ity of the general doctrine of
the New Testament, as the "moral evidence" of its miracles and of its
fulfilling the Messianic prophecies. But for the ambiguity of the
word _doctrine_, probably such confusion of thought would have been
impossible. "Doctrines" are either spiritual truths, or are
statements of external history. Of the former we may have an inward
witness;--that is their proper evidence;--but the latter must depend
upon adequate testimony and various kinds of criticism.

How quickly might I have come to my conclusion,--how much weary
thought and useless labour might I have spared,--if at an earlier time
this simple truth had been pressed upon me, that since the religious
faculties of the poor and half-educated cannot investigate Historical
and Literary questions, _therefore_ these questions cannot constitute
an essential part of Religion.--But perhaps I could not have gained
this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to
think: and there are advantages also in expanding slowly under great
pressure, if one _can_ expand, and is not crushed by it.

I felt no convulsion of mind, no emptiness of soul, no inward
practical change: but I knew that it would be said, this was only
because the force of the old influence was as yet unspent, and that
a gradual declension in the vitality of my religion must ensue. More
than eight years have since past, and I feel I have now a right to
contradict that statement. To any "Evangelical" I have a right to
say, that while he has a _single_, I have a _double_ experience; and
I know, that the spiritual fruits which he values, have no connection
whatever with the complicated and elaborate creed, which his school
imagines, and I once imagined, to be the roots out of which they are
fed. That they depend directly on _the heart's belief in the sympathy
of God with individual man_,[7] I am well assured: but that doctrine
does not rest upon the Bible or upon Christianity; for it is a
postulate, from which every Christian advocate is forced to start. If
it be denied, he cannot take a step forward in his argument. He talks
to men about Sin and Judgment to come, and the need of Salvation,
and so proceeds to the Saviour. But his very first step,--the idea
of Sin,--_assumes_ that God concerns himself with our actions, words,
thoughts; _assumes_ therefore that sympathy of God with every man,
which (it seems) can only be known by an infallible Bible.

I know that many E