]
(covenant, testament), [Greek: Charis] (grace), are all terms pregnant
with fallacy.]

[Footnote 6: Horace and Cicero speak the mind of their educated
contemporaries in saying that "we ought to pray to God _only_ for
external blessings, but trust to our own efforts for a pure and
tranquil soul,"--a singular reversing of spiritual religion]

CHAPTER IX.

REPLY TO THE DEFENCE OF THE "ECLIPSE OF FAITH."

This small treatise was reviewed, unfavourably of course, in most of
the religious periodicals, and among them in the "Prospective Review,"
by my friend James Martineau. I had been about the same time attacked
in a book called the "Eclipse of Faith," written (chiefly against my
treatise on the Soul) in the form of a Platonic Dialogue; in which a
sceptic, a certain Harrington, is made to indulge in a great deal
of loose and bantering argumentation, with the view of ridiculing my
religion, and doing so by ways of which some specimen will be given.

I made an indignant protest in a new edition of this book, and added
also various matter in reply to Mr. Martineau, which will still
be found here. He in consequence in a second article[1] of the
"Prospective" reviewed me afresh; but, in the opening, he first
pronounced his sentence in words of deep disapproval against the
"Eclipse of Faith."

"The method of the work," says he, "its plan of appealing from what
seems shocking in the Bible to something more shocking in the world,
simply doubles every difficulty without relieving any; and tends to
enthrone a devil everywhere, and leave a God nowhere.... The whole
force of the writer's thought,--his power of exposition, of argument,
of sarcasm, is thrown, in spite of himself, into the irreligious
scale.... If the work be really written[2] in good faith, and be not
rather a covert attack on all religion, it curiously shows how the
temple of the author's worship stands on the same foundation with the
_officina_ of Atheism, and in such close vicinity that the passer-by
cannot tell from which of the two the voices stray into the street."

The author of the "Eclipse," buoyed up by a large sale of his work
to a credulous public, put forth a "Defence," in which he naturally
declined to submit to the judgment of this reviewer. But my readers
will remark, that Mr. Martineau, writing against me, and seeking to
rebut my replies to him--(nay, I fear I must say my _attack_ on him;
for I have confessed, almost with compunction,