nd tender matters, such as one always dreads to bring before a
promiscuous public, lest one cast pearls before swine. And yet unless
devotional books be written, especially by those who have as yet
no church, how are we to aid one another in the uphill straggle
to maintain some elements of a heavenly life? Can anything be more
heartless, or more like the sneering devil they talk of, than Mr.
Harrington? And here one who professes himself a religions man,
and who deliberately, after protest, calls _me_ an INFIDEL, is not
satisfied with having scoffed in an hour of folly--(in such an hour,
I can well believe, that melancholy record the "Eclipse of Faith,"
was first penned)--but he persists in justifying his claim to jeer
and snarl and mutilate, and palm upon me senses which he knows are
deliberately disavowed by me, all the while pretending that it is my
bad logic which justifies him! We know that very many religious men
_are_ bad logicians: if I am as puzzle-headed a fool as Mr. Rogers
would make people think me, how does that justify his mocking at my
religion? He justifies himself on the ground that I criticize the New
Testament as freely as I should Cicero (p. 147). Well, then let him
criticize me, as freely (and with as little of suppression) as I
criticize it. But I do not _laugh_ at it; God forbid! The reader will
see how little reason Mr. Rogers had to imagine that I had not read
so far as to see Harrington's defence; which defence is, either an
insolent assumption, or at any rate not to the purpose.

I will here add, that I have received letters from numerous Christians
to thank me for my book on the "Soul," in such terms as put the
conduct of Mr. Rogers into the most painful contrast: painful, as
showing that there are other Christians who know, and _he does not
know_, what is the true heart and strength of Christianity. He trusts
in logic and ridicules the Spirit of God.

That leads me to his defence of his suggestion that I might be
possibly as much inspired as the inventor of lucifer matches. He says,
p. 154:--

"Mr. Newman tells me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the
Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly
insult it I answer... that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context
would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read
on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration,
_formally_ held by Mr. Parker, who is _expressly_ referred to,