m my critic refers to the
Preface to the second issue of the Belfast Address: 'Christian men,' I
there say, 'are proved by their writings to have their hours of
weakness and of doubt, as well as their hours of strength and of
conviction; and men like myself share, in their own way, these
variations of mood and tense. Were the religious moods of many of my
assailants the only alternative ones, I do not know how strong the
claims of the doctrine of "Material Atheism" upon my allegiance might
be. Probably they would be very strong. But, as it is, I have
noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of
clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my mind;
that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever
dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in
which we dwell, and of which we form a part.'

With reference to this honest and reasonable utterance my censor
exclaims, 'This is a most remarkable passage. Much as we dislike
seasoning polemics with strong words, we assert that this Apology only
tends to affix with links of steel to the name of Professor Tyndall,
the dread imputation against which be struggles.'

Here we have a very fair example of subjective religious vigour. But
my quarrel with such exhibitions is that they do not always represent
objective fact. No atheistic reasoning can, I hold, dislodge religion
from the human heart. Logic cannot deprive us of life, and religion
is life to the religious. As an experience of consciousness it is
beyond the assaults of logic. But the religious life is often
projected in external forms--I use the word in its widest sense--and
this embodiment of the religious sentiment will have to bear more and
more, as the world become more enlightened, the stress of scientific
tests. We must be careful of projecting into external nature that
which belongs to ourselves. My critic commits this mistake: he feels,
and takes delight in feeling, that I am struggling, and he obviously
experiences the most exquisite pleasures of 'the muscular sense' in
holding me down. His feelings are as real, as if his imagination of
what mine are were equally real. His picture of my 'struggles' is,
however, a mere delusion. I do not struggle. I do not fear the
charge of Atheism; nor should I even disavow it, in reference to any
definition of the Supreme which he, or his order, would be likely to
frame. His 'links' and his 'ste