elf. Am I personally lowered by this change of
front? Not so. Give me their health, and there is no spiritual
experience of those earlier years--no resolve of duty, or work of
mercy, no work of self-renouncement, no solemnity of thought, no joy
in the life and aspects of nature--that would not still be mine; and
this without the least reference or regard to any purely personal
reward or punishment looming in the future.

And now I have to utter a 'farewell' free from bitterness to all my
readers; thanking my friends for a sympathy more steadfast, I would
fain believe, if less noisy, than the antipathy of my foes; and
commending to these a passage from Bishop Butler, which they have
either not read or failed to lay to heart. 'It seems,' saith the
Bishop, 'that men would be strangely headstrong and self-willed, and
disposed to exert themselves with an impetuosity which would render
society insupportable, and the living in it impracticable, were it not
for some acquired moderation and self-government, some aptitude and
readiness in restraining themselves, and concealing their sense of
things.'

********************

XI. THE REV. JAMES MARTINEAU AND THE BELFAST ADDRESS.

[Footnote: Fortnightly Review.]

PRIOR to the publication of the Fifth Edition of these 'Fragments' my
attention had been directed by several estimable, and indeed eminent,
persons, to an essay by the Rev. James Martineau, as demanding
serious consideration at my hands. I tried to give the essay the
attention claimed for it, and published my views of it as an
Introduction to Part 11. of the 'Fragments.' I there referred, and
here again refer with pleasure, to the accord subsisting between Mr.
Martineau and myself on certain points of biblical Cosmogony. 'In so
far,' says he, 'as Church belief is still committed to a given
Cosmogony and natural history of man, it lies open to scientific
refutation.' And again: 'It turns out that with the sun and moon and
stars, and in and on the earth, before and after the appearance of our
race, quite other things have happened than those which the sacred
Cosmogony recites.' Once more: 'The whole history of the genesis of
things Religion must surrender to the Sciences.' Finally, still more
emphatically: 'In the investigation of the genetic order of things,
Theology is an intruder, and must stand aside.' This expresses, only
in words of fuller pith, the views which I ventured to enunciate in
Belfast.