Phases of Faith Passages from the History of My Creed
Excerpt
Personal reasons the writer cannot wholly disown, for desiring to
explain himself to more than a few, who on religious grounds are
unjustly alienated from him. If by any motive of curiosity or
lingering remembrances they may be led to read his straightforward
account, he trusts to be able to show them that he has had no choice
but to adopt the intellectual conclusions which offend them;—that
the difference between them and him turns on questions of Learning,
History, Criticism and Abstract Thought;—and that to make their
results (if indeed they have ever deeply and honestly investigated
the matter) the tests of his spiritual state, is to employ unjust
weights and a false balance, which are an abomination to the Lord. To
defraud one’s neighbour of any tithe of mint and cummin, would seem
to them a sin: is it less to withhold affection, trust and free
intercourse, and build up unpassable barriers of coldness and alarm,
against one whose sole offence is to differ from them intellectually?
