I
believed for a long time, that the loss of faith in the supernatural
origin of Christianity and the Bible, had made me better, in some
respects, instead of worse. I thought no changes had taken place in my
character, but what, on the whole, were improvements. For years after I
became an unbeliever, I endeavored to practise all the unquestionable
virtues inculcated in the Bible, and I was disposed to believe that
modern unbelievers generally did the same. And when I lectured against
the Divine authority of the Bible, I disclaimed, as I have already said,
all sympathy with those who rejected the Bible because it
discountenanced vice. And such was the violence of my anti-religious
fanaticism, that I had actually come at one time to believe that
infidelity, in connection with natural science, was more friendly to
virtue than Christianity.
But my faith in this view met with many rude shocks after I had been
some time in America. Often when I came to be acquainted with the men
who invited me to lecture, I was ashamed to be seen standing with them
in the streets; and I shrank from the touch of their hand as from
pollution. And many a time when I had associated with persons for a
length of time, thinking them above suspicion, I was amazed to find, at
length, that they looked on vicious indulgence as harmless, and were
astonished that any man who had lost his faith in Christianity, should
have scruples with regard to fornication or adultery.
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