"Commit thy way to the Lord and trust in Him, and He will do it.And He will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thyjudgment as the noon-day."
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1890.
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
The following History of my Religious Opinions,now that it is detached from the context in whichit originally stood, requires some preliminary explanation;and that, not only in order to introduceit generally to the reader, but specially to makehim understand, how I came to write a whole bookabout myself, and about my most private thoughtsand feelings. Did I consult indeed my own impulses,I should do my best simply to wipe out ofmy Volume, and consign to oblivion, every trace ofthe circumstances to which it is to be ascribed;but its original title of "Apologia" is too exactlyborne out by its matter and structure, and theseagain are too suggestive of correlative circumstances,and those circumstances are of too grave acharacter, to allow of my indulging so natural awish. And therefore, though in this new EditionI have managed to omit nearly a hundred pages of[Pg iv]my original Volume, which I could safely considerto be of merely ephemeral importance, I am evenfor that very reason obliged, by way of making upfor their absence, to prefix to my Narrative someaccount of the provocation out of which it arose.
It is now more than twenty years that a vagueimpression to my disadvantage has rested on thepopular mind, as if my conduct towards the AnglicanChurch, while I was a member of it, was inconsistentwith Christian simplicity and uprightness.An impression of this kind was almost unavoidableunder the circumstances of the case, when a man,who had written strongly against a cause, and hadcollected a party round him by virtue of suchwritings, gradually faltered in his opposition to it,unsaid his words, threw his own friends into perplexityand their proceedings into confusion, andended by passing over to the side of those whomhe had so vigorously denounced. Sensitive thenas I have ever been of the imputations which havebeen so freely cast upon me, I have never felt muchimpatience under them, as considering them to bea portion of the penalty which I naturally andjustly incurred by my change of religion, eventhough they were to continue as long as I lived.I left their removal to a future day, when personalfeelings would have died out, and documents wouldsee the light, which were as yet buried in closetsor scattered through the country.
This was my state of mind, as it had been formany years, when, in the beginning of 1864, Iunexpectedly found myself publicly put upon mydefence, and furnished with an opportunity of pleadingmy cause before the world, and, as it so happened,with a fair prospect of an impartial hearing.Taken indeed by surprise, as I was, I had muchreason to be anxious how I should be able to acquitmyself in so serious a matter; however, I had longhad a tacit understanding with myself, that, in theimprobable event of a challenge being formallymade to me, by a person of name, it would be myduty to meet it. That opportunity had now occurred;it never might occur again; not to availmyself of it at once would be virtually to give upmy cause; accordingly, I took advantage of it, and,as it has turned out, th