It may enable many worthy persons, in whose estimation I should really
be glad to stand higher than I do, to become aware of the possibility
that my motives in writing the essays, contained in this and the
preceding volume, were not exactly those that they ascribe to me.
I too have reached the term at which the still, small voice, more
audible than any other to the dulled ear of age, makes its demand; and
I have found that it is of no sort of use to try to cook the accounts
rendered. Nevertheless, I distinctly decline to admit some of the
items charged; more particularly that of having "gone out of my way"
to attack the Bible; and I as steadfastly deny that "hatred of
Christianity" is a feeling with which I have any acquaintance. There
are very few things which I find it permissible to hate; and though,
it may be, that some of the organisations, which arrogate to
themselves the Christian name, have richly earned a place in the
category of hateful things, that ought to have nothing to do with
one's estimation of the religion, which they have perverted and
disfigured out of all likeness to the original.
The simple fact is that, as I have already more than once hinted, my
story is that of the wolf and the lamb over again. I have never "gone
out of my way" to attack the Bible, or anything else: it was the
dominant ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe,
without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.
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