CHAPTER VIII.
ON BIGOTRY AND PROGRESS.
If any Christian reader has been patient enough to follow me thus far, I now claim that he will judge my argument and me, as before the bar of God, and not by the conventional standards of the Christian churches.
Morality and Truth are principles in human nature both older and more widespread than Christianity or the Bible: and neither Jesus nor James nor John nor Paul could have addressed or did address men in any other tone, than that of claiming to be themselves judged by some pre-existing standard of moral truth, and by the inward powers of the hearer.

Does the reader deny this?
or, admitting it, does he think it impious to accept their challenge?
Does he say that we are to love and embrace Christianity, without trying to ascertain whether it be true or false?
If he say, Yes,--such a man has no love or care for Truth, and is but by accident a Christian.

He would have remained a faithful heathen, had he been born in heathenism, though Moses, Elijah and Christ preached a higher truth to him.

Such a man is condemned by his own confession, and I here address him no longer.
But if Faith is a spiritual and personal thing, if Belief given at random to mere high pretensions is an immorality, if Truth is not to be quite trampled down, nor Conscience to be wholly palsied in us,--then what, I ask, was I to do, when I saw that the genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew is an erroneous copy of that in the Old Testament?
and that the writer has not only copied wrong, but also counted wrong, so, as to mistake eighteen for fourteen?
Can any man, who glories in the name of Christian, lay his hand on his heart, and say, it was my duty to blind my eyes to the fact, and think of it no further?
Many, alas, I know, would have whispered this to me; but if any one were to proclaim it, the universal conscience of mankind would call him impudent.
If however this first step was right, was a second step wrong?
When I further discerned that the two genealogies in Matthew and Luke were at variance, utterly irreconcilable,--and both moreover nugatory, because they are genealogies of Joseph, who is denied to be the father of Jesus,--on what ground of righteousness, which I could approve to God and my conscience, could I shut my eyes to this second fact?
When forced, against all my prepossessions, to admit that the two first chapters of Matthew and the two first chapters of Luke are mutually destructive,[1] would it have been faithfulness to the God of Truth, or a self-willed love of my own prejudices, if I had said, "I will not inquire further, for fear it should unsettle my faith ?" The reader's conscience will witness to me, that, on the contrary, I was bound to say, what I did say: "I _must_ inquire further in order that I may plant the foundations of my faith more deeply on the rock of Truth."' Having discovered, that not all that is within the canon of the Scripture is infallibly correct, and that the human understanding is competent to arraign and convict at least some kinds of error therein contained;--where was I to stop?
and if I am guilty, where did my guilt begin?
The further I inquired, the more errors crowded upon me, in History, in Chronology, in Geography, in Physiology, in Geology.[2] Did it _then_ at last become a duty to close my eyes to the painful light?
and if I had done so, ought I to have flattered myself that I was one of those, who being of the truth, come to the lights that their deeds may be reproved?
Moreover, when I had clearly perceived, that since all evidence for Christianity must involve _moral_ considerations, to undervalue the moral faculties of mankind is to make Christian evidence an impossibility and to propagate universal scepticism;--was I then so to distrust the common conscience, as to believe that the Spirit of God pronounced Jael blessed, for perfidiously murdering her husband's trusting friend?
Does any Protestant reader feel disgust and horror, at the sophistical defences set up for the massacre of St.Bartholomew and other atrocities of the wicked Church of Rome?
Let him stop his mouth, and hide his face, if he dares to justify the foul crime of Jael.
Or when I was thus forced to admit, that the Old Testament praised immorality, as well as enunciated error; and found nevertheless in the writers of the New Testament no indication that they were aware of either; but that, on the contrary, "the Scripture" (as the book was vaguely called) is habitually identified with the infallible "word of God;"-- was it wrong in me to suspect that the writers of the New Testament were themselves open to mistake?
When I farther found, that Luke not only claims no infallibility and no inspiration, but distinctly assigns human sources as his means of knowledge;--when the same Luke had already been discovered to be in irreconcilable variance with Matthew concerning the infancy of Jesus;--was I sinful in feeling that I had no longer any guarantee against _other_ possible error in these writers?
or ought I to have persisted in obtruding on the two evangelists on infallibility of which Luke shows himself unconscious, which Matthew nowhere claims, and which I had demonstrative proof that they did not both possess?
A thorough-going Bibliolater will have to impeach me as a sinner on this count.
After Luke and Matthew stood before me as human writers, liable to and convicted of human error, was there any reason why I should look on Mark as more sacred?
And having perceived all three to participate in the common superstition, derived from Babylon and the East, traceable in history to its human source, existing still in Turkey and Abyssinia,--the superstition which mistakes mania, epilepsy, and other forms of disease, for possession by devils;--should I have shown love of truth, or obstinacy in error, had I refused to judge freely of these three writers, as of any others who tell similar marvels?
or was it my duty to resolve, at any rate and against evidence, to acquit them of the charge of superstition and misrepresentation?
I will not trouble the reader with any further queries.

If he has justified me in his conscience thus far, he will justify my proceeding to abandon myself to the results of inquiry.