CHAPTER IV.
THE RELIGION OF THE LETTER RENOUNCED.
It has been stated that I had already begun to discern that it was impossible with perfect honesty to defend every tittle contained in the Bible.

Most of the points which give moral offence in the book of Genesis I had been used to explain away by the doctrine of Progress; yet every now and then it became hard to deny that God is represented as giving an actual _sanction_ to that which we now call sinful.
Indeed, up and down the Scriptures very numerous texts are scattered, which are notorious difficulties with commentators.

These I had habitually _overruled_ one by one: but again of late, since I had been forced to act and talk less and think more, they began to encompass me.

But I was for a while too full of other inquiries to follow up coherently any of my doubts or perceptions, until my mind became at length nailed down to the definite study of one well-known passage.
This passage may be judged of extremely secondary importance in itself, yet by its remoteness from all properly spiritual and profound questions, it seemed to afford to me the safest of arguments.

The _genealogy_ with which the gospel of Matthew opens, I had long known to be a stumbling-block to divines, and I had never been satisfied with their explanations.