Their love to God and man, their allegiance to righteousness and true holiness, will not be in suspense and liable to be overturned by new discoveries in geology and in ancient inscriptions, or by improved criticism of texts and of history, nor have they any imaginable interest in thwarting the advance of scholarship.

It is strange indeed to undervalue _that_ Faith, which alone is purely moral and spiritual, alone rests on a basis that cannot be shaken, alone lifts the possessor above the conflicts of erudition, and makes it impossible for him to fear the increase of knowledge.
I fully expected that reviewers and opponents from the evangelical school would laboriously insinuate or assert, that I _never was_ a Christian and do not understand anything about Christianity spiritually.

My expectations have been more than fulfilled; and the course which my assailants have taken leads me to add some topics to the last paragraph.

I say then, that if I had been slain at the age of twenty-seven, when I was chased[8] by a mob of infuriated Mussulmans for selling New Testaments, they would have trumpeted me as an eminent saint and martyr.

I add, that many circumstances within easy possibility might have led to my being engaged as an official teacher of a congregation at the usual age, which would in all probability have arrested my intellectual development, and have stereotyped my creed for many a long year; and then also they would have acknowledged me as a Christian.