I write you these lines in haste, and with my head full of the by no means agreeable work which I am doing for my examination, so you must excuse the want of order in my ideas.  I shall expect a long letter from you which will have on me the effect of water on a thirsty land.

PARIS, September 11th, 1846.

I wish that I could comment on each line of your letter which I received an hour ago, and communicate the many different reflections which it awakens in me.  But I am so hard at work that this is impossible.  I cannot refrain, however, from committing to paper the principal points upon which it is important that we should come to an immediate understanding.

It grieved me very much to read that there was henceforward a gulf fixed between your beliefs and mine.  It is not so—­we believe the same things; you in one form, I in another.  The orthodox are too concrete, they set so much store by facts and by mere trifles.  Remember the definition given of Christianity by the Proconsul (ni fallor) spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles, “Touching one Jesus, which was dead, and whom Paul declared to be alive.”  Be upon your guard against reducing the question to such paltry terms.  Now I ask of you can the belief in any special fact, or rather the manner of appreciating and criticising this fact, affect a man’s moral worth?  Jesus was much more of a philosopher in this respect than the Church.

You will say that it is God’s will we should believe these trifles, inasmuch as He had revealed them.  My answer is, prove that this is so.  I am not very partial to the method of proving one’s case by objections.  But you have not a proof which can stand the test of psychological or historical criticism.  Jesus alone can stand it.  But He is as much with me as with you.  To be a Platonist is it necessary that one should adore Plato and believe in all he says?

I know of no writers more foolish than all your modern apologists; they have no elevation of mind, and there is not an atom of criticism in their heads.  There are a few who have more perspicacity, but they do not face the question.

You will say to me, as I have heard it said in the seminary (it is characteristic of the seminary that this should be the invariable answer), “You must not judge the intrinsic value of evidence by the defective way in which it is offered.  To say, ’We have not got vigorous men but we might have them,’ does not touch intrinsic truth.”  My answer to this is:  1st, good evidence, especially in historical critique, is always good, no matter in what form it may be adduced; 2nd, if the cause was really a good one, we should have better advocates to class among the orthodox: 

1.  The men of quick intelligence, not without a certain amount of finesse, but superficial.  These can hold their own better; but orthodoxy repudiates their system of defence, so that we need not take them into account.