Till it can be shown that another religion to an equal extent, has propagated itself without force amongst totally different races, and in the most distant countries, and has survived equal revolutions of thought and opinion, manners and laws, amongst those who have embraced it, it cannot be said that Christianity is simply like any other religion.

Till it can be shown that the sacred books of other religions have contained predictions as definite and as unlikely to be fulfilled as the success of early Christianity against all the opposition of prejudice and persecution,—­its voluntary reception amongst different races, contrary to all the analogies of religious history,—­and the continued preservation of the Jews among all nations without forming a part of any,—­I cannot think that Christianity is precisely in the condition of any other religion.

Such, gentlemen, were some few of the differences in fact which seemed to me, not less than its theory, to discriminate Christianity from other religions.  Had I in those days of my youth, been favored with the views of modern “spiritualism,” I should have added, that till it is shown that some other religion has possessed an equal power of moulding those characters whom Mr. Newman points out as the best examples of “spiritual” religion, and can point to oracles equally pervaded by that “sentiment” which he declares is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, and German Pantheists, but which, he admits, pervades the Bible; till I see the devout men whom he extols produced by other religions, or rather.  I ought to say, produced without them (where Christianity however is unknown) by the unaided “spiritual faculty,”—­I cannot but think that the position of Christianity is somewhat discriminated both from other religions and from “Naturalism.”

Such, I said, to conclude, was an imperfect outline of some of my early conflicts, and such the cruel mode in which my unbelieving friends laughed at each other’s hypotheses, and left me destitute of any.  Finding that they conclusively confuted one another, and perceiving at last that the idea of the superhuman origin of Christianity did, and, as Bishop Butler says, alone can resolve all the difficulties of the subject, I was compelled to forego all the advantages of infidelity, and condescended to “depress” my conscience to the “Biblical standard”!  Would to Heaven that it had never been depressed below it!

I am bound to say my auditors listened with courtesy.  The conversation was now carried on in little knots:  I, who was glad of a rest, was occupied in listening to a conversation between Harrington and his Italian friend, who was urging him to take refuge from such a Babel of discords as his company had uttered, in the only secure asylum.  Harrington told him, with the utmost gravity, that one great objection to the Church of Rome was the unseemly liberty she allowed to the right of private judgment; that he found in her communion distractions the most perplexing, especially as between English and foreign Romanists!