of late date. I found great difficulty of expression; but the man
listened to me with much attention, and I was encouraged to exert
myself. He waited patiently till I had done, and then spoke to the
following effect: "I will tell you, sir, how the case stands. God has
given to you English a great many good gifts. You make fine ships, and
sharp penknives, and good cloth and cottons; and you have rich nobles
and brave soldiers; and you write and print many learned books:
(dictionaries and grammars:) all this is of God. But there is one
thing that God has withheld from you, and has revealed to us; and that
is, the knowledge of the true religion, by which one may be
saved." When he thus ignored my argument, (which was probably quite
unintelligible to him,) and delivered his simple protest, I was
silenced, and at the same time amused. But the more I thought it over,
the more instruction I saw in the case. His position towards me was
exactly that of a humble Christian towards an unbelieving philosopher;
nay, that of the early Apostles or Jewish prophets towards the proud,
cultivated, worldly wise and powerful heathen. This not only showed
the vanity of any argument to him, except one purely addressed to
his moral and spiritual faculties; but it also indicated to me that
Ignorance has its spiritual self-sufficiency as well as Erudition; and
that if there is a Pride of Reason, so is there a Pride of Unreason.
But though this rested in my memory, it was long before I worked out
all the results of that thought.

Another matter brought me some disquiet. An Englishman of rather low
tastes who came to Aleppo at this time, called upon us; and as he
was civilly received, repeated his visit more than once. Being
unencumbered with fastidiousness, this person before long made various
rude attacks on the truth and authority of the Christian religion,
and drew me on to defend it. What I had heard of the moral life of the