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. On reading it afresh, after long
intermission, and comparing it for myself with the Old Testament, I
was struck with observing that the corruption of the two names Ahaziah
and Uzziah into the same sound (Oziah) has been the cause of