at least, that I could find written in English and lying about;
and I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other
note of philosophy. The penny dreadfuls which I also read
were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity;
but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of
Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now.
It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me
back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild
doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said
that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do.
They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question
whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished
Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time)
whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of
Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke
across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." I was
in a desperate way.

This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts
deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways.
I take only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian
or anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh,
a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically
upon my mind--the impression that Christianity must be a most
extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity
the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent
for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other.
It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons.
No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far
to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it