story is that of the wolf and the lamb over again. I have never "gone
out of my way" to attack the Bible, or anything else: it was the
dominant ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe,
without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.

I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of
exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair's
breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue;
and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long, I came to a
tall and formidable-looking fence. Confident as I might be in the
existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood
the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board--"No
Thoroughfare. By order. Moses." There seemed no way over; nor did the
prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do, attract me. True there
was no longer any cause to fear the spring guns and man-traps set by
former lords of the manor; but one is apt to get very dirty going on
all-fours. The only alternatives were either to give up my
journey--which I was not minded to do--or to break the fence down and
go through it.

Now I was and am, by nature, a law-abiding person, ready and willing
to submit to all legitimate authority. But I also had and have a
rooted conviction, that reasonable assurance of the legitimacy should
precede the submission; so I made it my business to look up the
manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to
exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the
search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be
justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification
of claims so large required careful scrutiny.