arguments of the last chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of
these mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications. All I had hitherto
heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at
the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen; and I
cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen without having
asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a cloudy
reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical interest in the
Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though
perhaps I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over
some of His modern critics. I read the scientific and sceptical
literature of my time--all of it, 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