"Did you, at this period, feel at ease—quite satisfied with yourself and your condition?"
"No; not quite. I sometimes felt an impression, and it was a very painful one, that I was not acting honourably nor honestly by standing identified with a body of Christians, after I had virtually renounced my belief in the articles of their faith. This greatly perplexed me. I knew not what to do."
"I suppose if you had openly avowed, what you had virtually done, they would have excluded you from their fellowship?"
"It is probable that a sentence of disownment would have been passed against me. This I should not have liked. It would have given so much pain to my parents."
"There is now, I believe, a change in your views of Divine truth?"
"Yes; and a great change, not only in my views of Divine truth, but in my appreciation of its importance."
"Will you tell me what was the means of leading you to receive the faith you once repudiated?"
"In the first instance, the reading of Dr. Chalmers' Astronomical Discourses weakened, in some measure, one very strong objection which I had long cherished against the truth of Christianity, and which I then considered invincible."
"I presume you refer to the objection which some philosophic sceptics have advanced against the Divine origin of Christianity, that it is monstrous to suppose the Deity would lavish on so insignificant a world as ours such peculiar and distinguishing attention as are ascribed to him in the Bible?"