I told him that after avowing the fact on which I look back with pain, of having been sceptically inclined in that period of youthful arrogance when new-born reason, proud of her first flights, imagines that her wing can soar above the clouds, and penetrate the sanctuaries of the Most High, I could have no objection to inform him how far I had been enabled to overcome, as also where my presumption met with its first check, while Reason was my only guide. I then gave him a brief sketch of my former uneasy sensations, and the causes which had led to them. He listened with the deepest attention, and, when I concluded, answered that by a remarkable coincidence in our views, the only difficulties which had greatly harassed me were precisely those which still haunted him with ceaseless perplexity. “I never,” added he, “stuck at the historical discordances of the Bible, because, though I did not take the trouble of going minutely into the inquiry myself, I was aware that others of superior learning did do so; and when such a man as Sir William Jones, versed in Oriental literature, and examining the records of antiquity with critical acumen, was satisfied with his researches, so as to pronounce upon the increase of evidence which every added information produced to him, confirmatory of Scriptural truth, I could not tarry to believe that _apparent_ contrarieties only require investigation to be satisfactorily reconciled to _my_ understanding also, were I patiently to pursue the testimony which might be collected. I never felt that Herodotus was to be set aside as a historian, because superstition has deformed his work, and fable occasionally obscured the truth of his narrative. Nor have I ever doubted that Cæsar wrote the Commentaries imputed to his pen, though Hirtius has added a supplement to the book. Why then should I deny that Moses was author of the Pentateuch, because the account of that great lawgiver’s death and burial is supplied by another hand; or conclude it impossible that Joshua, the son of Nun, should have compiled the narrative ascribed to him, in consequence of finding a few mistakes in the arrangement of facts, for which he was, probably, not to blame, and which are the cause of certain unimportant anachronisms in the story? _My_ difficulties have been of another kind, and the three points of free-will, the soul’s separate state, and personal identity, have been with me, as with you, the barrier over which I have hitherto been unable to pass. I have heard much of a Novel which has lately appeared, and I brought it with me, though I have not yet looked into it, feeling how idle it is to expect argument in a _story_.” I told him that I had read _Tremaine_ with great pleasure, that I thought it an excellent, though not a faultless work, and should be happy to go over it again with him.