The delivery of a lecture on Missions in Westminster Abbey by a layman, and that layman a German, caused great excitement at the time. While some persons of great experience and authority in Church and State expressed their full approval of the bold step which the Dean of Westminister had taken, and while some of the most devoted missionaries conveyed to me their hearty thanks for what I had said in my lecture, others could not find terms sufficiently violent to vent their displeasure against the Dean, and to proclaim their horror at the heretical opinions embodied in my address. I was publicly threatened with legal proceedings, and an eminent lawyer informed me in the “Times” of the exact length of imprisonment I should have to undergo. I did not reply. I had lived long enough in England to know that no good cause can ever be served by a breach of the law, and neither the Dean nor I myself would have acted as we did unless it had been ascertained beforehand from the highest authorities that, with the sanction of the Dean, there was nothing illegal in a layman delivering such a lecture within the precincts of his Abbey. As to the opinions which I expressed on that occasion, I had expressed them before in my published “Lectures on the Science of Religion.” Whether they are orthodox or heretical, others are more competent to determine than I am. I simply hold them to be true, and at my time of life, mere contradictions, abuse, or even threats are not likely to keep me from expressing opinions which, whether rightly or wrongly, seem to me founded in truth.