If, in some points, the preceding statements and conclusions do, at all, diverge from anything that is popularly taught on the subjects to which they refer, there need be no attempt here to gauge and discuss such divergences. Because all that the inquiry that has been before us calls upon me to consider, in a work of this kind, is the higher question (which, in fact, embraces, and is decisive of, the minor ones) of what in this matter is historically true. We have been endeavouring to ascertain the right interpretation, and the real connexion of some particulars in the history of our religion, regarded as a part of general History. That the conclusions we may be brought to have an important bearing on morality and religion themselves, which are the chiefest concerns of mankind, ought to have the effect of making us only more careful, and more determined, in our search for the truth. We are all agreed that truth, together with the effects it has on men’s hearts and lives, is, or at all events ought to be, religion: not what any person, or persons, at the present time think, or at any past periods may have thought; but, as far as is attainable, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We owe no fealty to anything else. Any error in this matter, just like any mistake in the statement of an arithmetical problem, must vitiate every step that follows. If any mistakes exist in the data, either of the arithmetical, or of the religious, problem, it cannot be worked out to any useful conclusion. From the beginning it was apprehended that religion was the truth. In this sense it was that it was described as ‘the Knowledge of God.’ In no other sense can it be ‘the Inspiration of Gods Spirit.’ We, at this day, looking back over the pages of History, can see that wherever this knowledge was clouded, or something else mistaken for it, the result was bad; and, as far as it went, destructive of religion. However venerable any mistakes may be, and however useful they may appear, supposing there are such mistakes, it is our interest, as well as our duty, to rid ourselves and the world of them as speedily and as completely as possible. I hardly need say that there is nothing in the foregoing argument, or in any of the remarks that have arisen out of its course, which militates against the ideas, that God has so ordered the course of this world as to show on which side He is; and that He has made doing right to be good in itself and good in its general and final consequences; and doing evil to be evil in itself, and evil in its general and final consequences. In fact, as much is assumed in the argument.[6]