I am not much given to open my heart to anybody, and on looking back I am often astonished at the way in which I threw myself and my troubles at your head, in those bitter days when my poor boy died. But the way in which you received my heathen letters set up a freemasonry between us, at any rate on my side; and if they make you a bishop I advise you not to let your private secretary open any letters with my name in the corner, for they are as likely as not to contain matters which will make the clerical hair stand on end. I am too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle of the "Analogy" that "there is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of Nature" (it is not commonly stated in this way), to have any difficulties about miracles. I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless, I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian world call, and, so far as I can see, are justified in calling, atheist and infidel. I cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomena of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father--loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. On the contrary, the whole teaching of experience seems to me to show that while the governance (if I may use the term) of the universe is rigorously just and substantially kind and beneficent, there is no more relation of affection between governor and governed than between me and the twelve judges. I know the administrators of the law desire to do their best for everybody, and that they would rather not hurt me than otherwise, but I also know that under certain circumstances they will most assuredly hang me; and that in any case it would be absurd to suppose them guided by any particular affection for me. This seems to me to be the relation which exists between the cause of the phenomena of this universe and myself. I submit to it with implicit obedience and perfect cheerfulness, and the more because my small intelligence does not see how any other arrangement could possibly be got to work as the world is constituted. But this is what the Christian world calls atheism, and because all my toil and pains does not enable me to see my way to any other conclusion than this, a Christian judge would (if he knew it) refuse to take my evidence in a court of justice against that of a Christian ticket-of-leave man.