13. Again. I was frequently tried by the characters of unbelievers. I had read and believed that many of the older unbelievers had been immoral; but I supposed that modern unbelievers were a better class. I had seen a number of statements to that effect in books and newspapers, some of them proceeding from Christians, and even from Christian ministers. I was disposed to believe that even the older infidels had not been so bad as represented. I knew that _I_ had been belied, and I considered it probable that all who had had quarrels or controversies with members of the priesthood, had been belied in like manner. I believed for a long time, that the loss of faith in the supernatural origin of Christianity and the Bible, had made me better, in some respects, instead of worse. I thought no changes had taken place in my character, but what, on the whole, were improvements. For years after I became an unbeliever, I endeavored to practise all the unquestionable virtues inculcated in the Bible, and I was disposed to believe that modern unbelievers generally did the same. And when I lectured against the Divine authority of the Bible, I disclaimed, as I have already said, all sympathy with those who rejected the Bible because it discountenanced vice. And such was the violence of my anti-religious fanaticism, that I had actually come at one time to believe that infidelity, in connection with natural science, was more friendly to virtue than Christianity. But my faith in this view met with many rude shocks after I had been some time in America. Often when I came to be acquainted with the men who invited me to lecture, I was ashamed to be seen standing with them in the streets; and I shrank from the touch of their hand as from pollution. And many a time when I had associated with persons for a length of time, thinking them above suspicion, I was amazed to find, at length, that they looked on vicious indulgence as harmless, and were astonished that any man who had lost his faith in Christianity, should have scruples with regard to fornication or adultery. Though these painful discoveries did not at once convince me that infidelity was wrong, and Christianity right, they were not without effect. They lessened my respect for the infidel philosophy, and prepared the way for my return to Christ. In England, where I expected on my return, to find unbelievers better, I found them worse. I supposed that the Secularists thought as I did with regard to virtue. I thought their object was to advance the temporal interests of mankind, and never dreamt but that they regarded virtue as the greatest of those interests. And when I found first one and then another to be dishonest, drunken, licentious, I was disposed to regard them as exceptions to the general rule. To the last; nay, for some time after my entire separation from the party, I supposed the profligate, unprincipled, abandoned ones to be the few, and the honest and virtuous ones to be the many.