Lessons I have learned.--1. Men slow to learn wisdom by the experience of others.--2. Danger of bad feeling.--3. Of a controversial spirit.--4. Old ministers should deal tenderly with their younger brethren.--5. Young thinkers should be prayerful, humble, watchful; yet faithful to conscience and to truth, trusting in God.--6. With Christian faith goes Christian virtue.--The tendency of unbelief is ever downwards.--7. Unbelievers are not irreclaimable.--We should not pass them by unpitied or unhelped.--8. Converts from infidelity must look for trials.--They must not expect too much from churches and ministers. Paul's case.--9. They must risk all for Christ, and bear their losses and troubles patiently.--10. They should join the Church, right away.--Not look for a perfect Church.--Keep inside.--Bear unpleasantnesses meekly.--Stones made smooth and round in the stream, by the rubbing they get from other stones.--Reformers should move gently, and have long patience.--The more haste the worst speed.--Killing rats.--12. Unbelief, when not a sin, is a terrible calamity: a world of calamities in one, 406 CONCLUDING REMARKS, 437 PREFACE. The object of this Book is, First, to explain a portion of my own history, and, Secondly, to check the spread of infidelity, and promote the interests of Christianity. How far it is calculated to answer these ends I do not pretend to know. I have no very high opinion of the work myself. I fear it has great defects. On some points I may have said too much, and on others too little. I cannot tell. I have however done my best, and I would fain hope, that my labors will not prove to have been altogether in vain. I have spent considerable time with a view to bring my readers to distinguish between the doctrines of Christ, and the theological fictions which are so extensively propagated in His name. It is exceedingly desirable that nothing should pass for Christianity, but Christianity itself. And it is equally desirable that Christianity should be seen in its true light, as presented in the teachings and character, in the life and death of its great Author. A correct exposition of Christianity is its best defence. A true, a plain, a faithful and just exhibition of its spirit and teachings, and of its adaptation to the wants of man, and of its tendency to promote his highest welfare, is the best answer to all objections, and the most convincing proof of its truth and divinity. And the truth, the reasonableness, the consistency, the purifying and ennobling tendency, and the unequalled consoling power of Christianity, _can_ be proved, and proved with comparative ease; but to defend the nonsense, the contradictions, the antinomianism and the blasphemies of theology is impossible.