Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. The many variations in the transcriptions from the Chinese have been standardised on the basis of the most frequent occurrence. Variations in hyphenation and accents have also been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

In the quotation: "If then this man says, 'Try to make friends with an old woman and inquire of her; if then this girl does 'not' make friends with an old woman, and inquire of her, and this old woman brings Baga, or Shaêta, or Ghnâna, or Fraçpâta, or any of the vegetable purgatives, saying, 'Try to kill this child;' if then the girl does try to kill the child, then the girl, the man, and the old woman are equally criminal." the 'not' destroys the sense of the passage and has been removed.

Italics are indicated thus _italics_ and superscripts thus ^character.

Footnotes are placed at the end of the book.

AN ANALYSIS
OF
RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

BY
VISCOUNT AMBERLEY.

"_Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you Free._"

From the late London Edition. Complete.

D. M. BENNETT:
LIBERAL AND SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING HOUSE.
141 EIGHTH STREET, NEW YORK.
1877.

AMERICAN PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

The appearance, a few months ago, of THE ANALYSIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF caused not a little excitement in England, and its introduction into our country had much the same effect here. While many were more or less shocked by the Viscount's boldness of language in examining the sources of the religious creeds of the world, and at the freedom with which he removed the sacred mask from many antique myths and superstitions, the thoughtful and the enquiring were furnished with a fund of material for new thought, and largely-increased facilities for investigating and comparing the creeds and dogmas which have made up the ruling religious faiths of mankind.

When the Viscount's high birth is remembered; that he was the son of Lord John Russell, one of the first and oldest Peers of England; that he was thus closely connected with the aristocracy of that country; that he had been carefully nurtured within the fold of the Christian Church; that he had received the instruction of a pious Christian mother, from the days of his early childhood, that the influence of his parents and his early companions was to draw him under the control of the popular system of religion which rules in his country, it is not a little remarkable that he had the independence and moral bravery to come out in opposition to all his near friends, and to avow his unbelief in a code of ethics and opinions unlike those taught him in his childhood and youth, an unusual interest attaches to the work which he produced.

When it is borne in mind that his amiable and sympathetic wife toiled with him and rendered him essential service in collecting and arranging the matter for his two volumes; that she was taken from him by the hand of death before his work was completed; that he also sank under the hand of disease and passed away while his work was still in the hands of the printer, it is indeed invested with peculiar interest.

When it is remembered that after his death urgent efforts were made—and from high sources too—to suppress his work; that the powerful Duke of Bedford, backed by Lord John Russell himself, tried to buy up the entire edition issued; it is enough to make every sympathetic and enquiring person anxious to read the results of his labor of years.

If some of the advanced thinkers of the day find that Viscount Amberly—as evinced in some of the later chapters of this volume—had not in all respects evolved in the line of Free-thought so far as they have done they should remember that he had at least made rapid progress for the time he had devoted to the pursuit of truth. He was still a young man at the time of his death, and had it been his lot to have scored a greater number of years, with the advantage of the experience which they give, it is very possible his views might have undergone other modifications.

The London edition was issued in two volumes, 8vo and was necessarily sold at a large price. This American edition contains the entire work in one volume and is presented to the public at about one-fifth the price at which the English edition was sold. It is hoped this feature will be duly appreciated by the American public.

D. M. B.
NEW YORK, March 20th, 1877.

ADDRESS TO THE READER.

Ere the pages now given to the public had left the press, the hand that had written them was cold, the heart—of which few could know the loving depth—had ceased to beat, the far-ranging mind was forever still, the fervent spirit was at rest.

Let this be remembered by those who read, and add solemnity to the solemn purpose of the book.

May those who find in it their most cherished beliefs questioned or contemned, their surest consolations set at naught, remember that he had not shrunk from pain and anguish to himself, as one by one he parted with portions of that faith which in boyhood and early youth had been the mainspring of his life.

Let them remember that, however many the years granted to him on earth might have been, his search after truth would have ended only with his existence; that he would have been the first to call for unsparing examination of his own opinions, arguments, and conclusions; the first to welcome any new lights thrown by other workers in the same field on the mysteries of our being and of the universe.

Let them remember that while he assails much which they reckon unassailable, he does so in what to him is the cause of goodness, nobleness, love, truth, and of the mental progress of mankind.

Let them remember that the utterance of that which, after earnest and laborious thought he deemed to be the truth, was to him a sacred duty; and may they feel, as he would have felt, the justness of these words of a good man and unswerving Christian lately passed away: "A man's charity to those who differ from him upon great and difficult questions will be in the ratio of his own knowledge of them: the more knowledge, the more charity." F. R.

_INSCRIBED,_

_With all reverence and all affection, to the memory of the ever-lamented wife whose hearty interest in this book was, during many years of preparatory toil, my best support; whose judgment as to its merits or its faults would have been my most trusted guide; whose sympathy my truest encouragement; whose joyous welcome of the completed work I had long looked forward to as my one great reward: whose nature, combining in rare union scientific dearness with spiritual depth, may in some slight degree have left its impress on the page, though far too faintly to convey an adequate conception of one whose religious zeal in the cause of truth was rivaled only by the ardor of her humanity and the abundance of her love._

RAVENSCROFT,
_November 1875_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 19

_BOOK I._

EXTERNAL MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS
SENTIMENT.