An analysis of religious belief

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.