Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Themany variations in the transcriptions from the Chinese have beenstandardised on the basis of the most frequent occurrence. Variationsin hyphenation and accents have also been standardised but all otherspelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
In the quotation, page 501:
"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.
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.
iii
AMERICAN PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.
The appearance, a few months ago, of The Analysis of ReligiousBelief caused not a little excitement in England, and itsintroduction into our country had much the same effect here.While many were more or less shocked by the Viscount'sboldness of language in examining the sources of the religiouscreeds of the world, and at the freedom with which he removedthe sacred mask from many antique myths and superstitions,the thoughtful and the enquiring were furnished with a fundof material for new thought, and largely-increased facilities forinvestigating and comparing the creeds and dogmas which havemade up the ruling religious faiths of mankind.
When the Viscount's high birth is remembered; that he wasthe son of Lord John Russell, one of the first and oldest Peersof England; that he was thus closely connected with the aristocracyof that country; that he had been carefully nurturedwithin the fold of the Christian Church; that he had receivedthe instruction of a pious Christian mother, from the days ofhis early childhood, that the influence of his parents and hisearly companions was to draw him under the control ofthe popular system of religion which rules in his country, it isnot a little remarkable that he had the independence and moralbravery to come out in opposition to all his near friends, and toavow his unbelief in a code of ethics and opinions unlike thosetaught him in his childhood and youth, an unusual interestattaches to the work which he produced.
When it is borne in mind that his amiable and sympatheticwife toiled with him and rendered him essential service in collectingand arranging the matter for his two volumes; that shewas taken from him by the hand of death before his work wascompleted; that he also sank under the hand of disease and ivpassed away while his work was still in the hands of theprinter, it is indeed invested with peculiar interest.
When it is remembered that after his death urgent effortswere made—and