--
"I hate the insolence, persecution, and intolerance, which so often
pass under the name of religion, and have fought against them; but I
have an unaffected horror of irreligion and impiety, and every
principle of suspicion and fear would be excited in me by a man who
professed himself an infidel."[174]
In a lighter vein, he talked with dread of travelling in a stage-coach with
"an Atheist who told me what he had said in his heart."[175] And in 1808 he
wrote to his friend Jeffrey with reference to the tone of the _Edinburgh
Review_:--
"I must beg the favour of you to be explicit on one point. Do you mean
to take care that the _Review_ shall not profess or encourage infidel
principles? Unless this is the case, I must absolutely give up all
thoughts of connecting myself with it."
The grounds on which his theism rested seem, as Sir Leslie Stephen points
out, to have been exactly those which satisfied Paley. Lord Murray, who,
though he was a judge, does not seem to have been exacting about the
quality of argument, admiringly relates this anecdote of his friend:--
"A foreigner, on one occasion, indulging in sceptical doubts of the
existence of an overruling Providence in his presence, Sydney, who had
observed him evidently well satisfied with his repast, said, 'You must
admit there is great genius and thought in that dish.
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