Excerpt from Steps of Belief James freeman clarke, a grand son_, through his mother, of the first avowed Unitarian minister in the United States, is, if not the most learned and gifted, at least among the most earnest, industrious, ener getic, and influential of contempo rary Unitarian ministers. He has a mind of singular comprehensiveness, and as open to the reception of er ror as to the reception of truth. He is an eclectic, or, rather, a syncretist, and holds it his duty to accept all opinions, whether true or false, as equally respectable. As a Unitarian, he comprehends both wings of the denomination, accepts both extremes, without troubling himself about the middle term that unites them. He is rarely impressed with the impor tance of logical consistency, and feels no difficulty in maintaining that, of two contradictory propositions, both are true, or both are false. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.