The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time.

I never read a line of Christian apologetics.

I read as little as I can of them now.

It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology.
They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt.

Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind.