Chapter 37

THE STORY OF MY DESCENT FROM THE FAITH OF MY CHILDHOOD, TO DOUBT AND UNBELIEF.

My parents were Methodists of the strictest kind, and they did their utmost to make their children Methodists. And they were very successful. They had eleven children, ten of which became members of the Methodist Society before they were twenty years of age; and even the odd one did not escape the influence of religion altogether.

I was a believer in God and Christ, in duty and immortality, from my earliest days. And my faith was strong. Things spiritual were as real to me as things natural. Things seen and things unseen, things temporal and things eternal, formed one great whole,--one solemn and boundless universe. I lived and breathed in a spiritual world.

My parents were rigorously consistent. They were true Christians. They not only talked, but looked and lived as persons who felt themselves in the presence of a great and holy God, and in the face of an awful eternity; and the influence of their godly life, and daily prayers, and solemn counsels fell on me with a power that was irresistible.

If the doctrine taught me in my early days had been the doctrine of Christ, and the doctrine of Christ alone, in a form adapted to my youthful mind, the probability is, that I should have grown up to manhood, and passed through life a happy, useful and consistent Christian. But I was taught other doctrines. Though my father and mother taught me little but what was Christian, doctrines were taught me by others that shocked both my reason and my sense of right. I was taught, among other things, that in consequence of the sin of Adam, God had caused me to come into the world utterly depraved, and incapable, till I was made over again, of thinking one good thought, of speaking one good word, or of doing one good deed. I felt that I did think good thoughts, and that I had good feelings, and that I both said and did good things. But this I was told was a great delusion:--that nothing was good, and that nothing was pleasing to God, unless it came from faith in Christ. But I _had_ faith in Christ. I believed in Him with all my heart. I had believed in Him from the first. The answer was that I had believed with a _common_ kind of faith, but that it was another kind of faith that was necessary to salvation, and that whatsoever did not spring from this other kind of faith, was sin. And I was given to understand, that if I thought otherwise, it was because of the naughtiness of my heart, which, I was told, was deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. What this other kind of faith was, I did not know, and could not learn. I was then told that the natural man could not understand the things of the Spirit, and that before I could understand them, I must experience a change from nature to grace; all of which was past my comprehension. I was then informed that I must wait till God revealed those things unto me by His Spirit. But this made the matter no plainer.

I was further taught, that I was, in some way, answerable for Adam's sin,--that God made Adam the federal head of all mankind, and that all were bound by what he did;--that if he had done right, all would have come into the world pure, and good, and happy, and sure of eternal life; but that through his sin, we wore all born, not only utterly depraved, but guilty and liable to eternal damnation.

Then followed strange things about satisfaction to offended justice, trust in Christ's merits and righteousness, justification, regeneration, and sanctification, all mysteries as dark to me as night.

Sometime after, I found in my Catechism the doctrine of God's absolute and infinite fore-knowledge,--the doctrine that from eternity God knew who should be saved and who should be lost. This gave me the most terrible shock of all. It was plain that my doom was fixed forever. For if it was certainly foreknown, it must he unchangeably fixed.

These dreadful doctrines filled me with horror. They all but drove me mad. For a time, when I was about eight or nine years old, they _did_ drive me mad. They were more than my nature could bear. I felt that if things were as these doctrines represented them to be, the ways of God were horribly unjust. And as I could do no other than believe the doctrines, my whole soul rose in rebellion against God. I supposed, as a matter of course, that I should be sent to hell for my rebelliousness; still I rebelled. It seemed a dreadful thing that God should hang one's eternal destiny on things that were not in one's own power. I thought that if people could not do all that God required of them, He ought to allow them to fall back into their original nothingness. My mind especially revolted against the arrangement which God was said to have made with Adam, and the terrible consequences entailed thereby on his posterity. To bring men into being, and force them to live on forever, and at the same time to hang their eternal destiny on another, or on something beyond their power, seemed dreadfully unjust. I felt that every man ought to be allowed a fair trial for himself, and to stand or fall by his own doings. And nothing could make me feel that I was really answerable for the sin of Adam, any more than that Adam was answerable for my sins. And how God could impute one man's sin to another, was past all comprehension. And I felt, that if matters were managed as they were represented to be, the government of the universe was not right.

But supposing that God had a right to do as He pleased, and not knowing that He was so good that it was impossible that He should ever please to do wrong, I suffered in silence. But I often said to myself, 'God does not deal fairly with mankind,' and my feelings towards Him were anything but those of love and gratitude. So far was I from feeling any obligation to Him, that I looked on my existence as a tremendous curse, and I would gladly have consented to undergo any amount of torment, for any length of time short of eternity, for the privilege of being allowed to return to my original nothingness. The thought that even this was too much to be hoped for,--that it was fixed unchangeably that I must live on forever, and that there was but one dark path, which I might never be able to find, by which I could escape the unbounded and unending torments of hell, darkened all the days of my early youth, and made me exceedingly miserable. Some kind of blind unbelief, or a partial spiritual slumber at length came over me, and made it possible for me to live. But even then my life was anything but a happy one.

I cannot give the story of my life at length; but I afterwards got over the difficulties of my early creed, or exchanged the blasphemous horrors of theology for the teachings of Christ, and became a cheerful, joyous Christian, and a happy and successful Christian minister.

As I have said in Chapter fourteenth, I regarded the Bible as the Word of God from my early childhood. I believed every word to be true, and every command to be binding. My faith, at first, rested on the testimony of my parents and teachers, and of those among whom I lived. Every one I heard speak of the Book, spoke of it as divine, and the thought that it might be otherwise did not, that I remember, ever enter my mind. This my hereditary faith in the Bible was strengthened by the instinctive tendencies of my mind to believe in God, and in all the great doctrines which the book inculcated.

The first attempt to _prove_ the divinity of the Bible, of which I have any recollection, was made by my mother, while I was yet a child. What _led_ her to make the attempt I do not remember. It might be some perplexing question that I had asked her; for I used to propose to her puzzling questions sometimes. Her argument was,--'Bad men _could_ not write such a book, and good men _would_ not. It must therefore, have been written by God.' Another argument that I remember to have heard in those days was,--'No man would write the Bible who did not know it to be true; because it tells liars that their portion will be in the lake of fire and brimstone.' There was also an impression among such people as my parents, that the Bible was so good a book, and that it wrought with such a blessed power upon their souls, that it was impossible it should be written by any one but God. The last had probably the greatest effect upon their minds. Then they found in the Bible so many things in harmony with their best affections, their moral instincts, and their religious feelings, that they felt as if they had proof of its heavenly origin in their own souls. I came, at one period of my life, to look on these arguments with contempt. And it is certain, that to give them much force with men of logical habits, they would require qualification, and considerable illustration. But they are none of them so foolish as I once supposed. As for the last two, they are, when presented in a proper way, unanswerable.

There was another argument that was sometimes used, namely,--that though the different portions of the Bible were written by persons of widely distant ages, of different occupations and ranks, and of very different degrees of culture, they all aim at one end, all bear one way, and all tend to make men good and happy to the last degree. This is a great fact, and when properly considered, may well be accepted as a proof that the Bible, as a whole, is from God.

What effect these arguments had on my mind in my early days, I do not exactly remember, but the probability is, that they helped to strengthen my instinctive and hereditary faith in the divine origin of the Bible.

This my instinctive and hereditary faith was a great and beneficent power, and would have proved an inestimable blessing, if it had been preserved unshaken through life. And I am sorry it was not. I have no sympathy with those who speak of doubt as a blessing, and who recommend people to demolish their first belief, that they may raise a better structure in its place. We do not destroy our first and lower life, to prepare the way for a higher spiritual life. Nor do we kill the body to secure the development of the soul. Nor do we extinguish our natural home affections, in order to kindle the fires of friendship, patriotism, and philanthropy. The higher life grows out of the lower. The lower nourishes and sustains the higher. At first we are little more than vegetables: then we become animals: then men; and last of all, sages, saints, and angels. But the vegetable nature lives through all, and is the basis and strength of the animal; and the animal nature lives, and is the basis and strength of the human; and the human lives, and is the basis and strength of the spiritual and divine. And the higher forms of life are all the more perfect, for the vigor and fulness of those by which they are preceded.

And so with faith. Instinctive faith is the proper basis for the faith that comes from testimony. And the faith which rests on testimony is the proper basis for that which comes from reason, investigation, experience, and knowledge. And in no case ought the first to be demolished to make way for the second, or the second discarded to make way for the third. To kill a tree in order to graft on it new scions, would be madness; and to kill, or discard, or in any way to slight or injure our first instinctive child-like faith, to graft on our souls a higher one, would be equal madness.

Our instincts are infallible. The faith to which they constrain us is always substantially right and true, and no testimony, no reasonings, no philosophy, ought to be allowed to set it aside. Testimony, and science, and experience, may be allowed to develop it, enlighten it, and modify it, but not to displace or destroy it. It is a divine inspiration, and is essential to the life and vigor of the soul, to the beauty and perfection of the character, and to the fulness and enjoyment of life. If you lose it, you will have to find it again, or be wretched. If you kill it, you will have to bring it to life again, or perish. It is a necessary support of all other faith, and a needful part of all religion, of all virtue, and of all philosophy. Skeptics may call it prejudice; but it is a kind of prejudice which, as Burke very truly says, is wiser than all our reasonings.

I did not fall out with my instinctive belief, though I did not know its value; but I was so formed, that I longed for proofs or corroborating of its truth. I wanted to be able to do something more, when questioned by doubters or unbelievers as to the grounds of my faith, than to say, 'I _feel_ that it is true;' or to refer to the testimony of my parents and teachers; and I did not rest till I could do so.

I had a dear, good friend, Mr. Hill, a schoolmaster, a local preacher, and a scholar, who, believing that I had talents to fit me for a travelling preacher, and desiring to prepare me for that high office, kindly undertook to aid me in my studies. After he had taught me something of English grammar, he began to teach me Latin. When he had got me through the elementary books, and exercised me well in one of the Roman historians, he lent me a copy of Grotius, on the truth of the Christian religion, and recommended me to translate it into English, and then to translate it back again into Latin. 'It contains the best arguments,' said he, 'in favor of Christianity, and it is written in pure and elegant Latin; and by the course I recommend, you will both improve yourself greatly in Latin, and obtain a large amount of useful religious knowledge.'

I did as I was bid, and the result was truly delightful. I found in the book proofs both of the existence of God, and of the truth of Christianity, which seemed to me most decisive. When I had got through the book, I felt as if I could convince the whole infidel world. By translating the work first into English and then back into Latin, and repeating my translations to my teacher without manuscript, I got the whole book, with all its train of reasoning, so fixed in mind, that I was able to produce the arguments whenever I found it necessary. I could, in fact, repeat almost the whole work from beginning to end.

I can hardly describe the pleasure I felt when I found that my faith had a solid foundation to rest upon,--that after having believed instinctively, and on the testimony of my parents and teachers, I could both justify my faith to my own mind, and give sound reasons for it to any who might question me on the subject.

I afterwards got Watson's Theological Institutes, which amplified some of the arguments of Grotius, and added fresh ones. Here too I found large quotations from Howe's LIVING TEMPLE, an argument for the existence of God drawn from the wonderful structure of the human body, and considerable portions of Paley's work on NATURAL THEOLOGY. About the same time I read the Lectures of Doddridge, which gave me a more comprehensive view than either Grotius or Watson, both of the evidences of the existence of God, and those of the truth of Christianity. I afterwards met with Dwight's Theology, in which I found a number of things which interested me, though some of his reasonings seemed mere metaphysical fallacies.

I next read Adam Clarke's Commentary, where I found, besides his arguments for the existence of God, abundance of quotations from Paley, Lardner, Michaelis, and others, on the credibility of the New Testament history, and the truth of Christianity. His _a priori_ argument for the existence of God seemed only a play on words. His other arguments were much the same as Watson's.

About this time I read Mosheim's History of the Church. This did me harm. It is a bad book. It is, in truth, no real history of the Church at all, but a miserable chronicle of the heresies, inconsistencies and crimes of the worldly and priestly party in the Church, who perverted the religion of Christ to worldly, selfish purposes. The whole tendency of the book is to put the sweet image of Christ and the glories of His religion, out of sight, and to present to you in their place, a distressing picture of human weakness and human wickedness. It is a great pity that this wretched pretence to a church history was not long ago displaced by a work calculated to do some justice, and to render some service, to the cause of Christ.

I afterwards read works in favor of Christianity and against infidelity, by Robert Hall, Olinthus Gregory, Dr. Chalmers, Le Clerc, Hartwell Horne, S. Thompson, Bishop Watson, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Porteus. I also read Leland's View of Deistical Writers, Leslie's Short and Easy Method with Deists, Faber's Difficulties of Infidelity, Fuller's Gospel its Own Witness, Butler's Analogy, Baxter's Unreasonableness of Infidelity, and his Evidences of Christianity, Simpson's Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings, Ryan on the Beneficial Effects of Christianity, Cave on the Early Christians, the Debate between R. Owen and A. Campbell, Scotch Lectures, G. Campbell on Miracles, Ray's Wisdom of God in Creation, Constable's History of Converts from Infidelity, Newton on the Prophecies, Locke on the Reasonableness of Christianity, Nelson on the Cause and Cure of Infidelity, Priestley's Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, Jews' Letters to Voltaire, and works by Beattie, Soame Jenyns, West, Lyttleton, Ogilvie, Addison, Gilbert Wakefield and others. I also read sermons on different branches of the evidences, by Tillotson, Barrow, and others. One of the last and one of the best works I read on the Evidences of Christianity, were some sermons by Dr. Channing. These sermons presented the historical argument in a simpler and more impressive form than any work I had ever read.

This reading of works on the evidences did not prove an unmixed blessing. I am not certain that it did not prove a serious injury.

1. In the first place, the works I read weakened, in time, and then destroyed, my instinctive and hereditary faith, and gave me nothing so satisfactory in its place. They filled my mind with thoughts of things outside me, and even outside Christianity itself, which did not take a firm and lasting hold of my affections. They seemed to take me from solid ground and living realities, into regions of cold, thin air, and bewildering mists and clouds.

2. In the second place, the writers disagreed among themselves. They differed as to the value of different kinds of evidence. Some were all for external evidences, and some were all for internal evidences. Some said there was no such thing as internal evidence. 'The very idea of such a thing,' said they, 'supposes that man is able to judge what doctrines are true, or rational, or worthy of God; and what precepts, laws, institutions, and examples are right and good; and man has no such power. Reason has no right to judge revelation. All that reason has a right to do is to judge as to the matter of fact whether the Bible and Christianity be really a revelation from God or not, and, if it be, what is its purport. As to the reasonableness of the doctrines, and the goodness of the precepts, reason has no right or power to judge at all.'

Others contended that miracles could never prove the truth or divinity of any system of doctrines or morals that did not commend itself to the judgments and consciences of enlightened, candid, and virtuous men. These two parties, between them, condemned both kinds of evidence.

3. Then thirdly; some used unsound arguments. They used arguments founded on mistakes with regard to matters of fact. Grotius, for instance, based two of his arguments for the existence of God on misconceptions of this kind. 'That there is a God,' said Grotius, 'is evident from the fact, that water, which naturally runs downward to the level of the sea, is made to run upwards through subterranean channels, from the sea to the tops of the mountains, and thus supply springs and streams to water the earth, and supply the wants of its inhabitants.' But the waters are _not_ forced upwards from the sea to the mountains in this way: they are carried to the hills in the form of vapors.

True, the evidence for the existence of God supplied by the conversion of water into vapor, and by the many beneficent ends answered thereby, is as real and as convincing a proof of God's existence as any evidence that could have been furnished by such an arrangement as that imagined by Grotius. But I did not see this at the time; hence the discovery that the argument of Grotius was unsound, had an unfavorable effect on my mind.

'Again,' says Grotius, 'it is plain that the world must have had a beginning, from the existence of mountains. For if the earth had existed from eternity, the mountains, which the rains and floods are always reducing, washing down particles into the valleys and plains, would long ago have disappeared, and every part of the earth would long before this have been quite level.' Here was another error. Grotius was not aware, it would seem, that there are forces continually at work in the interior of the earth making _new_ mountains,--that some portions of the earth are continually rising, and others gradually subsiding.

4. Several of the arguments which I met with in Doddridge's great work I found to be unsound. And there were others which, if I did not discover to be fallacious, I felt to be unsatisfactory. They were, in truth, as I afterwards found, mere metaphysical puzzles.

5. Among the most honest and earnest works on the evidences that came in my way, were those of Richard Baxter. But many of his arguments were unsatisfactory. Among other things of doubtful value, he gave a number of ghost stories, and accounts of witches and their doings, and of persons possessed by evil spirits, and even of men and women who had sold themselves to the devil, and who had been seized and carried away by him bodily, in the presence of their neighbors and friends. Then some of his arguments took for granted points of importance which I was particularly anxious to have proved. Much of his reasoning seemed conclusive enough, but when sound and unsound arguments are so blended in the same book, the unsound ones seem to lessen the credit and the force of the sound ones.

On the subject of the evidences, Baxter, like Grotius, was behind the times. His works might be satisfactory enough to people of his own day, but they were not adapted to the minds of people of the present day.

6. The works of Paley and Butler gave me the greatest satisfaction. Paley, both in his Natural Theology and in his evidences of Christianity, seemed to be almost all that I could desire, and I rested in him for a length of time with great satisfaction. But I read him only once, and I ought, for a time at least, to have made him my daily study, and imprinted his work on my mind, as I did the work of Grotius.

7. Many writers on the Bible attempted to settle points which could not be settled. They tried to make out the authors of all the books in the Bible, and this was found impossible. Different writers ascribed books to different authors. The Book of Job was ascribed by one writer to Job himself, by another to Moses, and by a third to Elihu. The Book of Ecclesiastes was ascribed by some to Solomon, by others to a writer of a later age. Writers differed with regard to the authorship of many of the Psalms and many of the Proverbs. They differed with regard to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Book of Revelation, and even with regard to some of the Gospels. They multiplied controversies instead of ending them, and in some cases made matters seem doubtful that were not so.

8. The writers on evidences often attempted to prove points which were not true, and which, if they had been true, would have been no credit to the Bible or Christianity. Some of them spent more time in laboring to prove that Christianity taught doctrines which it did not teach, than in proving that the doctrines which it did teach were 'worthy of all acceptation.' Some left the impression that Christianity was a mass of vain, improbable, and incomprehensible doctrines, calculated neither to satisfy man's intellect nor his conscience, neither to renovate his heart, nor improve his life, nor increase his happiness. Such writers served the cause of infidelity rather than the cause of Christ.

9. Some, like Hartwell Horne, gave so many rules for interpreting the Bible, and required such a multitude of rare qualifications to fit a man for being a Bible student, that they left the impression on one's mind that the Book must be utterly unintelligible to people at large. And they directed the attention of their readers so much to matters of little or no moment, that they lost sight of the matters which the Bible was specially intended to teach and impress on men's minds and hearts.

10. Many dwelt so much on things doubtful, that they left the impression on the minds of their readers, that there was little or nothing but what _was_ doubtful. They busied themselves so much in answering objections, that they left the impression that there was little or nothing but what was open to objections. They had so little to say about what was true, and good, and glorious beyond all question, that they left people in doubt whether there was any thing past question or controversy in Christianity or not.

11. And many treated the subject so coolly or carelessly, that they abated rather than increased the interest of their readers in religious matters.

12. And the great mass of writers followed one another so servilely,--they wrote so much by rote, and so little from experience or real knowledge, that all seemed cold and formal, uninteresting and unprofitable. It was a rare thing to come across a writer that touched the heart, or even satisfied the judgment.

13. And they often labored hard and long to prove points of little or no importance, while points of greatest moment were left untouched, or handled so unskillfully as to do harm rather than good.

14. And almost all had unauthorized and unscriptural theories of Scripture inspiration, which it was impossible for them to prove, and which they so manifestly failed to prove, that a critical reader could not but see their failure. They tried to justify expressions and actions which could not be justified, and to reconcile differences which did not admit of reconciliation.

15. Even the historical arguments of Paley and Grotius consisted of so many particulars, and carried one so far back into regions with which one was so imperfectly acquainted, and into states of society which it was so difficult for one to realize, that it was impossible they should have much power over the heart; and the little they had was soon lost, when their books were laid aside. Even when we remembered the facts, and could run them over in our minds, we could not feel the force of the argument based on them, or use it so as to make it felt by others.

The historical argument drawn from miracles never exerted much satisfying power on my mind for any length of time. I could remember that it _had_ satisfied me once, but that was not to feel its satisfying power then. And you could not go back to your books continually, and pore over the arguments forever. So that long before I became a doubter, I felt that the historical argument could never be useful to people generally, either in producing faith where it was not, or in perpetuating it where it was. I was sure that if mankind at large were to be brought to receive and cherish Christianity, it must be by proofs of a simpler and more popular kind, which people could feel, and carry along with them in their hearts as well as in their heads. And now I see most clearly that I was right. Miracles had a use, and I may show what it was by and by; but it was not the use to which they have been so often and so vainly applied.

16. The writers on prophecy were as unsatisfactory as those on miracles. They often handled the prophecies unfairly if not deceitfully. They treated as absolute prophecies, prophecies which were expressly conditional. And they lost sight of the fact, so plainly stated in Jeremiah xviii, that all prophetic promises and threatenings are conditional. Then they took one bit of a prophecy and left another: kept out of sight predictions which had not been fulfilled, and dwelt exclusively on phrases which had been fulfilled.

They dealt deceitfully with history as well as prophecy. They made or modified facts. They gave fanciful interpretations to prophecies. And they tried to make prophecy prove what it could not prove, however unquestionable and miraculous the fulfilment might be. The manner in which Nelson and Keith dealt with prophecy was often childish, and even dishonest. A careful examination of their works left a most painful impression on my mind.

What Albert Barnes says about much of the reasoning of preachers and divines is applicable to this class of writers more than to some others. 'A great part of the reasoning founded upon prophecies is unsound. Much of the reasoning employed by the early Christian Fathers, by the Schoolmen, and by the Reformers had no intrinsic force: it was based on ignorance and error. Yet theologians are prone to cling to it. They forget the age in which they live. They linger, they live, among the shades of the past. Their thoughts, their dialect, their way of reasoning are all of other days.

'The quality of another kind of reasoning common among divines is, that it is not understood by the mass of men, and that it does not seem to be understood by those who use it.'

17. In the following paragraph he speaks important words about theology as well as about theological reasoning.

'There is much theology,' says he, 'that a good man cannot preach. It would shock his own feelings; it would contradict his prayers; it would be fatal to all his efforts to do good; it would drive off the sinner to a hopeless distance, though he had begun to return to God; it would be at war with the elementary convictions which men have of what must be true. Among the doctrines of this theology are those,--that Christ died for the salvation of only a part of mankind,--that we are to blame for Adam's sin,--condemned for an act done ages before we were born.

'The theology that should be preached to make the pulpit what it should be, should be based on obvious and honest principles of Scripture interpretation. The preacher is the interpreter of a book, and he should be the voice, the organ, of its true and natural meaning. Nothing should be misquoted; nothing should be perverted or misapplied. His interpretation should be seen and felt to be in harmony with the scope, the drift, the spirit, the aim of the Bible. The success of preaching has been greatly hindered by false principles of Biblical interpretation. In interpreting other books men have gone on rational principles; but in interpreting the Bible they have gone on principles quite irrational. They have sought for double senses, and mystical meanings, and used texts as proofs of doctrines, that had no reference to the doctrines whatever. Metaphors and symbols have had all possible meanings forced on them. Infidels and men of the world are approached with arguments that are little less than insults to their understandings. They are disgusted, instead of being convinced. They are led to look on the Bible with disdain. They are willing to remain infidels, rather than become idiots. One is pained and sickened that such a multitude of impertinent and inapplicable texts should be brought as proofs of Christian doctrine;--texts applicable to anything else rather than the points under consideration. Even Dr. Edwards misuses texts of Scripture thus. The Bible is to be interpreted as other books are. Men are not to hide themselves in the mist of a hidden meaning, and shock the common sense of the world. Preachers should go on the supposition, that in every congregation there are shrewd and sagacious men, who can appreciate a good argument, and see the weakness of a bad one; men who can appreciate a good sermon, if there be a good sermon to be appreciated. For such, he may be assured, is the fact.'

All these unwise things had a tendency to shake my faith in writers on the evidences, to lessen my interest in the subject, to abate my confidence in the knowledge and integrity of the authors, and to diminish my faith in the supernatural origin of the Bible and Christianity.

18. The evidences that had most weight with me were the internal evidences. But these were often handled in an unsatisfactory way. The greater part of Soame Jenyns' little work was good, as far as it went; but it went only a very short way. It took a step or two, in the most difficult, doubtful, and uninviting part of the road, but it left the vast paradise of internal evidences unexplored, and even unapproached. His work was rather an apology for Christianity, proving that it was not open to censure, than a demonstration of its incalculable worth and power.

I did not myself see clearly at the time, that the adaptation of Christianity to man's wants, to man's nature, and its tendency to promote man's temporal as well as his spiritual welfare, was really a proof of its divine origin. I saw that it was a valid answer to the infidel objection that it was useless or mischievous; but not that it was a decisive proof of its divinity. Hence though I employed it as a refutation of infidel charges against Christianity, I never pressed it further.

And though I got at length much larger views of the excellency of Christianity than those presented by Soame Jenyns, I saw not half, I saw not a tenth of its worth and glory. I saw not a tenth even of what I see now. I now see there are no limits to the excellency of Christianity, or to the power of the argument supplied by its glorious character, in proof of its divinity.

And the worth and excellency of Christianity you can carry continually in your mind. They present themselves whenever you open the Gospels, or look at Jesus. They move you whenever you think of the happy effect Christianity has had on your own hearts and lives. They come to your minds whenever you look on the prevailing vices and miseries of society, which result from a want of Christianity. They touch your heart, as well as convince your judgment. But I neither saw them in their true light nor in their full extent before I fell into doubt; so that they were unable to make up for the deficiency in the external evidences, and to check my growing tendency to unbelief.

19. There were other influences that helped me down to unbelief. Negative criticism, pulling things to pieces with a view to find faults, to which our modern philosophers give the fine name of _Analysis_, tends to cause doubt about every thing. It eats out of one the very soul of truth, of love, and of faith. It tends naturally to kill all our good instincts and natural affections, and to render not only religion, but philosophy, virtue and happiness impossible. The Cartesian system of reasoning, which begins by calling in question every thing, and which refuses to believe anything without formal proof, is essentially vicious. The man who adopts it and carries it out thoroughly, must necessarily become an infidel, not only in religion, but in morals and philosophy. And he must become intolerably miserable, and destroy himself, unless, like John S. Mill, he can find out some method of deceiving himself.

And this is the system of reasoning now in vogue. This vicious system I adopted, and it hastened my fall into unbelief as a matter of course. Not one of all the most important things on earth admits of proof in this formal way. You cannot prove your own existence in this way. You cannot prove the existence of the universe. You cannot prove the existence of God. You cannot prove that there are such things as vice and virtue, good and evil. You cannot prove that men ought to marry, rear families, form governments, live in society, tell the truth, be honest, restrain their appetites and passions, or abstain from treachery and murder. All reasonings in favor of religion, virtue, society, philosophy, must rest on assumptions,--must take a number of things for granted,--must take for granted the truth and goodness of those instincts, sentiments, and natural affections which constrain us to be religious, social, and moral, independent of argument. All reasoning, to be of any use, must begin, not with doubt, but belief. The reasoning that begins with doubting every thing, and accepting nothing till it is proved by formal argument, will end in doubt of every thing that ought to be believed. It will end, not only in Atheism, but in boundless immorality, and in utter wretchedness and ruin. The man who would not be undone by his logic, must pity Descartes instead of admiring him, and instead of following him go just the contrary way. Descartes made a fool of himself, or his method of reasoning made a fool of him, the very first time he used it. His very first argument was a fallacy and a folly. He pretended, first, to doubt, and then to prove, his own existence. His argument was, 'I think; therefore I _exist_:' as if he could be more sure that he _thought_, than he was that he existed. He took his existence for granted when he said 'I think.'

20. Other things helped on the horrible change that was taking place in my soul. I got a taste for reading a different kind of works from those which I had been accustomed to read. I turned away from works on religion and duty, and began to read the works of the critical, destructive party. I turned away even from the best practical writers of the orthodox school, such as Baxter, Tillotson and Barrow, and read Theodore Parker, Martineau, W. F. Newman, W. J. Fox, and Froude. I also read Carlyle, Emerson, and W. Mackay, the metaphysical bore, and C. Mackay, the charming, fascinating, but not Christian poet. Theodore Parker became my favorite among the prose writers. His beautiful style and practical lessons had already reconciled me to his harsh expressions about the Bible, and to his contemptuous treatment of miracles; and now I had degenerated so far that I liked him for those very faults.

I read the writings of the American Abolitionists, all of which tended to draw me from the Church and the Bible, and to bring me more fully under skeptical influences. I began to look more freely and frequently into works of science, and most of those waged covert war with supernaturalism, and sought to bring down the Bible and Christianity to the level of ordinary human thought. All ideas of authority in books and religious systems, in ecclesiastical and social institutions, gradually faded away. All ideas of superhuman authority, or divine obligation, in marriage, in home, and in family life vanished. All things lost their sacredness, and came down to the vulgar level of mere human opinion, or of personal interest, convenience, or pleasure.

21. There was a change in my companions. Those who had high and holy thoughts of all things, and whose meat and drink it was to do good, withdrew from me; and men and women came around me who cared only for earth and self; whose talk was of gain, and fashion, and self-indulgence; and whose desire it was to silence conscience, and to stifle thoughts of duty.

22. I ceased to pray. I had already given up family prayer. I now gave up private prayer. I gave up prayer altogether. I had impulses to prayer, but I resisted them. Prayer was irrational, according to the new philosophy, and must be discarded.

23. And praise and thanksgiving went next. What reason could there be for telling an all-wise God what you thought of Him, or how you felt towards Him? And besides, it now began to appear that God had not been so very bountiful as to deserve either high commendation, or enthusiastic thanksgiving.

24. I had fresh work. Politics first got into partnership with my religion, and then turned religion out of the concern. And politics, severed from religion, soon become selfish, and even devilish. So long as Christian philanthropy occupied my thoughts and feelings, it helped religiousness; but when it gave way to polities, my religiousness declined, languished, and died.

25. I began to indulge in amusements. Chess, drafts, cards, concerts, theatres, and feasting asked for a portion of my time and money, and I gave it to them. I began to think of pleasure more than of usefulness; to live for myself rather than for others; and the higher virtues and religion went down together.

26. My position improved. I passed from poverty to comparative wealth. This helped my degeneracy. I had more abundant means of self-indulgence, and I began, though slowly, timidly, and with misgivings, and self-reproaches, and occasional fits of remorse, to use them for selfish, worldly purposes. God had given me more, so I gave Him less. Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked. Jesus knew what He was saying when He warned people against the danger, the deceitfulness, of riches.

27. I was often uneasy during the decline of religion in my soul, but philosophy had its anodynes, its soothing syrups, its dreamy, delusive, spiritual drugs. It could flatter, it could cheat, in the most approved fashion. It could bewitch, intoxicate, and take captive the whole soul,--judgment, conscience, fancy, everything.

Satan can put on the appearance of an 'angel of light.' He can talk religion. He can talk philanthropy. He can preach the most beautiful doctrines. He can use the most charming words. At the very moment that he is destroying religion and virtue, he can speak of them in the highest terms, and even sing of them in the sweetest strains. He can talk of liberty in the most swelling, high-sounding, and fascinating style, while all the time he is making men the most degraded and miserable slaves. He can lead people, singing and dancing, laughing and shouting, through a philosopher's paradise, to a purgatory of guilt and horror. And all the time he will preach to them the finest doctrines; the most exalted sentiments. 'Religion!--everything is religion, that is in accordance with the laws of our own nature, that is suitable to our position and relations, that helps our brothers or our families. And all truth is religious truth. All science is divine revelation. All laws are God's laws, except the arbitrary laws of men. All work is divine work, if it be according to nature. All useful work is religion. Farming, trade, government, are all religion. So are waking and sleeping. They are all divine ordinances; they are all divine service. All good work is worship. Singing foolish hymns, reading foolish lessons, preaching foolish sermons, offering foolish prayers, in unhealthy churches, half stifled with foul air, are not religion. Religion is the free and natural utterance of great, true thoughts, of good and generous feelings, of nature's own rich sentiments and inspirations. The flowery fields, the shadowy woods, the lofty mountains are nobler places of worship than the dark and damp cathedral; and the fresh air of heaven is a diviner inspiration than carbonic acid gas. And the sun is a diviner light than waxen tapers, explosive lamps, or oxygen-consuming gas. And the gorgeous sun-tinted clouds are grander and more beautiful than painted windows! God's temple is all space; His altar; earth, air, skies! His ministers are sun, moon, stars; birds, beasts, and flowers. Nature is God's revelation; the true Bible; written in an universal language; speaking to all eyes; needing no translation; in danger of no interpolation, alteration, or mutilation. Man is the true Shekinah,--the veritable image, the real glory, the true revelation and manifestation of God. Man is the saviour of man: the teacher, the guide, the comforter of man. Every one, male or female, is a servant, a minister of God. All are priests. All are kings. The truth makes us free: free from all authorities, but the authority of God,--God in the soul. Christ is our brother, not our master. He is a helper, not a ruler. And all are helpers of each other. All are saviours. All are Christs. Inspiration is not a matter of time, or place, or person. It is eternal and universal. It is in all, and it endures forever. Every good book is a Bible. Every good hymn or song is a holy psalm. Purity of body is holiness, as well as purity of mind. Every day is a sabbath, a holy day. Every place is holy ground. The Church of God is the human race. All are God's disciples, under training by nature's operations, and by the events of daily life. The earth is God's great school-house; mankind are one great school; God is our chief Master; the universe is our lesson book, and all we are ushers and under teachers. All things are our helpers, not masters;--our servants, not lords. They are made for us, not we for them; and must be used so as to make them answer their ends. The Sabbath was made for man; not man for the Sabbath. Bibles are for men, not men for Bibles. Governments, churches, authorities, laws, institutions, customs, events, suns, moons, stars, systems, atoms, elements, all are made for man, and to man's interest and pleasure they must be subordinated. All must be changed to meet man's changing wants. Nothing is entitled to be permanent, but that which answers beneficently to something permanent in man. Man is lord of the universe. Man is lord of himself. Man is his own rightful governor. Man is his own law. His nature is his law. Each individual man is his own law. Individualities are divine, and must be respected; respected by laws and governments. Law must yield to individuality; not individuality to law. Individuality is sacred. The individuality of the individual is his life, and must be fostered. It is a new manifestation of God. As to means of grace,--all expressions and interchanges of kind feeling are means of grace. Shaking hands is a means of grace. Free, friendly talk, a concert or a song, a social ride, a family feast, a social gathering, a pleasant chat, a game at whist, all are means of grace. All are holy to holy souls. All are pure to pure minds. Eating, drinking, sleeping are all divine ordinances. Religion, in its higher and more enlightened form, raises our views of all things; makes all things beautiful; all things glorious. It does not bring down the high and holy; but lifts up all things to a divine level. It desecrates no temple; but consecrates the universe. It breaks no Sabbath; but makes every day a Sabbath, and all time one lengthened holy day. It degrades no priest; but makes all men priests. It does not bring down the high, but raises the low. It denies not heaven; but brings down heaven to earth. Everywhere is heaven. God's kingdom is an universal kingdom. His presence, His throne, His glory, are everywhere, and heaven is all around us and within us. The universe is heaven.' Thus spake the devil.

And now came in his progressive poets to give those broad, those high, those rational, those philosophical principles, this theology and religion of advanced humanity, this Church and worship of the future, the fascination of their ecstatic genius, and all the charms of numbers, rhyme, and melody. 'My religion is love,' sings one, 'the richest and fairest.' 'Abou Ben Adhem,' sings another. 'He loves not God; but loves God's creature man. Give him a place,--the highest place,--in heaven.' Another sings, 'The poor man's Sunday walk.' The advanced religionist, addressing his wife, exclaims,

The morning of our rest has come, The sun is shining clear; I see it on the steeple-top: Put on your shawl, my dear, And let us leave the smoky town, The dense and stagnant lane, And take our children by the hand To see the fields again. I've pined for air the livelong week; For the smell of new-mown hay; For a pleasant, quiet, country walk, On a sunny Sabbath day.

Our parish church is cold and damp; I need the air and sun; We'll sit together on the grass, And see the children run. We'll watch them gather butter-cups, Or cowslips in the dell, Or listen to the cheerful sounds Of the far-off village bell; And thank our God with grateful hearts, Though in the fields we pray; And bless the healthful breeze of heaven, On a sunny Sabbath day.

I'm weary of the stifling room, Where all the week we're pent; Of the alley fill'd with wretched life, And odors pestilent: And long once more to see the fields, And the grazing sheep and beeves; To hear the lark amid the clouds, And the wind among the leaves; And all the sounds that glad the air On green hills far away:-- The sounds that breathe of Peace and Love, On a sunny Sabbath day.

For somehow, though they call it wrong, In church I cannot kneel With half the natural thankfulness And piety I feel When out, on such a day as this, I lie upon the sod, And think that every leaf and flower Is grateful to its God; That I, who feel the blessing more, Should thank Him more than they, That I can elevate my soul On a sunny Sabbath day.

Put on your shawl, and let us go; For one day let us think Of something else than daily care, Or toil, and meat, and drink: For one day let our children sport And feel their limbs their own: For one day let us quite forget The grief that we have known:-- Let us forget that we are poor; And, basking in the ray, Thank God that we can still enjoy A sunny Sabbath day.

What can be more natural,--what more plausible,--what more rational,--what more pious? Yet it means forgetfulness of God, forgetfulness of Christ, forgetfulness of duty, forgetfulness of immortality. It means self, and sin, and ruin. And so it is with a multitude of other sweet poems. One of the sweetest singers that ever received a poetic soul from God, ignores Christ and Christianity. His works are full of truth, but it is truth turned into a lie, and made to do the work of sin and death. It is Satan clad as an angel of light.

Every day a Sabbath, means no day a Sabbath. All places holy, means no place holy. All things worship, means nothing worship. All honest labor religious, means no labor religious. Freedom means license, contempt for virtue, enslavement to vice. Progress means falling back. Elevation means degradation. Liberality means leniency to error and evil, and severity towards truth and goodness. In short, darkness means light, and light means darkness; good means evil, and evil good; bitter means sweet, and sweet bitter. Reform means revolution, and renovation means degradation, and all these charming things mean wretchedness and ruin.

We must not be understood as condemning all the sentiments uttered by the great deceiver. Many of them are true and good. They are Christian. Satan is too wise to preach unmitigated falsehood. He understands too well the art of using truth so as to serve the ends of falsehood. It is enough for him if he can sever men's souls from Christ, and truth from divine authority, and religion from Christianity, the Church, and the Bible. Allow him to do this, and he will discourse and sing to you a world of sweet words and lofty sentiments. Truth is the ladder by which men climb to God, and goodness, and heaven. But Satan has found out that there is a way _down_ the ladder as well as _up_, and that to praise the ladder to the descending crowd is the surest way to draw them ever further downward, till they lose themselves amid the blinding smoke of the abyss beneath. We love, we cherish every sweet word of truth, but we value nothing apart from God, and Christ, and Religion.

28. It is a bad thing when people are taught things in their youth that are not true. They are sure, when they become students, if they are honest and able, to find out the errors, and to lay them aside. And the mere habit of detecting and laying aside errors, has a tendency to make men skeptical. Now I had been taught a multitude of things in my youth that were not true, both with regard to the doctrines and the evidences of Christianity. These things I detected and set aside in riper years. And I had so many things to set aside, that I came to look with suspicion on almost all my creed. The skeptical tendency got too strong for my habit of belief. I suspected where there was no good ground for suspicion. I rejected truth as well as error. I held in doubt doctrines that I ought to have cherished as my life. Change became too easy; judgment too hasty; and error and unbelief were naturally the result.

It is especially a bad thing when an earnest young student sees signs of carelessness in religious writers; a readiness to repeat what has been said before; to support what is popular, without endeavoring to ascertain whether it be true or not. It is still worse when a student discovers in religious writers signs of dishonesty and fraud. I discovered both. I saw cases in which false doctrines were passed on from generation to generation, and from writer to writer, without the least attempt to ascertain their true character. I saw other cases in which dishonesty was manifest, in which fraud was used, in support of doctrines. Old creeds were allowed to remain unaltered, long after portions of them had been found to be unscriptural; and error was subscribed as a matter of course. The result was, a distrust of everything held by such parties, unless it was supported by the plainest and most decisive proofs.

29. I was now in a state of mind to go down quietly and almost unconsciously into utter unbelief. And I _went_ down. I did not _reject_ the doctrine of the divine origin of the Bible and Christianity, but gradually _lost_ it. My faith died a natural death. I was in the world, and became a worldly man. I mixed with unbelievers, and gradually came down to their level. I had supposed that a man could be as religious outside the Church as inside; but I found it otherwise. It was a sad, an awful change I underwent; but I not only did not see it, at the time, in its true light, but was actually unconscious for a long time that it was taking place.

In November 1852, I attended a Bible convention at Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio. It lasted three days. I spoke repeatedly, and at considerable length, at its meetings. My remarks wore directed chiefly, not against the Bible, but against what I regarded as unauthorized theories of Scripture inspiration. I contended that those theories were injurious to the interests of virtue and humanity.

I also spoke about the darkness in which the human authorship of portions of the Bible was wrapt. My remarks were a mixture of truth and error, but in their general tenor they were unjust, and could hardly fail to be injurious.

Henry C. Wright spoke at this convention, contending that man had an infallible rule of life engraven on his own nature, independent of instruction from without. He was often severe and extravagant in his remarks. He was fierce, and said things which he could not make good.

The Rev. Jonas Harzell and others spoke in defence of the Bible.

On the last evening the hall in which the convention was held was densely crowded, and the audience was greatly excited. A Mr. Ambler spoke at great length, and seemed desirous to excite the people to violence against the assailants of the Bible. When he closed, a large portion of the audience seemed bent on mischief. I rose to reply to Mr. Ambler, and soon got the attention of the audience. Their rage quickly subsided, and at the close of my address, the people separated in peace.

In June 1853, I attended another Bible convention at Hartford, Connecticut. I was appointed President. A. J. Davis, the celebrated spiritualist, gave the first address. It was on the propriety of free discussion on religious subjects. Henry C. Wright spoke next, making strong remarks on portions of the Old Testament. I followed, going over much the same ground as at Salem, but speaking with more severity of feeling. My heart was getting harder.

The Rev. George Storrs replied. He set himself especially to answer H. C. Wright, and he spoke with much effect.

In the afternoon of the second day, W. L. Garrison proposed six resolutions, bearing partly on the Bible, and partly on the church and clergy. They were very strong. There was a considerable amount of truth in them, but their spirit and tendency were bad. Parker Pillsbury followed with a speech, in which he praised natural religion, but condemned the religion of the church.

In the evening Mr. Garrison spoke. He spoke with much power. He dwelt chiefly on what was called the doctrine of _plenary inspiration_. His strength was in the extreme views of the orthodox theologians, and in the inconsistencies of the church and the clergy.

Mr. Garrison made a second speech on the fourth evening, still dwelling on the theory of _plenary inspiration_. Before he got through his speech the meeting was disturbed by a number of theological students, from a college in the city. They threatened mischief. One displayed a dagger. Confusion followed. Some of the speakers fled, and others were alarmed. I kept my place, but soon found I had the platform to myself. I expected more courage from my skeptical friends. But they understood Judge Lynch better than I did, and their discretion, under the circumstances, might be the better part of valor. My rashness, however, ended in no mishap. And the only bad effect which the violence of our opponents had on me was, to increase my hatred, perhaps, of the church and its theology. It is not wise in professing Christians to resort to carnal weapons in defence of their views.

In December 1853, I gave a course of lectures in Philadelphia. I was brought to the city by the Sunday Institute. The object of the lectures was to show, that the Bible was of human origin, that its teachings were not of divine authority, and that the doctrine of its absolute perfection was injurious in its tendency. The room in which I lectured was crowded, and the audience was much excited. I stated, in opening, that I had nothing to say against anything that was true and good in the Bible,--that virtue was essential to man's happiness, and that I had no sympathy with those who rejected the Bible because it rebuked their vices. I was sincere in these remarks; but my older infidel friends, I found, regarded them as intended to deceive the unwary. Many of them were grossly immoral, and hated the Bible for its hostility to their evil ways.

After each lecture discussion followed. But the ability of my opponents was not equal to their zeal. They were often ignorant of both sides of the question, and injured the cause they sought to aid.

These lectures led to a public discussion between me and Dr. McCalla, a Presbyterian clergyman. It was to continue five nights, but ended on the fourth. We met first in the Chinese Assembly Room; but the place proving too small for the crowds which were anxious to hear the debate, we adjourned to the large hall.

Dr. McCalla was very abusive. He was so intent on calling me bad names, and on saying savage and provoking things, that he forgot his argument. I kept to the subject. I neither abused my opponent, nor spent my time in answering his abuse of me. I reproved him once or twice, telling him how unseemly it was in an old man, professing to be a disciple and a minister of Jesus, to show such a spiteful disposition, and to utter such offensive words; and then went on with my argument. The third night my opponent seemed to be losing his reason. On the fourth night he was literally mad. Loss of sleep, rage, and mortification, seemed to have brought on fever of the brain, and he was really insane. His friends were terribly put about. Many of them were furious, and were plainly bent on violence. A policeman climbed up the back of the platform behind where I was sitting and said in my ear: 'There's mischief brewing: you had better come with me. Step down now while they are looking the other way.' I looked for my overcoat and hat, but they were gone. Some one had carried them off, to prevent me from escaping. A gentleman who had seen a person take them away, and place them in a distant corner of the room, seeing what was coming, went and brought them to me, and I at once slipped over the back of the platform to the floor, and accompanied the policeman. The crowd, intent on getting towards the front of the platform, had left a vacant space near the wall, and I and the policeman got nearly to the door of the hall before we were observed. But just as we were passing out a cry arose, 'He's off! He's off!' and a maddened crowd prepared for pursuit. When we got into the street the policeman said hurriedly, 'Which is the way to your lodgings?' 'That,' said I, pointing south. 'Then come this way,' said he, 'quick;' and he pulled me north. This probably saved my life. The mob knew which way my lodgings lay, and as soon as they got out of the hall, they hurried south, like a pack of hounds, roaring and furious. I was soon half a mile away in the other direction. 'Where shall I take you?' said the policeman. 'Do you know any one hereabouts?' 'Take me to Mr. Mott's,' said I, 'in Arch Street.' We were there in a few moments, and as the door opened to receive me, the policeman received his gratuity, and hastened away. In fifteen minutes there was a noise in the street. Mr. Mott opened the door and looked out, when a brickbat passed just by his head, and broke itself to pieces on the door-post, leaving its mark on the marble. He had a narrow escape. He closed the door, and after awhile the mob dispersed, and all was quiet. Thus ended the discussion with Dr. McCalla.

One would have thought that after such an experience as this, I should have taken care to keep out of debates on such an exciting subject. But I was daring to madness. I was engaged again in discussion on the same subject, in the same city, in less than a month.

The clergy of Philadelphia, unwilling to leave the cause of the Bible in this plight, demanded that I should discuss the question with Dr. Berg, a minister in whom they had great confidence. I yielded to the demand, and the discussion took place in Concert Hall, in January, 1854.

The hall was crowded every night. One very wet and stormy night, the number present was only 2000, but every other night it was from 2250 to 2400. A Philadelphia newspaper of that period says, "We cannot forbear to notice the contrast in the manner and bearing of the two disputants. Mr. Barker uniformly bore himself as a gentleman, courteously and respectfully towards his opponent, and with the dignity becoming his position, and the solemnity and importance of the question. We regret we cannot say the same of Dr. Berg, who at times seemed to forget the obligations of the gentleman, in his zeal as a controversialist. He is an able and skilful debater, though less logical than Mr. Barker; but he wasted his time and strength too often on personalities and irrelevant matters. His personal inuendoes and offensive epithets, his coarse witticisms and arrogant bearing, may have suited the vulgar and intolerant among his party, but they won him no respect from the calm and thinking portion of the audience; while we know that they grieved and offended some intelligent and candid men who thoroughly agreed with his views. It is time that Christians and clergymen had learned that men whom they regard as heretics and infidels have not forfeited all claims to the respect and courtesies of social life by their errors of opinion, and that insolence and arrogance, contemptuous sneers and impeachment of motives and character towards such men, are not effective means of grace for their enlightenment and conversion.

"There was a large number of men among the audience who lost their self-control in their dislike of Mr. Barker's views, and he was often interrupted, and sometimes checked in his argument, by hisses, groans, sneers, vulgar cries, and clamors, though through all these annoyances and repeated provocations, he maintained his wonted composure of manner and his clearness of thought. On the other hand, Dr. Berg was heard with general quiet by his opponents, and greeted with clamorous applause by his friends."

I am afraid the above remarks were true. Still, Dr. Berg was almost a gentleman compared with Dr. McCalla, and he was vastly more of a scholar and debater, far as he was from being a model disputant.

Dr. Berg had the right side; he stood for the defence of all that was good, and true, and great, and glorious; but the way in which he went about his work was by no means the best one. He took a wrong position,--a position which it was impossible for him to maintain. His doctrine was that the Bible was absolutely perfect,--that the inspiration of the Book was such as not only to make it a fit and proper instrument for the religious instruction, and the moral and spiritual renovation, of mankind, but such as to preserve it from all the innocent, harmless, and unimportant weaknesses, imperfections, and errors of regenerate and sanctified humanity. He even contended for a kind or a degree of perfection which many of the most highly esteemed professors and theologians of orthodox churches had relinquished. He held to views about the creation and the universality of the deluge, which orthodox Christian Geologists like Professor Hitchcock of America, as well as Dr. Pye Smith of England, had given up as untenable. He contended for a perfection which, in fact, is physically impossible, and which, in truth, was inconsistent with his own acknowledgments in other parts of the discussion. I have no wish to disparage my opponent; I had rather do the contrary; but he did not properly and adequately understand the great question which he undertook to discuss. Hence he got involved in inextricable difficulties, and, in spite of all he could do, his attempted defence of the Bible was, to a great extent, a failure.

He said a many good things about the Bible. He proved a many things in its favor. He made the impression, at times, that there was something in its teachings of a most powerful and blessed tendency; that it was a book of infinite value,--that it was a wonderful teacher and a mighty comforter,--that it had done a vast amount of good, and was calculated to do a vast amount more,--that it was a friend and patron of all things good and glorious,--that it was the nurse of individual and national virtue, and the source of personal, domestic, and national happiness. He said many good things about the excellency of Christ's precepts, and the beauty and glory of His example. A hundred good things he said, both in favor of the Bible, and in opposition to infidelity. But the one great point which he had pledged himself to prove he did _not_ prove. It could not be proved. It was not true. So that though he won a substantial victory; he sustained a logical defeat. And if he had been twenty times more learned, and twenty times more able than he was, he would have been defeated. If a man attempts the impossible, failure is inevitable; and if he has a skilful, wary, and able opponent, his failure will be seen and felt, even by his most ardent friends, and greatest admirers. And so it was in the case of Dr. Berg.

But the error was not his alone; it was the error of his friends; the error of his patrons; the error of his times. What learning, and talent, and zeal, and skill in debate, considerably above the average of his profession, could do, he did; and that was a good deal: and his failure was chargeable not on himself, so much as on the faulty theology of the school in which he had been trained, and to which he still belonged.

So far as the general merits of the Bible were concerned, I was in the wrong. But the fact was not made so plain, so palpable to the audience, as it should have been, and as it might have been, if I had had a wiser, a warier, and an abler opponent, and one who had no false theory of Bible inspiration or abstract perfection to defend. A man thoroughly furnished for the work, and free from foolish and unauthorized theories, would have been able to give proof of the substantial truth and divinity of the Scriptures, and of their transcendent moral and spiritual excellence, absolutely overwhelming; and I do most heartily wish I had had the happiness to encounter such an advocate in my discussions. It might have proved an infinite advantage to me, and an incalculable blessing to my friends. As it was, the debate only tended to strengthen me in my unbelief, and to increase my confidence in future controversies with the clergy.

How I answered my own arguments, and got over my own objections, when on my way back to Christianity, I may state hereafter. All I need say here is, that I took a _qualified_ view of the divine authority of the Bible, and of the doctrine of its divine inspiration,--a view in accordance with facts, and with the teachings of Scripture itself on the subject. This view did not require me to demand in a book of divine origin the kind of abstract or absolute perfection which Dr. Berg required, and which he so rashly undertook to prove. On the contrary, it taught me to look for a thousand innocent and unimportant errors and imperfections in the Bible. A thousand things which would, if proved, have been regarded by Dr. Berg as valid objections to the doctrine of its superhuman authority and divine authority, were no objections at all to me. I could acknowledge the truth of them all, and yet believe in the substantial truth and divinity of the Book as a whole. The dust and mud of our streets and roads, and the decaying timbers and rotting grasses of our forests and farms do not make me question the divine origin and the substantial perfection of the world: nor do the errors and imperfections of ancient transcribers or modern translators, or the want of absolute scientific, historical, chronological, literary, theological or moral perfection even in the original authors of the Bible, make me doubt its divine origin and inspiration, or its practical and substantial perfection. You may show me ten thousand things in the earth which, to multitudes, would seem inconsistent with the doctrine that it is the work of an all-perfect Creator; but they would not be inconsistent with that doctrine in _my_ view. They would probably seem, to my mind, proofs of its truth. Things which, to men who had not properly studied them, appeared serious defects, or results of Adam's sin, would be seen by me to be important excellencies; masterpieces of infinite wisdom and goodness. Many of the things I said about the Bible in my debate with Dr. Berg were true; but they amounted to nothing. Dr. Berg thought they were serious charges, and that if they were not refuted, they would destroy the credit and power of the Book. He was mistaken. And he never did refute them. If I were in the place of Dr. Berg, and an opponent were to bring forward those things in proof that the Bible was not of God, I should say, Your statements may be true, or they may be false, and I do not care much which they are; but they are good for nothing as disproofs of the divine origin and practical perfection of the Bible. The Bible is all it professes to be, and it is more and better than its greatest admirers suppose it to be, notwithstanding its numberless traces of innocent human imperfections. The sun has spots, but they neither disprove its value nor its divine origin. The probability is, that the spots in the sun have their use, and would be seen, if properly understood, to be proofs of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. And it is certainly plain to me, that what you regard us defects in the Bible, are proofs both of its divine origin, and of its real perfection.

I said some things about the Bible in my debate with Dr. Berg, which, if they had been true, would have proved that the Bible was _not_ of divine origin. But they were not true. All these things should have been refuted by Dr. Berg with great promptness, and refuted so thoroughly and plainly, that every one should have been made to see and feel that they were refuted. But they were not. Some of them were left unnoticed. Others were handled unskilfully. The time and strength that should have been given to them were wasted on trifles, or unwisely spent in offensive personalities, unseasonable witticisms, or attempts at fine speaking.

The objections of this class, which my opponent failed to answer, or answered unsatisfactorily, we may notice further on.

In January, 1855, while over on business, I had a public debate at Halifax, England, with Brewin Grant, a congregational minister. This, so far as its impression on my own mind was concerned, was the most unfortunate discussion I ever had. My opponent was the meanest and most unprincipled or ill-principled man I ever met. In a pamphlet which he had published, giving instructions to those who were called to defend the Bible and Christianity against unbelievers, he had laid it down as a rule, that their first object should be to destroy the influence of their opponents, and that in order to do this, they should do their utmost to damage their reputation, and make them odious. He acted on this principle, in his debate with me, with the greatest fidelity. He raked together, and gave forth in his speeches, all the foolish and wicked stories which my old persecutors had fabricated and spread abroad respecting me, except those about my having committed suicide, and being smothered to death, and some others which were so notoriously false that they could no longer be used to my disadvantage. Those stories he improved by making them worse. He made a number of new ones also.

I had published a book, giving the story of my life up to the time of my expulsion from the Methodist New Connexion. This work, like my other works, was written in the clearest and simplest style, so that no man with ordinary abilities could fail to understand it, and no man without powers of perversion bordering on the miraculous, could give to any part of it an objectionable meaning. This book he took, and read, and misread, and interpreted, and misinterpreted, so as to make the impression on persons unacquainted with it, that I had written and published the most foolish, ridiculous, and in some cases, really discreditable things of myself, and even false and unwarrantable statements about others.

Before the discussion came on he gave a lecture on this book. I went to hear it. He spoke about an hour, and every quotation from the work, and every reference he made to it, was false. There was not a word of truth in the whole lecture. There was not a sentence which was not as opposite to truth and as full of falsehood as he could make it. And the ingenuity he displayed in his task was marvellous. It was really devilish. He enlarged my conception of the evil powers of wicked men, in the line of turning good into evil, and truth into lies, beyond all that I could otherwise have imagined. He did a hundred things, the least of which my poor limited capacity would have deemed impossible.

He pursued the same course in the debate. He went as far beyond poor McCalla, as McCalla had gone beyond ordinary sinners. If I had undertaken to correct his misrepresentations, and expose his fictions, I should not have had one moment to give to the subject we were met to discuss. So I did as I did with McCalla, I rebuked the man with becoming severity; I contradicted his statements in the plainest and strongest way I could; I also offered to arrange for a discussion of personal matters, if he wished it, after we had gone through our discussion of principles, and engaged to prove every discreditable story he told of me to be false, and then went on with the discussion. He accepted my challenge to discuss personalities, but neither kept his engagement, nor abated his efforts at misrepresentation during the remainder of the debate.

He was not content with sober, sad, deliberate falsehood; he resorted to ridicule. He pulled comical and ugly faces; put out his tongue; put his thumb to his nose; threw orange peel at me; and said and did other things which it is not lawful for me to utter.

He had thought, I suppose, to disgust me; to tire me out; to make me withdraw from the debate, and give him the opportunity of saying he had put me to flight. He was mistaken. I kept my ground. And I kept my temper. And I kept my gravity. I rebuked him at times with becoming sternness, and then went on with my task. It is probable that I spoke more strongly against the Bible, and that I said harder things against the church and the ministry, than I should have done, if he had conducted himself with any regard to truth and decency; but I did not raise my voice above its usual pitch, nor did I show any unusual signs of indignation, disgust, or irritation. My feelings became more intense, my language more cutting, and my style and logic more pointed and forcible; but my manner was calm, and my behaviour guarded.

And I husbanded my strength. I let him explode, while I let off my steam quietly, and in just measure only, making every particle do its proper work. I wasted neither words, nor strength, nor time. In three or four days my wicked opponent began to get weak and weary. He had tired _himself_ instead of me. He had disgusted and put to shame many of his friends. He had driven away several of his supporters. He had weakened his party. He had strengthened his opponent. He had lost, he had betrayed, his cause. He dragged on heavily. He was all but helpless. I had every thing my own way. I had an easy fight, and a decisive victory.

I had the last speech; and when the battle was over, I felt free to deal with my unprincipled opponent rather severely, and I said: "My opponent has acted, from beginning to end of this debate, in anything but a noble and manly way. I refer not merely to his personal abuse, his use of foul names, his insolence of manner, his malignity of spirit; but to the way in which he has misconducted the argument. He was pledged to prove the Bible of Divine origin and authority. He was bound to bring out, as early as possible, what he thought his strongest arguments, and afford me an opportunity of meeting them. But he did not do this. To judge from his proceedings, you would conclude that he had no faith in any of the popular arguments, such as those employed by Paley, Horne, &c. He sat watching, like an animal we need not name, for some stray thought to pounce upon. He tried every device to draw me from the question, and showed, not only the greatest reluctance, but a fixed determination, not to come any nearer to it himself than he could possibly help. He has shown nothing like courage, nothing like confidence in the goodness of his cause, nothing like openness, candor, or generosity; nothing but craft and cunning. He has never fought like a soldier, but dodged like an assassin. Honorable men _give up_ a cause that can't be honorably maintained. For myself, ye are witnesses, I came out openly, boldly, and at once, and gave my opponent the best opportunity he could have of grappling fairly with my arguments. But he would not meet them. He slunk behind his mud-battery, and instead of firing shot and shell, spurted forth filth. By-and-by he took my old deserted battery, and began to play upon me with my worn-out guns and wooden shot, till his friends compelled him to give up. He complained that I had taken up my position on Mount Horeb, and pattered him with grapeshot from the old Jewish armory, and besought and urged me to plant myself on Mount Tabor, or the Mount of Olives, and try what I could do with Christian ammunition. I did so; but even that did not please him. He stared and squalled, as if it had been raining red-hot shot, as thick as it once poured hailstones and fire in Egypt, killing every beast that was out in the fields. And thus he has gone on. He never seems to have been satisfied, either with his own position or mine. I might have pleased him, no doubt, by giving in before the battle, and surrendering at discretion; but that is not my custom. Well, now the battle draws near its close; and no one, I trust, has lost anything, but what is better lost than found. I am satisfied with my own position, and nearly so with my share of the fight. With a manlier foe, I should have had a pleasanter fight; but soldiers cannot always choose their antagonists, nor can they keep, in all cases, to their own best mode of warfare. The hunter cannot always find the noblest game; and perhaps it is better for his neighbour, if not so pleasant to himself, that he should sometimes be obliged to employ his dogs and rifles in destroying vermin.

"I feel that an apology is due from me to you and the public, for entering the lists with my opponent. It is soon given. When I first offered to meet him in discussion on the Bible, I supposed him to be a well-informed and respectable man, and the representative of the highest intellectual and moral culture, combined with superior talent and experience as a debater, that the orthodox world could boast. I soon found out my mistake, but I did not feel at liberty to withdraw my challenge. When I learned the infamous character of his personal lectures, I declined all further correspondence with him till he should retract his slanders; but still I did not feel free to say I would not debate with him, if his friends should bring him to reasonable terms. His friends in Halifax succeeded in doing so, and out of regard to the wishes of my friends, I submitted to the temporary degradation of being placed on the same platform with my unprincipled calumniator, and the calumniator of the best, the wisest, and the greatest men of every age and nation. I do not regret having done so.

"He will leave this discussion a sadder and a wiser man. He has found that the power of insolence, and falsehood, and of vulgar, brutal wit, has its bounds; that there are those whom they cannot abash or cow; that the _might_ in moral encounters is with the _right_.

"I part with my opponent without malice, though without regret. If he has natural characteristics which others have not, and lacks some higher qualities which others have, the fault is not entirely his. He did not make himself. Nor did he nurse, or rear, or train himself. He is the production, and his character may, to a great extent, be the production, of influences over which he had no control. I shall not therefore state all I have felt while listening to the false and fierce personalities with which this discussion has been disgraced. I will rather acknowledge my own errors, and lament that anything he has said or done should have been permitted, in any case, to affect my own style of advocacy, and render me less gentle or guarded in my utterances than I otherwise might have been. I retract every expression of unkindness or resentment. I apologize for everything harsh, offensive, or ungraceful in my manner; and I am sorry I could not declare and advocate my views, without shocking or distressing some of your minds. And now, with best and heartiest wishes for your welfare, and for the welfare of mankind at large, and in the fall and certain hope of the final, universal, and eternal triumph of the truth, and in the ultimate regeneration and salvation of our race, I bid you all farewell."

This man purchased the copyright of the debate, and pledged himself to issue a correct edition, in accordance with the notes of the reporter. Instead of doing so, besides making unlimited alterations in his own speeches, he altered every speech of mine. Some things he left out. In one case, to prevent an exposure of one of his more reckless mis-statements, he left out two pages of one of my speeches. By a free and artful use of _italics_, and an abuse of stops, he altered and perverted the meaning of quite a multitude of my statements. And when, after all, he found that the publication damaged him terribly in the estimation of his friends, he suppressed it altogether.

The conduct of this opponent had a bad effect on my mind, and if anything short of sound reason could have kept me in the ranks of infidelity, it would have been the shameless, the outrageous conduct of such pretenders to Christianity as this bad man. But I thank God, such horrible and inexcusable inconsistency was not allowed to decide my fate. Better powers, sweeter and happier influences, were brought into play to counteract its deadly tendency. And even other opponents, of a worthier character and of a higher order, came in my way, who, by their Christian temper, and high culture, and by their regard for my feelings, and their manifest desire for my welfare, obliterated the bad impressions produced by the unscrupulous and malignant conduct of Brewin Grant, and all but won me over to the cause of Christ.

It happened that while I was yet in England, an arrangement was made for a public discussion between me and Colonel Michael Shaw, of Bourtree Park, Ayr. Colonel Shaw was a kind of lay minister, who preached the Gospel gratuitously, and spent his time and property in doing good. He was a Christian and a gentleman out and out; a Christian and a gentleman of the highest order. Five such men might have saved Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the cities of the plain. He was as guileless as a little child, and as honest as the light, and about as pure, and good, and kind as a regenerated human soul could be. This, at least, was the impression which his looks, and conversation, and behaviour, made on my mind. He not only commanded my respect, but called forth my veneration; and he made me love him, as I never did love more than two or three good men in all my life.

Well, an arrangement was made for a public discussion on the divine authority of the Bible between this good and godly man and me.

The discussion took place in the City Hall, Glasgow. The Colonel was so kind and gentlemanly, that I found my task exceedingly difficult. It was very unpleasant to speak lightly of the faith of so good and true a man; or to say anything calculated to hurt the feelings of one so guileless and so affectionate. And many a time I wished myself employed about some other business, or engaged in a contest with some other man. At the end of the second night's debate we were to rest two days, and the Colonel was so kind as to invite me, and even to press me, to spend those days with him at his residence near Ayr. The Colonel had given his good lady so favorable an account of my behaviour in the debate, that she wrote to me enforcing her good husband's invitation. I went. I could do no other. The Colonel and his venerable father met me at the station with a carriage, and I was soon in the midst of the Colonel's truly Christian and happy family. Neither the Colonel nor any of his household attempted to draw me into controversy. Not a word was spoken that was calculated to make me feel uneasy. There seemed no effort on the part of any one, yet every thing was said and done in such a way as to make me feel myself perfectly at home. Love, true Christian love, under the guidance of the highest culture, was the moving spirit in the Colonel's family circle. A visit to the birthplace of Burns, and to the banks of Bonny Doon, was proposed, and a most delightful stroll we had, made all the more pleasant by the Colonel's remarks on the various objects of interest that came in view, and his apt quotation of passages from the works of the poet, referring to the scenery amidst which we were moving.

On our return home I was made to feel at ease again with regard to every thing but myself. I felt sorry that I should be at variance with my kind and accomplished host on a subject of so much interest and importance as religion and the Bible. The thought that on the evening of the coming day I should have to appear on the platform again as his opponent, was really annoying. To talk with such a man privately, in a free and friendly way, seemed proper enough; but to appear in public as his antagonist seemed too bad. When we started from Ayr to Glasgow in the same train, and in the same carriage, I felt as if I would much rather have travelled in some other direction, or on a different errand. But an agreement had been made, and it must be kept; so two more nights were spent in discussion. But it _was_ discussion,--fair and friendly discussion,--and not quarrelling. Neither he nor I gave utterance to an unkind or reproachful word. When the discussion was over, the Colonel shook me by the hand in a most hearty manner in the presence of an excited audience, and presented me with a book as an expression of his respect and good feeling. I made the best returns I could, unwilling to be too much outdone by my gallant and Christian friend. The audience, divided as they were on matters of religion, after gazing some time on the spectacle presented on the platform, as if at loss what to do, or which of the disputants they should applaud, dropped their differences, and all united in applauding both, and the disputants and the audience separated with the heartiest demonstrations of satisfaction and mutual good-will. The events of those days, and the impression I received of my opponent's exalted character, never faded from my memory. And though they had not all the effect they ought to have had, their influence on my mind was truly salutary. I have never thought of Colonel Shaw and his good, kind, Christian family, without affection, gratitude, and delight. He wrote to me repeatedly after my return to America, and his letters, which reached us when we were living among the wilds of Nebraska, were among our pleasantest visitants, and must be reckoned among the means of my recovery from the horrors of unbelief.

I cannot doubt but that my encounter with this blessed man did much towards winning back my soul to God, and Christ, and the Church. This gracious man,--this child of light and love,--is still living, and he continues, when I give him the opportunity, to testify his love for me, and his good wishes for my health and welfare. God bless his soul; and bless his household; and, after having given them a long and happy life on earth, receive them to His kingdom, to share together the riches of His love for ever and ever.