Chapter XVII (1)

CONTINUATION OF MY STORY. FRESH TROUBLES. A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER. HOW BROUGHT ABOUT. INCIDENTS. THE CHANGE COMPLETE AT LENGTH. ITS RESULTS.

In compliance with the request of some skeptical neighbours, I lectured against the Divine authority of the Bible in my first settlement in Ohio. Mr. Spofforth, a Methodist minister was induced to hold a public discussion with me on the subject, and as he was not well acquainted either with his own side of the question or the other, he was soon embarrassed and confounded, and obliged to retire from the contest. Not content with the retirement of my opponent, I announced another course of lectures on the Bible, resolved not to relinquish my hold of the people's attention, till I had laid before them my thoughts on the exciting subject at greater length. The company listened to me for a time with great patience, but while I was giving my last lecture, some young men set to work outside to pull down the log school-house in which I was speaking, and I and my friends had to make haste out before the lecture was over, to avoid being buried before we were dead.

The young men had provided themselves plentifully with rotten eggs, thinking to pelt me on my way home; but the night was very dark, and the way led through a tall, dense, shadowy forest, and somehow they mistook their own father for me, and gave _him_ the eggs. When he got home he was as slimy and odoriferous as a man need to be; while I was perfectly clean and sweet.

But I was not to be permitted to escape in this way. During the night they pulled down the fences of my farm, and gave me other hints, that I must leave, or do worse. So I sold my farm for what I could get, and bought another some seventy miles away, near Salem, Columbiana County, a region occupied chiefly by what, in America, were called "_Come-outers_"--people who had left the churches and the ministry, and even separated themselves from civil organizations, resolved to be subject to no authority but their own wills or their own whims. Among people so free as those, I thought I should have liberty plenty; but I soon found that they were so fond of freedom, that they wanted _my_ share as well as their own, and I got into trouble once more. And then I saw that the greatest brawlers about liberty, when they come to be tried, are often the most arrant despots and tyrants on the face of the earth.

Then the people in the district were not _all_ Come-outers. Some were Christians. And these I provoked by my disregard of the Sabbath, and by my advocacy of views unfriendly to religion and the divine authority of the Bible. I worked in my garden or on my farm on a Sunday, in sight of my neighbors as they went to church. I had previously called a Bible convention in the place, and taken the leading part in its proceedings. I took the skeptical side in a public discussion on Christianity in the town, and gave utterance to sentiments which pained the hearts of the religious portion of my neighbors beyond endurance. The consequence was, I got into trouble again, and had to move once more, or be undone.

So I moved once more. This time I resolved to make sure of a quiet home, so I went right away beyond the limits of the States, into the unpeopled territory of Nebraska, a country at that period ten or twelve times as large as Pennsylvania or England, and containing less than five thousand white inhabitants--an immense wilderness, occupied chiefly by tribes of red Indians, herds of buffalo and deer, countless multitudes of wolves, with here and there a bear, a panther, or a catamount, and heaps of rattlesnakes. And here I thought I should be safe. And so I was. The Indians gave me no trouble. I always treated them kindly, and they were kind to me in return. As for the wild beasts, God has "put the fear and dread of man upon every beast of the earth;" and as he approaches, they retire. As a rule, the fiercest beasts of the forest will turn aside to make way for man. I have lived in the midst of multitudes of wolves, and taken no harm. I have slept on the open prairie in regions swarming with wolves, and never been disturbed. I have travelled by night in other parts of the country, over the wildest mountains, the homes of panthers, bears, and catamounts, and never been molested. The rattlesnakes were the most dangerous creatures. Yet even from them I took no harm, I have walked among them time after time in slippers or low shoes, yet I never was bitten. I slept once for three nights with a rattlesnake within two or three inches of my breast, yet escaped unhurt. God took care of me, when I neither took due care of myself, nor cared as I ought for Him.

The parties I feared the most were the white people. They had heard of me, and as they passed me in the street, they looked at me askance, regarding me apparently as a mystery or a monster. But I never shocked them by skeptical lectures, or by any other act of hostility to religion, so they bore with me, and came at length to treat me with respect and confidence. My wife and family were regarded with favor from the first. And I shall never forget the kindness of one of our Christian neighbors to my wife, in a time of affliction and sorrow.

And it is from my settlement in this desolate and far-off region, that I date the commencement of a change for the better in the state of my mind. I do not say that my opinions began to change, but the state of my _feelings_ got better, which rendered possible a change for the better in my sentiments.

But I had reached a sad extreme. I had lost all trust in a Fatherly God, and all good hope of a better life. I had come near to the horrors of utter Atheism. And the universe had become an appalling and inexplicable mystery. And the world had come to be a dreary habitation; and life a weary affair; and many a time I wished I had never been born. And there were occasions when the dark suggestion came, "Life is a burden; throw it down." But I said; "Nay; there are my wife and children: I will live for their sakes if for nothing else." And for their sakes I did live, thank God, till I had something else to live for.

If I were asked what first gave a check to my skepticism, and led me to turn my face once more towards Christ and Christianity, I should say, "The answer is supplied by my story." As I have shown, it was the troubled state of my mind,--the tempest of unhappy feeling, and the whirlwind of excitement in which I had lived so long,--that had most to do in carrying me away from Christ; and now my mind was allowed to be at rest. The whirlwind of excitement had spent its fury. The tempest in my soul had subsided, so that the principal hindrance to my return was gone. There were other causes that had contributed to the destruction of my faith in Christ and Christianity, but this was the first and chief one, and the one which gave the principal part of their force to the rest. As I have shown, I had been taught things about the Scriptures that were not correct. I had found a number of the arguments used by divines in support of the divinity of the Scriptures to be unsound. I had detected pious frauds in the writings of some of the advocates of the Bible and Christianity. I had met with untenable views on the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures. I had, besides, adopted a defective method of reasoning on religious matters, which exerted an injurious influence on my mind. All these things, and many others which I cannot at present mention, had proved occasions of doubt and unbelief. But the probability is, that none of these things would have destroyed my faith in Christ, if I had been in a proper state of mind. There was nothing in them to justify unbelief to a mind unprejudiced, undistempered, calm. There was attractiveness enough in Christ, if the mists which passion had thrown around Him, to hide His worth and glory from my view, could be cleared away. And there was truth and goodness enough in Christianity, and there were evidences sufficient of its divinity, if one could have the films removed from one's eyes, and be permitted to behold it in its own sweet light. The great difficulty was in the disordered state of my mind, and the trying nature of my situation. What was wanted, therefore, to make it possible for me to return to my former faith, was not so much an explanation of particular difficulties, as a better, happier, calmer state of mind. Explanations of difficulties _were_ desirable, but they were not the first or principal things required. The great, the _one_ thing needful, at the outset, was a fitting state of mind,--a mind sufficiently free from irritation, painful excitement, and consequent unhappy bias, to enable me to do justice to the religion of Christ. And the circumstances in which I was placed in Nebraska were calculated to bring me to this desirable state of mind; and many things which befel me there were calculated to stimulate my return to Christ.

1. In the first place, I was in a region favorable to calm and serious thought. True, we were infected for a time with the fever of speculation so prevalent in new countries; and we shared the hardships and toils, the cares and anxieties, of a border life: but there were seasons when serious thought and salutary reflection were inevitable. I was often alone amid the quiet and solemnity of a boundless wilderness. The busy world of men was far away. There was no one near to foster doubt or unbelief, or to reopen or irritate afresh the closing wounds inflicted by bigotry and intolerance in days gone by. And the loneliness of my condition seemed to bring me nearer to God. It allowed the revival of those Godward-tending instincts implanted in man's heart by the hand of the Creator. It favored the resurrection to life of the natural religious affections, and the revival of those holy longings and aspirations after a higher life and a grander destiny than earth can give, which arise so spontaneously in the breasts of men. It allowed the better self to rise and assert its power, while it shamed the evil self into the shade. And often, when away beyond the sight of man or of human habitation, amidst the eternal silence and the boundless solitude, I had strange thoughts and strange feelings; and there were times when, if I had yielded to the impulses from within, I should have cast myself down upon the ground, and adored the Great Mysterious Infinite.

On one occasion I went, in company with my youngest son and a friend, some distance into the interior of the country. At one point we came upon a deserted and decaying Indian village, and then upon an Indian track across the desert. A little further on we struck a Mormon track, along which a company of the Latter-day saints had groped their way towards their promised Paradise in the Salt Lake Valley. As we followed the track we came upon a mound, and then upon another, marking the spots where worn-out travellers had ended their weary pilgrimages, and been consigned, amid the desolate wilds, to their final resting places. Into one of these unprotected graves the wolves had made their way, to feed upon the fallen victim of the new faith. When night came on it found us in these dreary and desolate wilds, and there we had to prepare to pass the night under the open sky, with multitudes of wolves around us. We had hardly spread our blankets when the sky was covered with black and heavy clouds, and lightnings flashed, and thunders roared, and everything betokened a night of storm and rain. We protected ourselves against the threatening elements as well as we could, and prepared ourselves for cold and drenching showers, and for a sleepless and troubled night, when, happily for us, the wind suddenly changed, and dissipated the clouds. The stars came out in all their glory, and the night was calm and bright, and all we had to try our patience was a little frost. And there I slept; and there I often awoke; and in my intervals of wakefulness I gazed on the magnificence of the outspread skies, and mused on the dreariness of the surrounding wilderness, and thought of the stirring scenes through which I had passed in days gone by, and of the strange and death-like silent one in which I then was placed. "And what will the future be?" said I. "And here is my son; in the spring of life; on adventures so strange; in a universe so vast and so mysterious; what will be his destiny? And what will be the destiny of the dear ones we have left behind?" And then I lost myself in a world of strange imaginings. When wearied with my restless musings, I sank to rest again, and passed from waking into sleeping dreams.

Morning broke at length, and we arose, and started on our journey. The deer were skipping gaily over the plains. The wolves were hiding in their holes. We came at length to a stream. It was skirted by a grove, into which we made our way, and there we kindled a fire, and prepared our breakfast. We filled our coffee kettle from the brook. A hazel twig served us for a toasting fork; and we were soon engaged in one of the pleasantest parts of a hungry traveller's work. We relished our bread and ham and coffee amazingly. The wolves might be snuffing the odor of our viands, and coveting our repast; but they remained within their hiding-places, and kept silent; and we finished our meal in peace.

We rested next on the outskirts of a grove on the banks of the Elkhorn river. Here I was left to take care of the stuff, to prepare a bed, and to gather wood for a fire to cook our supper, and to frighten away the wolves, and keep us warm through the night, I gathered a quantity of dry and withered grass, and spread it on the ground, and covered it with a blanket, for a bed. I then looked around for wood. I saw some down in a dark deep gully, and went to fetch it; when I found myself all alone and unarmed in front of a hideous wolf-hole. I retreated with all the haste I could, and was soon on the top of the bank again, panting and trembling, and endeavoring to increase the distance between myself and the horrible den as rapidly as I could. I next looked round for wood on safer ground, and having collected a quantity, I waited with anxiety for the return of my companions. We slept that night in a half-built and deserted log cabin, without doors or windows, put up by some adventurous border-man to secure a claim to a portion of the surrounding land. A considerable part of the cabin was without roof. And there were large spaces between the layers of logs through which the frosty winds had free admission. For a time we deliberated whether we should be colder inside the cabin or outside. At length we decided in favor of the interior. We then took the wagon body off the frame and carried it into the cabin, and raised it on one side to screen us from the wind which came through the cabin walls. Against the wall at our head we fixed up rugs. At our feet, between our bed and the open doorway, we had our blazing fire. And there we slept. We had prickly sensations in our eyes in the morning, but they soon passed away. We took no cold, or none that proved serious at all. And the wolves seemed to keep at a respectable distance.

As soon as we had got through our breakfast, and put our wagon and team in order, we started homewards. At one point, as we passed along, a wolf looked quietly down upon us from the side of a hill just by. A bigger one had passed us as we stood in front of the half-built cabin in which we had passed the night. The region abounded with them, on every side.

While crossing a tract of rich bottom land, where the dry and withered grass of the previous summer lay thick, I struck a light, and for an experiment, set the prairie on fire. The flames blazed forth at once like gunpowder. They spread and roared. The wind rose, and blew the flames in the direction of our wagon. It was all we could do to get to the wagon and jump in and flee. We had no sooner started the horses than we found that the traces of one of them were loose, and we had to jump out again to fasten them; and before we could retake our places the flames were almost at our ears. The horses fled, however, at a good quick pace, and speedily carried us beyond the reach of danger, and we got safe home.

2. There were many things in my new situation and in my strange way of life, besides the silence and the solitude of a boundless desert, that were calculated to awaken within me solemn feeling, and to rouse me to serious thoughtfulness on things pertaining to God and religion. And when once my mind had begun to awake to such matters, it was never permitted to sink again, for any length of time, into its former death-like slumber. And many things befel me that tended to make me feel, and feel most painfully at times, the helplessness and cheerlessness, the gloom and wretchedness, of the man who has lost his trust in God, and his hope of a blessed immortality. There is nothing in utter doubt and unbelief to satisfy a man with a heart. A man with a heart wants a Father in whose bosom he can repose, a Saviour in whose care and sympathy he can trust, and a better world to which he can look forward as his final home and resting-place, and as the eternal home and resting-place of those who are dear to him. And I _had_ a heart. I was not made for infidelity. I never submitted to it willingly, and I never sat easy under its power. I had affections, cravings, wants, which nothing but religion could satisfy.

3. Then trouble came. Infidelity is a wretched affair even in prosperity; but in adversity it is still worse. And adversity overtook me. In the spring of 1857 we had a reasonable income, from property which we supposed to be of considerable value. A few weeks later a panic came, and our income fell to nothing; our property was valueless; instead of a support it became a burden, and we had to set to work to get a living by our labor, at a time when work was hard to be got, and when wages were down at the lowest point. This was a time of great distress and grievous trial, and I felt the want of consolation most keenly. I could once have said, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." But now I _had_ no God. The universe had no great Fatherly Ruler. The affairs of man were governed by chance, or by a harsh and grinding necessity; and all good ground of hope and cheerful trust had given place to doubt, and gloom, and cruel uncertainty.

4. Trials of other kinds came. Sickness and pain entered our dwelling, and seized upon one of my family. My youngest son was taken ill. He was racked with excruciating pain. It seemed as if the agony would drive him to distraction, or cut short his days. And there I stood, watching his agony, and distracted with his cries, unable to utter a whisper about a gracious Providence, or to offer up a prayer for help or deliverance.

5. Another dear one was afflicted; and again my heart was torn, and again my lips were sealed. I could not even say to the suffering one, "God bless you."

6. I was called to attend the funeral of a child. The parents were in great distress, and I was anxious to speak to them a word of comfort; but doubt and unbelief had left me no such word to speak. I remembered the day when I could have said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

"They rest in Jesus, and are blest,
How sweet their slumbers are."

But the happy day was gone, and I was dumb in the presence of the mourners.

7. I was called, on another occasion, to visit a friend, a brother skeptic, who was sick and likely to die. I had often visited him when he was well, and we had managed, on those occasions, to interest or amuse each other; but now we were helpless. Both were in sorrow, and neither could console his brother. And there we were, looking mournfully on each other in the face of death, speechless and comfortless. I am horrified when I think of the dreadful position in which I was placed on those solemn occasions. It seemed to me as if I had been enchanted all those dreary days by some malignant demon, and made the sport of his infernal cruelty. My friend, like myself, had been a Christian in his earlier days, and had rejoiced in the assurance of God's love and favor, and in hopes of future and eternal blessedness; and now he was passing away in utter cheerlessness and hopelessness. He died, and I followed his remains to the grave. I spoke; but I had no great comforting truths with which to cheer the sad hearts of his weeping kindred. I looked down, with his disconsolate widow, and his sorrowing children, into the dark cold vault, but could say not a single word of a better life. We sorrowed as those who have no hope.

8. While I was in Nebraska my mother died. Like my father, who had died some years before, she had been a Christian from her early days; a very happy one; and she continued a Christian to the last. She was one of the most affectionate and devoted mothers that ever lived. She had eleven children. The eldest one died when he was twenty-one, after having spent a number of years, young as he was, as an able and useful minister of Christ. He died a happy death. The remaining ten were all permitted to grow up to manhood and womanhood, and my mother had the happiness at one time, an unspeakable happiness to her, to see them all, with one exception, devoted to the service of God, and several of them engaged as preachers of the Gospel. They were joyful days to her when she could get them all together, as she sometimes did, to sing with her the sweet hymns of praise and gratitude, of hope and rapture, which had cheered her so often during the years of her pilgrimage. And now she was gone. I had seen her some years before when on a visit to my native land. She know of my skeptical tendencies, and though she had faith in my desire to be right, she was afraid lest I should miss my way, and entreated me with all the affectionate tenderness of an anxious mother, not to allow myself to be carried away from the faith and hope of the Gospel. "Do pray, my dear son," she said,--"Do pray that God may lead you in the right path. I want to meet you all in heaven. It would be a dreadful thing if any of you should be found wanting at last. Don't forsake God. Don't leave Christ. Religion is a reality; a blessed reality. I know it, I feel it, my dear son. It is the pearl of great price." These were the last words I heard from her lips. I listened to them in silence. Though I was too far gone to be able to sympathize with her remarks as much as I ought, I was wishful that she should enjoy all the comfort that her faith could give her. She wept; she prayed for me; she kissed me; and I left her, to see her face no more on earth. I returned to my home in America, and the next thing I heard of the dear good creature was, that she had finished her course. I kept the sad intelligence to myself, for my heart was too full to allow me to speak of my loss, even to those who were nearest and dearest to me. I thought of all her love for me from my earliest days; and of all her labors and sacrifices for my comfort and welfare. I remembered her counsels and her warnings. I remembered her last kind words, her kiss, her prayers, her tears. It seems dreadful; but unbelief had so chilled my soul, that I could no longer indulge the sweet thought of an immortal life even for the soul of my dear good Christian mother. I had once had visions of a land of rest, a paradise of bliss, and countless crowds of happy souls, and rapturous songs, and shouts of praise, and joyous meetings of loving and long parted friends in realms of endless life and boundless blessedness; but all were gone. A sullen gloom, a deathlike stupor, a horrible and unnatural paralysis of hope had come in place of those sweet visions of celestial glories. My only comfort was, that though I had ceased to believe in the divinity of Christianity myself, _she_ had retained her faith, and had lived and died in the enjoyment of its consolations.

9. We had a young woman that had lived with us, with the exception of two short intervals, all the time we had been in America. She had come to regard us as her natural guardians, and we had come to look on her as one of our family. The second time she left us she caught a fever, and returned to us in hopes that in her old and quiet home she would soon be well again. We procured her medical aid, but the fever got worse. The doctor lost hopes, and it soon began to be evident, that she was doomed to a speedy death. I attended her during the last sad night of her sufferings. I heard her moanings as her life drew slowly towards a close. I wanted to comfort her, but I had lost the power. I could once have spoken to her of a Father in heaven, and of a better world; but I could speak on those subjects no longer. I could once have kneeled by her side and prayed; but I could pray no more. I could neither comfort myself nor my dying charge. She passed away without a word of consolation or a whisper of hope to cheer her as she trod the dark valley of the shadow of death. I stood by, afflicted and comfortless, when her lifeless form was committed to its final resting-place, unable to speak a word of hope or consolation to the sorrowing minds that were gathered around her grave. She was interred on the slope of the hill, on the opposite side of the stream over against my farm, within view of the field and the garden in which I often worked, and the lonely dwelling in which I frequently slept. And there she lay, far from her kindred and her native land, the wild winds moaning over her solitary grave, and no sweet word about God, or Christ, or a better life, to mark the spot where she slept. And there, on that quiet farm, and in that solitary dwelling, with that one melancholy grave in view, I passed at times the long sad days, and the still and solemn nights, in utter loneliness, gazing on the desolate scenes around, or feeding on saddening thoughts within, "without hope and without God in the world." I sought for comfort in a Godless and Christless philosophy, but sought in vain. I tried to extort from nature some word of consolation, but not a whisper could I obtain. I tried to forge some theory of my own that might lessen the gloom in which I was wrapt; but my efforts were fruitless. The light of life was quenched; the joy, the bliss of being was no more. I had "forsaken the fountain of living waters," and nothing remained but broken cisterns that could hold no water. I was wretched; and, apart from God, and Christ, and immortality, my wretchedness was incurable; and the sense of my wretchedness prepared me, and ultimately constrained me, to look once more in the direction of the religion that had cheered me in my earlier days.

10. I had a great and grievous trial of another kind while in Nebraska. When we removed to that far-off country, we left our eldest son in Ohio to look after our interests there, and to send off to us what goods we might require in our new home. The river Ohio, down which our goods had to be sent, was low at the time, and the steamer on which they were placed, while racing recklessly with another steamer, struck on a rock and was wrecked. There were over a thousand volumes of my books on board, the best and principal part of my library; nearly all my manuscripts too were on board, and much other property, amounting in value to twelve or thirteen hundred pounds; over $6,000; and nearly all was lost, or irreparably damaged.

This however was but a light part of the trial. As soon as my eldest son got news of the wreck, he hastened to the spot, to save what portions of our property he could. The weather was hot by day, and cold by night. Both the season and the place were unhealthy, and by his great anxiety, and excessive labors, and continual exposure, he brought on a violent fever. The first information we received about the matter was that he was dying. When the dreadful tidings reached us we were more than a thousand miles away. I started at once for Ohio, and made what haste I could to reach my son; but go what way I would, I must be four or five long days on the road, and four or five long nights. I took my way down the river. For four long days and four long dreary nights I travelled, in doubt all the time whether my child was dead or alive. And all that time I was unable to offer up a prayer, either for my son, myself, or the anxious and sorrowing ones I had left behind. Nor could I apply to myself a single consolatory promise of Scripture. My mad antichristian philosophy had robbed me of all. God and His Providence, Christ and His sympathy, heaven and its blessedness, were all gone, and nothing was left but the hard blank horrors of inexorable fate. My soul was shut up as in a dungeon, unable to help itself. It was stretched on a rack, and tortured with excruciating pain. Those four long dreary days and nights were the darkest and most miserable I ever passed. But God was merciful. I lived to reach the end of my dreadful journey, and He had spared my son. We embraced,--we wept. We were spared--the whole of our family were spared, thank God--for better days, and for a happier lot.

11. There were other events which befell me while I was in Nebraska, that had a salutary influence on my mind. I was frequently in the greatest danger, and was as frequently preserved from harm. As I have said, I slept three nights with a rattlesnake within three inches of my breast. My eldest son slept repeatedly in the same terrible position; yet we both escaped unhurt. Once I was within an inch--within a hair's breadth, I may say--of being killed by the kick of a horse. On another occasion, when my eldest son was forking hay in the field, and I was piling it on the wagon, he heard a rattlesnake, and looked all round upon the ground to find it, with a view to kill it, but looked in vain. At length, turning his eyes upwards, he saw it writhing and wriggling on one of the prongs of his hayfork, which he was holding up in the air. He had pierced the deadly creature while forking the hay, and I had taken the hay from the fork with my naked hands, and escaped unbitten. I had quite a multitude of escapes from deadly peril, some more remarkable than those I have described. And there were times when the thoughts of those wonderful deliverances made me feel, that there were far more incredible doctrines than that of a watchful and gracious Providence.

12. Again. When I commenced my career of religious exploration, I expected I should get rid of all difficulties, and that I should reach a region at last where all would be light; where there would be no more harassing or perplexing mysteries. For a time my hopes appeared to get realized. The doctrines of Calvinism I threw away in mass, and thus got rid of the difficulties connected with predestination, election and reprobation. The difficulties connected with infinite and absolute fore-knowledge I got rid of by modifying and limiting the doctrine. Many theological difficulties appeared to arise, not from the doctrines of Scripture, but from anti-christian fictions, and false theories of Scripture doctrines. These I set aside without much ceremony. But when one difficulty was disposed of, another made its appearance, and in some cases several. And when I got outside the religion of Christ, more difficulties than ever made their appearance, and difficulties often of a more appalling character. The doctrine of predestination came back in the shape of fate or necessity. All the great difficulties of theology had ugly likenesses in infidel philosophy. Instead of reaching a region of unsullied light, I got into one of clouds and darkness. And the further I wandered, the blacker the clouds became, and the thicker the darkness. The difficulties, the perplexities, on the side of unbelief, were more distressing and embarrassing than those I had encountered on the side of Christianity.

13. Again. I was frequently tried by the characters of unbelievers. I had read and believed that many of the older unbelievers had been immoral; but I supposed that modern unbelievers were a better class. I had seen a number of statements to that effect in books and newspapers, some of them proceeding from Christians, and even from Christian ministers. I was disposed to believe that even the older infidels had not been so bad as represented. I knew that _I_ had been belied, and I considered it probable that all who had had quarrels or controversies with members of the priesthood, had been belied in like manner. I believed for a long time, that the loss of faith in the supernatural origin of Christianity and the Bible, had made me better, in some respects, instead of worse. I thought no changes had taken place in my character, but what, on the whole, were improvements. For years after I became an unbeliever, I endeavored to practise all the unquestionable virtues inculcated in the Bible, and I was disposed to believe that modern unbelievers generally did the same. And when I lectured against the Divine authority of the Bible, I disclaimed, as I have already said, all sympathy with those who rejected the Bible because it discountenanced vice. And such was the violence of my anti-religious fanaticism, that I had actually come at one time to believe that infidelity, in connection with natural science, was more friendly to virtue than Christianity.

But my faith in this view met with many rude shocks after I had been some time in America. Often when I came to be acquainted with the men who invited me to lecture, I was ashamed to be seen standing with them in the streets; and I shrank from the touch of their hand as from pollution. And many a time when I had associated with persons for a length of time, thinking them above suspicion, I was amazed to find, at length, that they looked on vicious indulgence as harmless, and were astonished that any man who had lost his faith in Christianity, should have scruples with regard to fornication or adultery. Though these painful discoveries did not at once convince me that infidelity was wrong, and Christianity right, they were not without effect. They lessened my respect for the infidel philosophy, and prepared the way for my return to Christ. In England, where I expected on my return, to find unbelievers better, I found them worse. I supposed that the Secularists thought as I did with regard to virtue. I thought their object was to advance the temporal interests of mankind, and never dreamt but that they regarded virtue as the greatest of those interests. And when I found first one and then another to be dishonest, drunken, licentious, I was disposed to regard them as exceptions to the general rule. To the last; nay, for some time after my entire separation from the party, I supposed the profligate, unprincipled, abandoned ones to be the few, and the honest and virtuous ones to be the many. And when at length I was convinced past doubt of my mistake, the effect was terribly painful. But it was salutary. It went far towards convincing me, that whether religion was founded in truth or not, it was necessary to the virtue and happiness of mankind. It prepared me and inclined me still further to return to Christ, and brought me a step or two nearer to His side.

14. Then again, the influences of my family were strongly in my favor. I had a wife that always loved me, and that never ceased to pray. And I had children that grew up believers, to a great extent, under the shadow of my unbelief. They had suffered, as I have already said, from the cruel treatment to which they had seen their father subjected: they had been awfully prejudiced against certain classes of ministers, if not against ministers generally; but now their prejudices were well nigh gone. And they had never been embittered against Christianity. And now they had come to feel strongly in its favor, and to look on skepticism both as a great error, and a terrible calamity. My youngest son was something of a genius. He was a clever mathematician, and an acute logician. And he would say to me sometimes, when he heard me uttering antichristian sentiments, "Father, I think you are wrong. I am sure you are wrong on that point; and if you will listen to me I think I can convince you that you are." And I did listen. I had long been accustomed to regard my children more as friends and companions, than as inferiors, and to encourage them to speak to me with all freedom. And they were kind and considerate enough as a rule to use the liberty I gave them without abusing it; so I hearkened to their remarks and remonstrances. And there were occasions on which the logic of the child proved mightier than the logic of the father--there were cases in which the father learned lessons of truth, from those whom he ought to have instructed. My eldest son, if not so powerful in logic, was surpassed by none in goodness and tenderness; and if his brother excelled him in acuteness and caution, no one could excel him in devout and passionate longings for his father's return to Christ. And both these sons, and the whole of my family, exerted an influence, which tended first to check the extravagances of my skepticism, and then to help and hasten my return to the truth as it is in Jesus.

My sons assisted me in more ways than one. They were more observant of men than I was, and they were better judges of character. And they had better opportunities than I had, of learning what the infidels with whom they came in contact, really were, both in their principles and way of life. And they were readier to receive the truth on the subject than I. The consequence was, that both in America and in England, they gathered up a multitude of facts that I should have passed unnoticed; and were prepared to use them for my benefit, when the proper time should come. And the proper time did come at length. I could believe nothing against parties with whom I was connected, on any one's testimony, till I had begun myself to detect their misdoings. My wife and children knew this, so they never troubled me with _their_ discoveries, till I had myself begun to make similar discoveries. As soon as they found I had seen enough to shake my confidence in a number of the unbelievers--as soon as they found that I had got rid of my mad prejudices in favor of the parties, and had so far come to myself as to have obtained the use of my eyes and understanding, they knew that the time for making known to me _their_ discoveries had come. And they made them known. And they agreed so perfectly with what I myself had seen and proved, that I could no longer discredit their statements. And they explained a multitude of other matters. Thus another blow was struck, both at my faith in skeptics, and my faith in skepticism.

And both my wife and children had, on the whole, wonderful patience with me in my tardy movements towards the truth. When I consider how much of evil they saw in connexion with infidelity, and how strong their feeling was of the truth and necessity of religion, I wonder at their forbearance. At times their patience was well-nigh exhausted, but they seldom betrayed the fact by their behavior. But my eldest son informed me, after my return to Christ, that at one time, doubting whether I should ever be cured of my insanity, he made up his mind to forswear all other occupations, and give himself exclusively to the Christian ministry, that he might spend his life and powers in a ceaseless warfare against the horrible delusions to which I seemed so irretrievably wedded.

15. In the year 1857, towards the close of the summer, I left my home in Nebraska for a time, and went eastward on a lecturing tour. My first appointment was at East Liverpool, in Ohio. There I met with my good, old friend John Donaldson, of Byker, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. He spoke of days long past, when we worked together in the cause of Christ. He was kind, as he had always been; but it troubled him to find me so changed--so far estranged from the views of former times. Though glad to see my friend, the memories which his presence revived, of the days when I was a happy and a useful minister of Christ, and the partial re-awakening of old religious thoughts and feelings which it occasioned, made me feel, for a moment, an indescribable sensation, as of one who had got an unlooked-for glimpse of some fearful loss he had sustained, or of some tremendous mistake he had committed. My infidel logic, however, hastened to my aid, and assured me I was right; but the deep and deathless instincts of my soul were not entirely at rest.

I reached Philadelphia at length. There I was engaged by Dr. W. Wright for eight months. I lectured every Sunday, sometimes on theological, sometimes on moral, and sometimes on scientific and general subjects. I always urged on my hearers a virtuous life, and did what I could to escape the society of persons of immoral habits. And I thought, for a time, I had succeeded. But I was grievously mistaken. One of the acting men in my congregation was a Plymouth man. He, as I afterwards found, had deserted his wife and family, and was living with another woman. Another, a more important member of my congregation, whom I supposed to be an example of propriety, turned out to be an advocate of unlimited license. And another, a man of great wealth, who had often invited me to his house, and shown me kindness in other ways, I found, after his death, had never been married to the person with whom he had lived as his wife. I also found that he had another family in another part of the city. I mention these unpleasant matters to show, that facts were not wanting to shake my faith in the moral influence of infidel principles. The gentleman by whom I was employed, treated me with great respect and kindness, and some of my congregation did what they could to make me comfortable; but the longer I remained in my position, the less encouragement I saw to expect infidelity or skepticism to produce a virtuous and honorable life.

The gentleman by whom I was employed had thought of expending some fifty thousand dollars in building a hall, and endowing a lecture, &c., for the propagation of infidel principles; but the conduct of the skeptics that gathered round him, soon cured him of his anti-christian zeal.

16. Before my term was quite expired, I was engaged by another gentleman for eight months. But I had seen so much to shake my faith in the beneficent tendency of infidelity, that this time I left myself free, both to lecture on what subjects I thought best, and to leave my situation on two months' notice. As my new engagement did not commence for three months or more, I had the happiness of spending some time in the bosom of my family. As usual, the influences to which I was subject there were all calculated to abate my faith in irreligious principles, and to dispose me to look with less disfavor and prejudice on Christianity. In August I started again for Philadelphia. I left my family with sadness and tears, and I proceeded on my journey with a feeling that it would not be long before my labors in Philadelphia would come to an end. And the feeling grew stronger every week. The Hebrews had a hard task when they were required to make bricks without straw; but he who undertakes to make people good without religion, has to make bricks without clay--and that is a vast deal harder. I felt my position was not the right one, and I longed and sighed for something more in accordance with my gradually changing views and better feelings; but knew not exactly what it was I needed, or where it was to be found. I frequently attended the ministry of Dr. Furness, the Unitarian minister; and though his preaching was far from being all it should be, his sermons had a salutary effect on my mind. His words about God and duty, about Christ and immortality, fell on my soul at times like refreshing dew. I also went to hear the Rev. Albert Barnes, and was both pleased and surprised with the truth and excellence of many of his remarks. I heard several other ministers; but the irrational and anti-christian doctrines set forth by some of them, exerted an influence on my mind which was the opposite of salutary.

At the end of two months I gave notice to my committee that I should give up my situation as lecturer. I had come to the conclusion, that to war with Christianity was not the way to promote the virtue and happiness of mankind, and I told my congregation so. I added, that if we were even sure that the sentiments entertained by Christians were erroneous, it would be well to refrain from assailing them, till we had something better to put in their place. And I also advised them, now they were about to be left without a lecturer, to go to some place of worship; and if they could not hear exactly what they could like, to make the best of what they did hear, and by all means to live a virtuous, honorable, and useful life. I gave similar advice to congregations in other places, and by many it was well received.

When I gave up my situation in Philadelphia, my intention was to return to England. I was anxious to free myself, as far as possible, from men of extreme views, whether in religion or politics, and to place myself in a position in which I should be perfectly free to pursue whatever course a regard to truth and duty might require. I made up my mind, therefore, that on my arrival in England, I would stand alone, apart from all societies and public men, and have a paper of my own, and publish from time to time whatever might commend itself to my judgment as true and good. I knew I had changed during the last two years, though I did not know how much; and I believed I was changing, though I could not tell in what the change which was taking place would end. I had no idea that I could ever become a Christian again, though the tendency of the change which was taking place in me was in that direction.

Having taken leave of my friends, I hastened to Boston, and prepared for my voyage across the deep. I was to sail by the Royal Mail Steamship _Canada_, on the eleventh of January, 1860. Just as I was stepping on board the packet, I received a letter from my youngest son. Among a number of other kind things, it contained words like the following: "Father, dear, when you get to England, don't dream that by any breath of yours, or by any paper balls that you can fire, you can ever shatter or shake the eternal foundations on which Christianity rests." Words like those from a dear good son could not but have a powerful effect on my mind.