Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again | Page 2

different Methodist Bodies.--Grounds of my reformatory proceedings.--About immoralities.--Christianity not to blame for the faults of professors and preachers.--My own defects, 153
CHAPTER XII.
Story of my life continued.--Results of my expulsion.--Fierce fighting.--Desperation of my persecutors.--Great excitement on my part.--Rank crop of slanders.--Monstrous ones.--And silly ones.--Bad deeds as well as wicked words.--Hard work.--Exhaustion.--Powerlessness.--Three days' rest.--Long sleep.--Wonderful,--delightful,--result.--Public debates.--Remarkable occurrences; seemed Providential.--A lying opponent unexpectedly confronted and confounded.--New Body,--Christian Brethren.--My church at Newcastle.--Change in my views, and fresh troubles.--Losses.--Poverty.--Learn the Printing business.--Follow it under difficulties.--Want of funds.--Generous friends. Family on the verge of want.--Pray.--An unlooked-for cart-load of provisions.--Trust in Providence.--False friends.--True ones.--A mad utterance.--A worse deed.--Theological Conventions.--Free investigations and public discussions.--Change of views, 103
CHAPTER XIII.
Approach to Unitarianism.--Kindness of Unitarians.--Preaching and lecturing in their pulpits.--Ten nights' public discussion with Rev. W. Cooke.--Subjects.--Results.--Publications.--Now periodicals.--Unitarian invitation to London.--Public reception.--Liberal contributions to Steam Press Fund.--Press presentation.--Dr. Bateman; Dr.-Sir-John Bowring.--Pleasurable change from intolerance and persecution to friendship and favor.--Discoveries.--Unitarianism has many phases.--Channingism.--Anti-supernaturalism.--Deism.--Atheism.--Gradually slid down to the lower, 191
CHAPTER XIV.
The Bible.--My earliest views of its origin and authority.--Changed as I grew up.--Further changes.--Important facts about the Bible.--False theories of its Divine inspiration.--The true--the Bible's own,--doctrine on the subject.--Needful to keep inside of this.--No defence outside either for the Bible or for Bible men.--Explanations: illustrations: testimonies of celebrated writers.--The PERFECTION of the Bible--in what does it consist.--Foolish and impossible notions of perfection.--No absolute perfection in any thing.--No need for it.--Foolish talk about infallibility.--Other important testimonies, 202
CHAPTER XV.
Enters politics.--Advocates extreme political views.--Republicanism.--Foretells the French Revolution of 1848.--Great political excitement in England.--Government alarmed.--Get arrested.--Lodged in prison.--Trial.--Triumph over Government.--Great rejoicings.--Elected member of Parliament for Bolton, and Town Councillor for Leeds.--Exhaustion from excess of labor.--Health fails.--Terrible Pains.--Voyage to America and back.--Removes to America.--Objects in doing so.--Settles on a farm.--Gets into fresh excitement.--The Abolitionists.--Women's Rights.--All kinds of wild revolutionary theories.--Go farther into unbelief instead of getting back to Christ.--A mad world, with strange unwritten histories, and awful, nameless mysteries, 241
CHAPTER XVI.
Story of my descent from the faith of my childhood, to doubt and unbelief.--Bad theological teaching in my early days.--Dreadful results.--Perplexity.--Madness.--Survive all, and get over it.--The first arguments I heard for the Bible.--True basis of religious belief.--Reading on the evidences.--Effects.--Unsound arguments.--Their effect.--Internal evidences best.--Negative criticism, long continued, ruinous both to faith and virtue.--Moving ever downwards.--The devil as a theologian, a poet and a philosopher.--Bible Conventions.--W. L. Garrison, A. J. Davis.--Public discussions in Philadelphia with Dr. McCalla.--The Doctor's disgraceful failure.--Great,--mad,--excitement.--Narrow escape from murder.--Eight nights' debate with Dr. Berg.--The good cause suffered through bad management.--The Doctor took an untenable position.--Undertook to prove too much and failed.--Substantially right, but logically wrong.--Other debates in Ohio, Indiana, England and Scotland.--Mean and mischievous opponents.--Honorable and useful ones.--Bad advocates of a good cause, its worst enemies, 269
CHAPTER XVII.
Continuation of my Story.--Lectures on the Bible in Ohio.--Trouble.--Riot.--Rotten eggs.--Midnight mischief.--Had to move.--Settlement among Liberals, Comeouters.--Too fond of liberty.--Would have my share as well as their own.--Fresh trouble.--Another forced move.--Settlement in the wilds of Nebraska, among Indians, wolves, and rattlesnakes.--Experience there.--A change for the better.--How brought about.--Quiet of mind.--Reflection.--Horrors of Atheism.--Destroys the value of life.--Deceives you; mocks you; makes you intolerably miserable.--Suggests suicide.--Prosperity not good for much without religion: adversity, sickness, pain, loss, bereavement intolerable.--Strange adventures in the wilderness; terrible dangers; wonderful deliverances.--Solemn thoughts and feelings in the boundless desert.--Solitude and silence preach.--Religious feelings revive.--Recourse to old religious books.--Demoralizing tendency of unbelief.--Lecture in Philadelphia.--Cases of infidel depravity.--You can't make people good, nor even decent, without religion.--Infidelity means utter debasement.--A good, a loving, and a faithful wife, who never ceases to pray.--Return to England.--Experience there.--Unbounded licentiousness of Secularism.--Total separation from the infidel party.--My new Periodical.--Resolution to re-read the Bible, to do justice to Christianity, &c.--A sight of Jesus.--Happy results.--Change both of head and heart.--Happy transformation of character.--A new life.--New work.--New lot.--From darkness to light,--From death to life,--from purgatory to paradise,--from hell to heaven, 310
CHAPTER XVIII.
Parties whose Christian sympathy, and wise words, and generous deeds, helped me back to Christ, 345
CHAPTER XIX.
The steps by which I gradually returned to Christ.--Lectures and sermons on the road.--Answers to objections against the Bible and Christianity.--Spiritualism.--Strange phenomena.--Answers to objections advanced by myself in the Berg debate.--The position to be taken by advocates of the Bible and Christianity.--Additional remarks on Divine inspiration.--What it implies, and what it does not imply.--Overdoing is undoing.--Genesis and Geology.--The Bible and Science.--Public discussions,--explanation.--At Home in the Church.--Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.--Joy unspeakable, 355
CHAPTER XX.
Lessons I have learned.--1. Men slow to learn wisdom by the experience of others.--2. Danger of bad feeling.--3. Of a controversial spirit.--4. Old ministers should deal tenderly with their younger brethren.--5. Young thinkers should be prayerful, humble, watchful; yet faithful to conscience and to truth, trusting in God.--6. With Christian faith goes Christian virtue.--The tendency of unbelief is ever downwards.--7. Unbelievers are not irreclaimable.--We should not pass them by unpitied or unhelped.--8. Converts from infidelity must look for trials.--They must not expect too much from churches and