To Infidelity and Back | Page 4

Chapter I.
--To Infidelity and Back
Chapter II.
--Parting Message to Unitarian School
Chapter III.
--Functions and Limitations of the Mind
Chapter IV.
--Looking Through Colored Glasses

PART II.--FROM SECTARIANISM TO
PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY.

Chapter I.
--Scriptural Baptism
Chapter II.
--The New Testament Church
Chapter III.
--The Church Since the Apostles
Chapter IV.
--Our Neglected Fields

PART I.

TO INFIDELITY AND BACK

CHAPTER I.
To INFIDELITY AND BACK.
_To Christ by Way of Rationalism, Unitarianism and Infidelity._
I inherited on the one hand a strong religious nature, and on the other a
tendency to be independent in thought and to question everything
before adopting it as a part of my belief. Ever since I can remember I
was a praying boy, and early in life there came to me the desire to
devote myself to the ministry of the gospel.
Among my earliest religious impressions were those received by
having the story of the Patriarchs and Jesus read to me in German by a
saintly old Mennonite for whom I worked on the farm for a year.
Among the first things that aroused my reason in religion was the
declaration of my Sunday-school teacher that before we are born we are
predestined by God either to go to heaven or to hell, and that anything
we might do would not alter our eternal destiny. This declaration came
like a thunderbolt into my religious life, and stirred up a violent
agitation from which it took me ten years to fully deliver myself. I was
now about fourteen years old, and already had a desire to measure
everything in the crucible of logic or cause and effect, and to accept
nothing which did not come within the range of my reason. Looking at
things from the standpoint of cause and effect, I was naturally caught in
the meshes of fatalism, and this aggravated the religious agitation
above referred to.
At this time in my life there arose many religious questions, and the
answers I received from religious teachers tended to drive me away
from the church rather than to it. I feel to-day that if my case had been
clearly understood and the nature and the limits of the finite mind had
been patiently pointed out to me, in its relation to faith and revelation, I
could have been saved years of agony on the sea of rationalism. But my

questions were not answered and my honest doubts were rebuked, so
that I was naturally driven out of sympathy with the church and Bible,
since I judged that my doubts could not be satisfied because religion
itself is unreasonable.
Through the kindness of Christian people the way opened to prepare
myself for the ministry. But by this time many religious doubts and
perplexities were in the way, and I decided that I would a thousand
times rather be an honest doubter out of the church and ministry than a
hypocrite in it. Thus my fond hope of entering the ministry had to be
given up, and instead I determined to use the teaching profession as a
stepping-stone to law, and law as a means of serving humanity.
I was very fond of study, and read scores of books on all kinds of
subjects. Emerson was my favorite, and I procured and read his
complete works. Gibbon and Macaulay were eagerly read as revealing
some of the religious life of the world. Ingersoll, with many others, got
his turn. But the book that produced the greatest effect on my life at
this time was Fleetwood's "Life of Christ," with a short history of the
different religious bodies of the world attached. Through my reading
and observations I became greatly perplexed over the religious
divisions of the world. I discovered that thousands of people had died
as martyrs for all kinds of religions and sects, and that each claimed to
have the truth and to teach the right way to heaven. I concluded that
since they teach such contradictory doctrines they cannot possibly all
be right, although they might all be wrong. I formed a desire to make a
thorough study of all the different religious bodies of the world, to find
out where the truth is, if there is any in religion. My first information
along this line was obtained in the above-named history of the religious
bodies of the world. Being of a rationalistic turn of mind, I was
naturally very favorably impressed with Unitarianism and its teaching.
I sent for a number of their works and read them with great interest. I
learned many things that have been a benediction to my life ever since,
but you will see later on how far it satisfied my rationalistic proclivities.
I learned to my delight that I could enter a Unitarian theological