To Infidelity and Back | Page 6

of
experience and education, and that it is right to lie or do anything else
so long as you do it out of love. Doubtless you have all heard of the
farmer and his wife at the World's Fair who went to see the "Exit."
There was nothing in it, and of course they had to pay to get in again.
This was my bitter experience with rationalism. I thought I was

following a great light, but I discovered there was nothing in it, that I
was following an ignis fatuus. Rationalism has indeed proven the
"Exit" to multitudes, from the peace, joy and moral security that
accompany faith in evangelical Christianity into the desert of doubt,
darkness and despair.
But not even here did I find a staying-place. For rationalism, in its bold
confidence, led me on and on until it brought me to materialism and
absurdity. In going too far, it revealed its true nature and character, and
thus led me to see its fallacy and enabled me to get free from its
bondage. From atheism it led me to fatalism, and declared that there is
no free will and consequently people are not to blame for their sins and
shortcomings. If we "shall reap as we sow," it declared that we cannot
give anything to anybody and therefore philanthropy is a delusion.
But I taught rationalism in guile one day by which it thoroughly
exhibited the absurdity of its teaching. Its continual song was, "You
dare not believe what you cannot conceive to be true." So it declared
one day, in its bold folly, that an object cannot move in the space in
which it is, nor in the space in which it is not; therefore you cannot
conceive of an object moving; therefore you cannot move to walk, eat
or live. So the conclusion to which my rationalistic guide finally led me
was that I must sit down and die or be irrational. Well, this was too
much for me. I refused to die, and concluded that rationalism is not a
safe guide, and commenced to investigate as to where the difficulty lay.
But before I tell you how I discovered the false tricks of rationalism, let
me say that all these things into which rationalism led me were against
my strong religious nature, and gave me continual and excruciating
pain. I never for a day ceased to pray to God for help; for while my
intellect was held in doubt through the bondage of rationalism, my
heart held on to God, and thus I was in a mighty conflict. In my despair
I cried unto God, and when he had accomplished his purpose
concerning me, he set me free. Blessed be his name! Surely "he
bringeth the blind by a way that they knew not, and leads them into
paths that they have not known. He makes darkness light before them,
and crooked things straight, and does not utterly forsake the honest in

heart."
Most people have come to their religious and political position by
heredity and are held there by inertia. If you can set a person free from
this hereditary inertia, you can convert him to almost anything at will;
for it is but few who are sufficiently informed on any subject to defend
it against an expert, and none are thus qualified on all subjects. So
when I entered this school, free from all hereditary ideas, determined to
accept every position that I could not refute in argument, you can
imagine my experience. At first I was converted from one thing to
another by the different students and professors until I was about all the
"arians," "isms," and "ists" ever heard of, together with a number of
other things for which they have no names as yet.
But how did I discover the fallacy of rationalism? and how was I
delivered from its mighty clutches by which it had dragged me from
one pitfall to another so ruthlessly? My deliverance came from a source
where you would perhaps least expect it. It was through the study of
John Stuart Mill's "System of Logic." In it I learned "that
inconceivability is not a criterion of impossibility," as rationalism
claims. On the other hand, that we know things to be true that are just
as inconceivable as that there can be two mountains without a valley
between.
Let me introduce a few of these contradictions or inconceivabilities.
Before you can reach your mouth with your hand, you must go over
half the distance, then half of the rest, then half of the rest, and so on
_ad infinitum._ But you cannot make the infinite number of divisions,
and therefore you cannot reach your lips. Again, you cannot conceive
of extension of space or time without a