concerning my work at this time, beyond the fact that I was fairly successful in it, and for the time being, I found it eminently satisfactory and fairly pleasant to myself. However, under the workings of the itinerant system, in a few years I found myself located in the state of Missouri, where I transferred my church relations to the St. Louis Conference of the M. E. Church. This change involved nothing but a matter of personal choice and convenience.

CHAPTER III

NEW VISIONS AND DISTURBANCES

Having thus changed my church relations, and feeling that I had a greater field of usefulness open to me, my zeal for efficiency and success increased. I had a sincere and consuming desire to "save men's souls." And believing my creed to be as infallible as the Bible upon which it was based, I studied to make myself efficient and able in its defense. By following the ordinary methods of interpretation, I soon found no trouble in doing this. Does the reader inquire here what are the "ordinary methods of interpretation"? Taking a chapter, or verse, or paragraph of the Bible here and there, thru the whole book, from Genesis to Revelation, and weaving them together as a connected whole, regardless of whether there is any natural connection between them or not; then disposing of all contradictory passages as either "figurative,"—with unlimited latitude on the interpretation of the "figures,"—or as pertaining to those "great and mysterious, unknowable things of God's divine revelation,"—mysteries too great for man to know! This method of interpretation is the common practice, to a greater or less extent, of every church in Christendom that accepts the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, and looks to it as its sole and final source of authority in religion. There is not a creed in Christendom today, and never has been, that cannot be supported and proved to be conclusively correct from the Bible by this method of interpretation. By the same method the Bible can be made the defense—and it often has been—of war, murder, slavery, polygamy, adultery, and the foulest crimes known to humanity, and these all made the divine institutions of God. And these are exactly the leading methods of interpretation of the Bible that are being followed today, and have been since Christianity first began to divide into sects and parties.

But this is a digression. While I recognized some merit in nearly all the creeds, I firmly believed mine the best. My faith in, and devotion to the Methodist Church had become so intense that I believed the sum total of all theological knowledge was concentrated and embodied in John Wesley. There could be no more progress, no more discovery. It was a finished science, and John Wesley finished it. There are thousands who still think so, even to this day! I looked back over history to the days of apostolic purity, followed the trend of theological thought in its decline into error and superstition, thru the dark ages, to the first glimmer of light in Wickliffe, followed by Huss, until the flame of the Reformation sprang up in Luther, Zwingli and Calvin, followed by Knox and Arminius; but Wesley was the end of knowledge, and wisdom died with him.

Yes, I was soon able to defend and prove my creed to the satisfaction of myself and my superiors. But now I wanted to go further. I wanted to prove the proof. As I grew older and my mind broadened I desired to drink deeper from the fountains of knowledge. I started out with the best materials available to me to make a critical study of the Bible. Up to this time I had studied the Bible only superficially. I had accepted it as truth, as divine, as inspired, as infallible, except the doubts of my school days before described, and these I had long since cast aside. I had studied the Bible as the great mass of Christians study it today—to support and defend preconceived opinions, most of which I had inherited. Now I was to seek for basic principles. I wanted to know just who wrote each book of the Bible, when he wrote it and why, and just what the specific proofs were as to these facts and of its divine inspiration.

In looking back over the period of years that have since intervened, I am still unable to perceive any selfish, egotistical motive in these my ambitions. My unquenchable thirst for knowledge was inspired solely by my desire to increase my efficiency in that vocation to which I sincerely believed I was divinely called.

I never had the opportunity of taking a Divinity Course in a Divinity School. But both the great branches of the Methodist Church require all its ministers, before final ordination, to take a prescribed course of study, somewhat after the correspondence method, covering four years,—and longer if necessary to cover the full prescribed course,—that is practically equal to the curriculum of the average Divinity School, minus the advantages of class room instruction and class lectures. It was this course of study that I pursued, prescribed by the bishops of the M. E. Church. And it was here in these orthodox books, prescribed by the bishops of my church as necessary for me, not only to read, but to study, learn and digest, to fully equip me for the ministry, that I learned the lessons that completely upset my faith, and finally led me to abandon the church and religion entirely! I might add that it was perhaps as much what I failed to learn from these books, things that I was looking for and could not find because it was not in them, that led me to this course, as it was from the affirmative facts I did learn.

Up to this time, and long afterwards, I had never read a book that might be called at all liberal in theology, much less anything of a sceptical character. In fact I had read nothing, outside of school text books, except such books as were authoritatively published by some Baptist or Methodist publishing house. Robert G. Ingersoll was then at the height of his fame, and I would not even read a political speech of his, because he was an "infidel." The strange anomaly of the whole thing is that I was led, or rather driven, clear out of the church into practical agnosticism thru and by my earnest and intense efforts to more strongly fortify and establish myself in my preconceived beliefs about the Bible and religion. This will appear more fully as we proceed.

First of all, all orthodox Christianity is based upon the doctrine that the Bible is the supernaturally inspired, infallible word of God. Upon this Bible as the sole authority, every doctrine, creed, dogma and ecclesiastical practice is based. Take away this doctrine of Biblical infallibility, and orthodoxy crumbles to dust. As long as it is held to be infallible truth, every creed in Christendom can find abundant material in it to prove every point it claims. Every one knows that among the many Christian denominations which fully agree with each other the Bible is an infallible revelation from God; yet the doctrines and conclusions they deduce from it are as diametrically opposed to each other as midnight and noon.

As I have already said, I never had any doubt, up to this time, of the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, except a very slight one about the method of inspiration, which I have already detailed of my student days. As a Methodist I had become fairly proficient in my ability to defend every detail of my church doctrine. I could repeat almost every passage of scripture from Genesis to Revelation in support of each of the Twenty-five Articles. My only trouble was when I would occasionally run across some sceptic who would question my authority,—the Bible. Of course I would tell him the Bible was the word of God; and he would demand proof, "detailed facts," in support of my assertion. While perfectly satisfied in my own mind, these "detailed facts" were not in my possession. But now I was going to get them.

In the last year of my conference course of study, one of the