loving and obeying our father without ever a chance to doubt his existence. If our Heavenly Father would make me equally certain of His existence I should follow Him through flood and fire. "Then why does God not show Himself?" "Isn't it strange that He has hidden forever and forever!"

Here I remembered the Scripture which says, "No man can see God and live." But my heart quickly responded, "It is one thing to come near enough to kill us, and quite another to come near enough to convince us. Oh, isn't it strange that He hides forever?"

Then I thought of Jesus. But my heart replied, "Maybe Jesus was mistaken." If He had a rapturous feeling like mine, and was able to sustain it, He would continue to believe in God even if He did not exist. Nothing short of God's personal appearance, it seemed to me, could settle the question. "Then why does God not show Himself? There is no sense in hiding; and if no sense in it, then it is wrong; and if wrong, then there is no God. Because God, if He exists, must be good and sensible."

Therefore, when my reasoning led me to say, "There can't be a God," I found that unbelief had entered the marrow of my being. I felt that God could not possibly do such a foolish and wicked thing as to hide from His children.

Having reached this conclusion, I felt alarmed at my wicked thoughts. They were not, however, to be driven away. From that day forward the sky became more gray, and cold, and Godless. An awful crisis had come into my life. It seemed an irreparable loss if there were no God. My life, also, would go out in eternal night. If there was a God, and I gave up faith, then I should go to an endless hell of inexpressible torment. There was no comfort in either alternative. The problem was no longer the problem of the Church; it was my personal problem. And the battle had to be fought to a decisive issue. Being impaled on the two horns of the dilemma, I found it increasingly difficult to reproduce the exalted state of feeling on which I still relied for assurance.

Never having met a college graduate, of course I had not heard one preach. It was in the college chapel, four years later, that I first listened to a sermon by a college man. My impression was that he made neither noise nor light. That he made but little noise I knew. But I am now willing to admit that he may have shed more light than I saw. Preaching often fails to make any connection with the fundamental ideas and difficulties of doubting minds.

In my new state of doubt, the first impulse was to confide in my father and Christian friends. But then I realized that I knew all the stock phrases, and that none of them met my case. If confronted with the old phrases would I not argue, and might I not confirm myself in a possible error? Was it not safer to fight it out with God, if He existed, than to argue with those who could not feel what I had felt? The insistence of these questions caused me to keep my secret wholly to myself, and to go on with the struggle. Twenty-two years later during the last visit with my father, as we rode together over the hills, I told him this story. With a look of tenderness I shall never forget, he replied, "I believe the story because you tell me, but I am glad you did not tell me at the time. I could not have helped you." Said he, "I do not recall ever in my life doubting the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the existence of God. I have often doubted my worthiness and acceptance, but nothing more." Still believing that I did the wise thing under the circumstances, I was glad to have his approval. If an honest doubter asks for bread, he is not infrequently given a stone by well-meaning Christians,—and neither can understand the other.

As this is a case study, it should be said that my first mistake was in discrediting my early religious experience. My second mistake was in identifying religion with an extreme psychic state. And when my psychic state failed me, then my utterly false images of God and the universe completed the destruction of my faith. If I could have reproduced the psychic state readily, my false images of God and the universe would not have troubled me for many years.

The ministers who created these false impressions in my mind were not deserving of censure, because they did not understand the forces with which they were dealing—and the community was in great need of something. Even for me, it was best that I did what we thought was right regardless of what followed.

Having entered upon the vigorous adolescent period, I greatly needed to take my stand as an adult Christian. I needed to realize such a new influence as a thorough commitment of myself would bring. This, however, no one in the community understood.

We now know that one may be genuinely converted and hypnotized at the same time. That is, he may enter God's service with the noblest spirit of loyalty, and at the same time submit himself to a process that will induce the hypnotic state. Likewise, it is possible for one to be hypnotized under religious influences without being converted. This is the case with those who wish religion only if it will give them more pleasure than their sins. Though they may not deeply analyze it, yet their conversion is an experiment to see which they like the better; and when their hypnotic happiness leaves them, they return to their greater pleasure in sin. Or, when the idea and method are rational, one may be converted without being hypnotized. In this case a complete dedication of self to the will of God is trusted to bring its own rich reward in noble enthusiasm and fine appreciation.

Since I had always been a Christian, it was not conversion that I needed, but a deeper commitment of myself to the will and work of God. And as I have already explained, this I did before trying to "get religion." The moral will is the spiritual spine. If it stands erect in its duties toward God and men, the whole spiritual life will come into normal feeling and action. My unconditional submission to the will of God was normal, beautiful, and necessary. But the experience which came two days later should be characterized as a super-normal psychic state, self-induced. While the psychic state lasted my true religious feelings coöperated vigorously; but when it subsided, as it was bound to do, my true religious emotions likewise disappeared. For years, all references to spirituality were understood by me to mean an exciting, nervous thrill; such a thrill as I had once felt. This led me to study the feelings, a few years later, to see if I could determine their value. I found that I was able to hypnotize a man so that he thought he saw God; and then I could cause him to fall down in adoration before his imaginary deity. Or, by taking ether, I could reproduce the glory world of my own so-called conversion. Feelings alone are not to be trusted, for the objects which they often create do not exist. On the other hand, real objects, valid and knowable, produce appropriate feelings when we are rightly related to them. Never have I been in such a state of pain or dejection but that I knew that I loved my children if my attention was called to it. I still demand, therefore, an objective, knowable God before I can love Him.

While greatly deploring such religious exercises as are calculated to produce extreme psychic states, yet I bring an indictment against the average Church of this generation because its religious feelings are sub-normal. The latter condition is probably as dangerous as the former. Even our physical temperature must be allowed to run neither too high nor too low. If in everything but religion we feel warmth and enthusiasm, we reveal a deplorable religious condition. For if one intelligently