If I were asked what first gave a check to my skepticism, and led me to turn my face once more towards Christ and Christianity, I should say, "The answer is supplied by my story." As I have shown, it was the troubled state of my mind,—the tempest of unhappy feeling, and the whirlwind of excitement in which I had lived so long,—that had most to do in carrying me away from Christ; and now my mind was allowed to be at rest. The whirlwind of excitement had spent its fury. The tempest in my soul had subsided, so that the principal hindrance to my return was gone. There were other causes that had contributed to the destruction of my faith in Christ and Christianity, but this was the first and chief one, and the one which gave the principal part of their force to the rest. As I have shown, I had been taught things about the Scriptures that were not correct. I had found a number of the arguments used by divines in support of the divinity of the Scriptures to be unsound. I had detected pious frauds in the writings of some of the advocates of the Bible and Christianity. I had met with untenable views on the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures. I had, besides, adopted a defective method of reasoning on religious matters, which exerted an injurious influence on my mind. All these things, and many others which I cannot at present mention, had proved occasions of doubt and unbelief. But the probability is, that none of these things would have destroyed my faith in Christ, if I had been in a proper state of mind. There was nothing in them to justify unbelief to a mind unprejudiced, undistempered, calm. There was attractiveness enough in Christ, if the mists which passion had thrown around Him, to hide His worth and glory from my view, could be cleared away. And there was truth and goodness enough in Christianity, and there were evidences sufficient of its divinity, if one could have the films removed from one's eyes, and be permitted to behold it in its own sweet light. The great difficulty was in the disordered state of my mind, and the trying nature of my situation. What was wanted, therefore, to make it possible for me to return to my former faith, was not so much an explanation of particular difficulties, as a better, happier, calmer state of mind. Explanations of difficulties were desirable, but they were not the first or principal things required. The great, the one thing needful, at the outset, was a fitting state of mind,—a mind sufficiently free from irritation, painful excitement, and consequent unhappy bias, to enable me to do justice to the religion of Christ. And the circumstances in which I was placed in Nebraska were calculated to bring me to this desirable state of mind; and many things which befel me there were calculated to stimulate my return to Christ.
1. In the first place, I was in a region favorable to calm and serious thought. True, we were infected for a time with the fever of speculation so prevalent in new countries; and we shared the hardships and toils, the cares and anxieties, of a border life: but there were seasons when serious thought and salutary reflection were inevitable. I was often alone amid the quiet and solemnity of a boundless wilderness. The busy world of men was far away. There was no one near to foster doubt or unbelief, or to reopen or irritate afresh the closing wounds inflicted by bigotry and intolerance in days gone by. And the loneliness of my condition seemed to bring me nearer to God. It allowed the revival of those Godward-tending instincts implanted in man's heart by the hand of the Creator. It favored the resurrection to life of the natural religious affections, and the revival of those holy longings and aspirations after a higher life and a grander destiny than earth can give, which arise so spontaneously in the breasts of men. It allowed the better self to rise and assert its power, while it shamed the evil self into the shade. And often, when away beyond the sight of man or of human habitation, amidst the eternal silence and the boundless solitude, I had strange thoughts and strange feelings; and there were times when, if I had yielded to the impulses from within, I should have cast myself down upon the ground, and adored the Great Mysterious Infinite.
On one occasion I went, in company with my youngest son and a friend, some distance into the interior of the country. At one point we came upon a deserted and decaying Indian village, and then upon an Indian track across the desert. A little further on we struck a Mormon track, along which a company of the Latter-day saints had groped their way towards their promised Paradise in the Salt Lake Valley. As we followed the track we came upon a mound, and then upon another, marking the spots where worn-out travellers had ended their weary pilgrimages, and been consigned, amid the desolate wilds, to their final resting places. Into one of these unprotected graves the wolves had made their way, to feed upon the fallen victim of the new faith. When night came on it found us in these dreary and desolate wilds, and there we had to prepare to pass the night under the open sky, with multitudes of wolves around us. We had hardly spread our blankets when the sky was covered with black and heavy clouds, and lightnings flashed, and thunders roared, and everything betokened a night of storm and rain. We protected ourselves against the threatening elements as well as we could, and prepared ourselves for cold and drenching showers, and for a sleepless and troubled night, when, happily for us, the wind suddenly changed, and dissipated the clouds. The stars came out in all their glory, and the night was calm and bright, and all we had to try our patience was a little frost. And there I slept; and there I often awoke; and in my intervals of wakefulness I gazed on the magnificence of the outspread skies, and mused on the dreariness of the surrounding wilderness, and thought of the stirring scenes through which I had passed in days gone by, and of the strange and death-like silent one in which I then was placed. "And what will the future be?" said I. "And here is my son; in the spring of life; on adventures so strange; in a universe so vast and so mysterious; what will be his destiny? And what will be the destiny of the dear ones we have left behind?" And then I lost myself in a world of strange imaginings. When wearied with my restless musings, I sank to rest again, and passed from waking into sleeping dreams.
Morning broke at length, and we arose, and started on our journey. The deer were skipping gaily over the plains. The wolves were hiding in their holes. We came at length to a stream. It was skirted by a grove, into which we made our way, and there we kindled a fire, and prepared our breakfast. We filled our coffee kettle from the brook. A hazel twig served us for a toasting fork; and we were soon engaged in one of the pleasantest parts of a hungry traveller's work. We relished our bread and ham and coffee amazingly. The wolves might be snuffing the odor of our viands, and coveting our repast; but they remained within their hiding-places, and kept silent; and we finished our meal in peace.
We rested next on the outskirts of a grove on the banks of the Elkhorn river. Here I was left to take care of the stuff, to prepare a bed, and to gather wood for a fire to cook our supper, and to frighten away the wolves, and keep us warm through the night, I gathered a quantity of dry and withered grass, and spread it on the ground, and covered it with a blanket, for a bed. I then looked around for wood. I saw some down in a dark deep gully, and went to fetch it; when I found myself all alone and unarmed in front of a hideous wolf-hole. I retreated with all the haste I could, and was soon on the top of the bank again, panting and trembling, and endeavoring to increase the distance between myself and the horrible den as rapidly as I could. I next looked round for wood on safer ground, and having collected a quantity, I waited with anxiety for the return of my companions. We slept that night in a half-built and deserted log cabin, without doors or windows, put up by some adventurous border-man to secure a claim to a portion of the surrounding land. A considerable part of the cabin was without roof. And there were large spaces between the layers of logs through which the frosty winds had free admission. For a time we deliberated whether we should be colder inside the cabin or outside. At length we decided in favor of the interior. We then took the wagon body off the frame and carried it into the cabin, and raised it on one side to screen us from the wind which came through the cabin walls. Against the wall at our head we fixed up rugs. At our feet, between our bed and the open doorway, we had our blazing fire. And there we slept. We had prickly sensations in our eyes in the morning, but they soon passed away. We took no cold, or none that proved serious at all. And the wolves seemed to keep at a respectable distance.
As soon as we had got through our breakfast, and put our wagon and team in order, we started homewards. At one point, as we passed along, a wolf looked quietly down upon us from the side of a hill just by. A bigger one had passed us as we stood in front of the half-built cabin in which we had passed the night. The region abounded with them, on every side.
While crossing a tract of rich bottom land, where the dry and withered grass of the previous summer lay thick, I struck a light, and for an experiment, set the prairie on fire. The flames blazed forth at once like gunpowder. They spread and roared. The wind rose, and blew the flames in the direction of our wagon. It was all we could do to get to the wagon and jump in and flee. We had no sooner started the horses than we found that the traces of one of them were loose, and we had to jump out again to fasten them; and before we could retake our places the flames were almost at our ears. The horses fled, however, at a good quick pace, and speedily carried us beyond the reach of danger, and we got safe home.
2. There were many things in my new situation and in my strange way of life, besides the silence and the solitude of a boundless desert, that were calculated to awaken within me solemn feeling, and to rouse me to serious thoughtfulness on things pertaining to God and religion. And when once my mind had begun to awake to such matters, it was never permitted to sink again, for any length of time, into its former death-like slumber. And many things befel me that tended to make me feel, and feel most painfully at times, the helplessness and cheerlessness, the gloom and wretchedness, of the man who has lost his trust in God, and his hope of a blessed immortality. There is nothing in utter doubt and unbelief to satisfy a man with a heart. A man with a heart wants a Father in whose bosom he can repose, a Saviour in whose care and sympathy he can trust, and a better world to which he can look forward as his final home and resting-place, and as the eternal home and resting-place of those who are dear to him. And I had a heart. I was not made for infidelity. I never submitted to it willingly, and I never sat easy under its power. I had affections, cravings, wants, which nothing but religion could satisfy.
3. Then trouble came. Infidelity is a wretched affair even in prosperity; but in adversity it is still worse. And adversity overtook me. In the spring of 1857 we had a reasonable income, from property which we supposed to be of considerable value. A few weeks later a panic came, and our income fell to nothing; our property was valueless; instead of a support it became a burden, and we had to set to work to get a living by our labor, at a time when work was hard to be got, and when wages were down at the lowest point. This was a time of great distress and grievous trial, and I felt the want of consolation most keenly. I could once have said, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." But now I had no God. The universe had no great Fatherly Ruler. The affairs of man were governed by chance, or by a harsh and grinding necessity; and all good ground of hope and cheerful trust had given place to doubt, and gloom, and cruel uncertainty.
4. Trials of other kinds came. Sickness and pain entered our dwelling, and seized upon one of my family. My youngest son was taken ill. He was racked with excruciating pain. It seemed as if the agony would drive him to distraction, or cut short his days. And there I stood, watching his agony, and distracted with his cries, unable to utter a whisper about a gracious Providence, or to offer up a prayer for help or deliverance.