There were others, however, who took a more Christian course, and if they did not succeed in at once reclaiming me from my melancholy delusions, they produced a happy effect on my mind, which helped to bring about, in the end, my return to the Christian faith.
1. There was one man, a minister, who, though he wrote against some of my views, always treated me with respect. He never gave me offensive names, nor charged me with unworthy motives, nor treated me with affected contempt. He regarded me simply as an erring brother, and strove, with genuine Christian affection, to bring me back to what he regarded as the truth. He died before my restoration to the Church, but his labors on my behalf were not in vain.
2. A kind-hearted layman once sent me a book—"The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,"—accompanied with a short, but affectionate letter. The book did not convert me, but the kindness of the friend that sent it had a happy effect. Though beyond the reach of logic, I was within the reach of love.
3. The Author of "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation" was Mr. Walker, a minister of Mansfield, Ohio. While in America I gave a course of lectures in that town on the Bible. The friend at whose house I was staying took me to see Mr. Walker, who received me with great kindness, invited me to dine with him, and conversed with me in a truly Christian manner. He even came to one of my lectures, in hopes of helping me over the difficulties which blocked my way to the faith of Christ. I did not, however, treat him with the kind and considerate tenderness with which he had treated me. I was under unhappy influences, and I spoke on the Bible in such a manner as to try him past endurance, and he left me that night with very painful feelings, regarding me, probably, as lost past hope. Should he read this work, it may give him satisfaction to know, that his kindness, and his work on Christ as a revelation of the Eternal Father, had a part in helping me back to the religion of Christ.
4. Five years ago last December, Mr. John Mawson, Sheriff of Newcastle-on-Tyne, was killed on the Town Moor by a terrible explosion of nitro-glycerine. I had been acquainted with him more than five-and-twenty years. He joined the church at Newcastle, of which I was a minister, and remained my friend to the last. He had his doubts on certain points of theology, but he never lost his faith in the great principles of Christianity. When I was over from America once, I spent some time in his company, and we had frequent conversations on religion. "It seems to me," said he, "that we ought to put some trust in our hearts. My head has often tempted me to doubt; but my heart has always clung to God and immortality. It does so still; and I believe it is right. Indeed, I have no doubt of it." I remembered his words. They led me to study the moral and spiritual instincts of my nature more thoroughly than I had done before. They led me to study the subject of instinct and natural affection generally. My instincts, like the instincts of my friend, had always clung to God and a future life, and to the principles of religion and virtue, even when reason hesitated and doubted most. I had never given up my belief in any of the great doctrines of Christianity without a painful struggle. But I had been led to think it my duty, when there was a conflict between my head and my heart, to take part with my head. My heart, for instance, would say, "Pray;" but reason, or something in the garb of reason, would say, "Don't. If what you desire is good, God will give it you, whether you pray for it or not; and if it be evil, He will withhold it, pray as you may. Prayer may move a man like yourself; but it cannot move God." And I hearkened to the seeming reason, and gave up prayer. My heart said, "There is a personal, conscious, all-perfect God." My head, or my infidel philosophy said, "There cannot be such a God. A God all-powerful could prevent evil. A God all-good would prevent it. God cannot therefore be a conscious, personal, all-perfect being. He must be a blind, unconscious power; the sum total of natural tendencies, working according to the eternal properties of things, without the possibility of change; and hence the existence of evil, and the prevalence of eternal, unalterable law." And here again my head was permitted to prevail, and my heart, in spite of all its remonstrances, was compelled to give way. And with a personal, conscious, all-perfect God, went the richest treasures of the human heart,—trust in a Fatherly Providence; the hope of a blessed immortality, and faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice, and all assurance of human progress and a good time coming.
Yet I was obliged, in spite of the false philosophical principle I had adopted, to accept the oracles of my heart on many points, and to reject the logic of my head. My heart said, "Speak the truth; to lie is wrong." But now that it had got rid of a personal God, logic said, "There can be nothing wrong in a lie that hurts no one. There is something commendable in a useful, serviceable lie. To lie to save a person from danger or destruction is a virtue. The feeling which shrinks from such a lie is a blind, irrational prejudice, and should be plucked up and cast out of the soul. Truth may be proper enough in the strong: but deceit is the wisdom of the weak." But in this case my heart, my instinctive love of truth, prevailed.
Again, my heart pleaded for justice and mercy; for justice to all; and for mercy to the needy and helpless. But reason, or the heartless and godless philosophy that usurped its name, said, "Utility is the supreme law; the only law of man. Justice and mercy are right when they are useful; but when they are hurtful they are right no longer. If by destroying the helpless and the needy we can deliver them from their misery, and increase the happiness of the rest of our race, their destruction is a virtue, especially if we dispose of them in a quiet and painless way, so as to spare them the fears and agonies of death!" But here again my heart prevailed. My natural, unreasoning, instinctive horror of injustice and murder rendered the specious pleadings of Atheistic utilitarianism powerless. And so on moral matters generally.
As a rule, Atheists succeed, in course of time, in vanquishing and destroying their moral as well as their religious instincts, and then they embrace the most revolting doctrines, and reconcile themselves to the most appalling deeds. They look on marriage as irrational, and regard modesty and chastity as vices. Shame is a weakness in their eyes, and natural affections are irrational prejudices. Scruples against lying, theft and murder, when any great good is to be gained by those practices, are insanity. Gratitude, even to parents, is an absurdity. Free indulgence, unlimited license, is a virtue. The curse of our race is religion. The one great social evil is a surplus population; and the prevention or destruction of children is the sum of social science and virtue. The extinction of the weaker races, and the destruction of those of every race who cannot contribute their share of wealth and pleasure to the common stock, is the perfection of philosophy. In short, all the old-fashioned principles of virtue, honor, conscience, generosity, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, and natural affection are exploded, and in their place there comes a black and hideous chaos of all indecencies and immoralities, a boundless and bottomless abyss of all imaginable and unspeakable horrors. I shudder when I think how near I came to this hell of atheistical philosophy. My inability entirely to extinguish my better instincts and affections, prevented me from plunging headlong into its frightful depths. It was more than I could do to carry out the atheistical principles of mere theoretical reasoning to its last results. I was, thank God, on some points, always inconsistent, and my inconsistency was my salvation. My heart preserved me in spite of my head.
But if I could not carry out my principle of trusting to mere reasoning to its full extent, why did I act on it at all? When I found that it led to utter degradation and ruin, why did I not renounce it, and trust once more in my native instincts? When I found myself obliged to follow my heart in so many matters, why not follow it in all? I answer, I had not a sufficient understanding of the matter. I wanted more light. But the course of study on which the remarks of my dear good friend Mr. Mawson led me to enter, led to clearer and correcter views on the subject. It led to the conviction that instinct and natural affection are divine inspirations,—that the beliefs and practices to which they constrain us are the perfection of wisdom and goodness,—that to set them aside is inevitable ruin,—that whenever reason says one thing, and our religious and moral affections and instincts say another, we ought to turn a deaf ear to reason, and follow implicitly the dictates of our moral and religious faculties. And to this conviction, resulting in a great measure from the remarks of my faithful and devoted friend, I owe, in part, my present unspeakable happiness as a believer in Christ.
5. I encountered two Christian men in public discussion who left a favorable impression on my mind. One was the Rev. Andrew Loose, of Winchester, Indiana. The subject of discussion between me and Mr. Loose was the divine authority of the Bible. He went through the whole debate, which lasted several days, without uttering one uncharitable, scornful, or angry word, with the exception of a single phrase in his last speech; and even that he meekly and generously recalled, after I had satisfied him of its impropriety. I never forgot the conduct of that dear good man, and his Christian meekness and forbearance had a good effect on my heart.