God Hides His Face from Me.
“... But the blessing of God suddenly left me, and I found myself without a single thought on religion to give expression to. Previously I had no loss for words. Every verse of scripture had been to me a revelation of divine truth, bristling with suggestions for my talks; but now all are to me empty words, without force. The scriptures appear to me false. The story of Christ appears to me to be a myth. I agonize before God, and beseech Him to restore unto me the joy of salvation, and not to take the Holy Spirit from me. I cry out: ‘I do not believe it to be a myth! These infidel thoughts which come upon me are not mine! I believe, Lord, I believe, but my mind proves false to me! Help thou mine unbelief!’
“But God makes himself known in no way. It is to me as if there were no God. But I will persist in believing there is one. I read the Bible chapter after chapter, praying for light, but all the time there is nothing but darkness and doubt in my heart. Continually the thought comes into my mind: ‘There is no personal God.’ I still read diligently Row’s ‘Jesus of the Evangelists,’ which in former times had carried me up into the third heaven of bliss in the conviction of the historic character of the Gospels, and in adoration of the Christ; but the very same book is now tedious and falls flat. I had been speaking as if fully inspired by the Holy Ghost, and lost all consciousness of self. But the last three times, I spoke simply because I had to, my own heart being full of emotions of unbelief. After three flat failures, I decided to give up.
“My thorn in the flesh also now gives me no rest day nor night. It drives peace from my mind every day, and sleep from my eyes every night. Few have to endure such torture of unsatisfied longing. How I do bewail the fact that I have this abnormal passion which cries out for appeasement! It is not I who wish the gratification, I call God to witness. I wish all passion annihilated in me, and to spend my days in study and in doing good.... I have been celibate five months, and expected to continue so forever, but I now suspect such a life to be contrary to God’s will. All my hopes of leading an honorable life have been dissipated. All the indications are that God does not call me to preach the Gospel....”
Divine Ban on Celibacy.
A few mornings later I happened to be reading in the 23d Street Y. M. C. A. A poorly clad adolescent brushed lightly against me and I felt myself electrified. Looking up furtively, I recognized a Bowery favorite of six months before. To me his face appeared to be lighted up with an unearthly radiance, and a halo of glory encircled his head. As my identity was known at the Y. M. C. A., and as I was wearing my valuables, I did not dare reveal myself. But I was acutely lovesick the remainder of the day, pining to run across my friend again under circumstances such that I could greet him.
It actually chanced the following morning that I again encountered him, this time on the street several blocks distant from the Y. M. C. A. Though clad as a prosperous citizen, I would have greeted him on the street if he had not this time been accompanied by a malevolent-looking pal. After we had passed without either giving any sign of recognition, he came up behind, tapped me on the shoulder, and said: “Hello! Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember meeting me on Doyers Street?”
Conflicts of Double Life.
I was thunderstruck. It was the only time I have ever been recognized by a paramour of the slums in a quarter of the city distant from our place of meeting. I now enumerate my encounters with acquaintances of the one life while living out the other side of my double life.