"For all my innumerable benefits, for life, and reason, and the use of speech; for health, and joy, and every pleasant hour,—Good God, I thank Thee!"
It is true, there is not much religion in these things; and though they may have been adopted to satisfy the demands of conscience only, they prove that he was not an atheist, as many supposed.
Benjamin's experience with skeptical and infidel books recalls the experience of two young men, when about the same age, with publications of kindred character, which came very near depriving the United States of two good Presidents.
Before Abraham Lincoln began the study of law, he was connected with a clique or club of young men, who made light of religion, and read books that treated it as a delusion. It was at this time that he read Paine's "Age of Reason" and Volney's "Ruins," through which he was influenced to array himself against the Bible for a time,—as much of a skeptic, almost, as any one of his boon companions. But his early religious training soon asserted itself, and we hear no more of hostility to religion as long as he lived. On the other hand, when he was elected President, he spoke as follows to his friends and neighbors, who had assembled at the station to bid him adieu on leaving for Washington, on the eve of the late bloody Civil war:
"My Friends: No one not in my position can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. To this people I owe all that I am. Here I have lived more than a quarter of a century. Here my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall see you again. A duty devolves on me, which is greater, perhaps, than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I can not succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will pray that I may receive that Divine assistance, without which I can not succeed, but with which success is certain. Again I bid you all an affectionate farewell."
When James A. Garfield became a member of the "Black Salter's" family, he found "Marryatt's Novels," "Sinbad the Sailor," "The Pirates' Own Book," "Jack Halyard," "Lives of Eminent Criminals," "The Buccaneers of the Caribbean Seas"; and being a great reader, he sat up nights to read these works. Their effect upon him was to weaken the ties of home and filial affection, diminish his regard for religious things, and create within him an intense desire for a seafaring life. Nothing but a long and painful sickness, together with the wise counsels of his mother and a popular teacher, saved him from a wild and reckless life upon the sea, by leading him to Christ and a nobler life, in consequence of which his public career was one of honor, and closed in the highest office of the land.
Neither Lincoln nor Garfield would have been President of the United States if the spell, with which the influence of corrupt books bound them for the time, had not been broken by juster views of real life and nobler aims.
XVIII.
HOW HE QUIT BOSTON.
"I tell you how it is, John," exclaimed Benjamin, under great excitement; "I have withstood my brother's ill treatment as long as I am going to. I shall leave him."