Many of them had had an experience a good
deal like my own. They had been members and ministers of churches, and
had got into trouble in consequence of their reforming tendencies, and
had at length been cast out, or obliged to withdraw. They had waged a
long and bitter war against the churches and ministers of their land,
and had become skeptics and unbelievers of a somewhat extravagant kind.
Henry C. Wright was an Atheist. So were some others of the party. My own
descent to skepticism was attributable in some measure to my intercourse
with them, and to a perusal of their works, while in England. The first
deadly blow was struck at my belief in the supernatural inspiration of
the Scriptures by Henry C. Wright. It was in conversation with him too
that my belief in the necessity of church organization was undermined,
and that the way was smoothed to that state of utter lawlessness which
so naturally tends to infidelity and all ungodliness. My respect for the
talents of the abolitionists, and the interest I felt in the cause to
which they had devoted their lives, and the sympathy arising from the
similar way in which we had all been treated by the churches and
priesthoods with which we had come in contact, disposed me, first, to
regard their skeptical views with favor, and then to accept them as
true.
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