I read the writings of the American Abolitionists, all of which tended
to draw me from the Church and the Bible, and to bring me more fully
under skeptical influences. I began to look more freely and frequently
into works of science, and most of those waged covert war with
supernaturalism, and sought to bring down the Bible and Christianity to
the level of ordinary human thought. All ideas of authority in books and
religious systems, in ecclesiastical and social institutions, gradually
faded away. All ideas of superhuman authority, or divine obligation, in
marriage, in home, and in family life vanished. All things lost their
sacredness, and came down to the vulgar level of mere human opinion, or
of personal interest, convenience, or pleasure.
21. There was a change in my companions. Those who had high and holy
thoughts of all things, and whose meat and drink it was to do good,
withdrew from me; and men and women came around me who cared only for
earth and self; whose talk was of gain, and fashion, and
self-indulgence; and whose desire it was to silence conscience, and to
stifle thoughts of duty.
22. I ceased to pray. I had already given up family prayer. I now gave
up private prayer. I gave up prayer altogether. I had impulses to
prayer, but I resisted them.
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