" 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.
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