s.

My new friend lived out among the sycamores on the New Almaden Road, a
mile from the city, and the cottage in which he lived with his cultured
and loving household was one of the social paradises of that beautiful
valley in which the breezes are always cool, and the flowers never fade.

My friend interested me more and more. He had been a soldier, and in the
Mexican war won distinction by his skill and valor. He was with Joe Lane
and his gallant Indianians at Juamantla, and his name was specially
mentioned among those whose fiery onsets had broken the lines of the
swarthy foe, and won against such heavy odds the bloody field. He was
seldom absent from church on Sunday morning, and now and then his
inquiring, thoughtful face would be seen in my smaller audience at
night. One unwelcome fact about him pained me, while it deepened my
interest in him.

He was a skeptic. Bred to the profession of medicine and surgery, he
became bogged in the depths of materialistic doubt. The microscope drew
his thoughts downward until he could not see beyond second causes. The
soul, the seat of which the scalpel could not find, he feared did not
exist. The action of the brain, like that of the heart and lungs, seemed
to him to be functional; and when the organ perished did not its
function cease forever? He doubted the fact of immortality, but did not
deny it. This doubt clouded his life. He wanted to believe. His heart
rebelled against the negations of materialism, but his intellect was
entangled in its meshes. The Great Question was ever in his thought, and
the shadow was ever on his path. He read much on both sides, and was
always ready to talk with any from whom he had reason to hope for new
light or a helpful suggestion. Did he also pray? We took many long rides
and had many long talks together. Pausing under the shade of a tree on
the highway, the hours would slip away while we talked of life and
death, and weighed the pros and cons of the mighty hope that we might
live again, until the sun would be sinking into the sea behind the Santa
Cruz Mountains, whose shadows were creeping over the valley. He believed
in a First Cause. The marks of design in Nature left in his mind no room
to doubt that there was a Designer.

"The structure and adaptations of the horse harnessed to the buggy in
which we sit, exhibit the infinite skill of a Creator."

On this basis I reasoned with him in behalf of all that is precious to
Christian faith