confess, for one, that I feel them more
sensibly and powerfully the more I look at them, and the longer I live.
I do not understand these facts; and I make no advances towards
understanding them. I do not know that I have a ray of light on the
subject, which I had not when the subject first flashed across my soul.

"I have read, to some extent, what wise and good men have written; I
have looked at their theories and explanations; I have endeavored to
weigh their arguments; for my whole soul pants for light and relief on
these questions. But I get neither; and, in the distress and anguish
of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever, I see not one
ray to disclose to me the _reason_ why sin came into the world, why the
earth is strewed with the dying and the dead, and why man must suffer
to all eternity.

"I have never yet seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects
that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind; but I confess, when
I look on a world of sinners and sufferers, upon death-beds and
graveyards, upon the world of woe, filled with hosts to suffer forever;
when I see my parents, my friends, my family, my people, my
fellow-citizens,--when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this
sin and danger; and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he
_does not_ do it,--I am struck dumb. It is all _dark, dark, dark_ to
my soul, and I cannot disguise it."

I think the conclusions Dr. Barnes reached are about the only
conclusions any honest, intelligent _man_ can reach, starting from his
hypothesis, that a certain book is a divine and infallible revelation
from God, which no one dare question, or go behind. But, as has been
seen, this foundation had now entirely slipped from under me. My only
course was to proceed just as tho no such book were known; or at least,
that it was completely shorn of all claim to being a divine revelation,
or infallible truth. I proposed to analyze every element that entered
into the whole Christian system, creation, sin, redemption, atonement,
salvation, immortality, heaven and hell, going back to original sources
so far as possible, without any preconceived hypothesis whatever, in
search of abstract truth. I felt that since God had left me without
any conclusive and indisputable proofs of the truth of those things
which I had always believed to be of the most supreme importance to
mankind for time and eternity, that this supreme, distinguishing
feat