doctrine with doctrine, or to reason in any
respect whatever on religious matters. One young man, a candidate for
the ministry, told me that he never had thought matters over in his own
mind, but taken what came in his way in books or sermons, never
troubling himself, or finding himself able, to do more than to remember
and to repeat what he heard or read. He had not the faculty to compare
the sayings of men with the sayings of God; or the sayings of one man
with the sayings of another. He was a mere dealer in words and phrases,
and he aspired to nothing higher than to live by the ignoble occupation.
How many of those with whom I came in contact, and in whose society I
poured forth so freely the thoughts of my mind, were of the same stamp,
I do not know. I never tested any other person so thoroughly as I tested
him. There _were_ others, however, that had been fashioned in a similar
mould.

Others with whom I conversed _had thought_, and had embraced certain
views believing them to be true; but they had fallen under the influence
of teachers and books of a different cast from those by which my own
mind had been chiefly influenced. And they had been led to fix their
thoughts almost exclusively on one particular class of Scripture
passages, and to neglect or overlook other portions of the sacred
volume, though much more numerous, and much more clear in their meaning.
They had also been led to adopt certain interpretations of the passages
on which their attention had been specially fixed, which a consideration
of other passages of Scripture had led me to reject. Thus our minds had
run into different moulds, and taken different forms. We differed not
only on certain points of doctrine, but in our tastes, and in our rules
of judging. The consequence was, that we could never talk long on
religious subjects without getting into a dispute, or coming to a dead
stand. To make matters worse, this class of people had been led to
believe that their peculiar notions were the essential doctrines of the
Gospel, and that those who did not believe them could not be Christians.
When therefore they found that I looked upon their theories as erroneous
and unscriptural, they pronounced me at once an erratic and dangerous
man. I imagined, at first, that I could bring these people to see things
in a different light. I had such faith in the power of plain Scripture
passages, and in the force of common sense, and was so ignorant of the
power of p