m if he can sever men's souls from Christ, and truth from
divine authority, and religion from Christianity, the Church, and the
Bible. Allow him to do this, and he will discourse and sing to you a
world of sweet words and lofty sentiments. Truth is the ladder by which
men climb to God, and goodness, and heaven. But Satan has found out that
there is a way _down_ the ladder as well as _up_, and that to praise the
ladder to the descending crowd is the surest way to draw them ever
further downward, till they lose themselves amid the blinding smoke of
the abyss beneath. We love, we cherish every sweet word of truth, but we
value nothing apart from God, and Christ, and Religion.

28. It is a bad thing when people are taught things in their youth that
are not true. They are sure, when they become students, if they are
honest and able, to find out the errors, and to lay them aside. And the
mere habit of detecting and laying aside errors, has a tendency to make
men skeptical. Now I had been taught a multitude of things in my youth
that were not true, both with regard to the doctrines and the evidences
of Christianity. These things I detected and set aside in riper years.
And I had so many things to set aside, that I came to look with
suspicion on almost all my creed. The skeptical tendency got too strong
for my habit of belief. I suspected where there was no good ground for
suspicion. I rejected truth as well as error. I held in doubt doctrines
that I ought to have cherished as my life. Change became too easy;
judgment too hasty; and error and unbelief were naturally the result.

It is especially a bad thing when an earnest young student sees signs of
carelessness in religious writers; a readiness to repeat what has been
said before; to support what is popular, without endeavoring to
ascertain whether it be true or not. It is still worse when a student
discovers in religious writers signs of dishonesty and fraud. I
discovered both. I saw cases in which false doctrines were passed on
from generation to generation, and from writer to writer, without the
least attempt to ascertain their true character. I saw other cases in
which dishonesty was manifest, in which fraud was used, in support of
doctrines. Old creeds were allowed to remain unaltered, long after
portions of them had been found to be unscriptural; and error was
subscribed as a matter of course. The result was, a distrust of
everything held by such parties, unless it was