d heard of
me, and as they passed me in the street, they looked at me askance,
regarding me apparently as a mystery or a monster. But I never shocked
them by skeptical lectures, or by any other act of hostility to
religion, so they bore with me, and came at length to treat me with
respect and confidence. My wife and family were regarded with favor from
the first. And I shall never forget the kindness of one of our Christian
neighbors to my wife, in a time of affliction and sorrow.

And it is from my settlement in this desolate and far-off region, that I
date the commencement of a change for the better in the state of my
mind. I do not say that my opinions began to change, but the state of my
_feelings_ got better, which rendered possible a change for the better
in my sentiments.

But I had reached a sad extreme. I had lost all trust in a Fatherly God,
and all good hope of a better life. I had come near to the horrors of
utter Atheism. And the universe had become an appalling and inexplicable
mystery. And the world had come to be a dreary habitation; and life a
weary affair; and many a time I wished I had never been born. And there
were occasions when the dark suggestion came, "Life is a burden; throw
it down." But I said; "Nay; there are my wife and children: I will live
for their sakes if for nothing else." And for their sakes I did live,
thank God, till I had something else to live for.

If I were asked what first gave a check to my skepticism, and led me to
turn my face once more towards Christ and Christianity, I should say,
"The answer is supplied by my story." As I have shown, it was the
troubled state of my mind,--the tempest of unhappy feeling, and the
whirlwind of excitement in which I had lived so long,--that had most to
do in carrying me away from Christ; and now my mind was allowed to be at
rest. The whirlwind of excitement had spent its fury. The tempest in my
soul had subsided, so that the principal hindrance to my return was
gone. There were other causes that had contributed to the destruction of
my faith in Christ and Christianity, but this was the first and chief
one, and the one which gave the principal part of their force to the
rest. As I have shown, I had been taught things about the Scriptures
that were not correct. I had found a number of the arguments used by
divines in support of the divinity of the Scriptures to be unsound. I
had detected pious frauds in the writings of some of the advocates