, and no hope of a future life. I remember too how I wrote
or spoke of such. I mourned over them as the most hapless and miserable
of all living beings. Yet I myself have come at length, by slow degrees,
after a thousand struggles, and with infinite reluctance, to the dread
conclusion, that a personal God and an immortal life are fictions of the
human mind. Yet existence has not quite lost its charms, nor life its
enjoyments. There is something infinitely grand, and unspeakably
exciting and elevating in the consciousness of having made a sacrifice
of the most popular and bewitching of all illusions, out of respect to
truth. It was an enviable state of mind which prompted, the grand and
thrilling exclamation, "Let justice be done, though the heavens should
fall." And that state of mind is no less enviable which can sustain a
man in the sacrifice of God and immortality at the shrine of truth. Such
a sacrifice, accompanied, as it must be in the present state of society,
with a thousand other sacrifices of reputation, friendships, popular
pleasures, and social favor, is an exercise of the highest virtue, a
demonstration of the greatest magnanimity, and is accompanied or
followed with an intensity of satisfaction which none but the
martyr-spirit of truth can conceive. It is often said by Christians,
that the reason why persons doubt the existence of God and a future life
is, that they have good cause to dread them; or, as Grotius expresses
it, that they live in such a way that it would be to their interest that
there should be no God or future life. This was not the case with me. My
unbelief came upon me while I was diligently striving in all things to
do God's will. My virtue outlived my faith.

"Born of Methodist parents, and reared under Christian influences, and a
Christian myself, and even a Christian minister for many years, I was
brought slowly and reluctantly, in spite of a world of prejudices, and
in spite of interests and associations and tastes all but almighty in
their influence, to the conclusion, that pure, unmixed Naturalism alone
accorded with what was known of the present state and the past history
of the universe. I say I was brought to these conclusions in spite of a
world of opposing influences. While a Christian, all that the world
could promise or bestow seemed to be within my reach. Friends,
popularity, wealth, power, fame; and visions of infinite usefulness to
others, and of unbounded happiness to myse