In my work as evangelist I have had quite as much experience with those who professed utter disbelief, even atheism, as any other class of people. This will be understood when it is remembered that the influence of strong drink is to entirely destroy the knowledge of God and faith in Him.
But not all of these unbelievers have been drinking men. One notable case has been coming to my mind for several days as I have been thinking of preparing something for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The name is well known and must be covered by a fictitious one.
It was at a summer assembly. Mr. Z. and I were talking together concerning the work in which we were colaborers. We had never met before, but had known of each other, the lines of our engagements in temperance work often lying close together for a long period. He had asked to have an interview in which to compare notes, he wishing especially to know more about my special work for the hopeless classes. We sat on the lawn in front of the hotel, and something which I said caused him to reply, “But, Mrs. Henry, you must talk so that a man who is not a Christian can understand.”
“A man who is not a Christian,” I said, “you? If you are not a Christian, what are you?”
“I am known by those who know me, as an unbeliever, an infidel, an atheist.”
“An unbeliever! an infidel! an atheist! how can that be? How can you be in the temperance work then?”
“Because I believe in the temperance reform.”
“But,” I said, “how can you go on in the temperance reform without even believing that there is a God? I am astonished; a man like you! There must be a reason for it. Tell me what brought you to this.”
He sat a moment, silent, and then said: “Pardon me, but this is something about which I never talked to any one. I have too much regard for my wife and her convictions to speak against anything which is sacred to her.”
“Then if you should say anything about it, it would be against it?”
He looked earnestly into my face, but did not reply.
“I understand,” I said, “I do not think that I can continue this conversation about the work: I am too much hurt. I could not think of anything else to say just now, so I must leave you.”
THE GOLDEN GATE.
I arose and turned away, had gone a few steps, when he recalled me, saying, “Don’t go like that; come back; come to think about it I believe I would like to tell you.”
I returned, seated myself, and waited. He began with his early life, and told me how he had been brought up in a formal Christian home; how he had been, as he supposed, converted when he was a child; had united with the church; but the atmosphere in which he was required to live as a young Christian took all the zeal and spirit out of him. He made up his mind that the leaders of Christian thought and experience with whom he was acquainted did not believe what they professed; and doubts began to arise which led him into an investigation of the subject, as it is to be found in the writings of men, instead of God. In the course of years he had read nearly everything which modern skepticism had produced, as well as any amount of earlier literature of the same class. He had made a practise of taking two or three volumes in his satchel as he had been going on his circuit as lawyer and judge, and later in his temperance work, reading until his mind had become filled with the arguments against Christianity, while all the time the desire of his heart was to know the truth. At last he found that the more he read the more bitter, censorious, and wicked he became; and he had some time before decided never to read another line upon this subject, never to discuss it, to live a life as honorable as he could, but to let dogma of every sort alone.
As a consequence of these investigations, the faith with which he started out had given place to an absolute unbelief. He said:—
“I can but admire the beauty of a genuine Christian life, consistent with the theory of Christianity, wherever I find it. I have seen it in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Many times I have thought, If I were only a woman, I could be a Christian. I have longed to come into the experience which some of you women have; and as I have read of the work which has been done in Gospel lines from the crusade until now, my heart has warmed, and I have thought that it was blessed to believe; but the power to believe is dead in me. I can also see the logic of Christianity. Granted that there is a God, the Christian scheme is the only way out. But I can not find any evidence anywhere that there is a personal God. I can not conceive of a disembodied person, and since a spirit in a body could not be omnipotent and omnipresent, as Christians believe God to be, the whole subject is so impossible, so dark with uncertainty and doubt, and yet so peculiar in its relations to man, that, as I have said before, I must decline, as a rule, to discuss it. But now if you have anything to say to me, I would be glad to hear it, since you know the worst.”
I replied: “I can not think of entering into discussion. Argument will never reach your case. The only thing which I am able to bring to you concerning this matter is personal testimony.”
