FullReads

So they told of a man who compared himself with his dog. “My dog,” he said, “just barks and plays–has all he wants to eat. He never works–has no trouble about business. In a little while he dies, and that is all. I work with all my strength. I have no time to play. I have trouble every day. In a little while I will die, and then I go to hell. I wish that I had been a dog.”

Well, while the cold weather lasted, while the snows fell, the revival went on, but when the Winter was over, when the steamboat’s whistle was heard, when business started again, most of the converts “back-slid” and fell again into their old ways. But the next Winter they were on hand, ready to be “born again.” They formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every Winter and backsliding every Spring.

The ministers who preached at these revivals were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread–a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal. To them hell was a burning reality–they could see the smoke and flames. The Devil was no myth. He was an actual person, a rival of God, an enemy of mankind. They thought that the important business of this life was to save your soul–that all should resist and scorn the pleasures of sense, and keep their eyes steadily fixed on the golden gate of the New Jerusalem. They were unbalanced, emotional, hysterical, bigoted, hateful, loving, and insane. They really believed the Bible to be the actual word of God–a book without mistake or contradiction. They called its cruelties, justice–its absurdities, mysteries–its miracles, facts, and the idiotic passages were regarded as profoundly spiritual. They dwelt on the pangs, the regrets, the infinite agonies of the lost, and showed how easily they could be avoided, and how cheaply heaven could be obtained. They told their hearers to believe, to have faith, to give their hearts to God, their sins to Christ, who would bear their burdens and make their souls as white as snow.

All this the ministers really believed. They were absolutely certain. In their minds the Devil had tried in vain to sow the seeds of doubt.

I heard hundreds of these evangelical sermons–heard hundreds of the most fearful and vivid descriptions of the tortures inflicted in hell, of the horrible state of the lost. I supposed that what I heard was true and yet I did not believe it. I said, “It is,” and then I thought, “It can not be.”

From my childhood I had heard read, and read the Bible. Morning and evening the sacred volume was opened and prayers were said. The Bible was my first history, the Jews were the first people, and the events narrated by Moses and the other inspired writers, and those predicted by prophets, were the all-important things. In other books were found the thoughts and dreams of men, but in the Bible were the sacred truths of God.

Yet, in spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God. He was so saving of mercy, so extravagant in murder, so anxious to kill, so ready to assassinate, that I hated Him with all my heart. At His command, babes were butchered, women violated, and the white hair of trembling age stained with blood. This God visited the people with pestilence–filled the houses and covered the streets with the dying and the dead–saw babes starving on the empty breasts of pallid mothers, heard the sobs, saw the tears, the sunken cheeks, the sightless eyes, the new-made graves, and remained as pitiless as the pestilence.

This God withheld the rain–caused the famine–saw the fierce eyes of hunger–the wasted forms, the white lips, saw mothers eating babes, and remained ferocious as famine.