my attention to secular pursuits. And
having nowhere else to go, I naturally drifted into that state of mind
which the world calls agnosticism.

CHAPTER VI

THE REACTION: A NEW CONFESSION OF FAITH

At this time I knew nothing of a liberal church. If I had, I doubt if
I was in a condition of mind to consider it. I was so utterly
disgusted with ecclesiasticism as I knew it that I was but little
prepared if at all, to give anything of the kind fair consideration.
The pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme. I abandoned everything
but God. I never doubted for a moment the existence of a Supreme
Being. Nature and instinct taught me this. But who, or what, or
where, this Supreme Being was, or what his attributes or
characteristics were, I did not pretend to know, or care. I relegated
it all to the realm of the unknown and unknowable.

For a while I went to church occasionally, merely for the sake of
respectability, and not because I took any interest in common with it.
I listened to the preaching with such patience and fortitude as I could
command. I heard only the same old platitudes about a dying Christ and
the flames of perdition I had heard all my life and preached for eight
years myself. I often felt as if I would like to help the preacher out
in his struggle to "divest himself of his thoughts." I finally quit
going to church altogether, until I located where I had an opportunity
to attend a Reformed Jewish synagogue, which I did quite often, and
always heard broad-gauged, intellectual discourses.

As I have before said, up to this time, and for years thereafter, I had
never read a distinctively "infidel" book, nor even a liberal religious
one. My change of opinions had all come from an honest effort to seek
proofs for the faith of my fathers, which I inherited. But I never
ceased to be a student. My temporary antagonism to the church soon
vanished. I simply viewed it with utter indifference, and somewhat of
sympathy. I had no more creed to defend, and none to condemn. I had
no desire whatever to propagate my own ideas or disturb any one else in
theirs. I felt that if any one got any satisfaction out of his
religious beliefs he was welcome to it. I would not disturb him for
anything. I looked upon it as a harmless delusion, and if it made one
any better, society was so much the gainer. But to me it was as
"sounding brass and tinkling cymbals." But I cannot say that I was
satisfied wi