rther inquiry and
deeper investigation of the subjects treated, if I have succeeded in
this, my main object has been accomplished.

No one is more sensible of the many defects in this work than I am. It
makes no pretension to any literary merit, nor to any scholarly
erudition. I am not a "professional writer." I have simply tried to
tell my story in a simple way and make it "readable" if possible. My
sole purpose in writing these pages has been to try to help others who
may still be in the fetters of ecclesiastical bondage, or wandering in
the quagmires of agnosticism--and I know there are many such--to find
the way to light and liberty in a rational religious faith. If I can
accomplish this, even in a small degree, I shall feel abundantly repaid
for the time and labor spent in reviewing the story of my own religious
evolution.

INTRODUCTION

When the traveller, bent on some important quest, makes a prolonged and
perilous journey and returns in safety to his friends and neighbors,
instinctively those who have known him in former years realize that he
is, and he is not, the same person who had dwelt among them. He has
seen unfamiliar peoples, traversed strange lands, encountered
unexpected dangers. Old prepossessions have been effaced, erroneous
opinions have been corrected, new habits of thought have taken the
place of old ones and the narrow world of youth has expanded on every
side. Naturally, what has happened to him becomes a matter of
curiosity and enquiry, and the hero of a great achievement is expected
to relate the story of his adventures.

The man who, in these revolutionary days, takes religion
seriously--there are many who do not--must make a journey which is
fraught with as many surprises and filled with as many
anxieties--especially if it be a pilgrimage from orthodoxy to personal
independence--as that which the explorer encounters in a voyage to the
North Pole or the jungles of Africa. At every turning of the way he
must be prepared for disillusions and the discovery of facts and errors
which call for unlimited courage and boundless faith. Religion is not
simply a matter of the emotions, its very perpetuity depends upon that
sane and persistent activity of the intellect without which the
emotions are tyrannous and fateful. Emotion in religion is the driving
force by which religion may be applied to human welfare, but if emotion
be not governed and directed by the well-trained intellec