“‘That is a question which cannot be rightly answered by a “yes” or “no,”’ he replied; ‘for neither answer would be true. I was brought up, as perhaps you were, to look upon all these matters without the slightest discrimination; to think a disbelief in Jonah’s whale synonymous with the disbelief in the divine inspiration of any part of the Bible; to think a disbeliever in the Bible necessarily a disbeliever in God; and to count a disbeliever in immortality on a par with a bigamist or a horse-thief. “‘When I dared trust myself to think and read this book, or rather collection of books, with a calm, unprejudiced eye, I was amazed to find how much I had been taught to claim for them which they never claim for themselves. They became utterly new books to me, as if I had never read them before; wonderfully rich and helpful and inspiring and full, as I believe, of the truest religious inspiration, but not always a guide for me in history and science, and not infallible as to fact. “‘Who shall find any authority for the doctrine that inspiration ceased with the last one of those sixty-six books? No, Miss Brewster,’ said Mr. Everett, looking at me earnestly, his shoulders thrown back, his head erect, ‘God reveals himself to man to-day just as truly in this new world as ever he did thousands of years ago to Hebrew seers. “‘You ask why I should crave any deeper reasons for my belief in God, free will, and immortality than these writings give. Simply this: I must. At first I fought against it, fearing it to be a temptation of the devil. But I came to see that this fear, for me at least, was cowardice and folly. The command was laid upon my soul to give an adequate reason for the faith that I held, and I could not be recreant to this call of conscience. I had been told to believe the Bible because it was God’s Word, and then, following in a circle, to believe that there was a God because God’s Word proved it. It did not take me long to see the childishness of this, and though I put it off again and again, my conscience would not be stilled until I had systematically set myself to see whether or not anything could really be known, or whether inference, conjecture, and hope were all that God had vouchsafed to the creature made in his image. “‘I suppose few women ever feel this necessity. I do not say that it is necessary for you or for any one to probe to the bottom of these things, if you are content without doing so. I think, however, that it is of the utmost importance for the thousand bewildered spirits in our day, who long to know but who cannot themselves study, to come to see that knowledge on the questions which are most vital to us all is to be had by every rational being who has time and patience and follows the right path of inquiry; and that in these matters, if we are willing to pay the cost of time and labor, we may in truth see and know.