Just before graduating from college A had a talk with a favorite professor. The professor asked him what he proposed to do, and was much interested when A said that he wanted to become a minister. The professor said that during his own active years in the pulpit, before he began to teach, he had learned at least one thing. Every man who was intellectually honest and independent would sooner or later discover that he questioned his own dogmas, and a period of bitter anguish would ensue. If a man were intellectually honest, he would never flinch from the truth, even for the sake of wife and family. But when the period of doubt arose he advised A not to abandon his work too abruptly. He had himself lived through six months of torture during which he had been on the verge of dropping everything and going into business. But finally he had arrived at a faith which he could defend, and stuck to it. “I would rather be drawn and quartered than preach anything I do not believe,” he declared emphatically. This conversation made a deep impression upon A, leading him to anticipate doubts as a mark of intellectual keenness and honesty. Thus far in his life he had never questioned the tenets of the strict and simple theology of his immediate surroundings. Indeed, he had never met anybody who questioned it. Only a single episode had slightly jarred his complacency and left a tiny scar behind. At one time his Sunday-school teacher had been a young professor of theology who was much more liberal than his contemporaries. A boy in the class had dared to ask something about the authority of the Bible, and the teacher, without the least trace of embarrassment, had replied that authority should not rest on blind faith but upon clear reason. “If the Bible told you to kill your father and your mother, you would not do it. You would not be bound to do it. The justification of the Bible is that its teachings prove to be sound in the experience of all reasonable men.” In the divinity school the first course which A attended was on the authority of the Bible. It was taught by a smug and full person of some eminence. A was accustomed to distinguish himself by bold opinions, and he undertook to challenge several of the propositions which were supposed to be accepted and repeated by rote. His main point was that authority rested on reason, not on faith. For his pains he got the reputation of being a smart and troublesome upstart of doubtful orthodoxy. His former Sunday-school teacher was a member of the faculty, and A wrote a thesis on the authority of the Bible, in which he elaborated the line of argument which had so much impressed him. Only the constant intercession of this professor kept A from being disciplined, or even expelled, at various times.