I wish you also to know that during those years of storm and stress, when everything seemed so discouraging, and when my resignation from the church had left us exposed to many privations,--without money and without help, your mother's sympathy with me in my combat with the church--a lone man, and a mere youth, battling with the most powerfully intrenched institution in all the world, was more than my daily bread to me during the pain and travail of my second birth. My spirits, often depressed from sheer weariness, were nursed to new life and ardor by her patience and sympathy. One word more: Nothing will give your parents greater satisfaction than to see in you, increasing with the increase of years, a love for those ideals which instead of dragging the world backward, or arresting its progress, urge man's search to nobler issues. Co-operate with the light. Be on the side of the dawn. It is not enough to profess Rationalism--make it your religion. Devotedly, M. M. Mangasarian. CHAPTER I. In the Cradle of Christianity I was a Christian because I was born one. My parents were Christians for the same reason. It had never occurred to me, any more than it had to my parents, to ask for any other reason for professing the Christian religion. Never in the least did I entertain even the most remote suspicion that being born in a religion was not enough, either to make the religion true, or to justify my adherence to it. My parents were members of the Congregational church, and when I was only a few weeks old, they brought me, as I have often been told by those who witnessed the ceremony, to the Rev. Mr. Richardson, to be baptized and presented to the Lord. It was the vow of my mother, if she ever had a son, to dedicate him to the service of God. As I advanced in years, the one thought constantly instilled into my mind was that I did not belong to myself but to God. Every attempt was made to wean me from the world, and to suppress in me those hopes and ambitions which might lead me to choose some other career than that of the ministry. This constant surveillance over me, and the artificial sanctity associated with the life of one set apart for God, was injurious to me in many ways. Among other things it robbed me of my childhood. Instead of playing, I began very early to pray. God, Christ, Bible, and the dogmas of the faith monopolized my attention, and left me neither the leisure nor the desire for the things that make childhood joyous. At the age of eight years I was invited to lead the congregation in prayer, in church, and could recite many parts of the New Testament by heart. One of my favorite pastimes was "to play church." I would arrange the chairs as I had seen them arranged at church, then mounting on one of the chairs, I would improvise a sermon and follow it with an unctuous prayer. All this pleased my mother very much, and led her to believe that God had condescended to accept her offering.