Of course it was not true that I was a Mohammedan. My companions told the Kurds a falsehood about me, to save my life. There was no doubt the Kurds would have killed me, but for the lie _which I did not correct_. When I reached my destination many of my co-religionists declared that I had denied Christ by allowing the Kurds to think that I was a Moslem. As I feel now, my conscience does not trouble me for helping, by my silence, to deceive the Kurds about my religion. In withholding the truth from these would-be assassins I was doing them no evil, but protecting the most sacred rights of man, the Kurd's included. Here was an instance in which silence was golden. But I would not hesitate, any moment, to mislead a thief or a murderer, by speech, as well as by silence. If it is right to kill the murderer in self-defense, it is right to deny him also the truth. But young as I was, what alarmed me at the time was that we should have been led into the temptation of lying to save our lives. Why did a "Heavenly Father" deliver us to the brigands? And of what help was God to us, if, in real peril, we had to resort to fighting or falsehood for self-protection? In what way would the world have been worse off without a "Heavenly Father?" About a month after I arrived at my destination, I received a letter from my mother, to whom the driver, upon his return, had related my adventure with the Kurds. Without paying the least thought to the fact that we had to lie to save our lives, my mother claimed that it was her prayers which had saved _me_ from the brigands. _Sancta Simplicitas!_ But my hospitality to new tendencies did not in the least diminish the anguish and pain of the separation from the religion of my mother. Even after I began to seriously doubt many of the beliefs I had once accepted as divine, it seemed impossible to abandon them. Ten thousand obstacles blocked my way, and as many voices seemed to caution me against sailing forth upon an unknown sea. In a modest way, I was like Columbus, separated from the new world I was seeking, by the dark and tempestuous waste of waters. How often my heart sank within me! I was almost sure of a better and larger world beyond Calvin, or Christ even, but the huge sea rolled between and struck terror upon my mind.