But not even here did I find a staying-place. For rationalism, in its bold confidence, led me on and on until it brought me to materialism and absurdity. In going too far, it revealed its true nature and character, and thus led me to see its fallacy and enabled me to get free from its bondage. From atheism it led me to fatalism, and declared that there is no free will and consequently people are not to blame for their sins and shortcomings. If we "shall reap as we sow," it declared that we cannot give anything to anybody and therefore philanthropy is a delusion. But I taught rationalism in guile one day by which it thoroughly exhibited the absurdity of its teaching. Its continual song was, "You dare not believe what you cannot conceive to be true." So it declared one day, in its bold folly, that an object cannot move in the space in which it is, nor in the space in which it is not; therefore you cannot conceive of an object moving; therefore you cannot move to walk, eat or live. So the conclusion to which my rationalistic guide finally led me was that I must sit down and die or be irrational. Well, this was too much for me. I refused to die, and concluded that rationalism is not a safe guide, and commenced to investigate as to where the difficulty lay. But before I tell you how I discovered the false tricks of rationalism, let me say that all these things into which rationalism led me were against my strong religious nature, and gave me continual and excruciating pain. I never for a day ceased to pray to God for help; for while my intellect was held in doubt through the bondage of rationalism, my heart held on to God, and thus I was in a mighty conflict. In my despair I cried unto God, and when he had accomplished his purpose concerning me, he set me free. Blessed be his name! Surely "he bringeth the blind by a way that they knew not, and leads them into paths that they have not known. He makes darkness light before them, and crooked things straight, and does not utterly forsake the honest in heart." Most people have come to their religious and political position by heredity and are held there by inertia. If you can set a person free from this hereditary inertia, you can convert him to almost anything at will; for it is but few who are sufficiently informed on any subject to defend it against an expert, and none are thus qualified on all subjects. So when I entered this school, free from all hereditary ideas, determined to accept every position that I could not refute in argument, you can imagine my experience. At first I was converted from one thing to another by the different students and professors until I was about all the "arians," "isms," and "ists" ever heard of, together with a number of other things for which they have no names as yet.