Millersville, Pa., March 28, 1911. CONTENTS Dedication Soul's Struggle in Symbolism Introduction by Peter Ainslie Author's Preface PART I.--TO INFIDELITY AND BACK. Chapter I.--To Infidelity and Back Chapter II.--Parting Message to Unitarian School Chapter III.--Functions and Limitations of the Mind Chapter IV.--Looking Through Colored Glasses PART II.--FROM SECTARIANISM TO PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. Chapter I.--Scriptural Baptism Chapter II.--The New Testament Church Chapter III.--The Church Since the Apostles Chapter IV.--Our Neglected Fields PART I. TO INFIDELITY AND BACK CHAPTER I. To INFIDELITY AND BACK. _To Christ by Way of Rationalism, Unitarianism and Infidelity._ I inherited on the one hand a strong religious nature, and on the other a tendency to be independent in thought and to question everything before adopting it as a part of my belief. Ever since I can remember I was a praying boy, and early in life there came to me the desire to devote myself to the ministry of the gospel. Among my earliest religious impressions were those received by having the story of the Patriarchs and Jesus read to me in German by a saintly old Mennonite for whom I worked on the farm for a year. Among the first things that aroused my reason in religion was the declaration of my Sunday-school teacher that before we are born we are predestined by God either to go to heaven or to hell, and that anything we might do would not alter our eternal destiny. This declaration came like a thunderbolt into my religious life, and stirred up a violent agitation from which it took me ten years to fully deliver myself. I was now about fourteen years old, and already had a desire to measure everything in the crucible of logic or cause and effect, and to accept nothing which did not come within the range of my reason. Looking at things from the standpoint of cause and effect, I was naturally caught in the meshes of fatalism, and this aggravated the religious agitation above referred to. At this time in my life there arose many religious questions, and the answers I received from religious teachers tended to drive me away from the church rather than to it. I feel to-day that if my case had been clearly understood and the nature and the limits of the finite mind had been patiently pointed out to me, in its relation to faith and revelation, I could have been saved years of agony on the sea of rationalism. But my questions were not answered and my honest doubts were rebuked, so that I was naturally driven out of sympathy with the church and Bible, since I judged that my doubts could not be satisfied because religion itself is unreasonable.