opening address, believing that radical utterances at this time would make me more enemies than friends. But when I began to speak, in the enthusiasm of the moment, joyous over the first taste of freedom of speech, I forgot my caution, and gave my thoughts as they welled up within me, full scope. "To the winds with policy and calculation! Whether I win followers, or lose the last man, I must not stammer,-I must speak!" Under the spell of this thought, which seemed to seize me without at all consulting me, I said many things which changed the color on the faces of my Presbyterian supporters.

Unused to freedom of speech, and brought up to believe certain beliefs as sacred, the attempt on my part to subject these to the strain of reason was in the nature of a painful disappointment to them. Thus many of my followers lost heart and quickly returned to the cradle from which, in a moment of excitement, they had leaped forth. But new friends took the place of those who deserted the young movement, and in a very short time, a larger hall was secured. This was St. George's hall, on Arch street, one of the largest halls in Philadelphia. But up to this time we, including myself, believed ourselves to be still Christians, though no longer Presbyterians. As long as we held on to the name of Christian we continued to sail in comparatively smooth waters. We made the word "Christian,”

of course, to mean what we wanted it to mean.

But very soon new perplexities arose. The people who came to hear me, and who paid the expenses of the new organization, as well as directed its policy, while they progressed sufficiently to renounce Presbyterianism, they were very reluctant to part with Christianity altogether. I could criticise Calvin to my heart's content, but I must not, Christ. The church, or churchianity, certainly deserved to be investigated, and its errors exposed, but Christ and Christianity were too sacred to be handled with equal freedom. My trustees felt that as a liberal Christian organization, there was a great future before us; we would soon become one of the largest and most prosperous religious bodies in the city; but if we "attacked" Christ— they called examining the teachings and character of Christ freely "attacking" Christ-we would be disowned by all respectable members, and lose our standing in the esteem of a hitherto friendly public.

And the public was indeed friendly at this stage of our evolution. The press of Philadelphia, as well as of New York City, reported daily, for some time, the doings of the new organization. The majority of the editorials in the daily papers commended the course I had taken in avoiding a "heresy trial," and in resisting the great temptation to resort to shifts and

subterfuges to enable me to remain at a lucrative post. In these days (1) departures from Orthodoxy were rare, and naturally, my case created a great stir. But as I have intimated, the preponderance of criticism and comment was favorable. Encouraging letters from Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Prof. David Swing, and other prominent leaders gave the new society an enviable prestige. But my trustees protested that this "good will" of the public, which constituted our best asset, would be lost, and its sympathy turned into antagonism, if I spoke as freely of Christ as I did of Calvin, and subjected the Bible to the same strain of reason that I did the Westminster Catechism. In other words, I was politely made to feel that while it was respectable enough to part with Presbyterianism, it would spell ruin to part also with Christianity.

In justice to my supporters I must state that when I resigned from the Presbyterian church I had no idea that the step would eventually carry me beyond Christianity itself. "A purer Christianity" was my plea at that time, and I sincerely believed that with Calvinism out of the way there would be left no serious obstacle for reason to stumble over. I was not prepared at that stage of my evolution to perceive the impossibility of separating Calvinism from Christianity without destroying both. Calvinism was a symptom and not the disease itself. The disease. (1) 1886.

was supernaturalism, of which the different sects are the manifestations. It is the disease and not its manifestation that required suppression. 1 was unable to see the relationship between an infinite God, sovereign of all, and Calvinism, and fancied in my mind that I could keep God and let Calvin go. But faith in a God who knows everything and is absolutely sovereign, spells Calvinism.

The step out of Christianity was infinitely more difficult than the step out of Presbyterianism. Had my followers been trained to think rationally, they would have seen that since I did not resign from the Presbyterian church, for a different form of baptism, or communion, but because of its failure to recognize Reason as the highest authority in religion, I was bound, by the very stress and logic of my premises, to drop Christianity as I had been led to drop Calvinism.

My trustees were quite unconscious of giving me dangerous advice, or of trying to make of me an example of arrested development. They were my friends, and the friends of the cause, but they could not think logically, and that is why they could not appreciate my reply that we are not free to command the truth,-we must obey the truth.

Matters came to a crisis when I delivered a lecture on "Was Jesus God?" I can still see the painful expression on the faces of many of my

hearers on that Sunday morning. Did I bring them out of the Presbyterian church to make “infidels" and "blasphemers" of them? A number of my hearers rose and left the hall. The strain upon me was severe. When I sat down I was in a profuse perspiration. When all was over, I must have looked ashen pale. I had hardly any strength left to announce the closing hymn. But my audience suffered perhaps even more than did I. To part with Jesus is not the same thing as parting with Calvin, and that morning I had told them that if Calvin goes, Jesus must go too. C'est le premier pas qui coute.

"It is the first step that costs." But I found my second step even more costly. Voltaire speaks of the inevitableness of the second step if the first is taken. They told him how St. Denis had picked up his own head after it had been chopped off by the executioner, and walked a hundred teps with it in his hands. He replied, "I can believe in the ninety-nine steps, it is the first step I find difficulty in believing." Granted the first step, the ninety-nine, or nine million steps are very easy. Would it not be wasteful to argue that St. Denis took the first step, but no more? Is it not equally superfluous to accept one miracle in the Bible, and deny the rest? If one miracle, why not a million? But the aim of the training we had received in the church was not to help us to think logically but how not to think logic