When I had company I always directed the conversation so that my friend would teach me something, or I would teach him.  I would read the poets, and Scott’s writings and history.  Read Josephus, mythology and the Bible together, and never read a course that taught me as much.  I would go to the country dances and sometimes to balls in the City.  The church did not object to this:  I would teach Sunday school at the same time.  No one taught me that this was wrong.  One thing was a tower of defense to me.  I always, when possible, read the Bible and would pray.  After retiring would get up and kneel, feeling that to pray in bed only, was disrespectful to God.  If the angels in heaven would prostrate themselves before Him, I a poor sinner should.  And right here, I believe in “advancing on your knees.”  Abraham prostrated himself, so did David and Solomon, Elijah, Daniel, Paul, and even our sinless Advocate.  Why did the Holy Ghost state the position so often?  For our example, of course.  There are no space writers in the Scriptures.  I often had doubts as to whether the Bible was the work of God or man.  I kept these doubts to myself, for I thought infidelity a disgrace.  I wanted to believe the Bible the word of God.  I early saw that to close the Bible was to shut out all knowledge of the purpose of life.  Without its revelations one does not know why we are born, why we live, or where we go after death.  We can see the purpose of all nature, but not of this life of ours, and God had, by revelation, to make this known.

The Bible was a mystery to me.  It often seemed to be a contradiction.  I did not love to read it, but above all things, I did not want to be a hypocrite.  I was determined to try to do my part.  I would pray for the same thing over and over again, so as to be in earnest, and think of what I was asking.  My mind was distracted by thoughts of the world.  I said, if there is a God, he will not hear the prayer of those, so disrespectful as not to think of what they ask.  I never seemed to get rid of this, unless at times, when I would have some sorrow of heart.  “By the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better.”

I do not believe the Bible because I understand it; for there are few things of revelation that I do understand.  Creation is a mystery, still we know everything had a beginning.  I do not know why things grow out of the earth.  Why they are green.  Why grass makes wool on a sheep and hair on a cow, but I know these are facts.  I cannot understand why or how the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from sin, neither do I understand that greatest of all mysteries, the new birth, but nothing more positively a fact in my experience.

God is not perceived by the five senses.  The things that are seen are temporal, but those that are unseen are eternal.  What a sin of presumption to question God in any of His providences.  What God says and does is wisdom, righteousness and power.