To infidelity and back ...

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Dedication

To the sacred memory of the pioneers of the great Restoration Movement of the nineteenth century, who forsook the religious associations of a lifetime and cheerfully endured poverty, persecution and every hardship in their ■ endeavor to restore Christian union on the primmitive gospel, and who held forth a beacon-light that helped me to find the truth in its simplicity as it is in Christ Jesus.

My Soul Struggle in Symbolism

Upon the fly-leaf of my Bible I find the following, which was written shortly after I emerged from the stormy sea of heartrending agony through which I passed in my conflict with sectarianism, rationalism, infidelity and doubt. It was not written for the public, but was simply an effort of my soul to express in a measure, through human symbols, the painful experiences through which it passed. It will seem extravagant language to those who have never had their souls lacerated by doubt and despair. But the sensitive souls who have endured similar experiences will understand, and it is with the hope of reaching and helping them that it is given to the public.

Introduction

One of the clearest expounders of the Scriptures in my acquaintance is the author of this book, who honors me in asking that I write these few lines of introduction. His experience is full of interest. I have listened night after night with profit to his sermons, and he has dug his way in the most painstaking fashion out of the darkness of un faith into the beauty and strength of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no institution like the church of God, for it is founded upon the divine Sonship of Jesus, and his Holy Spirit has given to it divine life, so that Isaiah's prophecy lights up the pathway of victory, when it is said: "He will not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set justice in the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law." Its right to advance has been disputed, and, at times in its long history, it appears to have stood timidly doubting its power and right to soul conquest, but this has only been apparent, for every century has brought with it a greater courage, so that in this day believers x INTRODUCTION

in Jesus are speaking in the language of every nation on the earth, and hosts of these are as ready to lay down their lives for their faith in Jesus as did Stephen and James and Paul and that host of martyrs whose willing sacrifices gave strength and solidarity to the early church.

The ordinances have naturally suffered at the hands of every invasion, and, in consequence, some of the most devout have not been able to find the path to the ordinances as practiced in the apostolic days, but the skies are brightening, and, without questioning for a moment the sincerity and devotion of those who think otherwise, the Scriptures are being read to-day with more freedom than at any other period in the history of the church, and its ordinances are gradually coming to light in the public mind. God has been patient with us and we must be patient with those who do not think as we do. One of the most important problems now facing us, however, is that all believers shall find a common way for entrance into the church. When that has been done, a long step will have been taken towards world-wide evangelization.

The fields are already white unto harvest. This is the day of opportunity. Christ is waiting on us. If the time was short, like a furled sail, in Paul's day, how much shorter is it in

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our day ! The gospel has been sent to all nations, and God is sending men from all nations to America to hear the gospel, so that the lines are crossing and recrossing each other and are so many prophecies of the fulfillment of the commission of Jesus, when he said : "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you ; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

Deciding for Christ and being baptized into him is only a small part of the work that is to be done. Then begins their training into real discipleship, when they are to produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control."

This book is a contribution to that end, and may those who read its pages be brought to yield their best to the glory of Him who is our all.

Baltimore, Md. Peter Ainslie.

Preface

This book contains my religious experience in a forty years' sojourn on earth. If any doubt the propriety and value of relating one's religious experience, I would refer them to the case of Paul, who used this method on a number of occasions. However, we should be careful not to make an improper use of this method and preach our experiences in place of the gospel. Paul says : "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake" (2 Cor. 4:5). We should refer to our experiences simply to help deliver people from human error and center their attention on the gospel of Christ, which alone is the power of God unto salvation.

I do not take any great credit to myself for my experiences recorded in this book, realizing that they were largely the result of my inherited proclivities and religious environment. It must be admitted that the great mass of mankind are what they are in religion, politics, etc., by heredity and environment. This is powerfully xiv PREFACE

impressed upon us by the ministers who give their experience in "Why I Am What I Am." Even the fact that it is natural for me to seek to. know what is right for myself, I attribute more largely to my natural hereditary mental bent, than to any particular merit of my own. I trust this book will help us all to realize the danger of drifting with traditionary religion, and thus defeating the revealed truth of Jesus Christ, and the need of searching the truth for ourselves that thus we may be used of God to advance his kingdom of unity and truth. Christian civilization would make much more rapid strides if we all would struggle to find the truth instead of acquiring our ideas through the colored glasses of prejudice and ignorance.

My ancestry on mother's side were German Reformed and on father's side Lutheran. While a boy I lived for three years with Mennonites and attended their church. I attended a Moravian Sunday-school, was taught by a Presbyterian Sunday-school teacher, educated at a Unitarian theological school, graduated from a Christian college and a Congregational theological seminary, and took postgraduate work at a United Presbyterian university. I was born and raised in southeastern Pennsylvania, which may be called "The Cradle of Religious Liberty" in

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America. For while the colonies to the north and south persecuted people on account of therr religious opinions, Penn opened his settlement to all the religiously persecuted in America and Europe. As a result Pennsylvania became a great sectarian stronghold. To-day some twenty denominations have either their national headquarters or leading national center in southeastern Pennsylvania. The reader can readily see how my contact with this Babel of sectarianism affected my religious life and experience.

There are some things that seem too sacred to drag before the public. For years I said very little in my public ministry about my experience with doubt. While, as city evangelist of Greater Pittsburg, I was assisting a minister in a revival, he learned incidentally of my experience with infidelity; and as there were a number of skeptics in the community, he urged me to preach on the subject. The message seemed to do much good to the large audience that heard it. Since then it has been repeated a number of times, and the largest auditoriums have not been able to hold the people who were eager to hear it. This demonstrates that the message supplies a great need, and has encouraged me to prepare this book for the public. The Christian Temple in Baltimore was packed with people, and on acxvi PREFACE

count of the jam the doors were ordered closed fy the policeman in charge half an hour before time for the service. At Portsmouth, Va., twenty-five hundred were crowded into a skatingrink, and many failed to get admittance. At Halifax, Can., hundreds were turned away. But this has been the experience wherever the sermon has been thoroughly advertised. To illustrate this, I quote from the Harrisonburg (Va.) papers of Jan. 9, 191 1, where the sermon was delivered the night before in Assembly Hall, the largest auditorium in the city. About sixteen hundred people were jammed in the hall and many crowded out. It was the largest audience that ever assembled in that city for a religious service.

"Evangelist Lutz says that on every occasion on which he has delivered his address on 'My Conversion from Infidelity,' no matter how large the hall may have been, people have turned away for lack of room. Last night's attendance at Assembly Hall maintained the record. Presumably the hall has never been more closely packed. Seats, stage, box, aisles, windows, doorways, were filled, and many found place in the flies of the theater. A number couldn't find places anywhere and went away. Mr. Lutz is a fine example of evangelist. He has a magnetic per-

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sonality and a strong, oratorical way of talking, fluent in speech and filled with figurative language and the phrases of his profession." — Harrisonburg Daily Times.

"Evangelist H. F. Lutz spoke last night at Assembly Hall on 'The Story of My Conversion from Infidelity.' The audience showed close attention and earnestness. Many were turned away because of the crowded condition of the hall. Many people from the near-town sections came to attend the service.'' — Harrisonburg Daily News.

I trust that my bitter experience with rationalism, infidelity and doubt will help to reveal their true nature and thus keep many young men from these dangerous rocks, and will help to deliver many others from this terrible bondage. May the Father graciously bless my humble efforts to win souls to Christ and to help bring about Christian union on the primitive gospel in order to the Christian conquest of the whole world. Henry F. Lutz.

Millersville, Pa., March 28, 191 1.

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.

Through the kindness of Christian people the way opened to prepare myself for the ministry. But by this time many religious doubts and perplexities were in the way, and I decided that I would a thousand times rather be an honest doubter out of the church and ministry than a hypocrite in it. Thus my fond hope of entering the ministry had to be given up, and instead I determined to use the teaching profession as a stepping-stone to law, and law as a means of serving humanity.

I was very fond of study, and read scores of books on all kinds of subjects. Emerson was my favorite, and I procured and read his complete works. Gibbon and Macaulay were eagerly read as revealing some of the religious life of the world. Ingersoll, with many others, got his turn. But the book that produced the greatest effect on my life at this time was Fleetwood's "Life of Christ," with a short history of the different religious bodies of the world attached. Through my reading and observations I became greatly perplexed over the religious divisions of the world. I discovered that thousands of people had died as martyrs for all kinds of religions and sects, and that each claimed to have the truth and to teach the right way to heaven. I concluded that since they teach such contradictory doctrines they cannot possibly all be right, although they might all be wrong. I formed a desire to make a thorough study of all the different religious bodies of the world, to find out where the truth is, if there is any in religion. My first information along this line was obtained in the above-named history of the religious bodies of the world. Being of a rationalistic turn of mind, I was naturally very favorably impressed with Unitarianism and its teaching. I sent for a number of their works and read them with great interest. I learned many things that have been a benediction to my life ever since, but you will see later on how far it satisfied my rationalistic proclivities. I learned to my delight that I could enter a Unitarian theological school to prepare for the ministry without first joining a church or signing a creed. For a person in my state of mind nothing better could have presented itself. I determined to go there and make a thorough study of the Bible and all the different religious bodies, and to fearlessly follow the truth wherever it might lead me.

The time came and I entered the school. And a fine school it was from an intellectual standpoint and for the purpose of investigation. I have been a student at six educational institutions since I left the high school, but this was far ahead of the others for the development of the logical and philosophical faculties. Here there was absolutely no restraint to thought ; and all kinds of systems and ideas were represented, from philosophical anarchy to socialism and from mysticism to materialism. The moral and spiritual earnestness I expected to find among the Unitarians I did not find, especially among the younger and more radical ones. Its effect, on the whole, was to relax rather than intensify the moral fiber. Their ideals seemed so grand and noble that I thought those possessed with them could scarcely find time to eat and sleep in their, zeal to put them into practise ; but I discovered that they not only had plenty of time to eat and sleep, but also for dancing, card-playing, theater-going, etc. Many of the young men studying for the ministry often spent a large part of the night in card-playing, and the Sunday-school room served also as a dancing-floor. Unitarians pride themselves upon the high standard of morality among their people and upon the few prisoners you find among their members, but this is due to the character of the people they reach rather than to the restraining influence of their teaching

My reading had given me a wrong impression as to the teaching of Unitarianism. Like many others, I was fascinated and enticed by the writings of conservative Unitarians, whose contention is largely against the bad theology of human creeds; but the present-day teaching of the vanguard of Unitarianism is an entirely different thing. It rejects all the miraculous in the Bible, and, in many cases, even denies the existence of a personal God. All the students were required to conduct chapel prayers in turn. Those who did not believe in a personal God explained that they were pronouncing an apostrophe to the great impersonal and unknowable force working in the universe. I had read Ch'anning, Clark, Hale, Emerson, and other conservative Unitarians, and found much food for my soul, but I discovered that these were considered old "fogies" and back numbers by most of the students in attendance.

But I must tell you of my evolution along the line of rationalism. My rationalistic proclivities were given a free rein. And as a child, when left to run away, will soon stop and return to its mother, so this freedom was the natural cure for my intellectual delusion. To the statement of the creeds, "The Father is God, and the Son is God, and the. Holy Ghost is God ; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God/' my rationalism replied, that is logically inconceivable, therefore I became a Unitarian. No sooner was I happy in this faith than a Universalist addressed me and said, "If you want to be rational, you must give up your belief in eternal punishment, for God could not give eternal punishment for a finite sin." As a rationalist, what could I do but yield, and so I became a universalist Unitarian. I felt I had at last found the truth, but my peace was short ; for a student accused me of being irrational, "because," said he, "an omnipotent, loving God would give an infinitely large amount of good and an infinitely small amount of evil ; but an infinitely small amount of evil is not perceptible, evil is perceptible, therefore there is no such God." This was an awful pill and gave a terrible shock to my religious sensibilities, but as rationalism was my guide, I had to follow on or stand accused as a superstitious coward.

Again rationalism declared, through my teachers, that all the supernatural must be eliminated from the Bible as mythical and unreliable, and so I was robbed of my Christ, my God and my Bible. Misguided by rationalism, I thought it my conscientious duty to accept, step by step, the dictates of destructive criticism until the

Bible was only inspired to me in religion as Kant in philosophy, Milton in poetry, and Beethoven in music. But when I came to the end of the matter I discovered that my conscience, which had urged me along, was gone also. For I was gravely taught that conscience is merely a creature of experience and education, and that it is right to lie or do anything else so long as you do it out of love. Doubtless you have all heard of the farmer and his wife at the World's Fair who went to see the ''Exit." There was nothing in it, and of course they had to pay to get in again. This was my bitter experience with rationalism. I thought I was following a great light, but I discovered there was nothing in it, that I was following an ignis fatuus. Rationalism has indeed proven the "Exit" to multitudes, from the peace, joy and moral security that accompany faith in evangelical Christianity intc the desert of doubt, darkness and despair.

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.

But how did I discover the fallacy of rationalism? and how was I delivered from its mighty clutches by which it had dragged me from one pitfall to another so ruthlessly? My deliverance came from a source where you would perhaps least expect it. It was through the study of John Stuart Mill's "System of Logic." In it I learned "that inconceivability is not a criterion of impossibility," as rationalism claims. On the other hand, that we know things to be true that are just as inconceivable as that there can be two mountains without a valley between.

Let me introduce a few of these contradictions or inconceivabilities. Before you can reach your mouth with your hand, you must go over half the distance, then half of the rest, then half of the rest, and so on ad infinitum. But you cannot make the infinite number of divisions, and therefore you cannot reach your lips. Again, you cannot conceive of extension of space or time without a limit, nor can you conceive of a limit to space or time. Here conceivability contradicts itself. Furthermore, you cannot conceive of existence without a cause, nor of a cause without existence. To the statement of the believer that, "as the wonderful mechanism of the watch presumes a designer, so the infinitely more wonderful mechanism of the universe presumes God, the infinite designer," Ingersoll replied that this is simply to jump over the difficulty by an infinite assumption. Ingersoil, on the other hand, claimed that the material universe has always existed; apparently unaware that he thus was guilty of the same fallacy of which he accused others, by assuming infinite existence without a cause. The difference is that the believer's assumption gives us a personal God, a kind, loving heavenly Father who provides for the eternal bliss and welfare of his children, while Ingersoll's assumption gives death and darkness and despair.

An object thrown from one point to another is always at some point, therefore it has no time to move from one point to another. And yet we know that it does move, even though we cannot conceive how it can do so. Again, suppose that the hour-hand of your clock is at eleven and the minute-hand at twelve. Now, you cannot conceive how the minute-hand can overtake the hour-hand, although you know by observation that it does overtake it. For by the time the minute-hand gets to eleven, the hour-hand has passed on to twelve, and by the time the minute-hand has reached twelve, the hour-hand has passed beyond it. Every time the minute-hand comes to where the hour-hand now is, the hour-hand has passed beyond. The distance becomes less and less, but theoretically, or in conceivabilitv. the one can never overtake the other.

Through this line of reasoning I learned, clearly and once for all, that inconceivability is not a proof of impossibility; but, on the other hand, that we know many things to be true that are not conceivable to the finite mind, and therefore we must follow truth learned by experience and observation, irrespective of rationalism. In this way the mighty fetters of rationalism that held me in bondage were cut and I was set free to search for the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. I learned the limitations of the finite intellect and the truth of God's word when he says: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."

After the empirical school of philosophy had taught me that we must follow inductions based on experience and observation rather than rationalism or conceivability, I began to value Paul's admonition, "Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good." If inductive philosophers have often been opposed to religion and the Bible, it is because they have not carried their inductions far enough to cover the entire world of facts. It is admitted by all historians and observers that prayer and faith and religious convictions have been among the mightiest forces at work in the world, and any system of reasoning that does not take these facts into consideration is neither philosophical nor scientific.

To illustrate what is meant by saying that we must follow experience rather than conceivability, let us suppose that you are suffering from a malignant disease and you hear of a medicine that has cured this disease whenever it has been tried, and you know of nothing else that will cure it. Would it not be foolish for you to refuse to use the medicine because you cannot conceive how it produces the cure? It might be discovered later that it was not the medicine, but your belief in its curative qualities, that produced the result. But this would not affect your common-sense duty in the matter. If certain desirable results follow the doing of a certain thing, we are bound to do that thing until we know how to get the good results without doing it.

This reveals the folly and inhumanity of the conduct of some infidels towards religious people. When I was minister of a church in

Ohio, I was visited by a noted infidel. After he went on in a tirade against preachers and Christians, I asked him if he was not an unhappy man. At first he denied it; but I called his attention to some of his utterances, and he soon admitted that he was a very unhappy man. But he said he was unhappy because he knew too much, and claimed that Christians were so happy because they were ignorant and deluded. He claimed to be a great lover of humanity, and although, according to his profession, he had no God or conscience or judgment to require it of him, he spent his time in spreading the knowledge and wisdom which made people unhappy by destroying that which he admitted gave people great joy and peace and happiness. Suppose a man should come to town who is as lean as a skeleton and is slowly dying because he is not getting enough nourishment out of the food he eats, and should begin to lecture well-nourished and healthy people for eating the food they are eating. Would we not put him down as a fool? Well, if he would add the claim that we are well fed because we are ignorant and deluded, while he is suffering and dying because he knows tco much on the food question, he would be on a par with many of our infidelic friends. .