Chapter XVII
Reading edition
CHAPTER XVII.
Continuation of my Story.—Lectures on the Bible in Ohio.—Trouble.—Riot.—Rotten eggs.—Midnight mischief.—Had to move.—Settlement among Liberals, Comeouters.—Too fond of liberty.—Would have my share as well as their own.—Fresh trouble.—Another forced move.—Settlement in the wilds of Nebraska, among Indians, wolves, and rattlesnakes.—Experience there.—A change for the better.—How brought about.—Quiet of mind.—Reflection.—Horrors of Atheism.—Destroys the value of life.—Deceives you; mocks you; makes you intolerably miserable.—Suggests suicide.—Prosperity not good for much without religion: adversity, sickness, pain, loss, bereavement intolerable.—Strange adventures in the wilderness; terrible dangers; wonderful deliverances.—Solemn thoughts and feelings in the boundless desert.—Solitude and silence preach.—Religious feelings revive.—Recourse to old religious books.—Demoralizing tendency of unbelief.—Lecture in Philadelphia.—Cases of infidel depravity.—You can't make people good, nor even decent, without religion.—Infidelity means utter debasement.—A good, a loving, and a faithful wife, who never ceases to pray.—Return to England.—Experience there.—Unbounded licentiousness of Secularism.—Total separation from the infidel party.—My new Periodical.—Resolution to re-read the Bible, to do justice to Christianity, &c.—A sight of Jesus.—Happy results.—Change both of head and heart.—Happy transformation of character.—A new life.—New work.—New lot.—From darkness to light,—From death to life,—from purgatory to paradise,—from hell to heaven, 310