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THE STORY OF MY MIND

How I Became a Rationalist

By M. M. Mangasarian

1909

DEDICATION

To My Children

My Dear Children:--

You have often requested me to tell you how, having been brought up by
my parents as a Calvinist, I came to be a Rationalist. I propose now to
answer that question in a more connected and comprehensive way than I
have ever done before. One reason for waiting until now was, that you
were not old enough before, to appreciate fully the mental struggle
which culminated in my resignation from the Spring Garden Presbyterian
church of Philadelpha, in which, my dear Zabelle, you received your
baptism at the time I was its pastor. Your brother, Armand, and your
sister, Christine, were born after I had withdrawn from the Presbyterian
church, and they have therefore not been baptised. But you are, all
three of you, now sufficiently advanced in years, and in training, to
be interested in, and I trust also, to be benefited by, the story of my
religious evolution. I am going to put the story in writing that you may
have it with you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests
for which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and
intimate period in my career as a teacher of men. If you should ever
become parents yourselves, and your children should feel inclined to
lend their support to dogma, I hope you will prevail upon them, first to
read the story of their grand-father, who fought his way out of the camp
of orthodoxy by grappling with each dogma, hand to hand and breast to
breast.

I have no fear that you yourselves will ever be drawn into the meshes of
orthodoxy, which cost me my youth and the best years of my life to break
through, or that you will permit motives of self-interest to estrange
you from the Cause of Rationalism with which my life has been so closely
identified. My assurance of your loyalty to freedom of thought in
religion is not based, nor do I desire it to be based, on considerations
of respect or affection which you may entertain for me as your father,
but on your ability and willingness to verify a proposition before
assenting to it. Do not believe me because I am your parent, but believe
what you have yourselves, by conscientious and earnest endeavor, found
to be worthy of belief. It will never be said of you, that you have
inherited your opinions from me, or borrowed them from your neighbors,
if you can give a reason for the faith that is in you.

I wish you also to know that during those years of storm and stress,
when everything seemed so discouraging, and when my resignation from
the church had left us exposed to many privations,--without money and
without help, your mother's sympathy with me in my combat with the
church--a lone man, and a mere youth, battling with the most powerfully
intrenched institution in all the world, was more than my daily bread
to me during the pain and travail of my second birth. My spirits, often
depressed from sheer weariness, were nursed to new life and ardor by her
patience and sympathy.

One word more: Nothing will give your parents greater satisfaction than
to see in you, increasing with the increase of years, a love for those
ideals which instead of dragging the world backward, or arresting its
progress, urge man's search to nobler issues. Co-operate with the
light. Be on the side of the dawn. It is not enough to profess
Rationalism--make it your religion. Devotedly,

M. M. Mangasarian.




CHAPTER I. In the Cradle of Christianity

I was a Christian because I was born one. My parents were Christians for
the same reason. It had never occurred to me, any more than it had to
my parents, to ask for any other reason for professing the Christian
religion. Never in the least did I entertain even the most remote
suspicion that being born in a religion was not enough, either to make
the religion true, or to justify my adherence to it.

My parents were members of the Congregational church, and when I was
only a few weeks old, they brought me, as I have often been told by
those who witnessed the ceremony, to the Rev. Mr. Richardson, to be
baptized