Evidence is the basis of my faith. Evidence of more than human power in character transformation in the lives of some of my friends caused me to investigate, and first find the Lord in a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Then I entered the university. Though I still kept up my religious activities, I made little progress spiritually. I realize now, as I did not at the time, that my thinking gradually became influenced by the almost universal atmosphere of apology and attempted reconciliation of "scientific" (agnostic) philosophy with the teaching of the Bible. All that held me was the undeniable evidence of my experience at conversion. But I had lost pleasure in reading God's word, and the religious views held by my mother (who had become a Seventh-day Adventist about the time of my early conversion) were no longer attractive to me.
It was while attending the university law school that a friend suggested that I read. Henry Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." I did so, and was greatly helped to perceive the naturalness and reasonableness of the spiritual. In this condition of groping I continued for several years. Agnostic science had me partly baffled and partly bluffed. In my heart, I did not wish it to prevail, and yet I feared that somehow it had the advantage of evidence. It remained for me to discover later that that doubtful "somehow" was the product of pure ignorance of the underlying facts.
As the channel through which light began to dawn upon my bewildered mind, God used the humble bean vine. I read somewhere that the bean vine twists invariably to the right, and I shall never forget the day when I went into my garden and examined the vine and observed intently its tender ends —all in graceful curves to the right! I thought this through to God. And ever since that day, whether at work or in prayer, I see in that tender bean vine an evidence which inspires trust and confidence in the Creator, and I praise the Lord as I see that through nature He beckons us to come nearer to Him. I at once began to search all the woods and fields for vines of all kinds, and catalogued them "right" or "left," for some twist one way and some another, according to their species.
Some ten years ago, when the blossom of the age-old materialistic agnostic philosophy began to open up and its foul odor filled the air, I became suspicious of it as involving earth's greatest issues, and resolved that I would go to the bottom of it once for all. I began, by reading "Evolution at the Bar," by Philip Mauro; then "Illogical Geology," by George McCready Price. These set me on the trail of many other books. When I had reached an understanding of Mendel's law of heredity and variation, and Price's teaching of the rock age hoax, I found my feet on new and firm ground of faith in the Bible. My reading included every available book on the other side of the question, but soon I was able to see through them, and enjoyed assembling evidences to defeat them. The presence of God's law and living power in the twisting vines and the astounding wonders of instinct, the scientific facts regarding heredity and variation, and the utter defeat of the rock age theory, began to arm me from head to foot, and there sprang up within me the impulse of a crusader.
A new sense of the deceptive interpretations of agnostic science came to me, and I realized that instead of the situation being a mere fad of a decade, as the public thought it to be, it was the result of the development of thousands of years of carnal-minded interpretations of nature. I recognized the force of the truth which I had often read with apparent indifference, that if the true Sabbath had always been observed, all this erroneous confusion would have been impossible, and I began to reconsider my obligation toward the Sabbath. I felt that if I failed to keep God's true Sabbath, I would be held responsible for a share of the bleak darkness enshrouding the world as the result of ignoring the great memorial of creation.
Just at that time Evangelist H. M. S. Richards was conducting a series of lectures in the city where I resided, and as I listened attentively to the presentations of truth, light on the Sabbath question penetrated many dark corners which had lingered in my experience, and I took my stand for the full Sabbath truth.
As soon as I acknowledged the truth concerning the Sabbath, and conformed my life to it, God seemed to single me out as one to whom He would graciously reveal His finger prints in nature and science. Light poured into my mind on astronomy, the long day of. Joshua and the dial of Ahaz, on Jonah and the whale, archeology, biology, radio action, the atom and the electron, the wonders of instinct, the flood of Noah's day, the rocks, fossils, et cetera. For about three years I seemed to be held a prisoner in this realm of study. My friends almost lost patience with me; no longer was I interested in politics or club life, through which I had been placed as a representative in the State legislature, and had been captain of infantry in the World War, then compiler, and finally a cashier of the Income Tax Division.
I stand humbly as a living example of a new creation within my own heart, brought about by a fresh view of God as He is revealed in nature and in science, and I praise Him for His long patience with my dullness of comprehension, and His goodness in bringing me, through the lesson book of the humble bean vine, into the marvelous mines of research and truth in which full evidence may be found to refute the false assertions of agnostic science. The great burden of my heart is to be able to reach the millions groping in the same darkness which bewildered me in my university life, and lead them into the paths of safety. Let us go on praising the Lord, delighting in His created wonders, and help light each other along the way.
An Evangelist's Associate.
