From Bondage to Liberty in Religion, A Spiritual Autobiography

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The substance of what is written in this book has been given on several occasions during the past five years in the form of sermons or lectures. On each occasion they met with such hearty commendation, and so many requests that they be written and published in book form that they might have a wider circulation, that I have been induced to undertake it. This volume is the result.

It is in no sense a treatise on controverted theological questions; altho some of these are incidentally treated, but only as they entered as factors into my own religious life and experience. This book is simply the story of my own religious life from my early childhood to the present time, in its various transitions from the narrowest orthodoxy to a broad, liberal, rational religious faith. It necessarily deals to some extent with certain theological problems that from time to time confronted me, the way in which I solved them, the conclusions I finally reached, and why I reached them. But these have been treated in mere outline only. The temptation has been very great to treat, some of these at least, more elaborately; but I have been compelled to content myself often with the bare statement of my views, with few or no detailed arguments to support them. But as my object has been, not so much to try to solve these problems for others, as to point the way thereto, and stimulate the reader to further inquiry and deeper investigation of the subjects treated, if I have succeeded in this, my main object has been accomplished.

No one is more sensible of the many defects in this work than I am. It makes no pretension to any literary merit, nor to any scholarly erudition. I am not a "professional writer." I have simply tried to tell my story in a simple way and make it "readable" if possible. My sole purpose in writing these pages has been to try to help others who may still be in the fetters of ecclesiastical bondage, or wandering in the quagmires of agnosticism—and I know there are many such—to find the way to light and liberty in a rational religious faith. If I can accomplish this, even in a small degree, I shall feel abundantly repaid for the time and labor spent in reviewing the story of my own religious evolution.

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