Book Description

An account of personal experiences may be interesting for one or two reasons: (1) because the writer is in some way remarkable; (2) because, not being at all remarkable, he may be able to set forth in a concrete way the experience of a considerable body of men. It is for the latter reason, if at all, that the present little sketch may justify its place in the volume of which it is to form a part. I have been asked to contribute to the volume, I suppose, in order that I may show by the example of my own very imperfect, but for that reason all the more typical, experience how it is that a considerable number of persons have been led to resist the current of the age and to hold with mind and heart to that religion of supernatural redemption which has always hitherto been known as Christianity.In the pursuance of this task, however, I shall not seek to distinguish those elements in my experience which are peculiar from those which I share with others, but shall simply set forth certain observations of mine in the concrete, in the hope that here and there they may by way of example shed some light upon something less unimportant than they are in themselves. It seems to me, even with that explanation, to be rather a presumptuous undertaking; but the responsibility is the Editor's, not mine.If the question be asked how it has come about that contrary to the majority of the men of our day I am a believer in the truth of the Bible and an adherent of the redemptive religion which the Bible presents, the answer will be found, to a far greater extent than in any other one place, in the home in Baltimore in which, in company with my brothers, Arthur W. Machen, Jr. and Thomas Machen, I was brought up. My father, who died in 1915 at the age of eighty-eight, and my mother, who died in 1931 at the age of eighty-two, were both Christians; from them I learned what Christianity is and how it differs from certain modern substitutes. I also learned that Christian conviction can go hand in hand with a broad outlook upon life and with the pursuit of learning.