The Light Where the People Had Been

The Light Where the People Had Been

by Marcia Brown

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I love telling this story because it’s the one thing I really know. There are lots of things I believe, but I know this one story. And most of the things that I believe are based on this one story. If I didn’t know this, I wouldn’t believe the rest.

But it’s a story I don’t often tell, and it never dawned on me I was going to be telling it today. Not until I walked into the concerto meeting late did I find out about it. It doesn’t say to be absent from meetings, or to arrive late.

There are several passages of scripture I want to read. I said this is one thing I know. I’ve learned through the years to listen when I hear an individual say, “I know this,” or “I know that,” or “I know the other thing.” I’ve learned to listen.

Because I know that what they know has come not because they’ve read it, or not only because they’ve seen it, but because something’s happened to them. Therefore they know it. I wish we could be relieved by just being told, or just being shown.

Doesn’t always work that way. At least it didn’t work that way with me. Long years ago I got out the concordance. And I travel with the concordance all the time. Don’t get very far away from it. This knowing.

46th Psalm we read, “Be still.” And what do you find out? “And know that I am God.” Be still, and know it. You find it out in stillness. Sometimes you have to be still for a long time. Nineteenth chapter of Job: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”

56th Psalm: “When I cry unto Thee, when I cry unto Thee, then shall mine enemies turn back. This I know, for God is for me.” Eighth chapter of Luke: “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God.”

Nineteenth chapter of Luke. As Jesus was weeping over Jerusalem, He said, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace.” If you had only known it. He could have gone on and said, “I have been here all the time. I have been talking about it. I have been showing you.”

But apparently that wasn’t enough. You had only known it. If you had been convinced. Seventh chapter of John: “If any man will do His will, He will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” Eighth chapter of Romans: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purposes.” We know it. But all people don’t know it.

Ralph Sockman, in one of his books, was trying to explain that particular passage of scripture. And he had difficulties. He said the only way in which he could believe it was to visualize a ship. He knew that the motor of that ship, the engine, it would sink if it were by itself.

And the mast would sink. And all of the other parts of the ship, they would sink by themselves. But if you put them together, they float. All things. Put it together. All things work together for good. He said not only that.

He knew that it was going somewhere too, and would accomplish something. To know that is wonderful. 2 Timothy: “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”

1 John: “And hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.” He’ll show us. 2 Timothy. Years ago someone was telling me of a sermon that they had heard preached. They had already also seen it preached.

The preacher had drawn some footprints across the stage. Huge footprints. They came into the sanctuary and stepped up onto the platform. And he stepped into that first footprint, and he preached on his first point in his sermon. The sermon was entitled, “My Nose,” K-N-O-W-S.

And his first point was, “I know that God is my Father.” Then he moved on to the second footprint, and he preached on that: “I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior.” He had some other points. I don’t know what they were.

But as they were talking to me about knowing that God was their Father, my mind went way back. Back to 1924. 1923. Back to the days when I began to wonder about God. About my Father. Up until then, I’ve been in Sunday school. I’ve been in church, yes. At that particular time I was teaching Sunday school to a group of 12-year-old girls.

And of course I was teaching them about God. And about Jesus. Yet I discovered very shortly I didn’t know very much about either one. I’ve been in the university for just a few months. And the head of our department, it was the botany department, told me that he was an atheist. I wondered. I wondered how that could be. And explained why he was an atheist. It wasn’t reasonable to me.

A few more months went by and… This professor’s daughter contracted cancer of the knee joint. They said it was the aftermath of a smallpox vaccination on the leg. A little youngster had her leg amputated. Later on she died. But some of the people there in the department said that the reason why she contracted that cancer, why her leg had to be amputated, and later on they said it was because… it was why she died, it was all because he was an atheist and God was punishing him in that way.

That very Sunday I was to teach a lesson on… the mercy of God. And I couldn’t get that little girl out of my mind. I thought, is it a merciful God who would do a thing like that? Let a child suffer? Or even let parents suffer?

Even if he said there was no God. I couldn’t understand it. That same week, the husband of… one of my best friends there in the department, he was an attorney, he discovered that he had become the victim of…

Some planning of his partner in the law business, and that he was in the process of cheating his friends… of money that they had saved up for their old age. He had just discovered it that week. And he decided that he just couldn’t face life, having done that to his friends.

Before the week was over, he committed suicide. Both of them were very good church people, and very wonderful people. And I thought, is that the end? Is that the answer? Is that a merciful God? I didn’t know God. But before Sunday came, I had made up my mind. I did not teach that lesson. I wasn’t in church again for a long, long time.

To me, if God was merciful, and if that was mercy, then I didn’t want any of that mercy, neither did I want any of that God. Of course, there were some things I didn’t understand. I jumped to conclusions without taking some things into consideration. All other things happened. All that same week.

I started in searching the scriptures. The Old Testament, the New Testament. Trying to find out what they said about God. Now particularly, we dwelt upon those portions that were inconsistent. Unexplainable. Contradictory. And then I began to share my feelings, and my findings, with my friends. Wasn’t too long before some of them were agreeing with me, and we had quite a lively evangelistic campaign on.

Ridiculing the people who believed the things that they read in the scriptures. Trying to convince them how foolish they were. Telling them that they’d only used their heads, that they couldn’t possibly believe some of those things. Went on for a long time.

Long before I graduated from the university, I too was an atheist. Not an agnostic. An agnostic is willing to be persuaded, if the facts can only be presented in such a way that they can believe. To me, I knew. I knew there was no God.

And yet… All of it based on such little things. Insufficient evidence. But you see, the reason why I was an atheist was because of my prejudices. It was because of block of the reason and I wasn’t big enough to look at it.

And find my shortcomings. So I did the usual thing. I found God’s shortcomings. And ended up by deciding it was all a fairy tale anyway. Why believe it? Why bother? If you were just honest and truthful and… did your best to help your neighbor and… a few things like that. But that was all that was required of you. And so far as life after death was concerned… just so much fancy. Nobody could prove it anyway. Who would come back to tell us about it? That you could believe.

I was supposedly a budding scientist. For 18 years there in Chicago, I was considered a specialist, considered to be quite excellently trained. At least in one little bit of a scientific field. At least I knew the scientific procedure.

But I didn’t know it well enough to really apply it. To me, if a thing was said could be demonstrated, you could prove it. And to me, it wasn’t fair to say a thing existed unless you could prove it.

That wasn’t scientific. You weren’t supposed to take some things for granted. It never dawned on me in these days, in those days, that most of the things I depended upon couldn’t be proven. Even though scientific laws, I couldn’t prove them. But I take the word of people who could. Who wrote the textbooks, I believe them. But, the Bible, to me there weren’t any facts in it. It was all fiction. It wasn’t very long before I became very prejudiced against all ministers.

To me they were all hypocrites. To me, if they had any brains at all, they couldn’t possibly believe the things they were preaching. And yet they were preaching them. Expecting people to believe them. Acting as if they were true. But to me, I knew very well they couldn’t be true. I could find the flaws. And I thought they ought to be bright enough to find the flaws too. Therefore, I knew they were hypocrites and I wouldn’t be a hypocrite. I was an atheist. I’m proud of it.

I decided that ministers, churches, all people interested in religion, the people at the top, all that they were doing was trying to take advantage of the underdog. The person who didn’t have much. Telling them if they’d only be good in this life. Only do things that they wouldn’t do. If they’d forgive their enemy and if they would give everything they had and if they would be truthful and do this, that and the other thing, why heaven would be their reward. And of course, they would get in their next life the things that they’ve missed here. But be satisfied. It’s coming. Just be satisfied now. Don’t resist it. Don’t rise up and revolt against it.

And to me, I thought the world’s problems would be solved when that kind of dishonesty and hypocrisy was removed. Then we could be honest. Then we could be fair. Then we could divide things up evenly. And not say we were doing it this way, but it was all for their good. They benefit in the long run. And strange the things you’ve reasoned out when you’ve been warped because of prejudice and frustration, when you’re not willing to look at yourself and find out where the flaws really are. Blame it on someone else. Or something else. Of course, I was honest. So I thought.

I think I really thought it for a while. At least I was consistent anyway. I remember when I was taking a course in bacteriology. The head of the department, Dr. Winesville, there at the University of Washington, he too was an atheist. He was giving a lecture on bacteriology, the science of bacteriology. And he was telling us how the science of bacteriology was the oldest of the sciences. Well, I’ve heard other professors say that about their sciences. It was the oldest. And he began to cite examples of when bacteriology, back in the beginnings, how people looked at disease and so on. Of course, it wasn’t scientific as it was in 1926 or 27 when he was talking. But people at one time thought that disease came from the dust of the earth. And they laughed at the idea. Of course, he knew and we all knew. We read them in textbooks and we listened to him. They all came from germs. And we’d taken those germs, those bacteria, and we looked at them under the microscope. We’d made the same preparations. We’d seen the tissue and the damage it caused in the tissue. Of course, that’s where it came from. There was bacteria. But we could laugh with them about the idea of disease coming from the dust.

Of course, that was way back when. In the early dawn of civilization. The disease was caused by evil spirits. They thought that at another time. And of course, they had their witch doctors. And the witch doctors could use exhortation or various methods and get rid of those evil spirits. And the disease would disappear. And he laughed at it and so did we. Those of us who agreed with him.

I’ve often wondered what some of those thought there in that room who didn’t agree with him. Never dawned on me that there were people in the room that might have contradicted him. Then he brought it down nearer in time. Came to 2,000 years ago. He said, “2,000 years ago there was a group of people in a certain part of this world. And they had the idea that prayer could heal disease.

“And they went around the countryside teaching that to people.” Then he looked up to find his notes and he said, “And the pity of it is that today there are people who still believe it.” And I thought to myself when I heard those words, “You and I agree.”

The pity of it is that there are people who believe it. Well, that was the way things were going, up until 1929. 1929, I was invited to become the head botanist of the General Biological Supply House there in Chicago. I made these things, botanical preparations that they use in high schools and colleges and universities around this world. Doing that work there for 18 years. A highly technical, specialized work. And of course, they said I was good. I don’t know what I was good for. Not much.

The call came to come to Chicago and become the botanist there, the head botanist. And of course, I was eager to go. Some other things had to be adjusted and they were adjusted. But, a friend of mine, where I was attending summer school at the time and teaching also at the time, a friend of mine came up to me when she heard the news and… she continued a story or… continued doing something that we had decided… several years before we would stop doing.

She was a Baptist. Of course, I was nothing. I’m proud of it. She decided that I needed salvation. I knew I’d have none of it. To me, it was all foolishness. But she was a good friend. She tried to get me to go to church. She tried to talk me into this, that and the other thing. And talk me out of certain things. I wouldn’t be talked. Got to the place of argument. Finally, we decided that we’d just stop talking religion.

Because we couldn’t continue and remain friends. So we’d had a truce on that subject. But she came to me as soon as she found that I was to go to Chicago and started in again. She said, “I’ll be going to the big bad city, Chicago. Full of gangsters.” To her, there were only two kinds of people that lived in Chicago. Gangsters and church people. And of course, if you weren’t with the church people, you were with the gangsters.

And I was a poor, innocent girl from out there in Seattle. And… I needed to be with the church people. She tried to get me to promise to go to church and I wouldn’t hear any of it. And that was the last place in the world that I wanted to go. And the last individual I wanted to hear was a preacher. And the last subject I wanted to talk about was… religion. And… even with her.

Well, she kept at it. Incessantly at it. And finally… just to keep her from talking anymore. I knew that if she kept it up, I would say something I would regret. Just to keep her from talking about it, I finally said, “Yes, I’ll go.” And then she quit talking about it. She was satisfied.

Promised I’d go to church for three months. She said she didn’t care whether it was a Baptist church, a Methodist church, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic. It could even be a Jewish synagogue. But some church for three months’ time in order to become acquainted with some friends. And I really believed that that was all she had in mind. I don’t think she was trying to trick me into going to church. But I said I would go.

Never expecting to have set foot inside of a church. Of course, I knew that was alright. I knew I’d kept my integrity at another point. Even if I’d lost it at the point of telling a lie. I left the West Coast. Arrived in Chicago. I was to live in the home of the head of the Botany Department of the University of Chicago, Dr. C.J. Chamberlain. A world-famous botanist. And it was to be a rare privilege to be in his home.

And to work with him. Arrived on a Sunday. It was noontime. It was August. We were at the end of the month. Mrs. Chamberlain and his wife had gone on to Pittsburgh to be with their daughter. And he was leaving the end of that week in order to go to Pittsburgh. The summer quarter was closing.

I’d become acquainted with Dr. and Mrs. Chamberlain three years before. They’d been out on the West Coast. They had taught a course up there at Friday Harbor, this extension section of the University of Washington. For some strange reason or other, Dr. Chamberlain had taken a fancy to me. And when I had come to… He was recommending someone to fill a certain vacancy at the biological supply house in Chicago, he had recommended me. That was why I was there. Dr. Chamberlain. And I was still living in his home.

We went home. We ate dinner on the way. Of course, the house was empty. I spent the afternoon in getting settled. We were having to take all of our meals out. Around about quarter past seven, I was starved.

Dr. Chamberlain called down the hall and said, “Get your hat and purse. It’s time to go.” Well, I knew it had been time to go for a long time. So I got my hat and my purse and we were on our way.

And I was just thinking of all the wonderful things I’d like to have to eat. We hadn’t gone very far when he pulled out his watch and he looked at it and… He said, “We’re going to have to hurry or we’ll be late.”

And I thought, “What? Late?” Chicago is a big bad city. To me, restaurants never closed. Along with other places. They never closed either. I couldn’t understand why we would be late. We walked on a bit and… finally, I asked the question.

I said, “Where are we going?” He said, “To church.” I kept still. That just isn’t an illustration of certain laws. You remember that one? An object at rest tends to remain at rest. An object in motion tends to remain in motion unless something else happens. Well, I was in motion. I remained in motion. Kept walking. I got down to the corner and he turned the corner and I thought, “Church, this is the one place where I’m not going.” And yet I had to go. I was already on the way. If he had told me we were going to church, I would have had a headache. At least that I had one. To me, the reason would have been adequate. Or the excuse adequate.

I would have said, “I’m too busy.” I would have said anything to have gotten out of going to church. I thought to myself, “Church? What do you know about church?” Never dawned on me he had ever stepped foot inside of a church. He was the most brilliant man I’d ever known. And of course, brilliant people didn’t go to churches.

I couldn’t see how they could believe something. Well, we kept walking. Finally, I said to him, “Well, what kind of a church is it?” He said, “Baptist.” Well, this friend of mine was a Baptist. And to me, she was the most fanatical individual imaginable. And here I was going to that kind of a place. And I thought, “Is he a Baptist too?” Well, we got inside the doors. Walked up the steps and just inside the doors, there was an awful hubbub.

He took me by the elbow and he steered me through the crowd and introduced me to his sister-in-law. And explained that I was the young lady that was coming from Seattle. The one you’d been telling them all about, there were lots of things about me he hadn’t known. He didn’t know that I didn’t go to church.

He didn’t have any idea about my ideas along that line. He introduced me to her and told her what a wonderful person I was. Then he said he was going on to Pittsburgh and I’d be left all alone and I didn’t know a soul in my city. Would she be so kind as to invite me out to dinner next Sunday? And she said yes, she’d be very happy to. And I said, “I’d be thrilled to come.” And then he went on. He said yes, he said you can pick her up here at church next Sunday and take her home with him.

When he found someone else, introduced me to them and said, “Will you invite her to supper next Sunday evening and then go to church afterwards?” And I said yes. And my head was twirling. And one night after another, he just steered me through that congregation that was just mixed up there in the back of the sanctuary and introduced me to all kinds of people. He found a Sunday school teacher. He said, I’d be in her Sunday school class and I’d be the most wonderful… attentive individual in the whole group and this, that, and the other thing. Well, when I sat down to listen to that sermon or that service that night, I thought, “Oh my.”

My head was whirling because that was the one place I wasn’t coming back to the next Sunday or the Sunday after and so on. I’d been tricked into going to church that Sunday. Never dawned on me that God had made me keep my promise. Of course, it wouldn’t have. To me, there was no God. Who do you suppose there was a preacher that night in that church?

The assistant pastor of that church. The minister was away. He’d been away for the summer. And the assistant had taken over. I sat there in the pew with Dr. Chamberlain and I listened to that preacher and I thought of all the stuff I ever heard in my life. That just about is as rank as the sermon I’d ever heard.

By the way, I owned as my husband in case somebody don’t know. Well, I listened to it. And I thought, “You hypocrite.” I thought, “You liar.” I’m not saying what else I thought. But I couldn’t understand how anyone would have as much nerve as to get up and say the things that he said. And it was just across the midway from the University of Chicago.

And the church was full of people and they looked like intelligent people. But I thought, “You can never tell by the looks.” I didn’t say anything to Dr. Chamberlain. After the service was over, of course, we met some more people. I found out in a hurry that Dr. Chamberlain had been a member of that church for 40 years.

And he’d held just about every office in that church except the preacher’s. He’d taught in the Sunday school. He’d been a deacon. He’d played the organ. He’d directed the choir. He’d done everything. And his greatest interest in life was what went on inside that church.

And botany, the thing that I thought was everything, so far as his life was concerned, why, that was his secondary. I found that out that night. And I thought, “I certainly misjudged you. I thought you were intelligent.” Of course, I decided he was intelligent in certain areas.

To me, he was still brilliant in the field of botany. We went home after the service was over. I met Roland at the door. I didn’t say what I thought. But I did think to myself, “I hope I never have to hear another Sunday evening service.” It was an evangelistic service. And he’d given the invitation. And he’d given that whole crowd of people the idea that there were people there that needed salvation. And that’s what he was offering them was salvation.

I asked Dr. Chamberlain what kind of service they had on Sunday mornings. He discovered it was a different type. I thought, well… Well, that week before he left town, I made up my mind I’d have to do at least one thing. I’d have to go to church at least Sunday mornings. I’d have to keep faith with him to that extent. I didn’t want to tell him what I thought about him. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I had just come to Chicago. I didn’t want to upset the apple cart.

But I knew I wasn’t going to those Sunday evening services. Oh, he had said that I’d be going to prayer meeting too. I declined that on the spot. As he was trying to make the appointments. None of that for me. I’d never seen any prayer answered. And people talked about prayers being answered. I taught it in Sunday school myself. Yet I’d never seen an answer. And if prayers were answered, of course I’d see it. And everyone else would too.

I’d been teaching those youngsters, “Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” And to me it was time to get honest. And teach only what you believed. Before he left, I asked him if he’d please write down the names and the addresses of the places where I would have to appear for dinner. And the people that I’d have to contact in church. Sunday mornings. And I asked him for the names and addresses so I could decline the invitations out to dinner on Sunday evenings. I’d have to get ready for Monday morning. That’s why I couldn’t go on Sunday evenings. That was my excuse.

When he was gone for that month, I did go to these different homes. Met some wonderful people. But I thought, “They’re all just foolish. And they’re all hypocrites anyway. They can’t believe this stuff.” And then Dr. and Mrs. Chamberlain came back. And they arrived in Chicago on a Saturday evening. They walked into the house and they were telling me all about the things that had happened that month. All about their daughter and all about their grandson. We talked late. He was one of the most wonderful storytellers. And he had all kinds of illustrations and stories to tell. Fascinating things. He sat up until midnight and all of a sudden he said, “It’s time to go to bed.” I didn’t tell him I wasn’t going to church tomorrow. But I thought, “I’ll tell him tomorrow morning.” They invited me to have breakfast with him. And we sat down at the table and it was the same thing all over again. He was doing the talking. After a while he pulled out that watch again and…

He said, “We have to hurry. It’s time for church.” And there wasn’t time to tell him then. I thought, well, I guess I can put up with it one time more. But this is the last time. I spent the previous Sunday afternoons, by the way, writing to this friend of mine out there in Washington. Since she had gotten me to promise to go to church on Sundays. She had broken that truce we had. Of course, I didn’t have to keep my part of the agreement either. I gave her almost a word-by-word report on the Sunday morning sermons I heard and a very vivid description of what I thought about them.

Well, it was too late to tell them then. We went to church that Sunday morning. We sat there in the usual place next to the back row. I was second from the end, Mrs. Chamberlain on one side of me and Dr. Chamberlain on the other. Of course, I’d said that I won’t believe these things. I can’t believe these things. They just aren’t so.

Besides, if they were so proven. To me, somewhere or other, somewhere or other, they could be proved either by taste or touch or smell or feel or something. Just show it if it’s so. What I couldn’t see, I wouldn’t believe.

But I went beyond where I should have gone. I did say, “It taint so.” That’s why I stopped being a scientist. I was not scientific at that point. I should not have said, “It taint so.” Just because I can’t believe it.

Well, the regular minister was back that Sunday. He had been in the pulpit there for 40 years. Everyone loved him. When they found out that there was a special anniversary that week, why, they made a special effort to make it the most wonderful service he had ever been a part of. And the place was full, downstairs and up in the balconies. Everyone there to greet him back on the first Sunday after his vacation. And of course they had a wonderful choir.

All of the preliminaries. And I thought, “When will this ever get over with?” And then he got up to preach. It was the first time I’d seen him. I was wondering just what it was that… how it was that he had managed to fool Dr. Chamberlain. What it was that Dr. Chamberlain was fascinated by. I finally decided it was his personality. Because he did have a winsome personality. And I thought he was getting by on that. And he more or less hypnotized the people so they couldn’t think straight. Well, Dr. Boynton was preaching. And it’s the strangest thing to happen. For an individual who will say that “I won’t believe what I can’t see. Or what I can’t hear. What I don’t experience, I won’t believe.” It’s a very strange thing for that kind of an individual, in that frame of mind, to be sitting in a morning worship service.

And all of a sudden become aware of the fact that… that church wasn’t full of people. Yet to know that Dr. Chamberlain was on one side, Mrs. Chamberlain on the other. The choir up there, the minister up there, and he was preaching, still preaching. To know all that was going on and yet not aware of people.

It was as if that place was empty. It was as if that place was filling with a light. I wondered where it came from. I wasn’t asleep. With one part of my mind I knew that I ought to be able to see and to hear.

And that was another part of my mind. There was something else. It was just crowding that out. All of that out. It seemed as if that light, somehow or other, was up in front more than anywhere else. And then it was as if there was nothing but light.

It was as if something was speaking and talking and something within me. Although I would say with my logical mind there is no God. Something was talking. And to me, I recognized it and I named it. It was as if God was talking. That which wasn’t.

It was as if God was telling me the reasons why He did exist. How He existed. All of these stories in the Old Testament that I’ve been laughing at. How they were all true. How you could believe them.

It was as if He was telling me the whole story clear on, down through to the days of Jesus. And of course to me, the biggest joke of all was the story they told about Jesus. How He is the Son of God. Born of a virgin.

I would have said, “I’ve had too many courses in biology to believe that. I know that isn’t so.” But even that. Jesus, the Son of God. I’ve heard many a minister bypass that one. For that matter, I haven’t heard very many of them be willing to stand up and say, “I believe that one too.” They just rationalize it and bypass it. It is as if God was revealing how that too was true. In a way in which I could believe it with a logical mind.

I think I might as well tell you how. I don’t know how much training you’ve had in some of these fields. The words kept coming over and over and over again to me: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Oh, I knew the scriptures. Some of them backwards as well as forwards.

Those words, “the only begotten Son.” And I thought, well why didn’t I ever hear that before? Why didn’t I ever see that before? The only begotten Son. All these years I’ve said, “Well if anyone could be begotten in that way, if anyone could be, why you know about it now. It would be happening now.” But of course take soul. You never hear about that anywhere else. But that only. The only one. I thought, why didn’t I ever read that before? Why didn’t I ever see it? I would have believed that. Just because no other illustrations anywhere. No one else had ever had such a thing as that happen. Or told about them. The only one. The only begotten of the Father.

And then I remembered one term that I’d run upon many, many times through the years. It’s a term you find in your… either your courses in botany or courses in zoology. The one term is parthenogenesis. How many of you have heard that term? How many of you know it? Now that I’m in the midst of it, I might as well finish the story. But it broke on me, the revelation that day. And it convinced me of a lot of other things that weren’t involved.

That term parthenogenesis. What it means is simply this. And you find it exhibited in different forms of early plant life and early animal life. You don’t find it in your higher plants or your higher animals. Oh, once in a while. But we call that a freak or something special. That’s not the usual thing. And we say it’s unexplainable, but there’s a good reason if you only knew it. Parthenogenesis. That’s when an egg cell starts to divide. All on its own. No explainable reason why.

And a new plant body or animal body is formed. No reason why. No explainable reason why. That term parthenogenesis is a very good term. And the people who are in that field just mention that one word and it’s acceptable. They know what you’re talking about. And I thought, “For heaven’s sake, parthenogenesis is the same thing all over again.”

What made it divide? Why, God, of course. What’s always made those things divide? Why, God, of course. No other explanation. And then that whole thing. Why, of course. The only begotten of the Father. And that complete story, right there in the book of Luke. Why, it was just as simple and believable as anything under the sun. More believable than things I had been believing. Well, that was one of the last walls to go down. Oh, there were a lot of other things that happened that Sunday morning.

When the service was over, I couldn’t have told you what the preacher had preached about. I had no idea. I never did have any idea. I didn’t hear any of it. But… I knew one thing when I walked down those steps. I knew this. But I could never again say, “What I cannot see, I will not believe. What I cannot hear, I will not believe. What I cannot touch, what I cannot taste, what I cannot believe, what I cannot believe. What I cannot believe, I will not believe.” I could never say that again.

For that matter, it had also dawned on me why I disbelieved. Why it was. That inability to say, “I’m wrong. I don’t understand. I don’t know all there is to know.” That’s why it all happened. And… at the end of that service, if I had had to choose which I would say was true, which I would say was reality, all of the things that I believed up until that morning, or what had happened that morning, I would have had to say, “What happened this morning? That’s true. The rest of it, I don’t know. And I don’t care. It isn’t so. It isn’t infallible.”

I know why people are atheists. I know too that people don’t always remain atheists. I know too that… to me, anything after that was reasonable. I went back to the Bible and… anything it said, it was so. And I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

And if that meant that I was sunk, well, I’ve been sunk ever since. I just hope I sink deeper. I know it’s true. The biggest miracle I ever experienced. I’d experienced no miracles up until then, but that was the biggest thing. And to me, in one sense, it’s still the biggest thing. That the Lord could convince me of His presence, of Himself, when I said there was no such thing. Goodness, He could do almost anything else. That was simple.

I’ve seen so much happen. Years ago, I would have said, following that old scientific training of… trend of thought. You know, they established scientific laws by saying, if a thing happens once… Oh, you’ve heard it. It’s an accident. Second time, a coincidence. Third time, maybe a coincidence. Maybe a fourth time, and so on.

But after a while, if the same thing keeps happening again, and again, and again, and it’s always the same thing, you’ve got to believe it. And you’ve got to believe it so. Then you say it’s a law. If it always seems to work out that way.

Then the man who says, “I’ve got to think this through,” he’ll believe it. I’ve turned it right around ever since that morning, that Sunday in October, 1928. I’ve turned it around. If a thing ever happens once, it can happen again. It doesn’t have to happen every time in order for me to believe it. It can happen again.

I may do something and may not know what I do, but if it happens, if I do the right thing the second time, it will happen again. And then I began looking at the promises. And comparing them to different chemical equations, different things I learned in the physics laboratory, and so on. Looking at those promises.

Take two parts of oxygen and one part of… two parts of hydrogen, one part of oxygen, you’ve got water. You take that water, you know you’ve got… two parts of oxygen, one part… two parts of hydrogen, one part of oxygen. You know that.

You know it’s there. You have the answer. You know the conditions have been met. You may not know what those conditions are, but you keep working. You’ll find out what they are. And of course the scriptures are full of the conditions.

We meet the conditions, and the answer follows. We don’t have to worry about that. Keep perpetually putting that hydrogen and that oxygen together, and you’ll always get water. Don’t be concerned about that end of it. That’s God’s business. Our business is to do what He tells us to do.

To meet the conditions. He takes care of it, He doesn’t say. And of course, along with it all, I remembered very distinctly that in chemistry we had some unknowns. They aren’t the same unknowns that they have now. I can’t even talk chemistry anymore. Neither can I talk physics. Things have happened since 1928.

But at that time we had two unknowns. There are all kinds of unknowns. And we have to take the unknowns into consideration. There might be a thousand things we don’t know. A thousand factors. But take care of the ones we do.

Keeping as close to that word as we can. It’s all right there. And if it doesn’t work, it isn’t because God isn’t going to do His part or hasn’t done His part. It’s because somewhere along the line, we’ve not taken everything into consideration. And not done all of our parts.

Of course, you can imagine what the end of that was. Perhaps I better say a bit about Rowan. It didn’t take too long after that to decide he wasn’t a hypocrite. For that matter, that was all taken care of that day. It didn’t take too long to decide that all of these preachers, they’re on the right track. I was on the wrong track. They’re not the hypocrites. They do have the key. They do know the way. It is it.

Following Sunday, I was baptized. Another phase of the story. I won’t tell what led up to that or the way in which it worked out. Yet it was equally miraculous. But the little incident amused me so that I could hardly keep from just bursting out in laughter.

Of course, I’m a Baptist. It was immersion. I was immersed in the evening service. And we had a guest choir that night. It was a Negro choir. And as the minister led me out of the baptistry, the choir burst out singing, and I’ve laughed every time I’ve heard the hymn since. The hymn that they were singing was “The Fight Is On.”

A Lime He Soared His Brave and True, and so on. Just one thing more. That Sunday, after that experience in church, that Sunday afternoon, I sat down and wrote a letter to this friend of mine out west telling her what had happened.

Telling her what I now knew. And I knew that I had never known anything else. Two days later, I had a letter from her that was written before I wrote my letter. And before she received my letter too. And I’m awfully glad it was.

Her letter told me how she had gone to her prayer meeting the Wednesday before, in this little Baptist church up in Anacortes, Washington. Told them about this friend of hers who had been writing her letters from Chicago. And of all the terrible things I was saying in those letters, and I was.

And she asked them to pray for me. She said, “I haven’t any idea how God can possibly break through. But something’s got to happen.” She was heartbroken. Of course, I thought I was happy. She told me that in the letter.

She said that she would probably wish that she had torn up the letter after she dropped it into the mailbox, but she was going to tell me anyway. She wanted me to know that she had gone to the prayer meeting about it.

Well, Chamberlain had a part in it. Mary had a part in it. That prayer group had a part in it. Well, there were lots of other things that had parts in it. Of course, through the years, I wondered why it happened.

Because it was one thing. Because it was one thing I did not want. And of course, through the years, I told people, “If with all your heart ye truly seek Him, He shall ever surely find you.” I know it’s far better to seek.

God says, if you do seek, you will find. But I do know that there is such a thing as not seeking. And yet, finally.