Excerpt from The Cosmic God: A Fundamental Philosophy in Popular Lectures
This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powders of darkness. My wife, my dearly beloved companion in this eventful life, the mother of my children, the faithful partner of my joys and my sufferings, was prostrated with an incurable disease. For nearly two years she lived the life of a shadow, without affection or clear consciousness, no more herself than the ruin is the castle. I prayed, I wept, I mourned, I despaired; and yet my cup of woe was not full. A feeling which I can not describe, in clashing conflict with the above, against which my sense of duty rebelled, and my better nature continually and forcibly remonstrated, overwhelmed me so irresistably, with such inexpressible violence, that I was drifting and whirling about in a roaring current of lacerating contradictions, tormenting self-accusations bordering on self contempt.
Ruthless attacks upon my character, of restless assailants, from the camp of implacable foes, embittered my joyless days. My energies failed. Insanity or suicide appeared inevitable. In this state of mind, the Satan of Doubt persecuted me with all his furious demons. My convictions were uprooted, and my faith was shaken; I was myself no longer. Once, at the midnight hour, in a state of indifference and stupor, I opened the Bible, and perchance I read:
"Unless thy law had been my delights, I should long since have been lost in my affliction." (Psalms 119, 92.)
It struck me forcibly: "There is the proper remedy for all afflictions." When those ancient Hebrews spoke of the law of God, they meant the whole of it revealed in God's words and works. Research, science, philosopy, deep and perplexing, problems most intricate and propositions most complicated, I thought, like the rabbis of the talmud, must be the proper remedy for all maladies of the heart and reason. I plunged headlong into the whirlpool of philosophy, and, I believe, to have found many a gem in the fathomless deep.
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