Mr. Oursler, as can be judged from the title of his book, does not hold to ihe Christi ith; he had been brought up: in it, but early fell away and apparently did not make much effort to get back again. His Sunday school and his membership of a Young People's Union had made of him, he says, a hypocrite, a Pharisee and a whited sepulchre. He drank, gambled and gallivanted as often as he could afford it and his conscience did not reprove him:
I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ but I was not saved. Instead I had a good time and enjoyed all the amusements that saved people gave until, at last, I gave up believing. It Was natural to do so, for I had begun to read and think. I read history, comparative religion and science; learned about rational objections inherent in the irrational nonsense of the two testaments; of the pompous cruelty and injustice of certain Bible ethics, I promptüy, gave it all up with the savage disillusion of a young man and went my, way with a new sense of peace.
From which it appears that Mr. Oursler suffered from a puritanical "upbringing, a supposition that is confirmed by his reference to a "blue-law Sabbath." At any rate it is obvious that respectability had come upon him by the time that he set out for a trip to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean countries, taking in the Holy for on that trip went with him his wife, his small son and daughter and their governess.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.