Publisher's Synopsis
The substance of what is written in this book has been given on several occasions in the form of sermons or lectures. On each occasion they met with such hearty commendation and requests that they be written and published that they might have a wider circulation, that I have been induced to undertake it. It is in no sense a treatise on controverted theological questions; although 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. 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. Dr. George T. Ashley was a Schoolteacher & Methodist Circuit Rider who was brought up in a primitive Baptist church in Mississippi. He professed "conversion," joined the church and was baptized by immersion at a revival meeting held during the summer when he was 15. He was intensely interested in the salvation of his schoolmates and felt the call of God upon his life. His pastor and neighbor provided the means for him to go to a Baptist College for two years. As for the rest of his education, he said he obtained it, as Ralph Parlett once put it, in the great "University of Hard Knocks."
