He was getting old before his years justified it.
Why should he, a minister of the word of God, be so easily moved by strange religious ideas?
Faintly as if from some distant, mostly forgotten past, there came to him this idea, that the truth, the whole, clean, simple truth as it exists in Christ Jesus had been told him, and he had rejected it.

Why he had done this was not clear to him.

He seemed to have lived in periods of alternating darkness and light.

Then later, he had come in contact with so-called "Mormonism." Strange to say, its teachings had the same ring as that which he had heard before; but this time he rejected it because of its evil name.

Once again, a little later, these same doctrines had come to him, but they were not welcomed when he learned that those who taught them and lived them were simple, ofttimes uneducated people, usually called the "scum" of the earth.
The Rev.Mr.Strong had actually given up his pastorship in two places, moving westward until he reached Kansas City .-- Here for a number of years, he had experienced peace, a sort of indifferent peace, he admitted, due more to callousness of soul than to anything else.