experiencing evolution 217fossils,stripped of mere theories, splendidly refute this evolutionary theory of the
invariable order of the fossils,which is the very backbone of the evolution doctrine.”
This discovery not only resolved his intellectual crisis but determined his future
course. Believing that he had found a fatal flaw in the logic of evolutionary
geology, he grew increasingly convinced that God wanted him “to enter this
unworked field; accordingly I threw myself into it with all the energy I pos-
sessed, constantly asking and receiving special help from the guiding and en-
lightening Spirit of God.” Responding to this call not only satisfied his spiritual
needs, but also allowed him to fulfill his dream of becoming a writer.^40
Price completed his first antievolution book,Outlines of Modern Christianity
and Modern Science, in 1902, but instead of elation came desperation, as a
sense of failure engulfed him. In the spring of that year he abandoned teaching
in New Brunswick to become an Adventist evangelist on Prince Edward Island.
His experiment in the pulpit proved disastrous, as did as brief stint as the
administrator of small boarding academy. Thoroughly discouraged and driven
by guilt to earn a living for his wife and three children, he returned in the
summer of 1904 to the one job that had brought him a measure of success:
selling religious books. But as he pedaled his bicycle over the rough roads of
eastern Canada, he continued to dream of a literary career, “the thing for which
I am best fitted and which I thoroughly enjoy above everything else.” He had
tried various lines of church work only to find “black, dismal Failure” mocking
him at every turn. By late summer he had grown so depressed by his situation
that he was contemplating suicide. However, out of consideration for his family
he decided instead to leave church employment and head for New York City
to try his hand at writing “hack stuff for the Metropolitan newspapers and
magazines.” If life did not improve in the city, he planned to sell his watch,
buy a revolver, and rid the world “of another useless, good-for-nothing man.”^41
In the city his circumstances only worsened. Unable to find steady work,
he suffered unspeakable privations—and the torment of knowing that his fam-
ily was “destitute and almost starving” back in Canada. Since his conversion
to Adventism he had derived strength from his religious faith, but now in his
neediest hour he quit even attending church. His wife, fearing the worst, wrote
to church headquarters in Takoma Park, Maryland, begging for help for her
husband. Moved by the family’s plight, the president of the church personally
offered the estranged worker a temporary construction job. Price gratefully
accepted the offer, noting that he was willing to go anywhere and do anything,
“even if it means hard manual labor.”^42
By 1906, Price, still “heartbroken” over his failure in life, was living in
southern California and working as a handyman at the Adventists’ Loma Linda
Sanitarium. That year he published a slim volume entitledIllogical Geology:
The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory, in which he confidently offered a
$1,000 reward “to any who will, in the face of the facts here presented, show
me how to prove that one kind of fossil is older than another.” In brief, he