before; I did not know where I was actually going; my mother had told me of her friends and their home; and she had instructed me to the full extent of my capacity to bear; what she said I was recalling to my mind, and was pondering upon the word of truth which had been spoken to me, which I believed, because I was unable to gainsay or resist it; but I had not yet known its power to rule, and guide, and direct my life, because I had not tried it, and I was ignorant of any internal influence beyond what is produced by the presentation of external objects, appealing through the senses. This feeling of

mine, like unto a dream, was something strange, and it arrested my attention. A dream is the only thing I can compare it to, for as you know, the mental and physical powers are not in operation when dreams disturb a man's spirit, so that whatever occasions the working of the spirit of a man when he is asleep, it is not any communication made to him through his mental faculties or physical powers. Had this dream concerned something of which I had been hearing, and been so exactly like it as to prove it to be the workings of my own spirit, developing by its own powers views of knowledge already possessed; or had the dream been something so foolish and ridiculous as to be entirely opposed to my common sense; or had it been a dream encouraging to what I knew to be wrong, or dissuading from what I knew to be right, I would not have paid any attention to it. I had often heard by the hearing of the ear of heaven and happiness, and I had often heard about the gift of the Holy Spirit, but some of the men who preached these things told me, that if a bishop or a priest who could prove his spiritual descent from the apostles, sprinkled me with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost, I was renewed then and there by the Spirit; and this they called baptismal regeneration. You know that our father and mother on earth took me when a child to church, and I was so baptized with water by an episcopally ordained priest, and according to these men's teaching, I was regenerated in baptism, received the Spirit, and was sealed an heir of heavenly happiness. I was very early sent to be educated and trained; my chief instructor in spiritual things was a catechism, which was lauded so highly in my hearing, that I preferred what it said to my Bible; and could I now feel shame, I would blush to tell you, that the effect produced within me was a distaste for the Scriptures altogether; for when I went to my Bible to seek for any information, I searched in vain, for what I then regarded as the peculiar excellence of catechisms and church standards, a statement of truth in distinct propositions, which required no mental labour in attaining the knowledge of them; so that while I did not deny that I should search the Scriptures for myself, and while my lot was cast among those who made it their boast that they judged each man for himself in matters of religion, I found the practical effect upon my mind to be, that I could not be troubled thinking for myself; and I thought it all the more unnecessary, seeing so many excellent and good men, whose praise was in all the churches, had already thought so much upon the Scriptures, and had drawn up such voluminous confessions of faith, church standards, and catechisms; so that when any controversy or difficulty arose, I thought it was going to the law and to the testimony for light and guidance, when I went to church standards or canons. The precept taught by the practice of my teachers was, that I should do so; and I recollect well, that if any

man, especially if he were a minister, ventured to say that he had searched the Scriptures, and found something that contradicted the standards of the churchbeing what his friends called a conscientious man, and a contender for the truth-and what his enemies called a contentious man, and disobedient to ecclesiastical authority-if he said he would not, or could not subscribe to the standards of the church, but appealed to Scripture in support of his views; if he was already ordained, they would not hear him, but would judge him by their standards, and pronounce sentence accordingly; if he was asking for ordination, he could only obtain it by his unconditional subscription to the standards of the church. I thus learned to oppose and exalt human tradition above the Scriptures: this I found to be a serious practical evil; for while the word of God said, "prove all things, hold fast that which is good," I saw nothing to prove; I got my faith stereotpyed from the minds of other men; and when I found learned divines conducting their controversies within their own denominations, by appealing only to church standards, I reasonably concluded I was quite safe in holding by them too. Had I even been inclined to prove the standards correct, by a comparison with Scripture, I had no encouragement to set about such a work. My teachers did not say their standards were infallible; neither did they say, you must not search the Scriptures for yourself: they taught me the very opposite; but it so happened that their example made a stronger impression upon me than their precept; and when I saw them always appealing to standards, and not to the Scriptures, the effect produced upon me was a very natural one-I disregarded their precept, and followed their example; and such was my blindness, I did

Had

not see the grievous inconsistency, either of their conduct or my own. I came to mature years; I was trained to correct views of public morality, and was studious in my abstinence from what the world called vice; but I was in reality deceiving myself, for I was the chief of sinners, and I knew it not. I had a strong opinion of the virtue of my baptismal regeneration by the hands of a man; and yet I wonder I could have been so stupid as to believe, not merely a thing without evidence, but a thing against evidence: in short, I believed what my experience told me was a lie. Now, you cannot understand these things, except you experience them; nevertheless, I shall continue my narration, and perhaps you may be made one with me. You may ask in amazement, how could these things be? I the intellect, reasoned and proved every thing I believed. I the body, the physical power, saw with my eye, and I believed. any man said to me, two and two are five; how could I have believed him, when I knew two and two were four? No argument, no demonstration, could make me say that I believed what I thus knew to be an error. And if another man had said, look at that object; it is a ship lying in a river: I looked, and behold it was a house, one of a number in a street: how could I believe that house to be a ship, when I looked and saw with my eyes that it was a house. I assure you I am surprised to hear you say you believed what was contrary to your experience; I should like your explanation of this mystery. Well, I grant your astonishment is not without cause, but I will be candid with you, and I must acknowledge that I believed myself to be a christian, not because I had the least possible evidence that I was one, but because my father assured me I had been baptized, and the

church taught me that I was regenerated in baptism; the effect was, I knew not the power of religion, neither was in the least degree concerned about it. I sometimes thought christianity a very unmeaning and idle thing; at other times I thought it a very easy religion, for when conscience troubled me I was glad to flee to my baptismal regeneration; and although I never knew it to give me one ray of hope, or light, or comfort, yet while the storm lasted, having no other shelter, I fled to it; and the very fact that I did so was an evidence that I was wrong, if I had just taken time to consider it; for any thing without a man can never be, to himself, an evidence of a thing within him, which he does not possess; so that my trusting in the rite of baptism was to myself, had I been wise enough to reflect upon it, an alarming proof that I had not within me the thing of which baptism is but a sign. When you, my soul and body, and I my spirit, first quarrelled and began to live in a state of open warfare with each other, I was very sad and much grieved. Day after day passed over us, sometimes there was a temporary lull of the troubles which our disagreement occasioned; but I found that unless I gave you entirely your own way-and you claimed and insisted upon your right to be my master-there was no hope of reconciliation. We began to be very unequally yoked together. Your lusts, and appetites, and passions, and desires, you were determined to gratify. There was a growing knowledge in my spirit that what you were so fully bent upon was not right, and because I sometimes ventured just to indicate in gentle terms that I thought you were wrong, you became more furious, and in spite of me, and to an extent hitherto unknown to us, you began to wallow in the mire of moral pollution. I began