s a Christian. When he actually came to take
the step he wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling
more; and afterward he walked home crying and wishing he knew what he
ought to do and how he ought to do it. Yet he became one of the
greatest religious leaders of his time.

From the "Biography of Henry Ward Beecher," by W. C. Beecher and
Scoville. C. L. Webster Co., 1888.

"If I had had the influence of a discreet, sympathetic Christian person
to brood over and help and encourage me, I should have been a Christian
child from my mother's lap, I am persuaded; but I had no such
influence. The influences of a Christian family were about me, to be
sure, but they were generic; and I revolved these speculative
experiences, my strong religious habitudes taking the form of
speculation all through my childhood. I recollect that from the time
that I was about ten years old I began to have periods when my
susceptibilities were so profoundly impressed that the outward
manifestations of my nature were changed. I remember that when my
brother George--who was next older than I, and who was beginning to be
my helpful companion, to whom I looked up--became a Christian, being
awakened and converted in college, it seemed as though a gulf had come
between us, and as though he was a saint on one side of it while I was
a little reprobate on the other side. It was awful to me. If there
had been a total eclipse of the sun I should not have been in more
profound darkness outwardly than I was inwardly. I did not know whom
to go to; I did not dare to go to my father; I had no mother that I
ever went to at such a time; I did not feel like going to my brother;
and I did not go to anybody. I felt that I must try to wrestle out my
own salvation.

"Once, on coming home, I heard the bell toll, and I learned that it was
for the funeral of one of my companions with whom I had been accustomed
to play, and with whom I had grown up. I did not know that he had been
sick, but he had dropped into eternity; and the ringing, swinging,
booming of that bell, if it had been the sound of an angel trumpet of
the last day, would not have seemed to me more awful. I went into an
ecstasy of anguish. At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and
prayed. There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the
woodhouse, in the carriage-house, or in the barn that was not a scene
of my crying and praying. It was piteous that I should be in