ity and through the seminary like
an epidemic, attacking in its worst form the most susceptible. Owing to
my gloomy Calvinistic training in the old Scotch Presbyterian church,
and my vivid imagination, I was one of the first victims. We attended
all the public services, beside the daily prayer and experience meetings
held in the seminary. Our studies, for the time, held a subordinate
place to the more important duty of saving our souls.

To state the idea of conversion and salvation as then understood, one
can readily see from our present standpoint that nothing could be more
puzzling and harrowing to the young mind. The revival fairly started,
the most excitable were soon on the anxious seat. There we learned the
total depravity of human nature and the sinner's awful danger of
everlasting punishment. This was enlarged upon until the most innocent
girl believed herself a monster of iniquity and felt certain of eternal
damnation. Then God's hatred of sin was emphasized and his
irreconcilable position toward the sinner so justified that one felt
like a miserable, helpless, forsaken worm of the dust in trying to
approach him, even in prayer.

Having brought you into a condition of profound humility, the only
cardinal virtue for one under conviction, in the depths of your despair
you were told that it required no herculean effort on your part to be
transformed into an angel, to be reconciled to God, to escape endless
perdition. The way to salvation was short and simple. We had naught to
do but to repent and believe and give our hearts to Jesus, who was ever
ready to receive them. How to do all this was the puzzling question.
Talking with Dr. Finney one day, I said:

"I cannot understand what I am to do. If you should tell me to go to the
top of the church steeple and jump off, I would readily do it, if
thereby I could save my soul; but I do not know how to go to Jesus."

"Repent and believe," said he, "that is all you have to do to be happy
here and hereafter."

"I am very sorry," I replied, "for all the evil I have done, and I
believe all you tell me, and the more sincerely I believe, the more
unhappy I am."

With the natural reaction from despair to hope many of us imagined
ourselves converted, prayed and gave our experiences in the meetings,
and at times rejoiced in the thought that we were Christians--chosen
children of God--rather than sinners and outcasts.

But Dr. Finney's terrible anathemas on the depravity