while absorbed in solicitude for others, she
began herself to question its reality. "For some months I had no hope
that I was a Christian, and _pride_ made me go on just as if I felt
myself perfectly safe. Nothing could at that time have made me willing
to have any eye a witness to my daily struggles." And yet she "often
longed for the sympathy and assistance of Christian friends," and to her
unwillingness to confide in them she afterwards attributed much of the
suffering that followed. "I do not know exactly how I passed out of that
season, but my school commenced in April, and I became so interested in
it that I had less time to think of and to watch myself. The next winter
most of my scholars were deeply impressed by divine things, and, of
course, I could not look on without having my own heart touched. It was
my privilege to spend many delightful weeks in watching the progress
of minds earnestly seeking the way of life and early consecrating
themselves to their Saviour." [1] But after a while a severe reaction
set in and in the course of the summer she became careless in her
religious habits, shrank from the Lord's table as a "place of absolute
torture," and while spending a fortnight in Boston in the fall, entirely
omitted all exercises of private devotion.

She had now reached a crisis which was to decide her course for life.
During the winter of 1839-40, she passed through very deep and harrowing
exercises of soul. Her spiritual nature was shaken to its foundation,
and she could say with the Psalmist, _Out of the depths have I cried
unto Thee, O Lord._ For several months she was in a state similar
to that which the old divines depict so vividly as being "under
conviction." Her sense of sin, and of her own unworthiness in the
sight of God, grew more and more intense and oppressive. At times she
abandoned all hope, accused herself of having played the hypocrite, and
fancied she was given over to hardness of heart. At length she sought
counsel of her pastor and confided to him her trouble, but he "did not
know exactly what to do with me." In the midst of her distress, and as
its effect, no doubt, she was taken ill and confined to her room, where
in solitude she passed several weeks seeking rest and finding none.
"Sometimes I tried to pray, but this only increased my distress and
made me cry out for annihilation to free me from the agony which seemed
insupportable." With a single interval of comparative indifference,