al
affection, which was intensified to an extraordinary degree in the
case of George and Isaac, yet the unfitness of the latter for
ordinary trade grew increasingly evident, and to himself painfully
so. The truth is, that his ideas of conducting business would have
led to the distribution of profits rather than to their accumulation.
If he could make the bake-house and the shop into a school for the
attainment of an ideal that had begun to hover, half-veiled, in the
air above him, he saw his way to staying where he was; but not
otherwise.

[* I Timothy 6:8.]

In the autumn of 1842 there came upon him certain singular
intensifications of this disquiet with himself and his surroundings.
In the journal begun the following spring, he so frequently and so
explicitly refers to these occurrences, now speaking of them as
"dreams which had a great effect upon my character"; and again,
specializing and fully describing one, as something not dreamed, but
seen when awake, "which left an indelible impression my mind,"
weaning it at once and for ever from all possibility of natural love
and marriage, that the integrity of any narrative of his life would
demand some recognition of them. His own comment, in the diary, will
not be without interest and value, both as bearing on much that
follows, and as containing all that need be said in explanation of
the present reference to such experiences:

"April 24, 1843.--. . . How can I doubt these things? Say what may
be said, still they have to me a reality, a practical good bearing on
my life. They are impressive instructors, whose teachings are given
in such a real manner that they influence me whether I would or not.
Real pictures of the future, as actual, nay, more so than my present
activity. If I should not follow them I am altogether to blame. I can
have no such adviser upon earth; none could impress me so strongly,
with such peculiar effect, and at the precise time most needed. Where
my natural strength is not enough, I find there comes foreign aid to
my assistance. Is the Lord instructing me for anything? I had, six
months ago, three or more dreams which had a very great effect upon
my character; they changed it. They were the embodiment of my present
in a great degree. Last evening's was a warning embodiment of a false
activity and its consequence, which will preserve me, under God's
assistance, from falling. . . . I see by it where I am; it has made
me purer."

In addition t