ugh my arduous and ceaseless labors, and
my varied and exhausting trials, without apparent injury to my health.
At length, however, continual excitement, intense thought, ceaseless
anxiety, the foul air of close and crowded rooms, perpetual travelling,
loss of sleep, lack of domestic comforts, unhealthy food, and trials of
other kinds without end, so exhausted me, that I found it difficult to
rise from my chair, or to steady myself on my feet. To walk was quite a
task,--a really painful one. I had a difficulty in putting one foot
before the other. It was a labor to drag myself along. A walk of two or
three miles quite wearied me. And when I got to my journey's end, my
lungs lacked power to utter words; my brain lacked energy to supply
thoughts; and lecturing and preaching became a weariness. When I sat
down to write, my pen seemed reluctant to touch the paper. My mind
shrank back from its task. In my ignorance of the laws of life, I
charged myself with idleness, and tried to spur myself on to renewed
activity. The attempt was vain. One afternoon I ventured to lie down and
treat myself to an after-dinner nap. I slept three hours. I had no
engagement that night, and feeling still unaccountably sleepy, I
slipped off to bed about eight o'clock. I slept till nearly nine next
morning. I slept an hour or two more after dinner. At night I slept
about ten hours more. Next day I felt as if my strength was running
over. I could do anything. My pen seemed to point to the paper of
itself, as if anxious to be writing. Walking was a pleasure. I could
preach or lecture without effort. Words, thoughts, and feelings were all
at hand to do my bidding. What I had charged on myself as idleness, was
strengthlessness, the result of sheer exhaustion.

I had suffered so much from the intolerance of my old colleagues, that I
now resolved to be subject to no authority whatever but God and my own
conscience. And I kept my resolution. I would neither rule nor be ruled.
The extreme of priestly tyranny, from which I had suffered so
grievously, had begotten in me the extreme of religious license. I have
seen since, that a man may have too much liberty, as well as too little;
too little restraint as well as too much; and that a church without
authority and discipline must inevitably lose itself in confusion and
ruin. We are none of us fit for unlimited liberty: we all need the
supervision, and counsels, and admonitions, of our Christian brethren.

Aft