count of the pleasant and
unlooked-for interview which he had had with the writer. I received the
letter, and the interesting story with which it was accompanied, with
the greatest astonishment and pleasure. I wrote to the Doctor,
reciprocating his expressions of kindness, and making the best returns I
could for the valuable present of his works. The result was a
correspondence, which has continued to the present time. The
correspondence led to interviews, in which the Doctor exhibited, in a
very striking manner, the graces and virtues that adorn the Christian
character. We talked, we read, we sang, we prayed together, and gave God
thanks, with tears of gratitude, for all the blessings of His boundless
love.

The effect of this kindness on the part of Dr. Cooke was, not only to
free my mind from any remains of hurtful feelings towards him, but to
dispose me, and enable me, to review the claims of Christianity and the
Bible in a spirit of greater fairness and candor, and so to make it
possible for me to become, what I had long believed I never could
become, a hearty believer in the religion of Christ.

CHAPTER XIX.

SOME OF THE STEPS BY WHICH I CAME TO FAITH IN CHRIST.

I am not certain that I can state the exact process by which I passed
from doubt and unbelief to faith in Christ, but the following, I
believe, is very near the truth.

1. There was, first, a sense of the cheerlessness of unbelief--the
sadness and the sorrow resulting from the loss of trust in God and hope
of immortality, and from the wretched prospect of a return to utter
nothingness.

2. Then came the distressing feeling of inability to comfort my
afflicted or dying friends--my utter helplessness in the presence of
sorrow, grief and agony.

3. And then I found myself unable to account for the wonderful marks of
design appearing in nature, and especially in my own body, without the
acknowledgment of an intelligent Deity. The wonderful perfection and
beauty of a flower or a feather would confound me; while mysterious
adaptations in my own frame would fill me with amazement. Darwin's
theory of development relieved me for a time; but I soon came to see
that some of his explanations of natural phenomena were erroneous, and
that none of his facts proved the truth of his theory. Still later I
found that Darwin himself acknowledged that the evidences of design in
the methods by which certain species of plants were fertilized, were not
only ove