e cause what it may--without his feelings and his
conduct being affected by such homage. Nature had endowed me, if not
with eloquence, at least with considerable fluency of speech; and as
my natural diffidence--which at first was great--wore away, whether by
extempore prayer or seasonable exhortation, the effects I produced
exceeded those, the fruits of zeal, of those about me. I became
admired as one more than usually gifted, and was gradually exalted
into a leader. The occasional tendency to gloom and nervous
irritability to which my temperament inclined me, was yet only marked
enough to throw no unbecoming seriousness and gravity into the
features of so young an apostle. It was strange to see persons of all
ages and both sexes admiring at the innate seriousness of so early a
preacher, and owning the sometimes really fervid earnestness of my
appeals, my warnings, or my denunciations. I began more and more to
feel myself in a station above that of my fellows, and that I had now
a character to sustain before the eyes of men. Young as I was, could
it well have been otherwise? Let me, however, speak the truth.
Spiritual pride at last crept upon me. Devotion by insensible degrees
became tainted with self, and the image of God was, I fear, sometimes
forgotten for that of His frail and unworthy creature. True it was, I
still, without slackening, spoke comfort to the ear of suffering or
repentant sin--I still exhorted the weak and strengthened the strong.
I still warned the besotted in corruption that the fruits of vice,
blossom as she will, are but like those of the shores of the Dead Sea,
seeming gay, but only emptiness and bitter ashes. But alas! the bearer
of the blessed message spoke as if the worm that bore, could add grace
to the tidings he conveyed to his fellow-worm. I was got upon a
precipice, but knew it not--that of self-worship and conceit--the
worst creature-idolatry. It was bitterly revealed to me at last.

About the year 1790, at the Assizes for the county of which the town
of C----r is the county town, was tried and convicted a wretch guilty
of one of the most horrible murders upon record. He was a young man,
probably (for he knew not his own years) of about twenty-two years of
age--one of those wandering and unsettled creatures, who seem to be
driven from place to place, they know not why. Without home, without
name, without companion, without sympathy, without sense,--heartless,
friendless, idealess, almost