Work of grace at L---- --The German professor--The wealthy young lady--“Don’t be offended”--A distinguished civilian 188
“It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” In all my connection with the scenes here truthfully described, as in the training and discipline of earlier years through which I was brought into them, I have been _led in a way that I knew not_.
I was born on the border of Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, within the wilds of the vast range of the Alleghanies, where the howl of the wolf, the scream of the panther, and the Indian’s tomahawk were my dread. In infancy my father died, and a few years later my pious mother. But God raised up a foster-mother, and in her family an intelligent Scotch female teacher, who made me her special charge during my first year at school. Here, in connection with faithful preaching from a tent in the woods on the Sabbath, and instruction in the log-cabin day-schools, I received those rudiments of education, and was indoctrinated in that sound system of faith and morals from which “old Scotia’s grandeur springs.”
Conscious of my ruin by sin and need of the “new birth,” as set forth in old standard works of Flavel and Boston which I read, for three years from ten to thirteen, I was often deeply impressed as to the state of my soul. I attended constantly on preaching and the monthly examinations, committed to memory catechisms and scriptures, and wrestled with God in prayer that I might be truly converted and become a minister of the gospel; and sometimes I indulged a trembling hope in Christ.
But among the snares and flatteries of ungodly companions, my alarm and faint hopes of salvation gradually subsided. I was at length led to show my _manhood_ by tobacco-chewing, card-playing, and even profanity. Next I was enticed to read works on Universalism, and for four years sought to stifle conscience by arguments to prove that all will be saved. Yet a still small voice was whispering, “The soul that sinneth it shall die;” and though jovial in company, when alone hell would seem to flash up before me in all its horrors. Two great powers were striving in my heart: one to lead me into deeper sin; the other crying, “Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?” At seventeen I went with an ungodly young man into the then wilderness of Central Ohio, where for half a year I heard no sermon, hunted on the Sabbath, threw off restraints, and as it were dared the vengeance of God. Oh how astonishing the mercy of God, to continue to strive with such a rebel!