“At other times it would come in this shape: I had probably been reprimanded for a misdemeanor or a delinquency, or something of that sort. I used to be melancholy and to sit in judgment upon myself; and I remember thinking, ‘Well, it is no use for me to try to be a good boy’—not a saintly boy; that sort did not abound where I was born, and I was certainly no exception to the average run. I don’t think there are many of that kind outside of Sunday-school books. Judged by the ordinary standard, I was a very good boy. I had no vices, and no objectionable tendencies except those which sprang from robust health, buoyant spirits, and immense nerve resources. But I thought I was a base sinner. The pulpit represented all men as being sinners, and I accepted it absolutely and literally. I thought I was an awful transgressor; every little fault seemed to make a dreadful sin; and I would say to myself, ‘There! I am probably one of the reprobate. I have tried to be good, but I am going down. The probability is, I am not one of the elect; and what is the use of my trying? If I am not fore-ordained to be saved there is no chance for me, and I may as well go by the wholesale as by the retail.’ So sometimes on the one side and sometimes on the other these thoughts wrought upon me. Not once or twice merely, but many times, they passed through my mind. They were the sub-base, as it were, of my life. I think it was a period of fifteen or twenty years before I got relief from that undertone. It had some advantages and not a few disadvantages. “If I had had the influence of a discreet, sympathetic Christian person to brood over and help and encourage me, I should have been a Christian child from my mother’s lap, I am persuaded; but I had no such influence. The influences of a Christian family were about me, to be sure, but they were generic; and I revolved in these speculative experiences, my strong religious habitudes taking the form of speculation all through my childhood. I recollect that from the time that I was about ten years old I began to have periods when my susceptibilities were so profoundly impressed that the outward manifestations of my nature were changed. I remember that when my brother George—who was next older than I, and who was beginning to be my helpful companion, to whom I looked up—became a Christian, being awakened and converted in college, it seemed as though a gulf had come between us, and as though he was a saint on one side of it while I was a little reprobate on the other side. It was awful to me. If there had been a total eclipse of the sun I should not have been in more profound darkness outwardly than I was inwardly. I did not know whom to go to; I did not dare to go to my father; I had no mother that I ever went to at such a time; I did not feel like going to my brother; and I did not go to anybody. I felt that I must try to wrestle out my own salvation.