"I remember well coming home one night from a ball, which, by my journal, I find to be on the 25th January, when, as I wrote at that time, I was more miserable than ever I was in that way. I went to bed, and heard a noise like a creak in the ceiling of my room. I felt a wish that it would break through and crush me. How I used to wish at that time I had the sort of bold, firm heart which appeared through some of the young manly faces which I used daily to meet--to whom low spirits was a thing unknown. I knew not that I was quarrelling with the most choice of God's mercies to me, without which I should probably have been irrevocably lost. I still, to this day, am used to the visits of my feelings of dejection, but, thank God, I know better how to receive them; and, far from wishing them away, I rather fear their departure, and desire they may never leave me. For if I have within me one bright, heavenly desire, I owe it to these feelings, which first poisoned my pleasure in the world, and drew me at length to seek for it elsewhere, and now I wish never to have peace within my breast while one desire lives there for anything but God. "Yet that thought of wishing even to be crushed, that I might escape from my miserable feelings, shows how far I was at that time from knowing how great a cause for sorrow I really had in the state of my soul--which, if I had known it, must have driven away all imaginary griefs--nor from what quarter I should seek for happiness; and it is a wonder that it took so long a time, and so many repetitions of the same lesson, before I began to correspond with the gracious purpose of my Heavenly Teacher; of Him who was thus correcting me, that I might at length love Him, and love Him willingly. How was it that I could have lived so long without being awakened to one sentiment of religious fear? ...