The weakness of my constitution, which often led me to think that I should not be long lived, contributed to give my mind a still more serious turn, and having read many books of _experiences_, and in consequence believing that a _new birth_ produced by the immediate agency of the Spirit of God, was necessary to salvation, and not being able to satisfy myself that I _had_ experienced any thing of the kind, I felt occasionally such distress of mind as it is not in my power to describe, and which I still look back upon with horror. Notwithstanding I had nothing very material to reproach myself with, I often concluded that God had forsaken me, and that mine was like the case of Francis Spira, to whom, as he imagined, repentance and salvation were denied. In that state of mind I remember reading the account of the man in the iron cage in the Pilgrim’s Progress with the greatest perturbation. I imagine that even these conflicts of mind were not without their use, as they led me to think habitually of God and a future state. And though my feelings were then, no doubt, too full of terror, what remained of them was a deep reverence for divine things, and in time a pleasing satisfaction which can never be effaced, and I hope, was strengthened as I have advanced in life, and acquired more rational notions of religion. The remembrance, however, of what I sometimes felt in that state of ignorance and darkness gives me a peculiar sense of the value of rational principles of religion, and of which I can give but an imperfect description to others. As _truth_, we cannot doubt, must have an advantage over _error_, we may conclude that the want of these peculiar feelings is compensated by something of greater value, which arises to others from always having seen things in a just and pleasing light; from having always considered the Supreme Being as the kind parent of all his offspring. This, however, not having been my case, I cannot be so good a judge of the effects of it. At all events, we ought always to inculcate just views of things, assuring ourselves that _proper feelings and right conduct_ will be the consequence of them. In the latter part of the interval between my leaving the grammar school and going to the academy, which was something more than two years, I attended two days in the week upon Mr. Haggerstone, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, who had been educated under Mr. Maclaurin. Of him I learned Geometry, Algebra and various branches of Mathematics, theoretical and practical. And at the same time I read, but with little assistance from him, Gravesend’s Elements of Natural Philosophy, Watt’s Logic, Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, &c, and made such a proficiency in other branches of learning, that when I was admitted at the academy (which was on Coward’s foundation) I was excused all the studies of the first year, and a great part of those of the second.