its instincts, it obeys the great good Author of its being, and lives. If--to suppose what is happily an impossibility--if the child should discard its instincts, and refuse to trust its mother, till it had logical proof of her trustworthiness; and, distrusting its natural cravings, should refuse to take the nutriment provided for it, till it could ascertain by chemical analysis and physiological investigation, that it was just the kind of food which it required, it would die. My departed friend was the happy, confiding child, and saved his soul alive; while I was the analytical and logical doubter, and all but starved my miserable soul to death. Thank God, I have lived to see my error. The loving, trusting Christian is right. The religion of Jesus is substantially true and divine; and, thus far, I declare myself a Christian." It was a beautiful, summer-like day. The sun shone brightly, and the winds were low, and the vast congregation was orderly and attentive, and many were much affected. The report that I had declared myself a Christian, without any qualification annexed, got into the papers, and ran through the country. To many it gave the greatest satisfaction. Good, kind Christians came round me wherever I went, testifying their delight and gratitude. Some wept for joy. Unbelievers were greatly annoyed at the tidings of my conversion, and some of them came and entreated me to give the report a public contradiction. This I refused to do. True, the papers said somewhat more than I had said; but the statement they gave was true in substance, so I let it pass, and the growing change for the better in my views and feelings soon made it true in form. CHAPTER XVIII. PARTIES WHO CONTRIBUTED TOWARDS MY RETURN TO CHRIST. After I fell into doubt and unbelief, the Church, and the ministry generally, appeared to look on me as irretrievably lost. The great mass of them made no attempt for my recovery. How much they cared for my soul I do not know; but for nearly twenty years they left me to wander as a sheep that had no shepherd. Many of them spoke against me, and wrote against me, and some of them even met me in public discussion; but they never approached me in the spirit of gentleness and love, to try to win me back to Christ, and bring me once more into His Church. Some of them treated me with grievous injustice. As I have said some pages back, one minister made himself most odious to me and my friends, and did something towards increasing our antipathy to the religion which he so grossly dishonored, by his unjust and hateful doings. It is bad for Christianity when men like these are put forward as its advocates. No open enemies can do it so much injury as such unworthy friends. There were others, however, who took a more Christian course, and if they did not succeed in at once reclaiming me from my melancholy delusions, they produced a happy effect on my mind, which helped to bring about, in the end, my return to the Christian faith.