Here God met and arrested me. When I kneeled down to pray, the strangest alarms took hold of my mind. He to whom I had been accustomed to prate with flippant volubility in a set form of heartless words, seemed to my startled mind so exceedingly terrible in unapproachable majesty, and so very angry with me in particular, that I became paralyzed with fear. I strove against this with characteristic pertinacity; I called to mind all the commonplace assurances respecting the sufficiency of a good intention, and magnified alike my doings and my sufferings. I persuaded myself it was only a holy awe, the effect of distinguished piety and rare humility, and that I was really an object of the divine complacency in no ordinary degree. Again I essayed to pray, but in vain; I dared not. Then I attributed it to a nervous state of feeling that would wear away by a little abstraction from the subject; but this would not do. To leave off praying was impossible, yet to pray seemed equally so. I well remember that the character in which I chiefly viewed the Lord God was that of an Avenger, going forth to smite the first-born of Egypt; and I somehow identified myself with the condemned number. Often, after kneeling a long time, I have laid my face upon my arms, and wept most bitterly, because I could not, dared not pray. It was not in my nature to be driven back easily from any path I had entered on; and here the Lord wrought on me to persevere resolutely. I began to examine myself, in order to discover _why_ I was afraid; and taking as my rule the ten commandments, I found myself sadly deficient on some points. The tenth affected me as it never had done before. "I had not known lust," because I had not understood the law when it said, "Thou shalt not covet." A casual glance at the declaration of St. James, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all," alarmed me exceedingly; and on a sudden it occurred to me that not only the ten commandments, but all the precepts of the New Testament, were binding on a Christian; and I trembled more than ever.