I am standing before you now in the character of one who, having been brought under conviction of sin into utter self-despair, had found in Christ Jesus a refuge from the storm of God's anger. I felt myself safe in him; but as the revelation which God had made to man was not confined to the sole point of a _satisfaction_ for the sins of men, I felt it my bounden duty to search for all that the Most High had seen good to acquaint his people with. At the same time I found myself a member of a church calling itself Christian; but I too had called myself a Christian, while as yet wholly ignorant of Christ, therefore I could not depend upon a name. I knew that there were other churches, each putting in a claim to a higher and purer standard than its neighbors, and it behooved me to know which of them all was in the right, I had no books of a religious character--not one; no clergyman among my acquaintance, no means of inquiry, save as regarded my own church, whose Liturgy and Articles lay before me. I resolved to bring them first to the test of scripture, and if they failed, to look out for a better. How I commenced the work and pursued it, I need not state. I tried every thing, as well as I could, by the Bible; and my satisfaction was great to find the purest, clearest strain of evangelical truth breathing through the book which I had used all my life long, as I did the Bible, without entering into its real meaning. How I could possibly escape seeing the doctrines of faith, regeneration, and the rest of God's revelation in them both, was strange to me; but I understood that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, and mourned over the darkness that I supposed universal. I found it distinctly stated by our Lord, that "except a man be _born again_, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" and this served as a key to many passages in the epistles and other parts of scripture illustrative of the same solemn truth. I had never understood, never thought of this. Did my church hold it? Yes; it was not only laid down as a fundamental doctrine in her Articles, but constantly put into the mouths of her congregation, either expressed or clearly implied. Again, I found that _not by works but by faith_ I was to be justified before God; and this also ran through the prayer-book, with unvarying distinctness; though with that book in my hand and its contents on my lips I had been hitherto attempting to scale heaven by a ladder of my own forming. * * * * *