"Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark the place; and it says Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 'If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, _then_ shall the Lord be my God.' Now _there_ was something that looked to me like a tangible foundation to begin upon. "If I understand Dr. H., I believe he would have called that all selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so; but then I thought of it in this way: 'Here he was all alone. God was entirely invisible to him; and how could he feel certain that He really existed, unless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? the point that he wanted to be sure of, more than merely to know that there was a God who made the world;--he wanted to know whether He cared anything about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, in fact, it was saying, "If there is a God who interests Himself at all in me, and will be my Friend and Protector, I will obey Him, so far as I can find out His will."' "I thought to myself, 'This is the great experiment, and I will try it.' I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietly resolved to assume for a while as a fact that there _was_ such a God, and, whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just to ask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it. "Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was more and more convinced that all the men of those times had tried this experiment, and found that it would bear them; and in fact, I did begin to find, in my own experience, a great many things happening so remarkably that I could not but think that _Somebody_ did attend even to my prayers,--I began to feel a trembling faith that _Somebody_ was guiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening by accident, but working themselves out by His will.