It would be impossible to reveal myself, according to the general promise involved in the title of this book, if I were to be silent regarding my religious convictions. Were I to remain silent, the true key to the actions of my life would be missing. Or, rather, let me try to put the matter more clearly: the secret influence which inspired what good I may have done in life, for the same reason prevented me from doing evil, curbed passion, guided me when the fires of youth, licentious company, irreverent mates, and a multitude of strange circumstances must have driven me into a confirmed state of wickedness. I was therefore grateful, after all, for the implanting of religious principles in me by the Biblical education given me in the Union. The fear of doing wrong intentionally, the feeling of reverence, the impulse of charity, the possession of a conscience, are all due to this. Without this teaching I should have been little superior to the African savage. It has been the driving power for good, the arrestor of evil. It has given me an acute and perceptive monitor, able by its own delicacy to perceive evil no matter how deceptive its guise. It has formed a magnet by which to steer more straightly than I could otherwise have done. My belief that there was a God, overseeing every action, observing and remembering, has come often between me and evil. Often when sorely tempted, came the sudden strength to say, ‘No, I _will_ not, it will be wicked; not criminal, but sinful; God sees me.’ It is precisely for this strength that I am grateful. Reason would not have been sufficient to restrain me from yielding to temptation. It required a conscience, and a religious conviction created it. That same inward monitor has restrained me from uttering idle words, from deceiving my fellow-creatures with false promises, and from hastily condemning them without sufficient evidence, from listening to slanders, and from joining with them, from yielding to vindictiveness; it has softened a nature that without its silent and gentle admonitions would, I am sure, be much worse than it is. I do not claim that it has always been successful,--far from it,--but I am grateful for what it has done; and this feeling, so long as I possess it, will induce me to hope that it will ever remain with me, a restraining power, a monitor to do my duty to my Creator, and to my fellow-men. Whether these religious convictions would have continued with me had I lived the life of the city is another question. I think not. At least, not in sufficient force. A journalist’s life in New York does not give time for reflection or introspection.