My mind for some time previous had been much afflicted with considerations and doubts respecting the free agency of man, and the truth of the Scriptures so far as they relate to everlasting punishment, and to the prescience of GOD. These doubts had been infused in conversation by the reasoning of an eminent lawyer. If you believe in the doctrine of everlasting punishment said he, and believe also in the prescience of GOD, and in HIS Omnipotence, must you not admit that GOD might prevent the sinner from entering at all into this world of probation? into this world of trial which is to prove too severe for his powers of resistance? If I know that a candle that I purpose lighting will, from any accident, or by any other hand after I shall have lighted it, be made to burn my neighbor's house; am I not in some degree participant or accessary to the consequence if I persist in the intention? Why is man to be made subject to consequences more direful to him than if he had never been born at all into this world of evil? He has had no voice in determining his mission into it, nor has his will been consulted in the creation of his spirit, nor in the qualities with which that spirit is endued; his existence also in a state of indulgence of wicked impulse, how short and limited it has been; and how frequently mingled with the disposition if not with repeated Effort toward goodness; shall he for twenty years of vice, be subjected to _everlasting_ punishment? how can this consist with Divine Justice and Mercy? You say that he has had the free option of good and evil; possibly so; but he has not chosen the good, he has not adopted the course that leads to everlasting happiness, and his everlasting misery might have been prevented; why then should he have been called into being? Is not this misery ordained to him, since it is not prevented, and since it has always been apparent as the result of life to the creative power which must know, and which could prevent, and has yet determined to create? Now these doubts were weighing on my heart when I first stood before that board; and when I had left the church, they were all removed. They had made themselves--air, into which they vanished. My hands were clasped together in pleasure at the relief; and when I awoke, a sensation, the purest perhaps that life affords, had entire possession of my heart, my mind, my soul. It was that gentle, yet etherial sensation--that yellow-green of the ransomed spirit--when gratitude that has never drawn a chain behind it, gratitude free as joy, gratitude beautiful as hope, melts into love toward HIM, 'who first hath loved us!' 'Parent of Heaven! great Master of mankind! Where'er Thy providence directs, behold My steps with cheerful resignation turn! Fate leads the willing, drags the backward on. Why should I mourn, when grieving I must bear; Or take with guilt what, guiltless, I might share!' JOHN WATERS.