prejudices. If I met with pious enlightened Christians, they appeared to me only as strange disordered spirits, worthy of remark perhaps, of pity assuredly. In a German town I took out of sheer insolence the book of a German mystic from the library to my own dwelling, that I might for want of better amusement, divert myself in the spirit of derision with the madness of the absurd and the foolish. Unconsciously, I had brought the fire-brand into my house, which soon set in flames all this edifice of pride and worldly impiety. I turned over the leaves, read and laughed, read again and found the puerility at least poetical. The book left me no rest, I felt as it were attracted to it, it tortured me, and to my shame I was soon forced to confess to myself, that it contained connexion, strength, and spirit, that it instructed me, and that gardens, flowers, and trees of love bloomed, where I had only seen a waste desert. The presentiment seized me, that another God might rule the universe than he, whom in my enthusiastic views of nature, or in my poetical inspirations, I had been willing to discover, or to acknowledge in the vortex of frivolity. "My mind much affected, after some weeks of anxiety and meditation, longed ardently to read the Holy Scriptures. None of my numerous acquaintances, even such as were book collectors, or who possessed extensive libraries, had this book in their households. I felt ashamed, that I too had never required it. From that time this treasure became my faithful companion on my travels. I read in solitary and consecrated moments, and experienced what every thirsty one feels, who is susceptible of humiliation, in whom the utter sense of helplessness is not entirely extinct, which, indeed, is so indispensably necessary before the spiritual word can take root in the uncultivated heart. Faith! this so often disputed, attacked and variously explained word. Oh! who has experienced it, in whom it has arisen with its strength, he will not dispute it. I could not withdraw myself from the revelation, the faith, so triumphantly did the words, the images, the language of the gospel glittering in the splendour of arms pierce through my soul, and all my energies became the prisoners of eternal love, and were now happy and blessed in the service, in the sweet slavery. My former rebellion against the Lord appeared to me mean and despicable, and my contempt turned from its course, no longer understood the folly of its early wisdom. Many indeed imagine, that faith, humility, and unbounded trust in the Lord, are nothing else than killing our energies, nay the faculty of thinking, and consequently withdraw in anger or in trembling from that work of regeneration, which, nevertheless speaks sometimes from afar indirectly to their insensible hearts. Unhappy men! This so much dreaded faith would first elevate their capacities to energies and kindle new lights and flames in their spirits. Without him, the