"Yes, Sir, I recollect having my eye often fixed on the two verses you have quoted, and others which speak of coming to him for life, and to be saved; but a veil of mystery hung over them which I could not lift up. I had the loftiest conceptions of his superhuman greatness and goodness; the fine blending of majesty and meekness, of dignity and condescension in his character, awakened my admiration; his pity, his love, his spotless purity, awed and delighted me; and I often felt indignant--a real loathing of spirit--when reflecting on the brutal treatment he met with from his countrymen; but I never could make out, from anything I read in the New Testament, how he could stand in the relation of a Saviour to me, or how I could perform that act of coming to him, on which he places the issue of salvation. And this is the origin of my unbelief. I had no wish to become an unbeliever; I became one against my inclination, and in opposition to early, and long-cherished, and endeared associations; but necessity compelled me; because, after long and intense thinking, I found that the proferred blessing of salvation was placed on an impracticable and an impossible contingency. Nor have I, as yet, had cause to regret it. I now can live without dread of the future; and I have no doubt, if there be another state of existence for man, as I feel inclined to believe there is, it will be one of happiness, to compensate for the sorrows and miseries which are endured in this." "But suppose others have been enabled to perform this act of coming to Jesus Christ; and suppose, by performing it, they have entered into the actual possession of peace and joy in believing, then I think you must admit that the contingency on which the proferred blessing of salvation is suspended, comes within the capabilities of the human mind, and what others have done _you might have done, and yet may live to do_. By your permission I will give you a paragraph, as it bears so closely on the subject of our conversation, which one of the most distinguished men of the present age addressed to a philosophical friend. The writer had been for years a believer in the Divine origin of the Christian faith, but up to this period in his moral history, it was to him a system of abstract truths, which made no approaches to his heart, to engage his affections, or to influence his will. But by a succession of impulses and impressions, and new discoveries of his inner spirit, he began to feel restless--some degree of alarm, in fact, that he stood in need of a Saviour; and by reading the Bible with close attention, he found that Jesus Christ, who up to this time had moved in dim vision before his imagination, as an ideal or a mere historical being, was a living being, and just such a living being as he needed--one who could save him from his fears, and who alone could save him. The crisis in his moral history now arrived, and he says: '_I sicken at my own imperfect preparations.