The power of early impressions and education is universally admitted; and when erroneous views have been imbibed from infancy, and become associated with everything that is hallowed in our domestic recollections, the influence exercised by them on the mind is so strong as very generally to maintain undisputed authority throughout life. Truth will sometimes, however, assert her supremacy, and succeed in producing conviction, even where she has to contend with the most deep-rooted feelings and long-cherished prejudices. These remarks are suggested by the history of Mr. Macfarlane, an intelligent and pious young man, whom I met at the house of Mr. Proctor, on the occasion of the discussion narrated in the foregoing chapters. I had frequently heard of him from a friend, of whose church he was a member, and been led to take a great interest in him from the account which had been given me of his religious history and that of his sister. This I shall now proceed to narrate, as exhibiting the progress, from the frigid zone of Unitarianism, to the warmth and sunshine of pure evangelical religion. Mr. Macfarlane's father was a wealthy merchant in the town where I resided, universally esteemed for his amiable character and unsullied integrity. Descended from ancestors who had borne a distinguished part in the struggles for civil and religious liberty during the seventeenth century, he was himself the son of pious parents, but their death, within a short period of each other, while he was but a child, deprived him of the advantages which he might have derived from their example and instructions. Left to the care of a maternal uncle, whose sentiments were of no decided order, he grew up to manhood with no one to guide him in his religious belief; and having, on his first entering into business, formed an intimacy with some zealous Unitarians, he imbibed their opinions, and regularly attended the ministry of one of their most celebrated preachers. He was too eager in the pursuit of wealth to devote much time to speculative inquiries, and of too retiring a disposition to take any part in discussion when theological topics became the subject of conversation; but he cheerfully and conscientiously supported the benevolent institutions connected with his denomination, which he thought the most enlightened and intelligent in the kingdom. While he admitted the truth of the Christian religion, he thought its records so ambiguous, or so corrupted in the early ages, that they ought not to be implicitly received. "I will believe nothing," he often used to say, "which I cannot fully comprehend; and I feel myself as much at liberty to dispute the opinion of an apostle, when he speaks on any speculative doctrine, as I do to examine the opinion of any other man." He rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ as indignantly as a Christian would the divinity of the pagan deities--often expressed his surprise that any