"That would be pardoning myself," he said: "I want the Lord to pardon me: if believing that my sins were forgiven, while I feel they are not, would produce a real pardon, I need never have asked the Almighty to perform the work." "Ah, my dear young brother!" quickly replied the preacher,--"I waited, as you have, no doubt, for weeks and weeks, expecting some miracle to be performed for me; but I found, at last, that there was no other refuge but believing. You _must_ believe: _that_ is your only way! All the direction that the word gives you is, '_Believe_, and thou shalt be saved!' You have nothing else to do but to believe; and the moment you do believe--that moment you will be happy! Try it!"--and, so saying, the "Revivalist" hastened on to make proof of the efficacy of his wild notional catholicon upon the comfortless spirit of some less hesitating patient or penitent. Joe's distress, when the preacher left him, became greater than ever. He felt fearful, on the one hand, of becoming a victim to self-deceit; and was horrified, on the other, with the terrible dread of losing his soul through the sin of unbelief. But the combat between his imagination and his understanding was one in which the former faculty had all the vantage-ground of his youthful age and his tendency to the marvellous,--and was immeasurably assisted by the overwhelming energy of his desire. The attainment of the new spiritual state had become his sole idea; and his reason succumbed beneath the combined strength of his wishes and the prurience of his ideality. "The preacher says he has _tried_ believing, and it has made him happy; therefore, I will try to believe," said Joe to himself,--becoming mentally desperate with distracting fears. He _did_ try; and the experiment produced,--as it could not fail to produce in such a mind, surrounded with such excitements,--a thrilling and ecstatic feeling; but yet, he doubted again, a few moments after! Thus, his intellect, all undisciplined and untutored as it had been, still revolted at the indignity of becoming the dupe of its own trickery. But the misery of doubt, and the pangs of spiritual condemnation, were more insupportable than the effort to impose upon himself the delusive assurance that he really possessed what he so ardently sought; and he, therefore, rushed to another act of desperate credence:--"I _will_ believe! I _do_ believe!" he wildly cried, at the full pitch of his voice, while the din and confusion of fifty persons praying aloud, at the same time, rendered his enthusiasm unnoticeable. At every new resurrection of his reason he thus drew afresh on the exorcism of his ideality, and allayed the troublous misgivings of the sterner faculty; so that, by the time the meeting was concluded, his reason had ceased to rebel,--and he went home, persuaded that he had attained the "new birth."