MY FIRST SIN
Among the recollections of my early childhood, one is more deeply impressed on my mind than any other, so deeply and firmly stamped that the many and varied experiences of fifty years have failed to make it less clear and distinct to the vision of memory than it was the day it occurred. It was the committing of a sin. It may have been my first wilful transgression, but, however that may be, it was one that caused an awful sense of guilt to come into my heart, and I trembled, as it were, in an unseen presence. No one had ever spoken to me of God, of shunning the wrong, or of doing the right, except my mother (sweet today is my memory of her); so I carried my trouble to her, and in her presence the tempter led me into falsehood, so that I was made more wretched than before.