From these considerations, the writer has been led to prefix to the exhibition of principles and arguments of this work, a mental history that shall particularly illustrate the subjects discussed. The article was prepared for certain personal and family friends, and is inserted very nearly in its original form.
ILLUSTRATIVE MENTAL HISTORY.
I wish, before publishing my forthcoming work, to obtain the views of some of my theological friends as to certain phases of experience of my own mind, and, to a certain extent, of other minds known to me.
My intellectual character was a singular compound of the practical and the imaginative. In youth I had no love for study or for reading even, excepting works of imagination. Don Quixote, the novel to which I first had access, was nearly committed to memory, as were a few other novels found at my grandmother's. The poets, both ancient and modern, were always in reach, and with these materials I early formed a habit of reverie and castle-building as my chief internal source of enjoyment. With this was combined incessant activity in practical matters, such as, at first, doll-dressing and baby-house building; afterward drawing, painting, exploits of merriment, practical jokes, snow castles and forts, summer excursions, school and family drama-acting, and the like. Till eighteen, I never wrote any thing but a few letters and scraps of rhyme, and the transforming of some stories into dramas for acting. A kind teacher, who sympathized in my strong love of the comic, described me as "the busiest of all creatures in doing nothing."
Socially, I was good-natured and sympathizing, so that my jokes and tricks were never such as to tease or annoy others.
Morally, I had a strong sense of justice, but was not naturally so conscientious as some of the other children. Add to these, persevering energy, great self-reliance, and such cheerful hopefulness that the idea of danger or failure never entered my head. Even to this day, perfect success and no mischances are always anticipated till reason corrects the calculation.
Thus constituted, my strict religious training made little impression, for I rarely heard any thing of that which seemed so dull and unintelligible. Up to the age of sixteen my conceptions on this subject were about these: that God made me and all things, and was very great, and wise, and good; that he knew all I thought and did; that because Adam and Eve disobeyed him once only, he drove them out of Eden, and then so arranged it that all their descendants would be born with wicked hearts, and that, though this did not seem either just or good, it was so; that I had such a wicked heart that I could not feel or act right in any thing till I had a new one; that God only could give me a new heart; that, if I died without it, I should go to a lake of fire and brimstone, and be burned alive in it forever; that Jesus Christ was very good, and very sorry for us, and came to earth, and suffered and died to save us from this dreadful doom; that revivals were times when God, the Holy Spirit, gave people new hearts; that, when revivals came, it was best to read the Bible, and pray, and go to meetings, but that at other times it was of little use. This last was not taught, but was my own inference.
My mind turned from all this as very disagreeable. When led by my parents and Christian friends to it, I tried to do as they told me, because I saw they were anxious and troubled, and I wished to relieve them. Two or three times, when I saw my father so troubled, I took Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion, and tried to go through the process there laid down, but with utter failure. Meantime, I rarely heard any prayers or sermons, and at fifteen I doubt if the whole of my really serious thoughts and efforts would, except the above, have occupied a whole hour.
In the earlier periods of my religious training, my parents, in their instructions, and also my little hymns and catechisms, made the impression that God loved little children, and, though he was angry when they did wrong, he was pleased when they did right; and, as parental government was tender and loving, my impression of the feelings of the heavenly Parent were conformed to this, my past experience.
But when, in more mature years, I came under the influence of "revival preaching," all this impression seemed to be reversed. I was taught to look at God as a great "moral governor," whose chief interest was "to sustain his law." Then there seemed to be two kinds of right and wrong, the "common" and the "evangelical." According to this distinction, I could not feel or do any thing that was right or acceptable to God till my birth-gift of a depraved heart was renewed by a special divine interposition.