"Leaving company almost entirely, and not going into society except on certain occasions, to please my friends or escape reproach, I gave myself up to solitary meditation and to the inward and undefined strivings of my being. In this state of spiritual disquietude, I felt no impulse to attend a church. I was most at home when alone. I heard divine voices where there was no man to act as medium or interpreter. At a funeral, I recollect having assisted in singing, and to have heard from Elder Moulton a sermon that impressed me, he being a man of considerable spiritual power, and one for whom I had particular respect. I heard him also a second time after this, when he most deeply affected my mind. I sometimes repaired to the forest for the express purpose of coming to God in prayer, but for some time was restrained from speaking aloud or kneeling on the earth. My heart was often eased in weeping; and though I had no form of prayer, I believe I prayed as really, as acceptably, as ever I did. Is it not a strange doctrine, so generally promulgated, that sinners, previous to conversion, ought not to pray? To me it is a dark doctrine. The Scriptures do not intimate it. My experience, the divine command, and common sense oppose the dogma. The fact that men are morally weak and sinful, is itself a sufficient occasion for prayer.
"One Sunday, without the knowledge of our family, I went about two miles to attend a Methodist meeting, in which several spoke, and spoke well. Mrs. John Gilson, a little, delicate woman, with much diffidence arose to speak. Her wisdom and manner won my heart, and her message, which was particularly to me, seemed to carry the evidence that it was from God. I could never forget it. I knew she was my friend, and believed that she spoke for my good, and I would have rendered her my thanks at the close, but for the restraining power of a sentiment common to me, which was, an unwillingness to disclose to any one my deepest emotions. We had been taught by some, that before we could attain salvation, we should be willing to be damned and lost. I never had this willingness. But, in candor, I must say that my sense of guilt was so deep that I felt I had merited the sentence to be finally uttered against the impenitent."
The reader will perceive that the thread of this journal is drawn from such portions of Mr. Badger's early life as seem most directly to express its various moral phases. From other points of experience, it is natural to suppose, much was omitted, the main purpose being that of tracing the moral history of his mind through the years of his youth. I think I never opened a journal that contained throughout a plainer natural impress of truth and reality.
[CHAPTER IV.]
CONVERSION.
"Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."—St. Peter.
To every work there is a crisis which openly exhibits success or failure. To every growth there are certain perceptible changes by which we note the progress from incipiency to the mature state. There is a symbolical new birth in nature when the rose-tree blooms, when leafless wintry trees are green with foliage and white with blossoms. Summer is a regeneration in the state of the earth, and it is none the less so because we cannot point out the moment, hour, or day, in which the actual summer assumed its effective reign. None fail to see the difference between June and January. If in July you meet the bending lilac, it silently tells you of all that March, April, May and June have done for it. So man's moral periods are marked. The soul in its struggles after divine life, through penitence and faith, reaches a crisis of victory and development of holy purpose, principle and power, which the church has generally agreed to call conversion, and for which we know no better name.
The journal of Mr. Badger, which refers to this epoch of his spiritual history, is headed with a poem on Christ, of which we have space for only a few lines: