Some days after this, the examination of a watch, its springs, its various wheels, and its motions, brought me afresh to the same conclusion, and for ever confirmed me in the belief of a God, the Creator of all things. "If this watch," I argued, "could not make itself, and necessarily leads us to suppose an artist who made each part, and so arranged the whole as to produce these movements--how much stronger reasons have we for concluding that the universe has a Contriver and Maker?"
I was no sooner fully satisfied of the existence of a God, than I trembled at the thought of his attributes, and my relationship to him. The sense of my unworthiness and sinfulness deeply affected me. When I called to mind the many years I had passed in forgetfulness of this great God; in indifference to, or in a culpable unbelief of his existence; I felt that I must indeed be, in his sight, the most ungrateful, and the most sinful of his creatures. My next feeling was an anxious desire to amend my conduct, and I determined to lay down such a plan for my future life, as I hoped might not be unworthy of that Being whose eye I then felt was upon me. After having made many efforts to recall the best maxims of wisdom and rules of virtue that I had met with in the course of my reading, I at length came to a resolution of examining what moral precepts the New Testament might contain, and whether it might not afford me the rules I was seeking for the regulation of my conduct.
This was the motive which brought me again to the New Testament, and induced me to undertake a fourth time the perusal of it. I wish it were in my power to recount to you, my dear children, all the effects that the eternal word of God produced upon my heart; for from that time I recognised it to be, what it is in fact, the revelation of sovereign wisdom; the genuine expression of the Divine will; the message of a tender and compassionate Father, addressed to his ungrateful and rebellious children, soliciting them to return and find happiness in him. I wish I could retrace all the impressions that this divine message produced on my mind, the vivid emotions I experienced, and the thoughts and feelings (never, I trust, to be forgotten) excited by that reading.
I was like a man born blind, who should suddenly recover his sight in a magnificent apartment, splendidly illuminated. My feelings at least corresponded with those of a man under such circumstances, were they possible. How glorious was the light of the Gospel to me! I sought for morality, and I found there the most simple, clear, complete, and perfect system of morality that could be conceived; and there I found precepts suited to every circumstance that could present itself in life, as a son, a brother, a father, a friend, a subject, a servant, a labourer, a man, a reasonable creature: my duty in every relation of life I there found inculcated in the most admirable manner. I could not imagine one moral duty for which I did not there find a precept; not one precept unaccompanied by a motive; and no motive that did not appear to me to be dictated by reason, or enforced by an authority against which I felt that I had nothing to object. I observed two kinds of precepts which, though tending to the same end, i.e. perfection, produced a different effect upon me. The positive precepts presented to my mind an idea of the high degree of holiness at which that man would arrive who could keep them without a single violation. The negative precepts, by leading me to a close self-examination, impressed me with a deep sense of my corruption, and convinced me that the authors of them must have possessed a profound knowledge of the human heart in general, and of my heart individually.
"Who then," said I, "were the writers of this book?" And when I reflected that they were poor, uneducated mechanics like myself, the question immediately presented itself--how could fishermen, tax-gatherers, and tent-makers, acquire such extraordinary sagacity, penetration, wisdom, and knowledge? "Ah!" I exclaimed, "this is indeed a problem, which can only be solved by admitting their own assertion, that the Spirit of God directed their pens, and that all they wrote was divinely inspired." Such, my children, was my conclusion after this examination of the morality laid down in the Gospel.
Thus I recognised the divine origin of the New Testament, and took my first step toward Christianity.
When I had once acknowledged the divine origin of the morality of the Gospel, reason and personal experience combined to convince me of the truth and divine source of the doctrines on which it was founded.
"If God inspired the apostles, and enabled them to give to the world the purest and most perfect system of morality that can be conceived, is it to be supposed that in the remainder of their writings he would leave them to themselves, and permit error or imposture to be mixed and confounded with truth?" No: from the same source cannot proceed sweet waters and bitter. As the moral precepts of the Gospel are divinely inspired, so, likewise, must be its doctrines. This reasoning appeared to me incontrovertible, and I received with full conviction the whole contents of the New Testament, as dictated by the Spirit of truth.
From that time Jesus Christ, his history, his divine character, his miracles, the end for which he came into the world, his sufferings and death, attracted and absorbed my whole attention. At the account of his passion, which, till then, I had read with indifference, my heart was melted, and my eyes overflowed with tears. In short, I found and felt such a suitableness between the wants of my sinful soul, destitute as it was of all peace and comfort, and the work which the Saviour had accomplished by his death on the cross, that I no longer doubted that the promises of the Gospel were personally addressed to me. I believed that Jesus Christ had offered himself a sacrifice for me, to expiate my sins, and to reconcile me unto God; and from that moment I have enjoyed an inward peace, the source of which I believe to be faith in Christ alone--a peace which the world can neither give nor take away, and which, as I myself have frequently experienced, is alone able to support and strengthen us through all the sufferings and afflictions of life.
In this manner you see how, a sinner and prodigal as I was, our heavenly Father met me, and received me to the arms of his mercy; how he made known to me his free grace and heavenly gift, of which I was utterly unworthy. It is his grace that has accomplished all in me. He it was who began, who carried on, and who, I trust, will perfect this work of salvation.