school for all the time the protracted meeting lasted. But conviction
never came. I was honest with myself, and though the frenzied and
ghastly exhortations harried my soul with dread, and I longed for the
coming of the ecstasy which was the recognizable sign of the grace
of God, I could not rise to the participation in it which the most
material and hysterical of the congregation enjoyed, and day after day
I went home saddened by the conviction that I was still one of the
unregenerate. The sign never came, but several years later I went
to make a visit to my brother Charles, who had then removed to
Plainfield, N.J., where he practiced medicine, and was one of the main
supports of the church in a community where the sect was large enough
to have a constant worship, which it never had in Schenectady. Here I
came under the influence of a beloved brother of my mother, one of the
most earnest and humble Christians I have ever known, and here were
gathered others of the denomination at a protracted meeting, at which
some of my friends of my own age became seriously inclined, and we
drifted together into the profession of Christian faith. But here
there was nothing of the ghastly terrors of the great revival
agitations. My uncle was a man of the world, had been all his early
life a sailor, and had taken late to what, in his experiences of men
and the vicissitudes of life, he considered the only reality, the duty
of making known to his fellows the importance of the spiritual life.
To fit himself for the ministry, he taught himself Hebrew and Greek
as well as Latin, and many years later was chosen as one of the New
Testament revisers for the American revision committee. But to him
the profession of religion was an act of the reason, not of revival
excitement, and in his ministrations he shunned carefully all the
frenzied exhortation of the revivalists. Associated with him in the
ministry and leading the meetings was another of the Sabbatarian
pastors, Elder Estee, a grave and earnest man like my uncle, who