than to thwart our strivings after good, and assuredly designed to
minister to our ultimate happiness, rather than to our ultimate
despair.



April 25, 1889.


I found to-day on a shelf a Manual of Preparation for Holy
Communion, which was given me when I was confirmed. I stood a long
time reading it, and little ghosts seemed to rustle in its pages.
How well I remember using it, diligently and carefully, trying to
force myself into the attitude of mind that it inculcated, and
humbly and sincerely believing myself wicked, reprobate, stony-
hearted, because I could not do it successfully. Shall I make a
curious confession? From quite early days, the time of first waking
in the morning has been apt to be for me a time of mental
agitation; any unpleasant and humiliating incident, any
disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart into my brain,
which, unstrung and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed to
view things with a certain poignancy of distress at that hour--a
distress which I always knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet
on the carpet. I used to take advantage of this to use my Manual at
that hour, because by that I secured a deeper intensity of
repentance, and I have often succeeded in inducing a kind of
tearful condition by those means, which I knew perfectly well to be
artificial, but which yet seemed to comply with the rules of the
process.