3. That Methodism was new there then, and generally misunderstood, and such
of its features as were correctly read were intensely hated--even such as
are now admired and revered.

4. That parents, especially fathers, were then allowed by public opinion to
hold more control over the consciences of their children, and variations
from ancestral faith, and even ancestral error, not so frequent as now.




CHAPTER VI.


GREAT VICTORIES.

Seven months of despair had now worn slowly away. This poor supposed
"reprobate" had all that time been buffeted by Satan without mercy. She had
wasted to a skeleton. Her large, sharp eye had become heavy and lusterless,
and her ruddy cheek pale and sunken, and every expression sad and hopeless;
and the "enemy of all righteousness" got into a hurry to secure his prize,
and brought all his arts to bear upon the suggestion of suicide!

Such a temptation aroused her to a sense of her real danger--no longer the
victim of ingenious devices to harbor gloomy forebodings, but a wretched
sinner, about to destroy soul and body in hell, on the verge of destruction
to character, and all good influences by an act of her own! Desperately,
in spite of her dread of prayer, she cried to God against that dreadful
temptation, and instantly she had full victory over it. The eyes, long
dried in the desert of despair, were moistened with tears of wonder and