In no transaction of my life have I ever been more sincere--have I acted
with a more decided assurance of the justice and necessity of the task,
than at this critical moment of my career. If Divine goodness had not
been specially vouchsafed to me, it was not that the conviction of my
appointment was not as clear and firm as the liveliest impressions of
the inmost heart could make it. To labour for the souls of the poor--to
teach them their obligations--to point out to them the way of safety--it
was this view of my delegated office that raised me to ecstasy, and
compelled from me the strangest ebullitions of passion. I pronounced the
change in my habits of thought to be "the dawning of the day, and the
sudden rising of the day-star in my heart;" and, dwelling with intensity
on my future labours, I could exclaim, with trembling emotion,--"Oh the
exceeding excellency and glory and sweetness of the work! The smile of
heaven is upon it--the emphatic testimony of my own conscience approves
and hallows it." I reflect at this moment with wonder upon the almost
supernatural ardour and devotion by which I was elevated and abased when
I first became thoroughly convinced of my mission, and declared aloud
that my only business now upon earth was that of the lowest and readiest
of servants, whose joy consists in the pleasure of their Master. The
strangeness, the excitement that accompanied the adoption of my new
character, had nearly overthrown me. Wild with gladness, before I
visited a human being, I took a journey of some twenty miles from the
metropolis. I do not remember now the name of the village at which I
stopped, from which I hurried, and whose fields I scoured with the
design of finding some covert, unfrequented spot, where I might
unmolested and unobserved pour forth the prayers and hymns of praise
with which my surcharged heart was teeming. Until nightfall I remained
there, nor did I leave the place until calmly and deliberately I begged
permission to devote myself to the glory and honour of Him, whose