destitute of knowledge, or worthier of respect. Looking back, at this
distance of time, upon this strange interview, I am indeed shocked and
grieved at the part which I then and there permitted myself to
undertake. The scene has lost the colours which gave it a false and
superficial lustre, and I gaze on the melancholy reality chidden, and,
let me say, instructed by the sight. I can now better appreciate and
understand the self-confident tone which pronounced upon my state in the
eye of heaven--the canting expressions of brotherly love--the irreverent
familiarity with which Scripture was quoted, garbled, and tortured to
justify dissent, and render disobedience holy--the daring assumption of
inquisitorial privileges, and the scorn, the illiberality and
self-righteousness, with which my angry, bigoted, and vulgar questioners
decided on the merits of every institution that eschewed their fanciful
vagaries and most audacious claims. I do not wonder that, overtaken in a
career of misery, the consequence of my own imprudence, I should have
been arrested by the voice, and smitten by the eloquence, of Mr Clayton.
I do not wonder that I listened to his arguments, and observed his
conduct, until I was reduced to passiveness, and my mind was willing to
be moulded to his purposes. But I do wonder and lament that any
obscuration of my judgment, any luxuriance of feeling, should have
permitted my youthful understanding for an instant to believe that to
such men as my examiners the keys of heaven were entrusted, and that on
them, and on their voice, depended the reception of a broken-hearted
penitent at the mercy-seat of God.

A few words from the haberdasher-deacon, at the breaking up of the
convocation, or whatever else it might be termed, were satisfactory, in
so far as they showed that my temporal prospects were not entirely
neglected by those who had become so deeply interested in my spiritual
welfare. The blacksmith had hardly brought to a close a somewhat lengthy