I can unhesitatingly say, the first and
second have been produced; but then these are but
transactions of the time, not abiding transformations;
and if these are all? But, surely, it cannot be;
surely, when my heart melted within me, especially
on Second-day morning, and I heard the word "and
anon with joy received it," some depth of central
stone was fused into softness; some actual change,
effected, that I might not have altogether "no root"
in myself. Sometimes predominated a fear that intellectual
interest interfered with spiritual simple
reception of good, that _this_ would vanish when _that_
was over; sometimes the responsibility of being thus
ministered to was truly a weighty thought; for never
more than on that morning did I so understand, "Go
preach, baptizing." Sometimes I thought that God
had indeed brought me to this Yearly Meeting to
make me then and there his own; and when I heard
of passing by transgressions as a cloud, I was ready
to think my own were indeed dissolving as one. I
felt strongly the superiority of religion to every
other thing, not merely for its external aim, God,
but for its internal power on self, how these masterpieces
of the human creation were not only made the
most of by religion, but that _it_ alone can make any
thing of the _whole man_.
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