in pursuit of religion, and had come to find me out. "Daniel," he said,
addressing me by my Christian name, "what are you doing here? Don't make
a fool of yourself." To which I answered, that I had got to be just such
a fool as I had long wanted to be; and I took him by the arm, and
endeavored to prevail upon him to kneel down and allow us to pray over
him, assuring him that I knew his convictions to be much better than his
conduct; that he must get religion, and now was the time. But he drew
back, and escaped from me, with promises to do better, which, however,
he did not keep.

As for myself, considering, and, as I thought, feeling that I was a
converted man, I now enjoyed for some time an extraordinary
satisfaction, a sort of offset to the months of agony and misery which I
had previously endured. But, though regarding myself as now truly
converted, I delayed some time before uniting myself with any particular
church. I did not know which to join. This division into so many
hostile sects seemed to me unaccountable. I thought that all good
Christians should love each other, and be as one family. Yet it seemed
necessary to unite myself with some body of Christians; and, as I had
been educated a Methodist, I concluded to join them.

I have given the account of my religious experience exactly as it seemed
to me at the time, and as I now remember it. It corresponded with the
common course of religious experiences in the Methodist church, except
that with me the struggle was harder than commonly happens. I did not
doubt at the time that it was truly a supernatural change, as much the
work of the Spirit as the sudden conversions recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles. Others can form their own opinion about it. I will only add
that subsequent experience has led me to the belief that the reality of
a man's religion is more to be judged of by what he does than by how he