sovereign wisdom; the genuine expression of the Divine will; the
message of a tender and compassionate Father, addressed to his
ungrateful and rebellious children, soliciting them to return and find
happiness in him. I wish I could retrace all the impressions that this
divine message produced on my mind, the vivid emotions I experienced,
and the thoughts and feelings (never, I trust, to be forgotten)
excited by that reading.

I was like a man born blind, who should suddenly recover his sight in
a magnificent apartment, splendidly illuminated. My feelings at least
corresponded with those of a man under such circumstances, were they
possible. How glorious was the light of the Gospel to me! I sought for
morality, and I found _there_ the most simple, clear, complete, and
perfect system of morality that could be conceived; and _there_ I
found precepts suited to every circumstance that could present itself
in life, as a son, a brother, a father, a friend, a subject, a
servant, a labourer, a man, a reasonable creature: my duty in every
relation of life I there found inculcated in the most admirable
manner. I could not imagine one moral duty for which I did not there
find a precept; not one precept unaccompanied by a motive; and no
motive that did not appear to me to be dictated by reason, or enforced
by an authority against which I felt that I had nothing to object. I
observed two kinds of precepts which, though tending to the same end,
i.e. perfection, produced a different effect upon me. The _positive_
precepts presented to my mind an idea of the high degree of holiness
at which that man would arrive who could keep them without a single
violation. The _negative_ precepts, by leading me to a close
self-examination, impressed me with a deep sense of my corruption, and
convinced me that the authors of them must have possessed a profound
knowledge of the human heart in general, and of my heart individually.