feet from falling."

The only thing I knew was that God was good to me, and therefore I loved
Him, and was thankful, not for the sake of getting His favour, but
because I thought I had it. I turned over a new leaf, and 'therewith
covered up the blotted page of my past life. On this new path I
endeavoured to walk as earnestly in a religious way, as I had before
lived in a worldly one.

This mistake into which I fell was natural enough and common as it is
natural; but for all this it was very serious, and might have been fatal
to me, as it has proved to multitudes. I did not see then, as I have
since that turning over a new leaf to cover the past, is not by any
means the same thing as turning back the old leaves, and getting them
washed in the blood of the Lamb.

I have said before that I did not know any better; nor was I likely to
see matters in a clearer light from the line of study in which I was
chiefly occupied. I was absorbed for the time, not so much in the Bible
as in the "Tracts for the Times"--a publication which was engaging much
attention. These Oxford tracts suited me exactly, and fitted my tone of
mind to a nicety. Their object was the restoration of the Church of
England from a cold, formal condition, into something like reality--from
a secular to a religious state; this also was my own present object for
myself. I read these writings with avidity, and formed from them certain
ecclesiastical proclivities which carried me on with renewed zeal.

I suppose I learned from the perusal of them to interpret the Bible by
the Prayer-book, and to regard the former as a book which no one could
understand without the interpretation of the Fathers. Certain it is,