are real pleasures which are of an innocent nature, and are used as
recreations, subjected to the Cross of Christ. I was in my judgment
much confirmed in the infinite importance of religion as the only
real stay, guide, help, comfort in this life, and the only means of
having a hope of partaking of a better. My understanding was
increasingly opened to receive its truths, although the glad
tidings of the Gospel were very little, if at all, understood by
me. I was like the blind man, although I could hardly be said to
have attained the state of seeing men as trees. I obtained in this
expedition a valuable knowledge of human nature from the variety I
met with; this, I think, was useful to me, though some were very
dangerous associates for so young a person, and the way in which I
was protected among them is in my remembrance very striking, and
leads me to acknowledge that at this most critical period of my
life the tender mercy of my God was marvelously displayed towards
me, and that His all-powerful--though to me then almost unseen and
unknown--hand held me up and protected me.

Self-abnegation and austerity were now to take the place of pleasant
frivolities and fashionable amusements. Her conviction was that her mind
required the ties and bonds of Quakerism to fit it for immortality. Not
that she, in any way, trusted in her own righteousness; for she gives it
as her opinion that, while principles of one's own making are useless in
the elevation and refinement of character, true religion, on the
contrary, does exalt and purify the character. Still the struggle was
not over. Long and bitter as it had been, it became still more bitter;
and the nightly recurrence of a dream at this period will serve to show
how agitated was her mental and spiritual nature. Just emancipated from
sceptical principles, accustomed to independent research, and deciding
to study the New Testament rather than good books, when on the