help and protect me.

"I will relate to you something of my chief wanderings and perverse
ways in which I have lived:--I was not clever enough to have to do
with Satan, and to use sorceries; but I have lived in the sins of the
flesh--from these I have now ceased, for I perceive I should be worse
than a beast if I were to go to the holy communion, to partake of the
body and blood of Jesus, with a heart defiled with such impurities.
Henceforth I could not bear to be separated from my teachers, for I
think thus--Why was Jesus crucified and put to death? Surely for this
cause, because he would atone for me, an exceeding sinful creature.
When I was a poor orphan child, for I have seen neither father nor
mother, then Jesus became my father. As long as I live I will not
forget him, and even in eternity I shall be with Him.

"I sometimes think, if I were with you and beheld your faith, I should
be much more happy and cheerful than I am now; however, though I be
ever so needy--be it so--yet, like Thomas, I will call him my Lord and
my God! This, 'tis true, I cannot do of myself; but when I continue
asking it as a favour he grants it me, and I experience it.

"With respect to my countrymen, I must tell you, that they often
grieve me when they will not follow my advice. I do not say this as if
I fancied myself to be a man of importance, for I will gladly be the
meanest of these before the eyes of Jesus. When I think on my former
resistance and stiff-necked behaviour in the work of conversion, I
could strike myself. It causes deep sorrow and repentance within me,
when I consider that I have been most faithfully instructed by my
teachers for so many years, and yet have been like one that had no
ears to hear. But now, not my ears only are unstopped to hear and