MY RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. My first impressions respecting the Divine Being were very indefinite. From my earliest remembrance I had heard his name pronounced by my grandfather in the solemnity of prayer on the Sabbath, the only day of the seven in which he offered worship with his family. Then I frequently heard the same name uttered by some one reading aloud from the Bible, or some other religious book, on the sacred day. Thus the idea of God became most intimately associated in my mind with the Sabbath; and this seemed to me a long, very long and cheerless period. I must not only stay in the house, but much of the time sit still and silent in my little chair; restraints, with the promptings of nature within, and the invitations of nature without, render most irksome to active, prattling childhood. The stillness of the house lay like a vast burthen on my spirit. And when this stillness was broken, it was not often for my relief; for I heard but the dismal monotony of some solitary reader, which fastened the oppression still more painfully on my heart. I probably suffered more in this way than most children; for having no fit conveyance to the distant meeting-house, I could not accompany the family to public worship, for the first four years of my life. I was obliged to remain at home, generally in company with one individual, whose turn it was to keep the house from harm and myself from mischief and danger. Alas! I had no little brother or sister to share and sympathize in the durance. Even an answering look and fellow feeling in another, would have been a welcome alleviation. It was a task to exist through the day. I hardly knew why I was kept within doors and so still. I was told that I must not play, because it was wicked. What this word meant, I was not informed. I do not recollect to have received hitherto any particular instructions concerning God, excepting perhaps, that he made me, and every body and all things. I had moreover the impression that the Sabbath had some peculiar connexion with this Being, and that he was the occasion of this pause in the ordinary pursuits of people, and of my wearisome restraint. Of course, my ideas of God, though very vague, were as unpleasant as my cheerless Sabbath associations could make them. At length these indefinite notions were changed to a terrific distinctness, to conceptions which filled my mind with unmingled dread. I think that I was between four and five years of age, when a youth of eighteen, living with my father, undertook to give me a few hints for my religious edification. He was staying at home with me on the Sabbath, but was hardly so strict a keeper as my affectionate relatives. I wandered about the house to escape from time and solitude; but the echoes of my pattering footsteps and the creaking of doors, gave me an awful sense of lonesomeness, and I fled to an unfinished upper chamber, and crept upon a bed, where lay the aforementioned youth, enjoying that lazy luxury vouchsafed to the laborious on the day of rest. What prompt ed him I know not, for his character was rather the opposite of pious—perhaps as a penance, he might have been reading the Scriptures, or something else which made him feel particularly serious however it might be, he then gave me a lesson which haunted my soul with horror for years; and it will be an everlasting remembrance to my mind. I recollect nothing of his communications, but the following appalling intelligence. He told me that if I did wrong, if I was wicked, God would put me after death into a place burning with fire and brimstone, called hell, where I should suffer the pain of the flames for ever and ever. I shuddered with emotions I never knew before. I supposed that it was wicked to laugh and play on the Sabbath, and to disobey my parents; and I knew that in these particulars I was very much inclined to wickedness, if not absolutely very guilty; and I was struck with consternation at the thought that I was liable to die at any time, and be plunged into the hell which had been described. The effect was probably greater, on account of my predisposition to gloom. The solitude of the house now seemed pervaded by an all-seeing, but invisible eye, watching my minutest actions. Thenceforth, the Sabbath, and everything of a religious nature seemed doubly dismal. When the idea of God recurred to my mind, he was ever imaged in the character of vengeance. Not long after I had imbibed the preceding notions, my father presented me, one Sabbath morning, with a copy of the New Testament, enjoining on me to read it every Sabbath. I did as was desired, glad to find something to do, if not positively to enjoy, on the wearisome day. I had read in the Scriptures before, but had not |