for
the sake of variety, I began to attend to the sermons. What a lesson
ought not this to be to instructors! One Sunday I returned from church
in a state of almost spiritual intoxication. The rector was a pale,
attenuated man, with a hollow, yet flashing eye--a man who seemed to
have done with everything in this world, excepting to urge on his
brethren to that better one, to which himself was fast hastening; and,
on this memorable day, that I fancied myself a convert, he had been
descanting on the life of the young Samuel. Of course he, very
appropriately, often turned to the juvenile part of his congregation;
and as I was seated in the front row, I felt as if I were alone in the
church--as if every word were individually addressed to myself; his
imploring yet impassioned glances seemed to irradiate my breast with a
sweet glory. I felt at once, that since the goodness of the Creator was
inexhaustible, the fault must rest with man if there were no more
Samuels, so I determined to be one--to devote myself entirely to divine
abstraction, to heavenly glory, and to incessant worship--and,
stupendous as the assertion may seem, for six weeks I did so. This
resolution became a passion--a madness. I was as one walking in a sweet
trance--I revelled in secret bliss, as if I had found a glorious and
inexhaustible treasure. I spoke to none of my new state of mind--
absorbed as I was, I yet dreaded ridicule--but I wrote hymns, I composed
sermons. If I found my attention moving from heavenly matters, I grew
angry with myself, and I renovated my flagging attention with inward
ejaculation. I had all the madness of the anchorite upon me in the
midst of youthful society, yet without his asceticism, and certainly
without his vanity.

My studies, of course, were nearly totally neglected, under this
complete alienation of spirit, and Mr Root, lenient as he had lately
become towards me, began to flog again; and--shall I be believed when I
say it?--I have been examining my memory most severely, and I am sure it
has delivered up its record faithfully; but yet I hardly dare give it to
the world--but, despite of ridicule, I find myself compelled to say,
that these floggings I scarcely felt. I looked upon them as something
received for the sake of an inscrutable and unfathomable love, and I
courted them--they were pleasurable. I now can well understand the
enthusiasm and the raptures of that ridiculous class of exploded
visionaries,