r doubted. I could not believe
that a grave man in a pulpit could speak anything but truth, when he
spoke so loudly, and spoke for two hours. My mind was a chaos of
confusion: I began to be very miserable. The next, or one or two
Sundays after, produced the crisis. My dress was always much superior
to what could have been expected in the son of a mere operative. I was,
at that time, a fair and mild-featured child, and altogether remarkable
among the set who frequented the meeting-house. Mr Cate had been very
powerful indeed in his description of the infernal regions--of the
abiding agonies--the level lake that burneth--the tossing of the waves
that glow; and, when he had thrown two or three old women into
hysterics, and two or three young ones into fainting-fits, amidst the
torrent of his oratory, and the groaning, and the "Lord have mercy upon
me's," of his audience, he made a sudden pause. There was a dead
silence for half a minute, then suddenly lifting his voice, he pointed
to me, and exclaimed, "Behold that beautiful child--observe the pure
blood mantling in his delicate countenance--but what is he after all but
a mouthful for the devil? All those torments, all those tortures, that
I have told you of, will be his; there, look at him, he will burn and
writhe in pain, and consume for ever, and ever, and ever, and never be
destroyed, unless the original sin be washed out from him by the `call,'
unless he be made, hereafter, one of the `elect.'"

At this direct address to myself, I neither fainted, shuddered, nor
cried--I felt, at the time, a little stupefied: and it was some hours
after (the hideous man's words all the time ringing in my ears) before I
fully comprehend my hopeless state of perdition. I looked at the fire
as I sat by it, and trembled. I went to bed, but not to sleep. No
child ever haunted by a ghost-story was more terrified than myself, as I
lay panting on my tear-steeped pillow. At length, imagination began its
dreadful charms--the room enlarged itself in its gloom to vast space--I
began to hear cries from under my bed. Some dark bodies first of all
flitted across the gloaming. My bed began to rock. I tried to sing a
hymn. I thought that the words came out of my mouth in flames of bright
fire. I then called to mind the offerings from the altars of Cain and
Abel. I watched to see if my hymns turned into fire, and ascended up to
heaven. I felt a cold horror when I discovered them scatt