ions, I
often said to myself, What is to be done? Who of all these
parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one
of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?

"While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by
the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day
reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse,
which reads: _If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God,
that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it
shall be given him._

"Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the
heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to
enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I
reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person
needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know,
and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would
never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects
understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to
destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to
the Bible.

"At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in
darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that
is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to 'ask of
God,' concluding that if He gave wisdom to them that lacked
wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might
venture.

"So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I
retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning
of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen
hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had
made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as
yet made the attempt to pray vocally.

"After I had retired to the place where I had previously
designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself
alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my
heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was
seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had
such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so
that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and
it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden
destruction.

"But, exerting all my powers