that I could not find with all my soul that I did
desire deliverance. My heart was at times exceedingly hard. If I
would have given a thousand pounds for a tear, I could not shed one;
no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one.

"I was both a burthen and a terror to myself; nor did I ever so know,
as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die. How
gladly would I have been anything but myself! Anything but a man! and
in any condition but my own."[81]

[81] Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners: I have printed a number
of detached passages continuously.

Poor patient Bunyan, like Tolstoy, saw the light again, but we must
also postpone that part of his story to another hour. In a later
lecture I will also give the end of the experience of Henry Alline, a
devoted evangelist who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and
who thus vividly describes the high-water mark of the religious
melancholy which formed its beginning. The type was not unlike
Bunyan's.

"Everything I saw seemed to be a burden to me; the earth seemed
accursed for my sake: all trees, plants, rocks, hills, and vales
seemed to be dressed in mourning and groaning, under the weight of the
curse, and everything around me seemed to be conspiring my ruin. My
sins seemed to be laid open; so that I thought that every one I saw
knew them, and sometimes I was almost ready to acknowledge many things,
which I thought they knew: yea sometimes it seemed to me as if every
one was pointing me out as the most guilty wretch upon earth. I had
now so great a sense of the vanity and emptiness of all things here
below, that I knew the whole world could not possibly make me happy,
no, nor the whole system of creation. When I waked in the morning, the
first thought would be, Oh, my wretched soul, what shall I do, where
shall I go? And when I laid down, would say, I shall be perhaps in
hell before morning. I would many times look on the beasts with envy,
wishing with all my heart I was in their place, that I might have no
soul to lose; and when I have seen birds flying over my head, have
often thought within myself, Oh, that I could fly away from my danger
and distress! Oh, how happy should I be, if I were in their place!"[82]

[82] The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, Boston 1806,
pp. 25, 26. I owe my acquaintance with this book to my colleague, Dr.
Benjamin Rand.

Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very wid