e I there found inculcated in the most admirable
manner. I could not imagine one moral duty for which I did not there
find a precept; not one precept unaccompanied by a motive; and no
motive that did not appear to me to be dictated by reason, or enforced
by an authority against which I felt that I had nothing to object. I
observed two kinds of precepts which, though tending to the same end,
i.e. perfection, produced a different effect upon me. The _positive_
precepts presented to my mind an idea of the high degree of holiness
at which that man would arrive who could keep them without a single
violation. The _negative_ precepts, by leading me to a close
self-examination, impressed me with a deep sense of my corruption, and
convinced me that the authors of them must have possessed a profound
knowledge of the human heart in general, and of my heart individually.

"Who then," said I, "were the writers of this book?" And when I
reflected that they were poor, uneducated mechanics like myself,
the question immediately presented itself--how could fishermen,
tax-gatherers, and tent-makers, acquire such extraordinary sagacity,
penetration, wisdom, and knowledge? "Ah!" I exclaimed, "this is indeed
a problem, which can only be solved by admitting their own assertion,
that the Spirit of God directed their pens, and that all they wrote
was divinely inspired." Such, my children, was my conclusion after
this examination of the morality laid down in the Gospel.

Thus I recognised the divine origin of the New Testament, and took my
first step toward Christianity.

When I had once acknowledged the divine origin of the _morality_ of
the Gospel, reason and personal experience combined to convince me
of the truth and divine source of the _doctrines_ on which it was
founded.

"If God inspired the apostles, and enabled them to give to the world
the purest and most perfect system of morality that can be conceived,
is it to be supposed that in the remainder of their writings he would
leave them to themselves, and permit error or imposture to be mixed
and confounded with truth?" No: from the same source cannot proceed
sweet waters and bitter. As the moral precepts of the Gospel are
divinely inspired, so, likewise, _must_ be its doctrines. This
reasoning appeared to me incontrovertible, and I received with full
conviction the whole contents of the New Testament, as dictated by the
Spirit of truth.

From that time Jesus Christ, his history, h