out bursting into
tears.... And I recollect well what a struggle I had when I first told a
lie. A school in the neighborhood had a feast, ours had not, so I played
the truant, after a serious struggle, to have an opportunity of seeing
the scholars walk. I had a miserable afternoon; for I felt that I was
doing wrong, and I was afraid lest my mother should find me out. My
sister found me out and told my mother, but my mother was loth to
believe her till she had asked me myself. When I went home my mother
asked me if I had been to school, and I said yes, and my mother, as she
had never found me out in a lie before, believed me. But I was sadly
distressed afterwards when I thought of what I had done. That lie
caused me days of remorse, and my sufferings were all the severer in
consequence of my mother having so readily believed what I said."

The unhappy and unnatural effects of theology on the minds of earnest,
truth-seeking men--the total prostration of manly dignity, the
perversion of the mental faculties, and the debasement of human nature,
is truly stated by Mr. Barker in the following extract:--

"I also recollect being very much troubled with dreadful and
indescribably awful dreams, and for several months during certain parts
of the year I was accustomed to rise during my sleep, and walk about the
house in a state of sleep for hours together. I say in a state of sleep:
but I cannot exactly describe the state in which I was. It was not
_perfect_ sleep, and yet I was not properly awake. My eyes were open,
and I saw, as far as I can remember, the things around me, and 1 could
hear what was said to me. But neither what I saw nor what I heard seemed
to have power to penetrate far enough into my soul to awake me properly.
During those occasions, I was frequently very unhappy, dreadfully
unhappy, most horribly miserable. Sometimes I fancied I had been doing
something wrong, and my fancied offence seemed horrible beyond all
expression, and alarmed and overwhelmed me with unutterable terrors and
distress. On one occasion I fancied that both I and my father had
both been doing something wrong, and this seemed most horrible and
distressing of all; and as I wandered about in my mysterious state, I
howled most piteously, and cried and wept as if my heart would break. I
never recollect being roused from that dismal state while I was walking
about the house, except twice. Once when I struck my shins violently
against a large earth