ndeed! but in sin, not only immoral and unregenerate, but so
ignorant of the very rudiments of the Gospel of Christ that he could not
have stated to an inquiring soul the simple terms of the plan of
salvation. There was, it is true about such serious and sacred
transactions, a vague solemnity which left a transient impression and
led to shallow resolves to live a better life; but there was no real
sense of sin or of repentance toward God, nor was there any dependence
upon a higher strength: and, without these, efforts at self-amendment
never prove of value or work lasting results.

The story of this wicked boyhood presents but little variety, except
that of sin and crime. It is one long tale of evil-doing and of the
sorrow which it brings. Once, when his money was all recklessly wasted,
hunger drove him to steal a bit of coarse bread from a soldier who was a
fellow lodger; and looking back, long afterward, to that hour of
extremity, he exclaimed, "What a bitter thing is the service of Satan,
even in this world!"

On his father's removal to Schoenebeck in 1821 he asked to be sent to
the cathedral school at Magdeburg, inwardly hoping thus to break away
from his sinful snares and vicious companions, and, amid new scenes,
find help in self-reform. He was not, therefore, without at least
occasional aspirations after moral improvement; but again he made the
common and fatal mistake of overlooking the Source of all true
betterment. "God was not in all his thoughts." He found that to leave
one place for another was not to leave his sin behind, for he took
himself along.

His father, with a strange fatuity, left him to superintend sundry
alterations in his house at Heimersleben, arranging for him meanwhile to
read classics with the resident clergyman, Rev. Dr. Nagel. Being thus
for a time his own master, temptation opened wide doors before him. He
was allowed to collect dues from his father's debtors, and again he
resorted to fraud, spending large sums of this money and concealing the
fact that it had been paid.

In November, 1821, he went to Magdeburg and to Brunswick, to which
latter place he was drawn by his passion for a young Roman Catholic
girl, whom he had met there soon after confirmation. In this absence
from home he took one step after another in the path of wicked
indulgence. First of all, by lying to his tutor he got his consent to
his going; then came a week of sin at Magdeburg and a wasting of his
father's mea