The convert or, Leaves from my experience

Front matter

OR,

//^. 2/ ^^/

LEAVES FROM MY EXPERIENCE.

CHAPTER III. Become a Univeesalist, . . . . .33

CHAPTER lY.

Univeesalibm Unsatisfaotoet, ... 60

CHAPTER y.

Become a Woeld-Refoemee, . . . .83

CHAPTER YI.

Methods of Woeld-Refoem, . . . .107

CHAPTER YII.

The Woeking Men, ..... 128

CHAPTER YHI.

Religion of Humanity, .... 144

XU CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

Union and Peogress, . . . . .162

PAOK

CHAPTER X.

My "New Views," 182

CHAPTER XL Saint-Simonism, ...... 199

CHAPTER XII.

HOREIBLE DOCTEINES, ..... 218

CHAPTER XIII.

Getting Bettee, . . . ^. . . 240

CHAPTER XIY.

Man no Chtjeoh-Buildee, .... 268

CHAPTER XY.

Providential Men, . . . . . 293

CHAPTER XYI.

Struggles after Light, . . . .319

CHAPTER XYII.

A Step Foeward, ...... 342

CHAPTER XYIIL Become a Catholic, . . . . .368

CHAPTER XIX.

Belief on Authority, . . . . .397

CHAPTER XX.

Conclusion, . . . . . .418

THE CONVERT.

CHAPTEE I.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH.

I WAS bom in the town of Stockbridge, Windsor County, Vermont, September 16, 1803. My father was a native of Hartford County, Connecticut ; my mother of the beautiful village of Keene, New Hampshire. At the age of six years I was placed with an aged couple in the town of Eoyalton to be brought up. The man, when I went to live with him, was upwards of sixty ; his wife was about fifty. They were plain country people, living on a small farm, and supporting themselves by their own ina THE CONVERT.

dustiy. They had been brought up in New England Congregationalism^ were honest, upright, strictly moral, and far more ready to suffer wrong than to do wrong, but had no particular religion, and seldom went to meeting.

I was treated with great kindness and affection, and as well brought up as could be expected from persons in their condition of life. They taught me to be honest, to owe no one any thing but good will, to be frugal and industrious, to speak the truth, never to tell a lie under any circumstances, or to take what was not my own, even to the value of a pin ; to keep the Sabbath, and never to let the sun go down on my wrath. In addition they taught me the Shorter Catechism, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and a short evening prayer in rhyme, which ran,

'^ Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Properly speaking I had no childhood, and have more of the child in my feelings now than at eight or ten years of age. Brought up with old people, and debarred from all the sports, plays, and amusements of children, I had the manners, the tone, and tastes of an old man before I was a boy. A sad misfortune ; for children form one another, and should always be suffered to be children as long as possible. Both childhood and youth are quite too short with us, and the morals and manners of the country suffer from it.

I early learnt to read, and was from my earliest recollection fond of reading ; but we had few books, and our neighbors had fewer. Our family library consisted of a Protestant version of the Scriptures, a London edition ; Watts's Psalms and Divine SongSj and The Franklin Primer^ to which were subsequently added Edwards's History of Bedemp-- tion ; Davies's Sermons ; a History of the Indian Wars, by a Dr. Sanders, I believe, at one time President of the Vermont University at Burlington ; a mutilated copy of Philip Quarle, sl work of fiction, written in imitation of Defoe^s Rohinson Crusoe ; and during the war of 1812 with Great Britain, a weekly newspaper, published in Windsor by Alden

Spooner. My reading was confined to these works^ and principally to the Scriptures^ all of which I had read through before I was eight, and a great part of which I knew by heart before I was fourteen years old.

My thoughts from my earliest recollection took a religious turn, and my greatest pleasure was in conversing or in hearing others converse on the subject of religion. When about nine years old I was permitted to accompany a much older boy to " the middle of the town/' about four miles distant from our residence, to witness a muster, or general training of a brigade of militia. On returning home I was asked what I had seen to interest me. I answered that I had seen two old men talking on religion. In fact I was so much interested in their discussion that I quite forgot the soldiers, though I came of a military family, and almost forgot to eat my card of gingerbread. The discussion, I remember, was on free will and election, and I actually took part in it, stoutly maintaining free will against Edwards, who confounds volition with judgment, and maintains that the will is necessarily determined by the state of the aflfections and the motives presented to the understanding.

The simple history of the passion of our Lord, as I read it in the Evangelists, affected me deeply. I hung with delight on the Mystery of Eedemption, and my young heart often burned with love to our Blessed Lord, who had been so good as to come into the world, and to submit to the most cruel death of the cross that he might save us from our wicked dispositions, and make us happy for ever in heaven. I wanted to know every thing about him, and I used to think of him frequently in the day and the night. Sometimes I seemed to hold long familiar conversations with him, and was deeply pained when any thing occurred to interrupt them. Sometimes, also, I seemed to hold a spiritual intercourse with the Blessed Mary, and with the Holy Angel Gabriel, who had announced to her that she was to be the mother of the Eedeemer. I was rarely less alone than when alone. I did not speculate on the matter. It all seemed real to me, and I enjoyed often an inexpressible happiness. I preferred to be alone, for then I could taste the sweets of silent meditation, and feel that I was in the presence of Jesus and Mary, and the holy angels ; yet I had not been baptized, and had very little instruction except such as I had obtained from reading the Holy Scriptures.

The earliest wish I recollect to have formed with regard to my future life, was to be a minister of religion, and to devote myself to the work of bringing people to the knowledge and the love of God. For this I longed to go to school, to get learning, to grow up, and to be a man. I early looked upon myself as one called and set apart to the service of religion. I had an irritable temper, and was subject to violent outbreaks of passion, but I tried hard to control myself, and neither to do nor to think any thing wrong, and till I was man grown, I do not believe I ever suffered the sun to go down upon my wrath. I had my faults as weU as others, and did many things which were by no means right or excusable ; but my conscience was active, and I always felt a deep remorse for them, and was ready always to do all in my power, to submit to any humiliation however great, to repair the faults I committed, or the wrongs I did. I always felt that the next best tiling to never doing wrong, was to own the wrong done, and endeavor to undo it. So it was with me in my -childhood, till I was fourteen years of age, when I left the kind old people, who had thus far brought me up, and went forth into the world alone, to make my way as best I could.

My youth was not as blameless as my childhood, and it was far less happy. Keligion, however, never lost its place in my thoughts. But unhappily, while I had strong religious affections, and the elements of Christian behef, I belonged to no Church, and had no definite creed. True, I had been taught the Shorter Catechism, but I was not taught it as something I must believe, and I soon learned that they who taught it to me did not themselves believe it. True, also, I was taught the Apostles' Creed, but I was not required to believe it, and received no instructions as to its sense. I probably did believe, however, the greater part of it. I believed in God the Father Almighty ; that Jesus Christ was his only begotten Son; that he was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin

Mary, was crucified by the wicked Jews, under Pontius Pilate, was dead, and buried ; that he rose again from the dead on the third day ; that he ascended into heaven ; that he sitteth at the right hand of the Father Ahnighty, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believed in the Holy Ghost ; the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake ; the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. But to the articles of the creed affirming the Holy Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints, I attached no meaning ; my attention was not called to them ; and not till long years after, did it occur to me to ask whether they meant any thing or nothing.

There is no doubt that I was weU disposed to believe, and that if I had been properly instructed in the Christian faith I should have heartily received it, and held as fast to it as an unbaptized person, as one who is only a catechumen can do ; but as it was, I attached very little definite meaning to what I was taught, and was open to any kind of infiuences by which I was surrounded. Nobody, however, told me that baptism was necessary ; and nobody told me

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. y

any thing about the Cliurch. The most I was told was that I must ^^get religion/' "experience religion/' have " a change of heart/' " be born again ; " but how that was to be brought about I could not understand. I took it for granted that I had not experienced religion^ and I really wished I might be born again ; but how I could be born again, or what I was to do in order to be born again, nobody explained to my understanding.

In the town in which I lived we had Congregationalists, called in my young days, " The Standing Order/' Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, and Christians, or, as they insisted on the word being pronounced, Christ-yans. The Congregational meeting-house was four miles distant from our house, in the middle of the town, and we never attended it. The Methodists and Christians, a sect founded in New England by one Elias Smith, and one Abner Jones, in the year 1800, if I mistake not — held their meetings near by us, sometimes in a schoolhouse, sometimes in private houses ; and in the summer season, not unfrequently in a very pleasant

grove. The Universalists were few, and so were the 1*

Baptists. The Methodists and Christians were the more numerous. I usually attended their meetings. They differed I was told ; but the only difference I could discover between them was that the Methodist preachers appeared to have the stronger lungs ; they preached in a louder tone, and when they preached the people shouted more. I thought them the best, because they made the most noise, and gave the most vivid pictures of hell-fire, and the tortures of the damned. All I learned, however, from either was, that I must be bom again or go to hell, get religion or be damned. The more I listened to them the more I feared hell, and the less I loved God. Love gave place to terror ; and I became constantly afraid that the devil would come and carry me off bodily. I tried to get religion, and at times almost made up my mind to submit to the Methodists, and let them " bring me out.''

One of our neighbors, an elderly woman, who had seen better days, had been well brought up, and well educated, was a Congregationalist, a stanch adherent to the Standing Order. She was now very poor, and lived in a miserable log-hut on one corner of our farm, and was treated generally by our neighbors with great contempt, because she insisted on maintaining her self-respect and personal dignity, notwithstanding her poverty. I had a great affection for her, because I found her a woman of intelligence and refinement. I visited her one evening, when I was in great distress of mind, and told her my fears and my resolutions. She heard me with great patience, till I had concluded my story.

" My poor boy,'' she replied, ^^ God has been good to you, and has no doubt gracious designs towards you. He means to use you for a purpose of his own, and you must be faithful to his inspirations. But go not with the Methodists or with any of the sects. They are New Lights, and not to be trusted. The Christian religion is not new, and Christians have existed from the time of Christ. These New Lights are of yesterday. You yourself know the founder of the Christian sect, and I myself knew personally both George Whitfield and John Wesley, the founders of Methodism. Neither can be right, for they come too late, and have broken off, separated from the body of Christians, which subsisted before them. When you join any body calling itself a Christian body^ find out and join one that began with Christ and his ApostleS; and has continued to subsist the same without change of doctrine or worship down to our own times. You will find the true religion with that body, and nowhere else. Join it, obey it, and you will find rest and salvation. But beware of sects and New Lights, they will make you fair promises, but in the end will deceive you to your own destruction.''

I was some twelve years old at the time, but the words made a deep impression upon my mind. They struck me as reasonable and just, and I think they prevented me from ever being a genuine, hearty Protestant, or a thorough-going radical even. She was not a Catholic, but her argument is one which, though I knew it not then, none save a Catholic can consistently urge. She was sincerely a Congregationalist, and held only the views which in my boyhood were generally insisted on by the old Standing Order of New England. However erroneous were the views of the New England Puritans, they retained a conception of the Church of Christ, held that Christ had himself founded a Church, established its order, and given it its ordinances, and taught that it was necessary to belong to it in order to be saved. The loose notions of the Church, the humanism and transcendentalism, now so common among their descendants, were then unknown. They were as rigid and as consistent churchmen in their way as the Anglicans, and even more so.

But time went on, and after I was fourteen years of age, I was thrown upon a new world, into the midst of new and strange scenes, and exposed to new and corrupting influences. I fell in with new sectaries, universalists, deists, atheists, and nothingarians, as they are called with us, who profess no particular religion. I still held fast to the belief in my need of religion, and there were times when my earher feelings revived, and I enjoyed my silent meditations. But my young head became confused with the contradictory opinions I heard advanced, with the doubts and denials to which I listened, and for a time my mind was darkened, and I half persuaded myself that all religion was a delusion, — the work of priestcraft or statecraft. I was in a labyrinth of doubt, with no Ariadne's thread to guide me out to the light of day. I was miserable, and knew not where to turn for relief. I felt that my own reason was insufficient to guide me, and the more I attempted by it alone to arrive at truth, the farther I went astray, and the more uncertain and perplexed I became.

One day, when I was about nineteen years of age, I^was passing by a Presbyterian meeting-house. It was Sunday, and the people were gathering for the service. The thought struck me that I would go in and join with them. It was a beautiful September day, in Malta, Saratoga County, New York. The air was soft and balmy, the sky was clear and serene, and it seemed as if all nature was enjoying its sweet Sabbath-day repose. I went into the meeting-house ; it was long since I had been in a place of worship. The singing was perhaps not very good, but it soothed me, while it affected me even to tears. I listened reverently to the reading of the Scriptures, to the prayer, and to the sermon. There was nothing in the sermon that I remember. It was a commonplace affair. But I went out from that meeting-house much affected, and feeUng that I had missed my way. As I pursued my journey, I could not help asking myself what I had gained by my speculations, and why it was that I must have no sympathy with my kind ? why I must stand alone, and find no belief to sustain me, and have no worship to refresh me ?

I have, said I, in my self-communing, done my best to find the truth, to experience religion, and to lead a religious life, yet here I am without faith, without hope, without love. I know not what to believe. I know not what to do. I know not whence I came, why I am here, or whither I go. My. life is a stream that fiows out of darkness into darkness. The world is dark to me, and not a ray of light even for one instant relieves it. My heart is sad, and I see nothing to hope for, or to live for. For me Heaven is dispeopled, and the Earth is a desert, a barren waste. Why is this so ? Why does my heart rebel against the speculations of my mind ? If doubt is all there is for me, why cannot I discipline my feelings into submission to it ? Why this craving to believe, when there is nothing to be believed ? Why this longing for sympathy, when there is nothing to respond to my heart ? Why this thirst for an unbounded good^ when there is no good, when all is a mere show, an illusion, and nothing is real ? Have I not mistaken my way ?

Was I not told in the outset that if I followed my own reason, it would lead me astray, that I should lose all belief, and find myself involved in universal doubt and uncertainty ? Has it not been so ? In attempting to follow the light of reason alone have I not lost faith, lost the light of revelation, and plunged myself into spiritual darkness ? I did not believe what these people said, and yet were they not right ? They were. They told me to submit my reason to revelation. I will do so. I am incapable of directing myself I must have a guide. I will hear the Church. I will surrender, abnegate my own reason, which hitherto has only led me astray, and make myself a member of the Church, and do what she commands me.

In a few days I told my experience to the Presbyterian minister of the town where I was pursuing my academic studies, went the same day, at his request, and told it to the Session of his church, and the Sunday following was baptized and received into the Presbyterian communion. I did not ask wlietlier the Presbyterian church was the true Church or not^ for the Church question had not yet been fairly raised in my mind, and as it did not differ essentially from the Standing Order, and claimed to be the true Church, and was counted respectable, I was satisfied. What it believed was of little consequence, since I had resolved to abnegate my own reason, and take the Church for my guide. My proceeding was precipitate, but after all was not rash, for it was logical, and justified by the resolution I had taken. So in October, 1822, 1 became a member of the Presbyterian church, Ballston, Saratoga County, New York.

CHAPTEE II.

PRESBYTERIAN EXPERIENCE.

The Monday following my reception into the Presbyterian communion we had a covenant meeting, or a meeting of all the members of the church. The Presbyterians, like most of the Protestant sects in this country, adopt the doctrine of the old Donatists, that the Church is composed of the elect, the just, or the [saints only, and they therefore distinguish between the church and the congregation, or between those who are held to be saints, and those held to be sinners, that is, between those who profess to have been regenerated, and those who make no such pretension, although they may have been baptized. The church members, to the number of about six hundred, came together on Monday, and after being addressed by the pastor, and stirred up to greater zeal for the promotion of Presbyterianism, renewed their covenant obligations, and bound themselves to greater efforts for the conversion of sinners, the common name given to all not of the sect, even though members of the congregation, and born of Presbyterian parents. In this meeting we all solemnly pledged ourselves, not only to pray for the conversion of sinners, but to mark them wherever we met them, to avoid them, to have no intercourse with them that could be helped, and never to speak to them except to admonish them of their sins, or so far as it should be necessary on business. There was to be no interchange of social or neighborly visits between us and them, and we were to have even business relations with them only when absolutely necessary. We were by our manner to show all not members of the Presbyterian church that we regarded them as the enemies of God, and therefore as our enemies, as persons hated by God, and therefore hated by us ; and we were even in business relations always to give the preference to church members, and as far as possible, without sacrificing our own interests, to treat those not members as outcasts from society, as pariahs, and thus by appeals to their business interests^ their social feelings, and their desire to stand well in the community, to compel them to join the Presbyterian church. The meeting was animated by a singular mixture of bigotry, uncharitableness, apparent zeal for God's glory, and a shrewd regard to the interests of this world.

About the time I speak of, and for several years after, meetings of the sort I have described, were common in the Presbyterian churches, and a movement was made, in 1827, to induce all the members throughout the Union to pledge themselves to non-intercourse with the rest of the community, except for their conversion, and to refuse in the common business affairs of life to patronize any one not a member of the church. How far it succeeded I am not informed ; but as, taking the country at large, the Presbyterians were but a small minority, and by no means able to control its business operations, I suppose it was only partially successful, and its abettors had to soften their rules a little so as to bring within the privileged the members of the other Evangelical sects.

It may readily be believed that the exliibitioii I saw was not over and above pleasing to me, and that it was only with a wry face that I took the pledges with the rest. I was in for it, and» I would do as the others did. I saw at once that I had made a mistake, that I had no sympathy with the Presbyterian spirit, and should need a long and severe training to sour and elongate my visage sufficiently to enjoy the full confidence of my new brethren. Every day's experience proved it. In our covenant we had bound ourselves to watch over one another with fraternal affection. I was not long in discovering that this meant that we were each to be a spy upon the others, and to rebuke, admonish, or report them to the Session. My whole life became constrained. I dared not trust myself, in the presence of a church member, to a single spontaneous emotion ; I dared not speak in my natural tone of voice, and if I smiled I expected to be reported. The system of espionage in some European countries is bad enough, and it is no pleasant reflection that the man you are talking with may be a mouchardy and report your words to the Prefet de Police ; but that is nothing to what one must endure as a Presbyterian, unless he has enough of malignity to find an indemnification for being spied in spying others. We were allowed no liberty, and dared enjoy ourselves only by stealth. The most rigid Catholic ascetic never imagined a disciphne a thousandth part as rigid as the discipline to which I was subjected. The slightest deviation was a mortal sin, the slightest forgetfulness was enough to send me to hell. I must not talk with sinners ; I must take no pleasure in social intercourse with persons, however moral, amiable, wellbred, or worthy, if not members of the church ; I was forbidden to read books written by others than Presbyterians, and commanded never to inquire into my belief as a Presbyterian, or to reason on it, or about it.

I tried for a year or two to stifle my discontent, to silence my reason, to repress my natural emotions, to extinguish my natural affections, and to submit patiently to the Calvinistic discipline. I spent much time in prayer and meditation, I read pious books, and finally plunged myself into my studies with a view of becoming a Presbyterian minister. But it would not do. I had joined the church because I had despaired of myself, and because despairing of reason I had wished to submit to authority. If the Presbyterian church had satisfied me that she had authority, was authorized by Almighty God to teach and direct me, I could have continued to submit ; but while she exercised the most rigid authority over me, she disclaimed all authority to teach me, and remitted me to the Scriptures and private judgment. ^' We do not ask you to take this as your creed,'" said my pastor, on giving me a copy of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith ; ^^ we do not give you this as a summary of the doctrines you must hold, but as an excellent summary of the doctrines which we believe the Scriptures teach. What you are tobeUeve is the Bible. You must take the Bible as your creed, and read it with a prayerful mind, begging the Holy Ghost to aid you to understand it aright." But while the church refused to take the responsibility of telling me what doctrines I must believe, while she sent me to the Bible and private judgment, she yet claimed authority to condemn and excommunicate me as a heretic^ if I departed from tlie standard of doctrine contained in her Confession.

This I regarded as unfair treatment. It subjected me to all the disadvantages of authority without any of its advantages. The church demanded that I should treat her as a true mother, while she was free to treat me only as a step-son, or even as a stranger. Be one thing or another, said I ; either assume the authority and the responsibiKty of teaching and directing me, or leave me with the responsibility my freedom. If you have authority from God, avow it, and exercise it. I am all submission. I will hold what you say, and do what you bid. If you have not, then say so, and forbear to call me to an account for differing from you, or disregarding your teachings. Either bind me or loose me. Do not mock me with a freedom which is no freedom, or with an authority which is illusory. If you claim authority over my faith, tell me what I must believe, and do not throw upon me the labor and responsibility of forming a creed for myself ; if you do not, if you send me to the Bible and private judgment, to find out the Christian faith the best way I can, do not hold me obliged to conform to your standards, or assume the right to anathematize me for departing from them.

My position was a painful one, and I could not endure it. I had gained nothing, but lost much, by joining the Presbyterian church. I had given up the free exercise of my own reason for the sake of an authoritative teacher, and had obtained no such teacher. I had despaired of finding the truth by my own reason, and had now nothing better, nor so good, because I could not now exercise it freely. Certainly I had been too hasty, and reckoned without my host. After all, what reason had I to regard this Presbyterian church as the true Church of Christ ? " Go not after the New Lights,'' said my old Congregationalist friend. Are not these Presbyterians New Lights, as much as the Methodists and the Christians ? If our Lord founded a Church and has a Church on earth, it must reach back to his time, and come down in unbroken succession from the Apostles. But the Presbyterian church is a recently formed body, not three hundred years old. It was founded in Scotland by men who had been Eoman Catholics, and who had deserted the faith in which they had been reared ; and in England by men who had belonged to tbe cliurcli of England, which itself had broken off from the Catholic Church. Were these men authorized by an express commission from God.^ Did they act by authority ? or did they follow their own private judgment^ and against the authority which they had previously recognized ? The latter certainly. Then what reason have I for regarding the church they founded as the Church of Christ ?