I was in this wretched state when it pleased God to have pity upon me, and to cause a ray of light to penetrate my mind.  One evening, after the labours of the day, instead of going as usual to the club which I frequented, I went alone upon the public walk, where I remained till the night was far advanced:  the moon shone clear and bright:  I had never before been so struck by the magnificence of the heavens, and I felt unusually disposed to reflection.  “No,” I said, (after contemplating for a long time the impressive scene before me,) “no, nature is not God,” (for till then I had entertained this opinion,) “God is certainly distinct from nature:  in all this I can only recognise a work replete with harmony, order, and beauty.  Although I cannot perceive the Author, whose power, intelligence, and wisdom are every where so strongly imprinted on it; still, both my reason and my feeling combine to convince me of his existence.”

This conclusion, which I sincerely adopted, was the result of the reflections in which I had been that evening absorbed.

Some days after this, the examination of a watch, its springs, its various wheels, and its motions, brought me afresh to the same conclusion, and for ever confirmed me in the belief of a God, the Creator of all things.  “If this watch,” I argued, “could not make itself, and necessarily leads us to suppose an artist who made each part, and so arranged the whole as to produce these movements—­how much stronger reasons have we for concluding that the universe has a Contriver and Maker?”

I was no sooner fully satisfied of the existence of a God, than I trembled at the thought of his attributes, and my relationship to him.  The sense of my unworthiness and sinfulness deeply affected me.  When I called to mind the many years I had passed in forgetfulness of this great God; in indifference to, or in a culpable unbelief of his existence; I felt that I must indeed be, in his sight, the most ungrateful, and the most sinful of his creatures.  My next feeling was an anxious desire to amend my conduct, and I determined to lay down such a plan for my future life, as I hoped might not be unworthy of that Being whose eye I then felt was upon me.  After having made many efforts to recall the best maxims of wisdom and rules of virtue that I had met with in the course of my reading, I at length came to a resolution of examining what moral precepts the New Testament might contain, and whether it might not afford me the rules I was seeking for the regulation of my conduct.

This was the motive which brought me again to the New Testament, and induced me to undertake a fourth time the perusal of it.  I wish it were in my power to recount to you, my dear children, all the effects that the eternal word of God produced upon my heart; for from that time I recognised it to be, what it is in fact, the revelation of sovereign wisdom; the genuine expression of the Divine will; the message of a tender and compassionate Father, addressed to his ungrateful and rebellious children, soliciting them to return and find happiness in him.  I wish I could retrace all the impressions that this divine message produced on my mind, the vivid emotions I experienced, and the thoughts and feelings (never, I trust, to be forgotten) excited by that reading.