I was like a man born blind, who should suddenly recover his sight in a magnificent apartment, splendidly illuminated.  My feelings at least corresponded with those of a man under such circumstances, were they possible.  How glorious was the light of the Gospel to me!  I sought for morality, and I found there the most simple, clear, complete, and perfect system of morality that could be conceived; and there I found precepts suited to every circumstance that could present itself in life, as a son, a brother, a father, a friend, a subject, a servant, a labourer, a man, a reasonable creature:  my duty in every relation of life 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.