did he stop up my path.  O from how many delusions of my own seeking; how many snares and nets of my own weaving; how many pits of my own digging, hast thou delivered me, when wandering, bewildered, on temptation’s ground, in the cloudy dark day.  How often hast thou sought me out; how often bound me up when broken, strengthened me when sick, and fed me with judgment, and very, very often, thou madest thyself known to me.  I knew thy hand when it shook the rod, when it arrested me on some mad career.  I knew thy hedge, thy bar; saw not only escapes, but my Deliverer:  often paused, turned, and took fast hold of thy covenant.  I had no afflictions in those days, but every pleasure lawful to be enjoyed, and natural to the heart of woman; but no pastor, no church, no Christian society; yet God was there, my Bible, my Doddridge, and other good books.  And to my shame and confusion this day, he was not, in the midst of all my idolatry, a barren wilderness, nor a land of drought to me.  I had many Sabbaths; literally the Sabbath was a sign between my covenant God and me:  ill spent it often was, but not with company; it was spent in retirement.  The Lord did not leave me so far as to give up the Sabbath to the world.  Though my heart was incrusted, and spiritual life scarcely discernible, sometimes the Lord met me, and strange to tell, not with threatenings causing terror, but with compunction, melting, turning, and ere the day was over, manifestations of pardon, though not joy; for I was grieved at my ingratitude.

“I did expect affliction long before it came, and my presumptuous heart calculated upon the fruit being the peaceable fruit of righteousness, and to take away sin; but still I held my way, gadding about, drinking the waters of Sihor and the rivers of Syria, and eating the worldling’s dainties.  Oh, Oh, at last it came; yes, it came.  Thou didst cut off the desire of my eyes with a stroke, and with that made the world a blank to me.  But O the stately steps of thy providential mercy previous to that trying hour.  O my God, I must ever wonder and stand amazed at thy exuberant grace.  In consistence with thy covenant, thou mightest have struck me among these worldlings, in that dry and barren land, where not one tongue could speak the language of Canaan, nor bring forth from thy precious Bible the words of consolation to my wounded and bereaved spirit; richly had I merited this; but never, no, never hast thou dealt with me as I sinned.  Through the whole of my life, from the time that the Lord called me out of darkness into his marvellous light—­from the time that he first led me to the Saviour, and enabled me to take hold of his covenant, wanderer, backslider, transgressor, rebel, idolater, ingrate, and if there be any name more expressively vile and abominable, that is mine.  And from the hour of my birth, through the whole of this refractory perverse life, ’the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin,’ has been, and now is, thy name to me.