“I will relate to you something of my chief wanderings and perverse ways in which I have lived:—­I was not clever enough to have to do with Satan, and to use sorceries; but I have lived in the sins of the flesh—­from these I have now ceased, for I perceive I should be worse than a beast if I were to go to the holy communion, to partake of the body and blood of Jesus, with a heart defiled with such impurities.  Henceforth I could not bear to be separated from my teachers, for I think thus—­Why was Jesus crucified and put to death?  Surely for this cause, because he would atone for me, an exceeding sinful creature.  When I was a poor orphan child, for I have seen neither father nor mother, then Jesus became my father.  As long as I live I will not forget him, and even in eternity I shall be with Him.

“I sometimes think, if I were with you and beheld your faith, I should be much more happy and cheerful than I am now; however, though I be ever so needy—­be it so—­yet, like Thomas, I will call him my Lord and my God!  This, ’tis true, I cannot do of myself; but when I continue asking it as a favour he grants it me, and I experience it.

“With respect to my countrymen, I must tell you, that they often grieve me when they will not follow my advice.  I do not say this as if I fancied myself to be a man of importance, for I will gladly be the meanest of these before the eyes of Jesus.  When I think on my former resistance and stiff-necked behaviour in the work of conversion, I could strike myself.  It causes deep sorrow and repentance within me, when I consider that I have been most faithfully instructed by my teachers for so many years, and yet have been like one that had no ears to hear.  But now, not my ears only are unstopped to hear and understand the doctrine of Jesus and the hymns we sing, but I feel that what I hear and learn penetrates into my heart, and since I am thus inwardly affected, warmed, and enlivened, I am the more astonished and amazed at the change, when recollecting, that I have been so hard and callous, that whenever any of my nearest relations departed this life, being taken from my side by death, I was not able to weep a tear for them; but now I can shed a flood of tears, both from a fervent desire of living intimately attached to Jesus, and for delight and pleasure to think what happiness I should enjoy if incessantly thus disposed.  However, since I am so poor and defective, I find that I cannot procure it by my own efforts; but I am taught that I may yet enjoy this constant happiness, by entreating our Saviour for it to-day, to-morrow, and every day.  As long as I am on this earth, I shall remain like a sick one, and be always apt to stray; for my heart is naturally untoward and hard as a stone, but when Jesus softens it, then it becomes truly soft and tender.  Ah! that I had not such corrupted senses! yet, being conscious that I am constantly in danger on account of my depravity, I am determined faithfully to attend to the gospel, and to my teachers, to be guided and advised by them and to follow after righteousness.  When I search my own heart, I still find many things condemnable in the sight of Jesus, of which I had never thought before.  Hear these my poor words to you in love.  JONATHAN.”