"Often," he writes in one of his letters,
"I mount my horse and sit upon him for ten or fifteen
minutes, wishing to go somewhere, but not knowing where to
ride; for I would escape anywhere from the incubus that
weighs me down, body and soul; but the fiend follows me _en
croupe_.... The strongest considerations of duty are barely
sufficient to prevent me from absconding to some distant
country, where I might live and die unknown."
A mind in such a state as this is the natural prey of superstition. A
dream, he used to say, first recalled his mind to the consideration of
religion. This was about the year 1810, at the height of those hot
debates that preceded the war of 1812. For nine years, he tells us,
the subject gradually gained upon him, so that, at last, it was his
first thought in the morning and his last at night. From the atheism
upon which he had formerly plumed himself, he went to the opposite
extreme. For a long time he was plunged into the deepest gloom,
regarding himself as a sinner too vile to be forgiven. He sought for
comfort in the Bible, in the Prayer-book, in conversation and
correspondence with religious friends, in the sermons of celebrated
preachers.
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