Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/470

458 of the falseness of the Roman system was the finding that, after I distrusted my own natural strength and trusted in Jesus alone, abandoning all other intercessors, and believing that true safety, salvation, and the remedy for our guilt, are alone to be found in the sacrifice of Calvary, I felt a great change in my heart; my feelings were different; what formerly pleased me now was repugnant to me; I felt real and positive sentiments of love and charity toward my brethren—sentiments which before were fictitious and artificial in me; in a word, I found the long-desired peace of my soul. By the grace of the Lord, I was enabled to resist temptations, and passed a quiet, peaceful, and happy life. As I had dedicated several years to the study of medicine, I was able to maintain myself by this profession. In the evening I read the Holy Scriptures to my family, and prayed with them.

"Although all this was very agreeable to me, it was not just that I should continue inactive in the Gospel cause. I soon commenced to think that I was in conscience bound to participate with my brethren the happiness I enjoyed, and especially so, as I had much facility in speaking to multitudes, from my long practice and experience in preaching that I had had while yet a Roman Catholic. I determined to manifest publicly that I had separated myself from the Roman Church, and that I had joined the true Church of Jesus. But, in order to take this step, I found myself laboring under great difficulties, which the devil would fain have me believe to be insurmountable. The idea of poverty from want of a livelihood presented itself to me with all its deformity; as I was aware that the moment I made such a declaration the Roman Bishop would excommunicate me, and, as I lived among an essentially fanatic people, I felt sure that not only my patients would abandon me immediately, but that all my friends would turn a cold shoulder upon me and also abandon me, and that my life would be menaced and attacks made against it. These and other considerations entered my mind, and I imagine that Satan augmented them, so as to try and swerve me from accomplishing the holy resolution that I had adopted.

"Nevertheless, my resolution was unshaken, and I commenced to attend the Provisional Protestant Church, which had been established in a large hall situated in the Street of San Juan de Letran. Being short-sighted, I there began to know my dear brother, the Rev. Henry Chaunccy Riley, solely by his voice. It filled me with comfort to hear him speak of Jesus and his precious blood; the liturgy and hymns which the congregation used enchanted me, as they were full of the pure faith of the primitive Christian; and I anxiously desired the arrival of Sundays, because in our church services I enjoyed delicious moments of peace and joy—Christian emotions that I had never felt in the Roman sect.

"I had for some time been thinking how to become personally acquainted with my brother Henry. One night, as I was at one of our churches, I heard my brother preach with so much valor and faith that I became quite ashamed