FROM MEMOIRS OF INCREASE WOODWARD, 1742-1822.

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"While I was yet very young, the gracious Preserver of men wrought in me by his love, by his judgments and his mercies, in order to bring me to fear his and seek his favour; for at that time I greatly feared his wrath. When I look back and view the dealings of the Lord with me, it is cause of deep humility and thankfulness that he continued to follow me by his chastisements, for I was a great sinner, making covenants of amendment, and still breaking them. But when I was about sixteen years old, he was pleased in a great degree to manifest his goodness to me, and begat fervent desires in my heart to live the life of the righteous, giving me clearly to see that I must take up the cross, - depart from vanity and evil, - be sober and watchful, and deny myself of those vain pastimes and pleasures in which I indulged myself with my thoughtless companions. But this seemed too great a trial, as I had none outwardly to look to for strength or help: so I turned away from the Divine requiring, intending to alter my way of life when I grew older. Oh! how foolish and unwise! How did I know I should live to see another day; not considering that god might cut me off, and my portion be assigned with the workers of iniquity.

"Yet the unslumbering Shepherd of Israel, who careth for his people and watcheth over them for good, left me not here; but after a few years brought my covenants to my remembrance with dread and fear, and prepared me by deep baptisms, to become as clay in the potter's hand; being introduced as into the awful state and condition of those who are sunk in the regions of death, and cut off from all hopes of mercy. Oh! the horror and black darkness which I was made at that time to feel! I cried out in my distress, Lord, deliver my soul, and I will follow thee. Being thus humbled, his power secretly wrought in me, enabling me to confess him openly before men. By the light which makes manifest, I now saw I must become joined to the Society of Friends, believing they were the true followers of Christ, without any mixture of men's traditions.

"After this, only God know my trials, temptations, and trouble in the wilderness; the enemy of man's happiness endeavouring to deceive and carry me away by presenting false lights instead of the true. These conflicts brought me to experience a being baptized with the fire that burneth as an oven, and I was cast as it were into the furnace to be tried and purified from the dregs of nature, that so the earthly part might be dissolved and melted away as with fervent heat. It is thus that we pass through death to obtain the pure life of the Son of God manifest in the flesh, that we may no longer live unto ourselves, but unto him who sent his Son into the world to redeem through suffering a people to his praise, and to bear testimony to the excellency of the gospel. Oh! the resplendent beauty, light, and luster which shines around the followers of Christ, who are the faithful children of the day, called and chosen to be a peculiar people. Truly it may be said, God is in the midst of them."