400 History of Methodism 



Sucli exercises were scarcely, if at all, present among 

 the same people at the camp-meeting of 1806. And 

 yet this camp-meeting was not less remarkable than 

 the former ones, and very much more so than any I 

 have attended in later years, for the suddenness with 

 which sinners of every description were awakened, 

 and the overwhelming force of their convictions, bear- 

 ing them instantly down to their knees, if not to the 

 ground, crying for mercy. At this meeting I became 

 clearly convinced that there was an actual, veritable 

 power of God's grace in persons then before me, 

 and who were known to me, by which they were 

 brought to repentance and a new life; and that with 

 respect to the latter (a state of regeneration and grace), 

 the evidence of their possessing it was as full and sat- 

 isfactory as it was that they had been brought to feel 

 the guilt and condemnation of their sins. I did not 

 fall at any time, as I saw others do, but with the con- 

 viction clear to my apprehension as to what was the 

 true character of the work before me, that it was of 

 God, while I feared greatly, I could not but desire 

 that I might become a partaker of the benefit. Still 

 I kept myself aloof, I knew not why." 



After his return to college, as there was much of 

 infidelity and vice prevailing among the students, his 

 situation, on the whole, became so trying that he re- 

 solved, if he could obtain his father's consent, to dis- 

 solve his connection with the institution; and accord- 

 ingly, early in the year 1808, he withdrew from college 

 and became a student of law under John S. Richard- 

 son, an eminent jurist, and afterward a distinguished 

 judge, in South Carolina. Shortly after this, his 

 father, whose spirituality had for some years greatly 

 waned, received a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost, 



