;328 JOURNAL or a 
symphonies, when the service was over. I felt the impropriety of 
introducing it into the church, but could not help admiring the 
very great dexterity, with which he executed the most difficult 
passages, and made them tell on the organ. I was displeased with 
m3'self, for not being more displeased with him. 
With a very highly esteemed friend, I had a conversation on 
several subjects, which made a deep impression upon me. Being 
rather of an anxious turn of mind, he expressed surprise at the con- 
fidence and cheerfulness of some Christians. He related, that he 
was educated in the celebrated Paedagogium at Halle in Saxony, 
where, contrary to the intention of its founders, he and others were 
taught to entertain scruples concerning the principal doctrines of 
Christianity, and to explain away those scriptures, which the 
Neologcfi, or Socinians and Deists, found to bear against their fa- 
vourite opinions. But as he could find no comfort and peace in 
the new doctrines of self-enlightened men, he began w^ell to consider 
those, which they had rejected, and, by slow degrees, seemed to ob- 
tain more faith in them, and to consider them as the basis of all 
sound religion. He wished, however, to know my views of that 
real and convincing experience of the efficacy of faith in Jesus, 
and the atonement made for sin, which a true believer ought to 
possess. I gave him a plain and faithful account of the manner, 
in which, " it pleased God to reveal his Son in me,"' though natu- 
rally averse to religion, falsely supposing, that it tended to check 
all cheerfulness, and the enjoyment of the pleasures of this life, 
w hereas I now knew, that the only way to live happy, and innocently 
to enjoy that good, which God has left to us in this world, as " a 
witness for himself," for our use, improvement, and comfort, was 
to make sure, that He is our Father, Friend, and Deliverer from 
the curse and punishment of sin, as declared in the Gospel. 
My friend observed, that ever since he had become acquainted 
witii mc, he had Avondered, how a man of so lively a disposition, 
could belong to a community so recluse and religious, as that of 
the Church of the Brethren, in which there were so many checks, 
