On 1st February, 1738, he writes: ―
“It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity―but what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I the last of all suspected), that I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God. I am not mad, though I thus speak, but I speak the words of truth and soberness, if haply some of those who still dream may awake and see that as I am so are they. Are they read in philosophy? So was I. In ancient or modern tongues? So was I also. Are they versed in the science of divinity? I, too, have studied it many years. Can they talk fluently upon spiritual things? The very same could I do. Are they plenteous in alms? Behold, I gave all my goods to feed the poor. Do they give of their labor as well as of their substance? I have labored more abundantly than they all. Are they willing to suffer for their brethren? I have thrown up my friends, reputation, ease, country; I have put my life into my hand, wandering into strange lands; I have given my body to be devoured by the deep, parched up with heat, consumed by toil and weariness, or whatsoever God should please to bring upon me; but does all this (be it more or less, it matters not) make me acceptable to God? Does all I ever did, or can know, say, give, do, or suffer justify me in His sight? Yea, or the constant use of all the means of grace? Or that I am, as touching outward moral righteousness, blameless? Or, to come closer yet, the having a rational conviction of all the truths of Christianity? Does all this give me a claim to the holy, heavenly, divine character’s, of a Christian? By no means.
“This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen short of the glory of God, that my whole heart is altogether corrupt and abominable, and consequently my whole life, seeing that it cannot be that an evil tree should bring forth good fruit; that, alienated as I am from the life of. God, I am a child of wrath, an heir of Hell; that my own works, my own sufferings, my own righteousness, are so far from making any atonement for the least of those sins, which are more in number than the hairs of my head; that the best of them need atonement themselves, or they cannot abide His righteous judgment; that, having the sentence of death in my heart, and having nothing in or of myself to plead, I have no hope but that of being justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
“If it be said that I have faith (for many such things have I heard from many miserable comforters), I answer, so have the devils a sort of faith, but still they are strangers to the covenant of promise; the faith I want is a sure trust and confidence in God, that through the merits of Christ, my sins are forgiven, and I reconciled to the favor of God. I want that faith which enables every one that hath it to cry out, ‘I live not, but Christ liveth in me―and the life which I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’”
On the 24th of May he writes,
“I felt my heart strangely warmed. I did trust in Christ, in Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He has taken away my sins―even mine―and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Soon as my all I ventured
On the atoning Blood,
The Holy Spirit entered,
And I was born of God.
Now Christ is my salvation.
What can I covet more?
I fear no condemnation―
Because God’s wrath is o’er.