Writings of
Elder John Leland
1754 - 1841
"by his own hand."

July 11.--Why art thou cast down, O my soul ! The mornings cometh as well as the night. Since writing the above note, God has graciously poured out his spirit in Hancock.

Yesterday I baptized ten, which, together with three scattering ones, raises my baptismal list to fourteen hundred and eighty-four.

Baptism does not put away the filth of the flesh; it is the answer of a good conscience towards God, and only figures out the salvation of the soul; which is by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: who died for our sins and rose again for our justification.

Nov. 10.--After living in New Ashford more than sixteen years, this day I removed into Cheshire again. My age and decays admonish me that the time of my departure is not far distant. When I die, I neither deserve nor desire any funeral pomp. If my friends think best to rear a: little monument over-my body, "Here lies the body of JOHN LELAND, who labored____[It is now (1831) 57 years] to promote piety, and vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men," is the sentence which I wish to be engraved upon it.

May 14, 1834.--I am this day fourscore years old; have just returned from Chatham, (30 miles off,) where I preached three times, at the opening of a new meetiug-house, and this day at Cheshire, to 600 people by estimation. I have now several little preaching tours appointed ; but my Maker only knows whether life and strength will be given me to fill them.

It is now sixty years since I began to preach. But ah! how little I have done! and how imperfect that little!

May 15.--Last night fell the largest snow that I ever knew so late in the season.

Many changes in the mechanical, political and religious world have taken place in the course of my life. Most of the changes among us in factories and machines are trans-Atlantic. The steam machines are original Americans. The plea for religious liberty has been long and powerful; but it has been left for the United States to acknowledge it a right inherent, and not a favor granted: to exclude religious opinions from the list of objects of legislation. Sunday schools and missionary societies are of long standing; but camp-meetings and protracted meetings (in their present mode of operation) are novel. What changes may hereafter take place, to me is uncertain. None, however, that will change the character of God, destroy the kingdom of Christ, or assure any of heaven without repentance towards God, and faith towards the Lord Jesus.

I have never labored hard to support the CREED of any religious society; but have felt greatly interested that all of them should have their RIGHTS secured to them beyond the reach of tyrants.

Brevity is the soul of wit, the nerve of argument and the bone of good sense, but loquacity palsies attention, massacres time, and darkens counsel.

August 17, 1834.--This day I baptized five, which are the first that I have baptized since I was eighty years old. My baptismal list is now fifteen hundred and twenty-four.

January 28, 1835.--I have been preaching sixty years to convince men that human powers were too degenerate to effect a change of heart by self-exertion; and all the revivals of religion that I have seen have substantially accorded with that sentiment. But now a host of preachers and people have risen up, who ground salvation on the foundation that I have sought to demolish. The world is gone after them, and their converts increase abundantly. How much error there has been in the doctrine and measures that I have advocated, I cannot say; no doubt some, for I claim not infallible inspiration. But I have not yet been convinced of any mistake so radical as to justify a renunciation of what I have believed, and adopt the new measures. I am waiting to see what the event will he; praying for light ; open to conviction ; willing to retract and ready to confess when convicted.

July 4, 1835.--It is now fifty-nine years since the independence of the United States was declared. In this length of time the inhabitants have increased from three to fourteen millions. The changes that have taken place are innumerable. Sixty-five years ago I was old enough to observe the face of things, and see what was going on: had I been in a dead sleep the sixty-five years, and were now to awake, such a change has taken place in the face of the earth, in architecture, in all the arts, in costume and regimen, and in the forms of religion, that I should doubt whether I had awakened in the same world. The love of money, sexual correspondence, diseases and death, however, remain stationary.