Respected Sir. Accept my grateful acknowlegements for your kindness in thus noticing me. A christian friend here, I value as I should a flower in the desert. I shall be happy to converse with you in any way, but as it respects your particular situation, the method you have proposed I think the most prudent of any that could be adopted. I shall consider it a great privilege, yet I feel that my conversation will be neither edifying, nor interesting to you, only so far as relates to the cause. But I hope you will consider that I am but an infant in the school of Christ, & treat me accordingly for I need your advice, your instruction & your prayers.
As my feelings are different from what they were formerly, I shall proud to tell you the change, (that I can but fully describe it) I may date the first of my serious impressions as far back as the 1st of January, tho it was but an occasional admonition of conscience until March. Several circumstances combined about that time to awaken me. Till then I had quieted myself with the idea that I was better than many others, & that if I now attended to the
In this letter to an anonymous recipient, Edward Hitchcock describes a religious awakening he has had and he asks for guidance. The letter is undated, but was probably written in 1814, or a little after, in response to his conversion to orthodoxy as a result of a bout with mumps, which affected his eyesight.