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For several years after this, Mr. Evans entertained painfully depressing views of his Christian character and ministerial talents. He thought every other believer had more light than himself, and every other preacher greater gifts. He called himself “a mass of ignorance and sin.” He imagined his discourses entirely useless to his hearers. This he attributed partly to his habit of repeating them memoriter. Others appeared to him to speak extemporaneously, and he “thought they received their sermons directly from heaven,” while he, by memorizing his, forfeited the aid of the Holy Spirit. “I therefore changed my method,” says he, “and took a text without any premeditation, and endeavored to speak what occurred to me at the time. If bad before, it was worse now. I had neither sense nor life, nothing but a poor miserable tone, which produced no effect upon the hearers, and made me really sick of myself. I thought God had nothing to do with me as a preacher. I had no confidence in my own talents and virtues, and the very sound of my voice discouraged me. I have since perceived the great goodness of God herein, preserving me from being puffed up by too good an opinion of my own gifts and graces, which both before and since has proved fatal to many young preachers.”

These views of himself often occasioned him deep distress of mind. He entered the pulpit with dread. He conceived that the mere sight of him there was sufficient to becloud the hearts of his hearers, and intercept every ray of light from heaven. He could not ascertain that he had been the means of the salvation of a single soul during the five years of his preaching. It might have been some relief to him, could he have ventured to develope to some judicious Christian friend the disquietude of his soul. But this he dared not do, lest he should be deemed an unconverted man in the ministry, and exposed as a hypocrite to the world. So he wrapped up the painful secret in his heart, and drank his wormwood alone.

From all this, what are we to infer? That Mr. Evans had never been converted, or was not now in favour with God? We think not. All who knew him had full confidence in his piety, and thought him an excellent Christian. Whether his attention to the subject of baptism, or the Calvinistic views he had recently imbibed, had acted injuriously upon his religious enjoyment, would be an unprofitable speculation, if not otherwise improper. Perhaps these distressing doubts were but the permitted buffetings of Satan, to preserve him from spiritual pride; the preparatory darkness, which enabled him more highly to appreciate, and more earnestly to recommend to others, “the Bright and Morning Star.” Many of God’s chosen servants have been disciplined for their work in darkness. Dr. Payson, during all the earlier part of his eminently useful ministry, and John Summerfield, when his sweet persuasive tongue was leading multitudes to the Cross, were constantly distressed with doubts of their own spiritual condition. Though it is certainly the privilege of every believer to know that he is “a new creature in Christ Jesus,” we cannot thence infer that all such as have not constantly the direct witness of the Spirit are in an unregenerate state.