I Would Rather Die Than Pray - I Abhor Myself

One midnight " (towards the end of his life, too) Shepard was found lying on his face in " a swoon of sweat and tears," with a copy of the New England Gazette crushed together in his hands. He had just been reading an "especially beautiful sermon of Mr. Thomas Hooker's! " And Principal Whyte says that until I see myself to be " the most to be abhorred, the most malicious, the most wolf-like, the most inwardly rent and distorted, the most hateful and the most hating, the most self-tormenting and the most Shepard-Iike sinner
on this side hell," I must not pass judgment on Mr. T. S. for
his jealousy of Mr. T. H. Agreed. " O my ransomed soul! " Shepard cried on his death-bed, " one hour in heaven will make me forget all my hell upon earth! "