made to understand was indispensable to real religion. Speaking some
time ago, he thus described that great change:--

"When as a giddy youth of fifteen I was led to attend Wesley
Chapel, Nottingham, I cannot recollect that any individual pressed
me in the direction of personal surrender to God. I was wrought
upon quite independently of human effort by the Holy Ghost, who
created within me a great thirst for a new life.

"I felt that I wanted, in place of the life of self-indulgence, to
which I was yielding myself, a happy, conscious sense that I was
pleasing God, living right, and spending all my powers to get
others into such a life. I saw that all this ought to be, and I
decided that it should be. It is wonderful that I should have
reached this decision in view of all the influences then around me.
My professedly Christian master never uttered a word to indicate
that he believed in anything he could not see, and many of my
companions were worldly and sensual, some of them even vicious.

"Yet I had that instinctive belief in God which, in common with my
fellow-creatures, I had brought into the world with me. I had no
disposition to deny my instincts, which told me that if there was a
God His laws ought to have my obedience and His interests my
service.

"I felt that it was better to live right than to live wrong, and as
to caring for the interests of others instead of my own, the
condition of the suffering people around me, people with whom I had
been so long familiar, and whose agony seemed to reach its climax
about this time, undoubtedly affected me very deeply.