revivals, and no sympathy with Cornish views and customs; so not having
a church to go to, they were left pretty much to themselves.

With this attractive sphere before me, I gave up my living and work in
the country, and accepted the curacy at l. 120 a year, with a house
rent-free. My rector was a dry Churchman, who had no sympathy with me;
but he seemed glad to get any one to come and work amongst such a rough,
and in some respects unmanageable, set. He had bought a chapel from the
Primitive Methodists for Divine service, and had erected schools for
upwards of three hundred children. These he offered me as my ground of
operation, promising, with a written guarantee, that if I succeeded, he
would build me a church, and endow it with all the tithes of that
portion of the parish.

Here was a field of labour which required much prayer and tact, as well
as energetic action. In accordance with Scriptural teaching, "I
determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." I made
up my mind that I would not begin by having temperance addresses for
drunkards, or lectures on the Evidences of Christianity for the infidel,
but simply with preaching the Gospel.

One thing that simplified my work very much was the fact, that the
people were spiritually dead. I used to tell them, that in this free
country every man is accounted innocent till he is proved to be guilty,
but that in the Bible every man is guilty before God till he is
pardoned, and dead till he is brought to life. In one sense it does not
matter very much whether a man is an infidel, a drunkard, or anything
else, if he is dead in trespasses and sins.

It is of very little consequence in what coloured raiment a corpse is