truth is usually to be learnt from both sides. Therefore I have never
liked to take sides; a fortunate thing for me.[9]

Another youthful experience which also had a decided influence in
forming my cast of character, was the following:--There are certain
oft-repeated demands made upon the members of our Established Church;
such as, to enter upon the service of Christ, to show forth Christ in
one's life, to follow Jesus, etc. These injunctions were brought home to
me times without number through the zeal of my father as a teacher of
others and a liver himself of a Christian life. When demands are made on
a child which are in harmony with child nature, he knows no reluctance
in fulfilling them; and as he receives them entirely and unreservedly,
so also he complies with them entirely and unreservedly. That these
demands were so often repeated convinced me of their intense importance;
but I felt at the same time the difficulty, or indeed, as it seemed to
me, the impossibility of fulfilling them. The inherent contradiction
which I seemed to perceive herein threw me into great depression; but at
last I arrived at the blessed conviction that human nature is such that
it is not impossible for man to live the life of Jesus in its purity,
and to show it forth to the world, if he will only take the right way
towards it.

This thought, which, as often as it comes into my mind, carries me back
even now to the scenes and surroundings of my boyhood, may have been not
improbably amongst the last mental impressions of this period, and it
may fitly close, therefore, the narrative of my mental development at
this age. It became, later, the point whereon my whole life hinged.

From what I have said of my boyish inner life, it might be assumed that
my outer life was a happy and peaceful one. Such an assumption would,