gifts by speaking to a few friends in a house licensed at Pury;
which he did with great acceptance. The next morning a neighbour of
ours, a very pious woman, came in to congratulate my mother on the
occasion, and to speak of the Lord's goodness in calling her son,
and my brother, two such near neighbours, to the same noble calling.
My mother replied, 'What, do you think he will be a preacher?'
'Yes,' she replied, 'and a great one, I think, if spared.' From
that time till he was settled at Moulton he regularly preached once
a month at Pury with much acceptance. He was at that time in his
twentieth year, and married. Our parents were always friendly to
religion; yet, on some accounts, we should rather have wished him to
go from home than come home to preach. I do not think I ever heard
him, though my younger brother and my sister, I think, generally
did. Our father much wished to hear his son, if he could do it
unseen by him or any one. It was not long before an opportunity
offered, and he embraced it. Though he was a man that never
discovered any partiality for the abilities of his children, but
rather sometimes went too far on the other hand, that often tended a
little to discourage them, yet we were convinced that he approved of
what he heard, and was highly gratified by it."

In Hackleton itself his expositions of Scripture were so valued that
the people, he writes, "being ignorant, sometimes applauded to my
great injury." When in poverty, so deep that he fasted all that day
because he had not a penny to buy a dinner, he attended a meeting of
the Association of Baptist Churches at Olney, not far off. There he
first met with his lifelong colleague, the future secretary of the
mission, Andrew Fuller, the young minister of Soham, who preached on
being men in understanding, and there it was arranged that he should
preach regularly to a small congregation at Earls Barton, six miles