fellowship among those who were like hearted; for the great woman well says:

On solitary souls the Universe

Looks down inhospitable, and the human heart
Finds nowhere shelter but in human kind."

IV

There was a band of Methodists, my old neighbors and friends, who met in a small chapel. There I went and told them in not many words how it was with me. They wondered first and then gave me a warm welcome. I had found out that one stick is not good for a fire. I knew how they would have loved to have a share in my conversion, open and above board, with Hallelujahs and Amens; but there I was, take me or leave me. They were not over-particular about the sticks if they would burn well, while in the burning a certain gift of speech came I must have inherited from my mother, in the prayer and class meetings, of which this was the upshot. In about a year the preacher in charge of the churches came to see me and told me how the brethren in the quarterly meeting on the previous Monday had risen one by one and said it had been borne in upon their hearts that I had a call to preach the gospel. They were local preachers,

with a gift for this work, and rustical men, with one exception, who made their own living as artisans and small farmers, and preached on Sundays for the love of God and of human souls, while some of them answered well to the canon of the great Swiss reformer, "A man who is truly called to preach the gospel may know many things, but must know two,- God and how to speak to the people."

Shall I say that there have been moments in my. life when what "Friends" call "the inward light" has shone or flashed for me on turning points always as I see now? Well this was one, and the first. I told good old Michael that I should be glad to try, and he said I must be ready when he called. So I went home to think out a sermon from the text, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner."

The word came duly that I must preach at the chapel in Addingham three miles up the river. It was Sunday afternoon. Luther loved to preach on Sunday afternoons because the men servants and maid servants could come to hear him then in great numbers, but I found only a handful. And here I must make confession. The sermon was divided into three parts: the

firstly and lastly were my own, the secondly I stole from a sound Scotch divine.

I must have no paper, so I had none, but managed somehow to get through. There was no greeting from the hearers as I came out of the chapel to go home; but half way there I halted, for I found I had quite forgotten the secondly I had stolen. And then came the painful conclusion that it served me right, and my text should have been by good rights, "Thou shalt not steal," while from that time to this I may say in all honesty I have stood true to Paul's words, "Let him that stole steal no more."

There was no inward light for me then. I had meant to do a mean thing and had failed, but by heaven's grace the failure opened the way to my ordination as a Methodist local preacher. I felt no great eagerness to try again: my sin had found me out. They did not know my secret, and old Michael sent me on a Sunday soon after to preach in a farmer's kitchen, on the lift of the moor, where they only had preaching now and then, and where I may suppose he thought poor provision might pass where the feasts came few and far between.

It was in June. I see the place still, and am aware of the fragrance of the wild uplands

stealing through the open lattice on bars of sunshine, to mingle with the pungent snap of the peat fire on the hearth which gives forth the essence of the moorlands for a thousand years. And I still mind how heavy my heart was that afternoon. I had been trying all the week to find a sermon in a parable; but there was no pulse to answer, no vision, and Bishop Horne says, "If you distil dry bones, all you will have for your pains is water."

Still there I was, the preacher, and they were simple-hearted folk up there, of the old Methodist election unto grace, eager and hungry for the word of life, and ready to come in with the grand Amens.

The big farm kitchen was full, and they were just the hearers to help a poor soul over the sand bars on the lift of their full hearts. So they sang with a will; and where in all the world will you hear such singing with a will as in Yorkshire and Lancashire! Then I must pray. Father Taylor said, "I cannot make a prayer," nor can I. But, with those hearts filled from the springs of life, I felt that day the prayer was making me. Then the time came for the sermon. Some stammering words came to my lips, and then some more, while