d. He tramped about vainly looking for work, grew reckless, and
took to drink. Visiting his cottage, consisting of one room and a
"lean-to," I found his wife ill with fever, a fever-stricken babe in
her arms, the second child lying dead on the bed. In answer to my
soft-spoken questions: Yes, she was pining (starving), there was no
work. Why did she leave the dead child on the bed? Because she had no
other place for it till the coffin came. And at night the unhappy,
driven man, the fever-stricken wife, the fever-stricken child, the
dead child, all lay in the one bed. The farmers hated the Union
because its success meant higher wages for the men, and it never
struck them that they might well pay less rent to the absent landlord
and higher wage to the men who tilled their fields. They had only
civil words for the burden that crushed them, hard words for the
mowers of their harvests and the builders-up of their ricks; they made
common cause with their enemies instead of with their friends, and
instead of leaguing themselves together with the labourers as forming
together the true agricultural interest, they leagued themselves with
the landlords against the labourers, and so made ruinous fratricidal
strife instead of easy victory over the common foe. And, seeing all
this, I learned some useful lessons, and the political education
progressed while the theological strife went on within.

In the early autumn a ray of light broke the darkness. I was in London
with my mother, and wandered one Sunday morning into St. George's
Hall, where the Rev. Charles Voysey was preaching. There to my delight
I found, on listening to the sermon and buying some literature on sale
in the ante-room, that there were people who had passed through my own
difficulties, and had given up the dogmas that I found so revolting. I
went again on the following Sunday, and when the service was over I
noticed that the outgoing stream of people were passing by Mr. and
Mrs. Voysey, and that many who were evidently strangers spoke a word
of thanks to him as they went on. Moved by a strong desire, after the
long months of lonely striving, to speak to one who had struggled out
of Christian difficulties, I said to Mr. Voysey, as I passed in my
turn, "I must thank you for very great help in what you said this
morning," for in truth, never having yet doubted the existence of God,
the teaching of Mr. Voysey that He was "loving unto _every_ man, and
His tender mercy over