t he had been brought up against a dead wall; although
on other sides of my nature I had been responsive and docile. But
now, in my tenth year, the imitative faculty got the upper hand,
and nothing seemed so attractive as to be what I was expected to
be. If there was a doubt now, it lay in the other direction; it
seemed hardly normal that so young a child should appear so
receptive and so apt.

My Father believed himself justified, at this juncture, in making
a tremendous effort. He wished to secure me finally,
exhaustively, before the age of puberty could dawn, before my
soul was fettered with the love of carnal things. He thought that
if I could now be identified with the 'saints', and could stand
on exactly their footing, a habit of conformity would be secured.
I should meet the paganizing tendencies of advancing years with
security if I could be forearmed with all the weapons of a
sanctified life. He wished me, in short, to be received into the
community of the Brethren on the terms of an adult. There were
difficulties in the way of carrying out this scheme, and they
were urged upon him, more or less courageously, by the elders of
the church. But he overbore them. What the difficulties were, and
what were the arguments which he used to sweep those difficulties
away, I must now explain, for in this lay the centre of our
future relations as father and son.

In dealing with the peasants around him, among whom he was
engaged in an active propaganda, my Father always insisted on the
necessity of conversion. There must be a new birth and being, a
fresh creation in God. This crisis he was accustomed to regard as
manifesting itself in a sudden and definite upheaval. There might
have been prolonged practical piety, deep and true contrition for
sin, but these, although the natural and suitable prologue to
conversion, were not conversion itself. People hung on at the
confines of regeneration, often for a very long time; my Father
dealt earnestly with them, the elders ministered to them, with
explanation, exhortation and prayer. Such persons were in a
gracious state, but they were not in a state of grace. If they
should suddenly die, they would pass away in an unconverted
condition, and all that could be said in their favour was a vague
expression of hope that they would benefit from God's
uncovenanted mercies.

But on some day, at some hour and minute, if life was spared to
them, the way of salvation would be revealed to