r intelligence!'

But there was, or there might be, another class of persona, whom
early training, separation from the world, and the care of godly
parents had so early familiarized with the acceptable calling of
Christ that their conversion had occurred, unperceived and
therefore unrecorded, at an extraordinarily earl age. It would be
in vain to look for a repetition of the phenomenon in those
cases. The heavenly fire must not be expected to descend a second
time; the lips are touched with the burning coal once, and once
only. If, accordingly, these precociously selected spirits are to
be excluded because no new birth is observed in them at a mature
age, they must continue outside in the cold, since the phenomenon
cannot be repeated. When, therefore, there is not possible any
further doubt of their being in possession of salvation, longer
delay is useless, and worse than useless. The fact of conversion,
though not recorded nor even recollected, must be accepted on the
evidence of confession of faith, and as soon as the intelligence
is evidently developed, the person not merely may, but should be
accepted into communion, although still immature in body,
although in years still even a child. This my Father believed to
be my case, and in this rare class did he fondly persuade himself
to station me.

As I have said, the congregation,--although docile and timid, and
little able, as units, to hold their own against their minister--
behind his back were faintly hostile to this plan. None of their
own children had ever been so much as suggested for membership,
and each of themselves, in ripe years, had been subjected to
severe cross-examination. I think it was rather a bitter pill for
some of them to swallow that a pert little boy of ten should be
admitted, as a grown-up person, to all the hard-won privileges of
their order. Mary Grace Burmington came back from her visits to
the cottagers, reporting disaffection here and there, grumblings
in the rank and file. But quite as many, especially of the women,
enthusiastically supported my Father's wish, gloried aloud in the
manifestations of my early piety, and professed to see in it
something of miraculous promise. The expression 'another Infant
Samuel' was widely used. I became quite a subject of contention.
A war of the sexes threatened to break out over me; I was a
disturbing element at cottage breakfasts. I was mentioned at
public prayer-meetings, not indeed by name but, in