nd
then.

"I at once gave notice to my master, who was very angry, and said,
'If it is money you want, that need not part us.' I told him that
money had nothing to do with the question, that all I wanted was
the opportunity to spend my life and powers in publishing the
Saviour to a lost world. And so I packed my portmanteau, and went
out to begin a new life.

"My first need was some place to lay my head. After a little time
spent in the search, I found quarters in the Walworth district,
where I expected to work, and took two rooms in the house of a
widow at five shillings a week, with attendance. This I reckoned at
the time was a pretty good bargain. I then went to a furniture
shop, and bought some chairs and a bed, and a few other
necessaries. I felt quite set up. It was my birthday, a Good
Friday, and on the same day I fell in love with my future wife.

"But the people would have nothing to do with me. They 'did not
want a parson.' They reckoned they were all parsons, so that at the
end of the three months' engagement the weekly income came to an
end; and, indeed, I would not have renewed the engagement on any
terms. There was nothing for me to do but to sell my furniture and
live on the proceeds, which did not supply me for a very long time.
I declare to you that at that time I was so fixed as not to know
which way to turn.

"In my emergency a remarkable way opened for me to enter college
and become a Congregational minister. But after long waiting,
several examinations, trial sermons and the like, I was informed
that on the completion of my training I should be expected to
believe and preach what is known as Calvinism. After reading a book
which fully explained the doctrine, I threw it at the wall opposite
me, and said I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one
special feature of which was that only a select few could be
saved.[A]

"My little stock of money was exhausted. I remember that I gave the
last sixpence I had in the world to a poor woman whose daughter lay
dying; but within a week I received a letter inviting me to the
charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolnshire, and from that
moment my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.

"The Spalding people welcomed me as though I had been an angel f