seriously, and had a habit of whistling the hymns in church instead of
singing them. Later he was distinguished by a timidity and reserve
which seemed to suggest that he would never rise above the environment
into which he had been born. His studies and his beliefs--which for
long showed no sign of deviating from the hereditary Scottish
faith--were under the direction of a rigidly severe father. At the age
of thirteen his parents, attracted by the Australian mirage of those
days, took him with them to Adelaide, and he became under-clerk in a
business house there, serving an apprenticeship which was to prove
useful later on. At twenty he returned to Edinburgh, desiring to enter
the ministry, as he believed he had a religious vocation, and plunged
into the study of theology with a deep hostility to everything that was
outside a strictly literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Full of
devotion and self-abnegation in his desperate struggle with the powers
of evil, he read the Holy Book with avidity, and was constant in his
attendance at theological conferences. Thus, nourished on the marrow
of the Scotch theologians, he returned to Australia and was ordained to
the priesthood at Alma. Soon afterwards he was appointed minister to
the Congregational Church in Sydney, where his profound learning was
highly appreciated.

He who desires to attract and instruct the masses must have two gifts,
without which success is impossible--eloquence and charm. Dowie had
both. As an orator he was always master of himself, yet full of
emotion, passionate in his gestures, and easily moved to tears.

We must admit that he did not, like so many others, owe his influence
to his environment. In New South Wales, where he made his _debut_ as a
preacher at Sydney, his eloquence and his learning made so great an
impression--especially after he had emerged victorious from a
controversy with the Anglican bishop, Vaughan, brother to the
Cardinal--that the governor of the province, Sir Henry Parkes, offered
him an important Government position. He refused to accept it,
desiring, as he said, to consecrate his life to the work of God.
Persuaded--or wishing to persuade others--that he had been personally
chosen by God to fulfil the prophecy of St. Mark xvi. 17, 18, he took
up the practice of the laying-on of hands, claiming that in this way,
with the help of prayer, the sick could be cured. On these words of
the evangelist his whole doctrine