n came over him that he
would not sleep that night until he had kneeled down and prayed with his
wife, though it would be the first time he had done so for thirty-two
years. When it came to bedtime his courage failed him. He could not get
into bed; and he did not like to tell his wife why. "That," he said,
"was the devil worritin' me." His wife said, "I know what's the matter
with you. You want to pray. We will see what we can do." His wife, he
told us, was "unconverted," but still she "throwed open the door" on
that occasion. He never knew happiness, he said, until he came to Jesus;
and he added, "Oh, I do love my Jesus." He often talked to his
fellow-workmen about the state of their souls, and they asked him how
it was he was so certain of being converted (a question I fancy others
than they would like to have solved), and he answered them, "I feel it.
I was uncomfortable before; and now I am happy. I don't wonder so much
at the old martyrs going boldly up to the stake, because I feel I could
do anything rather than give up my Jesus."

Hereupon the pastor, anticipating the departure of some of the
assembly--for the clock was pointing to ten--announced a Temperance
Meeting for the following Monday, and also said he should like the
congregation to get up these meetings entirely on their own account,
without any "clerical" element at all, and to make the Tea Meeting a
"Free and Easy" in the best sense of the word.

I went--shall I confess it?--to the experience meeting rather inclined
to scoff, and I stopped, if not altogether to pray, at least to think
very seriously of the value of the instrumentality thus brought to
bear on such intractable material as the Kensal New Town population.
The more cumbrous, even if more perfect or polished, machinery of the
Established Church has notoriously failed for a long time to affect
such raw material; and if it is beginning to succeed it is really by
"taking a leaf out of the book" of such pastors as the one whose
Tea-and-Experience Meeting I had attended. "Palmam qui meruit ferat."

Stiggins element, I must, in all justice, say there was none. The pastor
was a simple but a refined and gentlemanly man; so was the poor broken
old minister. There was no symptom of raving or rant; no vulgarity or
bad taste. A gathering at a deanery or an episcopal palace could not
have been more decorous, and I doubt if the hymns would have been sung
as heartily. There was as little clerical starch