umble, but
furiously angry by this caning. I cannot account for the flame of
rage which it awakened in my bosom. My dear, excellent Father had
beaten me, not very severely, without ill-temper, and with the
most genuine desire to improve me. But he was not well-advised
especially so far as the 'dedication to the Lord's service' was
concerned. This same 'dedication' had ministered to my vanity,
and there are some natures which are not improved by being
humiliated. I have to confess with shame that I went about the
house for some days with a murderous hatred of my Father locked
within my bosom. He did not suspect that the chastisement had not
been wholly efficacious, and he bore me no malice; so that after
a while, I forgot and thus forgave him. But I do not regard
physical punishment as a wise element in the education of proud
and sensitive children.

My theological misdeeds culminated, however, in an act so puerile
and preposterous that I should not venture to record it if it did
not throw some glimmering of light on the subject which I have
proposed to myself in writing these pages. My mind continued to
dwell on the mysterious question of prayer. It puzzled me greatly
to know why, if we were God's children, and if he was watching
over us by night and day, we might not supplicate for toys and
sweets and smart clothes as well as for the conversion of the
heathen. Just at this juncture, we had a special service at the
Room, at which our attention was particularly called to what we
always spoke of as 'the field of missionary labour'. The East was
represented among 'the saints' by an excellent Irish peer, who
had, in his early youth, converted and married a lady of colour;
this Asiatic shared in our Sunday morning meetings, and was an
object of helpless terror to me; I shrank from her amiable
caresses, and vaguely identified her with a personage much spoken
of in our family circle, the 'Personal Devil'.

All these matters drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry,
which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross-
examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin, and
pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry
consisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Wood
and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be
bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my
Father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would
be very angry,