loped mental as compared with his physical gifts,
were undoubtedly the reasons that a very ordinary English boy could
not appreciate him.

At fourteen years of age, at Marlborough School, I was asked if I
wished to be confirmed. Every boy of that age was. It permitted one to
remain when "the kids went out after first service." It added dignity,
like a football cap or a mustache. All I remember about it was
bitterly resenting having to "swat up" the Catechism out of school
hours. I counted, however, on the examiner being easy, and he was. I
am an absolute believer in boys making a definite decision to follow
the Christ; and that in the hands of a really keen Christian man the
rite of confirmation is very valuable. The call which gets home to a
boy's heart is the call to do things. If only a boy can be led to see
that the following of Christ demands a real knighthood, and that true
chivalry is Christ's service, he will want all the rites and
ceremonies that either proclaim his allegiance or promise him help and
strength to live up to it.

What I now believe that D.L. Moody did for me was just to show that
under all the shams and externals of religion was a vital call in the
world for things that I could do. This marks the beginning of the
second period of my religious development. He helped me to see myself
as God sees the "unprofitable servant," and to be ashamed. He started
me working for all I was worth, and made religion real fun--a new
field brimming with opportunities. With me the pendulum swung very
far. The evangelical to my mind had a monopoly of infallible truth. A
Roman Catholic I regarded as a relic of mediaevalism; while almost a
rigour went down my spine when a man told me that he was a "Unitarian
Christian." Hyphenation was loyalty compared to that. I mention this
only because it shows how I can now understand intolerance and
dogmatism in others. Yes, I must have been "very impossible," for then
I honestly thought that I knew it all.

About this time I began to be interested in reading my Bible, and I
learned to appreciate my father's expositions of it. At prayers he
always translated into the vernacular from the original of either the
Old or the New Testament. To me he seemed to know every sense of every
Greek word in any setting. Ever since I have been satisfied to use an
English version, knowing that I cannot improve on the words chosen by
the various learned translators.

Because I owed so much to