In speaking to his Officers later on he said:—­

     “When the great separation from the Wesleyan Church took place, Mr.
     Rabbits said to me one day:  ’You must leave business, and wholly
     devote yourself to preaching the Gospel.’

     “‘Impossible,’ I answered.  ’There is no way for me.  Nobody wants
     me.’  ‘Yes,’ said he, ’the people with whom you have allied yourself
     want an evangelist.’

     “‘They cannot support me,’ I replied; ‘and I cannot live on air.’

     “‘That is true, no doubt,’ was his answer.  ’How much can you live
     on?’

“I reckoned up carefully.  I knew I should have to provide my own quarters and to pay for my cooking; and as to the living itself, I did not understand in those days how this could be managed in as cheap a fashion as I do now.  After a careful calculation, I told him that I did not see how I could get along with less than twelve shillings a week.

     “‘Nonsense,’ he said; ’you cannot do with less than twenty
     shillings a week, I am sure.’

     “‘All right,’ I said, ’have it your own way, if you will; but where
     is the twenty shillings to come from?’

     “‘I will supply it,’ he said, ’for the first three months at
     least.’

     “‘Very good,’ I answered.  And the bargain was struck there and
     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,