several examinations, trial sermons and the like, I was informed that on the completion of my training I should be expected to believe and preach what is known as Calvinism.  After reading a book which fully explained the doctrine, I threw it at the wall opposite me, and said I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one special feature of which was that only a select few could be saved.[A]

“My little stock of money was exhausted.  I remember that I gave the last sixpence I had in the world to a poor woman whose daughter lay dying; but within a week I received a letter inviting me to the charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolnshire, and from that moment my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.

“The Spalding people welcomed me as though I had been an angel from Heaven, providing me with every earthly blessing within their ability, and proposing that I should stay with them for ever.  They wanted me to marry right away, offered to furnish me a house, provide me with a horse to enable me more readily to get about the country, and proposed other things that they thought would please me.

     “With them I spent perhaps the happiest eighteen months of my life. 
     Of course my horizon was much more limited in those days than it is
     now, and consequently required less to fill it.

“Although I was only twenty-three years of age and Lincolnshire was one of the counties that had been most privileged with able Methodist preaching for half a century before, and I had to immediately follow in Spalding a somewhat renowned minister, God helped me very wonderfully to make myself at home, and become a power amongst the people.

“I felt some nervousness when on my first November Sunday I was confronted by such a large congregation as greeted me.  In the morning I had very little liberty; but good was done, as I afterwards learned.  In the afternoon we had a Prayer, or After-Meeting, at which one young woman wept bitterly.  I urged her to come to the communion rail at night.  She did so, and the Lord saved her.  She afterwards sent me a letter thanking me for urging her to come out.  In the evening I had great liberty, and fourteen men and women came to the communion rail; many, if not all, finding the Saviour.

“On the Monday I preached there again.  Four came forward, three of whom professed to find Salvation.  I exerted myself very much, felt very deeply, and prayed very earnestly over an old man who had been a backslider for seven years.  He wept bitterly, and prayed to the Lord to save him, if He could wash a heart as black as Hell.  By exerting myself so much I made myself very ill, and was confined to the house during the rest of the week.  My host and hostess were very kind to me.

     “The next Sunday I started from home rather unwell.  I had to go to
     Donnington, some miles away, in the morning and evening, and to
     Swineshead Bridge in the afternoon.