A glorious work of salvation was going on without the extravagant noise and excitement we used to have in former years.  I was exceedingly thankful for this also, and began next to consider what was to be done with these new converts.  Besides inviting them to the church services, for which they needed no pressing, I urged them to read their Bibles at home, bidding them to mark any passages where they wished for explanation, that I might have something good and profitable to speak about when I visited them.  Then I invited them to Bible-classes; instead of to experience meetings, which Cornish people rely upon so much.  On these occasions I endeavoured to instruct the people from God’s Word, and put Christ before them as the object of faith, hope, and love.  After prayer I encouraged them to ask questions, which made these gatherings interesting and also instructive on the very points upon which they required information.

I found that these Bible-classes were a great blessing to those who attended them, but more than all, perhaps, to myself; watering other souls with the water of life I was more abundantly watered.  The questions of the people drew my attention to distinctions and differences I had not noticed before, and helped to take off the coloured glasses through which I had hitherto read the Word.

I observed that the third, sixth, and twentieth chapters of St. John’s Gospel had been held and interpreted by me in a way that I now saw to be altogether wrong.  I had taken the first of these as bearing on Baptism, the second on the Holy Communion, and the third on Priestly Absolution.

I pondered much over these chapters, and marvelled how they could have been so diverted from their original and obvious meaning; and, more wonderful still, that countless millions in Christendom had so received them for many generations.  It was a bold thing, and seemingly presumptuous to suppose that I was right and all Christendom wrong; but I soon found that mine was no new discovery, and that if millions who followed traditions without comparing them with the Bible, thought on one side, there were also millions who did read their Bibles, and thought on the other.

It was perfectly clear, moreover, that one obvious motive or policy had dictated the false application of the three chapters.  It will be observed that priest rule is established in them; for, according to this teaching, no one can enter the kingdom of God ’without priestly operation in baptism; no one abide or be fed in it without the same in Holy Communion; nor any one receive absolution from sin, and final release from hell to heaven, apart from sacerdotal action.

On the other hand, I saw spiritual men, as sure as they were of their own existence that their new birth took place, not at baptism, but at their conversion.  Therefore they were convinced that the third chapter of St. John, in which our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus is recorded, refers to that spiritual change which takes place at conversion, and not to baptism, which was not even instituted for two or three years afterwards (Matt. 28:19).