I also was beginning to see that I ought to care for the souls of my people-at least, as much as I did for the services Of the Church.  As a priest, I had the power (so I thought) to give them absolution; and yet none, alas! availed themselves of the opportunity.  How could they have forgiveness if they did not come to me?  This absolution I believed to be needful before coming to Holy Communion, and that it was, indeed, the true preparation for that sacred ordinance.  I used to speak privately to the members of the Church Guild about this, and persuaded some of them to come to me for confession and absolution:  but I was restless, and felt that I was doing good by stealth.  Besides this, those whom I thus absolved were not satisfied, for they said they could not rejoice in the forgiveness of their sins as the Methodists did, or say that they were pardoned.  In this respect I was working upon most tender ground, but I did not know what else to do.

I used to spend hours and hours in my church alone in meditation and prayer; and, while thinking, employed my hands in writing texts over the windows and on the walls, and in painting ornamental borders above the arches.  I remember writing over the chancel arch, with much interest and exultation, “Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ.” (Rev. 12:10).

I imagined, in my sanguine hope, that the kingdom of Christ was come, and that the “accuser of the brethren” was cast down.  I thought I saw, in the power of Christ given to His priests, such victory that nothing could stand against it.  So much for dwelling on a theory, right or wrong, till it fills the mind.  Yet I cannot say that all this was without prayer.  I did wait upon God, and thought my answers were from Him; but I see now that I went to the Lord with an idol in my heart, and that He answered me according to it (Ezek. 14:3).

One day I saw a picture in a friend’s house which attracted me during the time I was waiting for him.  It was nothing artistic, nor was it over well drawn, but still it engaged my attention in a way for which I could not account.  When my friend came down we talked about other things; but even after I left the house this picture haunted me.  At night I lay awake thinking about it—­so much so, that I rose early the next morning, and went to a bookseller’s shop, where I bought a large sheet of tracing-paper and pencil, and sent them out by the postman, with a note to my friend, begging him to give me a tracing of the picture in question.

I had to wait for more than a fortnight before it arrived, and then how great was my joy!  I remember spreading a white cloth on my table, and opening out the tracing-paper upon it; and there was the veritable picture of the Good Shepherd!  His countenance was loving and kind.  With one hand He was pushing aside the branch of a tree, though a great thorn went right through it; and with the other He was extricating a sheep which was entangled in the thorns.  The poor thing was looking up in helplessness, all spotted over with marks of its own blood, for it was wounded in struggling to escape.  Another thing which struck me in this picture was that the tree was growing on the edge of a precipice, and had it not been for it (the tree), with all the cruel wounds it inflicted, the sheep would have gone over and perished.