Another youthful experience which also had a decided influence in forming my cast of character, was the following:—­There are certain oft-repeated demands made upon the members of our Established Church; such as, to enter upon the service of Christ, to show forth Christ in one’s life, to follow Jesus, etc.  These injunctions were brought home to me times without number through the zeal of my father as a teacher of others and a liver himself of a Christian life.  When demands are made on a child which are in harmony with child nature, he knows no reluctance in fulfilling them; and as he receives them entirely and unreservedly, so also he complies with them entirely and unreservedly.  That these demands were so often repeated convinced me of their intense importance; but I felt at the same time the difficulty, or indeed, as it seemed to me, the impossibility of fulfilling them.  The inherent contradiction which I seemed to perceive herein threw me into great depression; but at last I arrived at the blessed conviction that human nature is such that it is not impossible for man to live the life of Jesus in its purity, and to show it forth to the world, if he will only take the right way towards it.

This thought, which, as often as it comes into my mind, carries me back even now to the scenes and surroundings of my boyhood, may have been not improbably amongst the last mental impressions of this period, and it may fitly close, therefore, the narrative of my mental development at this age.  It became, later, the point whereon my whole life hinged.

From what I have said of my boyish inner life, it might be assumed that my outer life was a happy and peaceful one.  Such an assumption would, however, not be correct.  It seems as if it had always been my fate to represent and combine the hardest and sharpest contrasts.  My outer life was really in complete contrast with my inner.  I had grown up without a mother; my physical education had been neglected, and in consequence I had acquired many a bad habit.  I always liked to be doing something or another, but in my clumsy way I made mistakes as to choice of materials, of time, and of place, and thus often incurred the severe displeasure of my parents.  I felt this, being of a sensitive disposition, more keenly and more persistently than my parents; the more so as I felt myself generally to blame in form rather than in substance, and in my inmost heart I could see there was a point of view from whence my conduct would seem, in substance at all events, not altogether wrong, still less blameworthy.  The motives assigned to my actions were not those which actuated me, so far as I could tell; and the consciousness of being misjudged made me really what I had been believed to be before, a thoroughly naughty boy.  Out of fear of punishment I hid even the most harmless actions, and when I was questioned I made untruthful answers.