His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case in point.  Things were possible to him which to others like him would be impossible.  If such a man as Towneley were told he must live henceforth in a house like those in Ashpit Place it would be more than he could stand.  Ernest could not have stood it himself if he had gone to live there of compulsion through want of money.  It was only because he had felt himself able to run away at any minute that he had not wanted to do so; now, however, that he had become familiar with life in Ashpit Place he no longer minded it, and could live gladly in lower parts of London than that so long as he could pay his way.  It was from no prudence or forethought that he had served this apprenticeship to life among the poor.  He had been trying in a feeble way to be thorough in his work:  he had not been thorough, the whole thing had been a fiasco; but he had made a little puny effort in the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour of need it had been returned to him with a reward far richer than he had deserved.  He could not have faced becoming one of the very poor unless he had had such a bridge to conduct him over to them as he had found unwittingly in Ashpit Place.  True, there had been drawbacks in the particular house he had chosen, but he need not live in a house where there was a Mr Holt and he should no longer be tied to the profession which he so much hated; if there were neither screams nor scripture readings he could be happy in a garret at three shillings a week, such as Miss Maitland lived in.

As he thought further he remembered that all things work together for good to them that love God; was it possible, he asked himself, that he too, however imperfectly, had been trying to love him?  He dared not answer Yes, but he would try hard that it should be so.  Then there came into his mind that noble air of Handel’s:  “Great God, who yet but darkly known,” and he felt it as he had never felt it before.  He had lost his faith in Christianity, but his faith in something—­he knew not what, but that there was a something as yet but darkly known which made right right and wrong wrong—­his faith in this grew stronger and stronger daily.

Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power which he felt to be in him, and of how and where it was to find its vent.  The same instinct which had led him to live among the poor because it was the nearest thing to him which he could lay hold of with any clearness came to his assistance here too.  He thought of the Australian gold and how those who lived among it had never seen it though it abounded all around them:  “There is gold everywhere,” he exclaimed inwardly, “to those who look for it.”  Might not his opportunity be close upon him if he looked carefully enough at his immediate surroundings?  What was his position?  He had lost all.  Could he not turn his having lost all into an opportunity?  Might he not, if he too sought the strength of the Lord, find, like St Paul, that it was perfected in weakness?