As I have said, the congregation,—­although docile and timid, and little able, as units, to hold their own against their minister—­ behind his back were faintly hostile to this plan.  None of their own children had ever been so much as suggested for membership, and each of themselves, in ripe years, had been subjected to severe cross-examination.  I think it was rather a bitter pill for some of them to swallow that a pert little boy of ten should be admitted, as a grown-up person, to all the hard-won privileges of their order.  Mary Grace Burmington came back from her visits to the cottagers, reporting disaffection here and there, grumblings in the rank and file.  But quite as many, especially of the women, enthusiastically supported my Father’s wish, gloried aloud in the manifestations of my early piety, and professed to see in it something of miraculous promise.  The expression ’another Infant Samuel’ was widely used.  I became quite a subject of contention.  A war of the sexes threatened to break out over me; I was a disturbing element at cottage breakfasts.  I was mentioned at public prayer-meetings, not indeed by name but, in the extraordinary allusive way customary in our devotions, as ’one amongst us of tender years’ or as ’a sapling in the Lord’s vineyard’.

To all this my Father put a stop in his own high-handed fashion.  After the morning meeting, one Sunday in the autumn of 1859, he desired the attention of the Saints to a personal matter which was, perhaps, not unfamiliar to them by rumour.  That was, he explained, the question of the admission of his, beloved little son to the communion of saints in the breaking of bread.  He allowed—­and I sat there in evidence, palely smiling at the audience, my feet scarcely touching the ground—­that I was not what is styled adult; I was not, he frankly admitted, a grown-up person.  But I was adult in a knowledge of the Lord; I possessed an insight into the plan of salvation which many a hoary head might envy for its fullness, its clearness, its conformity with Scripture doctrine.  This was a palpable hit at more than one stumbler and fumbler after the truth, and several hoary heads were bowed.

My Father then went on to explain very fully the position which I have already attempted to define.  He admitted the absence in my case of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting upon conviction of sin.  But he stated the grounds of his belief that I had, in still earlier infancy, been converted, and he declared that if so, I ought no longer to be excluded from the privileges of communion.  He said, moreover, that he was willing on this occasion to waive his own privilege as a minister, and that he would rather call on Brother Fawkes and Brother Bere, the leading elders, to examine the candidate in his stead.  This was a master-stroke, for Brothers Fawkes and Bere had been suspected of leading the disaffection, and this threw all the burden of responsibility on them.  The meeting broke