On the following Sunday morning, I was the principal subject which occupied an unusually crowded meeting.  My Father, looking whiter and yet darker than usual, called upon Brother Fawkes and Brother Bere to state to the assembled saints what their experiences had been in connexion with their visits to ‘one’ who desired to be admitted to the breaking of bread.  It was tremendously exciting to me to hear myself spoken of with this impersonal publicity, and I had no fear of the result.

Events showed that I had no need of fear.  Fawkes and Bere were sometimes accused of a rivalry, which indeed broke out a few years later, and gave my Father much anxiety and pain.  But on this occasion their unanimity was wonderful.  Each strove to exceed the other in the tributes which they paid to any piety.  My answers had been so full and clear, my humility (save the mark!) had been so sweet, my acquaintance with Scripture so amazing, my testimony to all the leading principles of salvation so distinct and exhaustive, that they could only say that they had felt confounded, and yet deeply cheered and led far along their own heavenly path, by hearing such accents fall from the lips of a babe and a suckling.  I did not like being described as a suckling, but every lot has its crumpled rose-leaf, and in all other respects the report of the elders was a triumph.  My Father then clenched the whole matter by rising and announcing that I had expressed an independent desire to confess the Lord by the act of public baptism, immediately after which I should be admitted to communion ‘as an adult’.  Emotion ran so high at this, that a large portion of the congregation insisted on walking with us back to our garden-gate, to the stupefaction of the rest of the villagers.

My public baptism was the central event of my whole childhood.  Everything, since the earliest dawn of consciousness, seemed to have been leading up to it.  Everything, afterwards, seemed to be leading down and away from it.  The practice of immersing communicants on the sea-beach at Oddicombe had now been completely abandoned, but we possessed as yet no tank for a baptismal purpose in our own Room.  The Room in the adjoining town, however, was really quite a large chapel, and it was amply provided with the needful conveniences.  It was our practice, therefore, at this time, to claim the hospitality of our neighbours.  Baptisms were made an occasion for friendly relations between the two congregations, and led to pleasant social intercourse.  I believe that the ministers and elders of the two meetings arranged to combine their forces at these times, and to baptize communicants from both congregations.