nothing more than peasants of a somewhat primitive type, not well instructed in the rules of conduct and liable to exactly the same weaknesses as invade the rural character in every country and latitude.  That they were exhorted to behave as ‘children of light’, and that the majority of them sincerely desired to do credit to their high calling, could not prevent their being beset by the sins which had affected their forebears for generations past.

The addition of so many young persons of each sex to the communion led to an entirely new class of embarrassment.  Now there arose endless difficulties about ‘engagements’, about youthful brethren who ‘went out walking’ with even more youthful sisters.  Glancing over my Father’s notes, I observe the ceaseless repetition of cases in which So-and-So is ‘courting’ Such-an-one, followed by the melancholy record that he has ‘deserted’ her.  In my Father’s stern language, ‘desertion’ would very often mean no more than that the amatory pair had blamelessly changed their minds; but in some cases it meant more and worse than this.  It was a very great distress to him that sometimes the young men and women who showed the most lively interest in Scripture, and who had apparently accepted the way of salvation with the fullest intelligence, were precisely those who seemed to struggle with least success against a temptation to unchastity.  He put this down to the concentrated malignity of Satan, who directed his most poisoned darts against the fairest of the flock.

In addition to these troubles, there came recriminations, mutual charges of drunkenness in private, all sorts of petty jealousy and scandal.  There were frequent definite acts of ‘back-sliding’ on the part of members, who had in consequence to be ‘put away’.  No one of these cases might be in itself extremely serious, but when many of them came together they seemed to indicate that the church was in an unhealthy condition.  The particulars of many of these scandals were concealed from me, but I was an adroit little pitcher, and had cultivated the art of seeming to be interested in something else, a book or a flower, while my elders were talking confidentially.  As a rule, while I would fain have acquired more details, I was fairly well-informed about the errors of the Saints, although I was often quaintly ignorant of the real nature of those errors.

Not infrequently, persons who had fallen into sin repented of it under my Father’s penetrating ministrations.  They were apt in their penitence to use strange symbolic expressions.  I remember Mrs. Pewings, our washerwoman, who had been accused of intemperance and had been suspended from communion, reappearing with a face that shone with soap and sanctification, and saying to me, ‘Oh! blessed Child, you’re wonderin’ to zee old Pewings here again, but He have rolled away my mountain!’ For once, I was absolutely at a loss, but she meant that the Lord had removed the load of her sins, and restored her to a state of grace.