My attitude to other people’s souls when I was out of my Father’s sight was now a constant anxiety to me.  In our tattling world of small things he had extraordinary opportunities of learning how I behaved when I was away from home; I did not realize this, and I used to think his acquaintance with my deeds and words savoured almost of wizardry.  He was accustomed to urge upon me the necessity of ‘speaking for Jesus in season and out of season’, and he so worked upon my feelings that I would start forth like St. Teresa, wild for the Moors and martyrdom.  But any actual impact with persons marvelously cooled my zeal, and I should hardly ever have ‘spoken’ at all if it had not been for that unfortunate phrase ‘out of season’.  It really seemed that one must talk of nothing else, since if an occasion was not in season it was out of season; there was no alternative, no close time for souls.

My Father was very generous.  He used to magnify any little effort that I made, with stammering tongue, to sanctify a visit; and people, I now see, were accustomed to give me a friendly lead in this direction, so that they might please him by reporting that I had ‘testified’ in the Lord’s service.  The whole thing, however, was artificial, and was part of my Father’s restless inability to let well alone.  It was not in harshness or in ill-nature that he worried me so much; on the contrary, it was all part of his too-anxious love.  He was in a hurry to see me become a shining light, everything that he had himself desired to be, yet with none of his shortcomings.

It was about this time that he harrowed my whole soul into painful agitation by a phrase that he let fall, without, I believe, attaching any particular importance to it at the time.  He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishing my faith, and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascend the pulpit to preach my first sermon.  ’Oh! if I may be there, out of sight, and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then I shall say, “My poor work is done.  Oh!  Lord Jesus, receive my spirit".’  I cannot express the dismay which this aspiration gave me, the horror with which I anticipated such a nunc dimittis.  I felt like a small and solitary bird, caught and hung out hopelessly and endlessly in a great glittering cage.  The clearness of the personal image affected me as all the texts and prayers and predictions had failed to do.  I saw myself imprisoned for ever in the religious system which had caught me and would whirl my helpless spirit as in the concentric wheels of my nightly vision.  I did not struggle against it, because I believed that it was inevitable, and that there was no other way of making peace with the terrible and ever-watchful ’God who is a jealous God’.  But I looked forward to my fate without zeal and without exhilaration, and the fear of the Lord altogether swallowed up and cancelled any notion of the love of Him.