He had left the Church because he did not agree with the preachers on
some points of Christian ethics, and because they used tobacco. But he
was unhappy on the outside, and finding that my views and habits did not
happen to cross his peculiar notions, he came back. His religious
experience was out of the common order. Bred a Calvinist, of the good
old Scotch-Presbyterian type, he had swung away from that faith, and was
in danger of rushing into Universalism, or infidelity. That once famous
and much-read little book, "John Nelson's Journal," fell into his hands,
and changed his whole life. It led him to Christ, and to the Methodists.
He was a true spiritual child of the unflinching Yorkshire stone-cutter.
Like him he despised half-way measures, and like him he was aggressive
in thought and action. What he liked he loved, what he disliked he
hated. Calvinism he abhorred, and he let no occasion pass for pouring
into it the hot shot of his scorn and wrath. One night I preached from
the text, Should it be according to thy mind?
"The first part of your sermon," he said to me as we passed out of the
church, "distressed me greatly. For a full half hour you preached
straight out Calvinism, and I thought you had ruined every thing; but
you had left a little slip-gap, and crawled out at the last.
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