when he came into the vestry, I could see that he had been crying. "Ah,
friend," I said, "it is bad to be left out from the Lord's table here;
what will it be to be left out of heaven?"

In the evening he was more miserable than ever, and at the close of the
service came into the school-room, where he broke down, and asked the
people to pray for him, for he was a hard-hearted, miserable sinner.
"Pray the Lord to melt my heart." We did so: and soon the poor
broken-hearted man sobbed and cried aloud for mercy; and it was not long
before, to our great joy, he found peace. He afterwards told us that he
had been getting hardened by forms ever since he had been clerk, reading
solemn words without any meaning, which at first he trembled at doing.
He was right; it is good to hear the Gospel, good to attend the means of
grace, good to assemble in the company of God's people; but to rest in
the habit of doing these good things, without conversion, is most
dangerous, and calculated to deaden the heart. He said that he felt it
very much when 'master' was converted (meaning myself), and was also
dreadfully condemned; for he had believed in the necessity of conversion
all his life; and though he knew that I was unconverted, yet he never
told me, but rather encouraged me to go on as I was. He said that he had
had many sleepless nights about it; "but now, thank God" he added, "it
is all right; my feet are on the Rock, my soul is saved. I can praise
the Lord in the congregation."

The clerk's conversion did not stop with himself, for it was a call to
some of the ringers; they were still outside and unsaved, though they
knew, as well as he did, that they ought to be otherwise. One of these
men began to attend the meetings regularly, but we could not get him to
pray, or speak a word. I said to him one evening, "You will never have a
sound from the bell till you move it or its tongue; in like manner, you