It is remarkable that the scheme was never of the slightest service to
me in repressing one solitary evil inclination; at no point did it come
into contact with me. At the time it seemed right and proper that I
should learn it, and I had no doubt of its efficacy; but when the
stress of temptation was upon me, it never occurred to me, nor when I
became a minister did I find it sufficiently powerful to mend the most
trifling fault. In after years, but not till I had strayed far away
from the President and his creed, the Bible was really opened to me,
and became to me, what it now is, the most precious of books.

There were several small chapels scattered in the villages near the
college, and these chapels were "supplied," as the phrase is, by the
students. Those who were near the end of their course were also
employed as substitutes for regular ministers when they were
temporarily absent. Sometimes a senior was even sent up to London to
take the place, on a sudden emergency, of a great London minister, and
when he came back he was an object almost of adoration. The
congregation, on the other hand, consisting in some part of country
people spending a Sunday in town and anxious to hear a celebrated
preacher, were not at all disposed to adore, when, instead of the great
man, they saw "only a student."

By the time I was nineteen I took my turn in "supplying" the villages,
and set forth with the utmost confidence what appeared to me to be the
indubitable gospel. No shadow of a suspicion of its truth ever crossed
my mind, and yet I had not spent an hour in comprehending, much less in
answering, one objection to it. The objections, in fact, had never met
me; they were over my horizon altogether. It is wonderful to think how
I could take so much for granted; and not merely take it to myself and