When I was twelve years old, I was an orphan, and lived with an uncle. During a religious revival, while many young people wore experiencing conversion, I felt it my duty to serve God, and commenced praying in secret. I cannot point to any particular time or place, as some do, when the change occurred, but I soon found that I loved God, loved to pray, and loved Christians.

      I once heard my uncle's folk say, that those who did not hold out in religion had taken up conviction for conversion. This troubled me, and I came to the sad conclusion that I had never been converted.--Some time later, my arm was severely cut, all the veins but the main artery being severed, and as I expected to die soon from loss of blood, I thought that hell was to become my early lot. Hope fled, and despair provoked me to shrieks that were heard far beyond my room. My condemnation was, that I had forsaken the Lord. I promised the Lord that if I recovered, I would serve Him faithfully.

      But, like many others, when past the horror of [61] danger, I neglected my promise, and continued in a sinful state of mind till I reached twenty-one. Then, in conversation about my experience, a brother suggested that if I would go back to my earliest starting point, and take up the cross where I had laid it down, I should feel a renewal of God's love. Thus advised, I prayed for faith, and after an earnest struggle, the evidence that God had converted me in childhood, filled my heart with joy, and I resolved to perform every known duty. I went to prayer-meeting and enjoyed it much. Satan, however, attempted to revive my old unbelief, but prayer brought me peace instead, and I rejoiced in my salvation. I joined the M. E. Church soon after, being initiated by the pouring of water on my head, and before long obtained a license to exhort. Five years later, I witnessed at one time the sprinkling of one, the pouring upon another, and the immersion of a third. While the last was coming out of the broad stream, a voice within me said, This is the way the Saviour went! I immediately renounced my former rite, and attended to this duty, reaping an abundant blessing, which God has continued upon me without intermission, and now at the age of sixty, I feel as much as ever a desire to serve God. His yoke is easy and His burden light, and He is willing to give us good gifts, and, lo! He is always with us even to the end of the world.

[THW 61-62]