After reading a book which fully explained the doctrine, I threw it at the wall opposite me, and said I would sooner starve than preach such doctrine, one special feature of which was that only a select few could be saved.[A] "My little stock of money was exhausted.

I remember that I gave the last sixpence I had in the world to a poor woman whose daughter lay dying; but within a week I received a letter inviting me to the charge of a Methodist Circuit in Lincolnshire, and from that moment my difficulties of that kind became much less serious.
"The Spalding people welcomed me as though I had been an angel from Heaven, providing me with every earthly blessing within their ability, and proposing that I should stay with them for ever.

They wanted me to marry right away, offered to furnish me a house, provide me with a horse to enable me more readily to get about the country, and proposed other things that they thought would please me.
"With them I spent perhaps the happiest eighteen months of my life.
Of course my horizon was much more limited in those days than it is now, and consequently required less to fill it.
"Although I was only twenty-three years of age and Lincolnshire was one of the counties that had been most privileged with able Methodist preaching for half a century before, and I had to immediately follow in Spalding a somewhat renowned minister, God helped me very wonderfully to make myself at home, and become a power amongst the people.
"I felt some nervousness when on my first November Sunday I was confronted by such a large congregation as greeted me.

In the morning I had very little liberty; but good was done, as I afterwards learned.

In the afternoon we had a Prayer, or After-Meeting, at which one young woman wept bitterly.