But before quitting Gainsborough a vital change had taken place in his thoughts and mode of life. Brought face to face with death in his recent illness, the most serious thoughts had been aroused within his mind, and on his recovery he was not the man to abandon or drown such thoughts because the immediate fear of death had passed away. The earnest conversations he held with the young curate of the parish, "the pious and laborious Charles Hensley," and his two former friends, Hough and Kelvey, strengthened his resolve to seek for peace of mind in the belief of gospel truth and entire devotion to a religious life. In January, 1829, he joined the Methodist Society. The perusal of Sigston's "Life of William Bramwell" fired his soul with a passion for holiness, and such was his intensity of religious fervor for a time, that he is constrained to say in his Autobiography: "If throughout eternity in heaven I be as happy as I often was for whole days during that short period of my religious life, it will be heaven indeed. Often for several days together I felt close to the Almighty--felt I was His own and His entirely. I felt no wandering of the will and inclination to yield to sin; and when temptation came, my whole soul wrestled for victory till the temptation fled." Entered on the local preachers' plan, he turned his rare gifts to good account in ministering to the congregations which formed the Gainsborough "circuit," and developed that faculty of eloquent speech which in later years has delighted the thousands who gathered to hear his political orations as an advocate of the "People's Charter" or his grand lectures on the evidences of the Christian religion. Driven away from his old home by unhappy disturbances in the Wesleyan Society, he went, as we have said, in November, 1833, to live at Lincoln, where once more he occupied himself as a schoolmaster. Just before leaving Gainsborough he was constrained to gather a few pieces of his poetry together and publish them by subscription in a small volume, with the title, taken from the first piece, "The Wesleyan Chiefs." The book fell flat on the market, and seems to have had very little merit. Its publication was chiefly remarkable for bringing the author into the company of James Montgomery, who kindly undertook to read the proof sheets. Only one of these selections seems to have called forth a word of commendation from the veteran poet. Against the lines addressed to "Lincoln Cathedral" he wrote: "These are very noble lines, and the versification is truly worthy of them."[65] Montgomery was then over sixty years of age, and had published all the poems by which his name is known to fame. [65] These lines stand first among the minor pieces in "Cooper's Poetical Works." London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1877.