Bradburn at once joined the Methodist Society at Chester. His master's son, a boy of twelve, and many other young people, began to attend the "class-meetings" about the same time. Among his work-fellows, also, there were some who rejoiced in the light which now filled young Bradburn's soul, and their conversation and hymn-singing while at work, and their union in prayer before quitting the workroom at the close of the day, made the new time a perpetual Sabbath, and the shoemaker's room "a perfect paradise." In March, 1770, after the usual period of probation, he was admitted to full membership, and received what the Methodists call "his first ticket." He was not long in discovering, as every one else has done in similar circumstances, that the change, though genuine, was not complete. An outburst of passion, and a growing desire after disputation on theological matters, in which he found himself contending for mastery rather than truth, gave him to see that a sound and secure religious character is a matter of growth and culture and can only be maintained by watchfulness and prayer, and the careful formation of habits of piety. And as Thomas à Kempis finely says, "Custom is overcome by custom," so Bradburn found it, and in order to put a bar between his spirit and possible temptations, changed his way of _living_, his _companions_, and his _books_. One day, when John Wesley was administering the Lord's Supper in the little chapel at Chester, Bradburn was seized with the idea that he must become a preacher. For a long time he strove hard to drive it from his mind. But the more he did so the more it seemed to possess him. His sense of unfitness for so great an office as that of the preacher, his exalted notions of the sacredness and responsibility attaching to the office, and his own deepening conviction, which nothing could resist, that it was his duty before God to devote himself to the work, made him for a time positively wretched. He tried the effect of change of residence upon his feelings in the matter. He was now twenty years of age, and out of his time. But on visiting his relations at Wrexham, he found that they and their friends of the Wesleyan Society, to whom he was introduced, had a common feeling that such a young man ought surely to exercise his gifts as a speaker. In answer to their entreaties he spoke several times in their meetings, and thus made his first start in public speaking. Still the question of preaching was left unsettled, and disturbed his mind night and day. It became a positive burden to him--"the burden of the Lord," indeed, and no power of his own could remove it. Six months after this brief visit to Wrexham, he obtained a situation, and went to reside in Liverpool, where he fell in with people much to his mind, who were exceedingly kind to him. They, however, no sooner came to know him than their opinion was strongly expressed to the same purport as that of his friends in Chester and Wrexham. In four