During this visit there came to him rumours of a movement for a world-wide union of Protestants. His heart leapt up when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. For two years at least the Evangelical Alliance was the leading interest of his life. From the preliminary Conference, held at Birmingham in April 1846, he wrote to his sister about one of the happiest evenings he had ever spent on earth. ‘What a prayer was that of Octavius Winslow’s! It stirred my deepest feelings and made the tears pour down my cheeks.’ There was developed in him a new love for his ministerial brethren. ‘I felt like a man who had brothers, but they had been abroad, and he had never seen them before.’ The Alliance was formed in August at the Freemasons’ Hall, London, in an assembly composed of a thousand representative Christians from America and the Colonies, and from almost every country in Europe. The project sprang from a common desire on the part of certain evangelical men all over the globe to combine against infidelity and Rome. An annual week of prayer in various cities throughout the world, in Britain an annual conference, a general conference once every lustrum in some European capital, reports from branches on events touching religious liberty: such were the methods by which these good men proposed to bring about the golden year. And so vigorous was the Alliance in its youth, that it negotiated the release of religious prisoners in various lands, and was the means of abolishing in Turkey the death-penalty for renouncing Islam. So at least we are told. There was doubtless at first a powerful tide of Christian sentiment; light there was little or none. ‘When our Saviour’s eyes,’ said the president, ‘witnessed your entrance into this room, He witnessed a sight that, since the early days of Christendom, has not been presented to the eyes of God or man.... And is there not another class of eyes which may be said to be upon you? Is not the eye of the Jew upon you? Are not the eyes of the heathen upon you? They know not yet of your meeting: but upon the result of your meeting much of their interests may be suspended. But, brethren, there are other eyes upon us. We have reason to think that no such gathering as this would take place, and principalities and powers and evil spirits not be watching for our halting; and we cannot doubt that they would triumph, if the spirit of love should fail, or the spirit of wisdom not be granted to us. And out of the Church angels learn lessons of wisdom (Eph. iii. 10); we cannot then doubt but that the eyes of angels are directed towards us.’ A few days later he told the Conference that he had been in the committee-room, and ‘he was persuaded he did not overstate the case when he said that the world’s interests and the interests of humanity were trembling in the balance.’ At a point in the speech of a certain professor the editor interjects, ‘The respected speaker here paused, evidently overcome by his feelings.’ The orator