“Whenever your worldly interests are concerned, I do not consider you men are easily to be taken in; it is only about the salvation of your souls—your eternal interests—that which will be living on still when the heavens and the earth have passed away,—it is only on these points that you allow yourselves to be—to be—I must use one of your own words—to be ‘humbugged.’ “Then, again, if it were some difficult thing which God asked us to do, we might make many excuses—we might plead the want of learning, the want of capacity, the want of strength; but we have only to ‘Look, and live.’” “Ma’am,” said one of the men, “will you pray for us?” We all kneeled together, and prayed that whatever prevented our looking to the “Crucified One” might be removed; and that, instead of going to earthly fountains to quench our thirst, we might drink of the water of everlasting life, and thirst no more. Just as we were separating, one of the men said—“Ma’am, if you will come here to meet us every Wednesday evening, we’ll all come, and bring about a hundred more with us.” I replied that I was much obliged to them, but I really had not the time to spare. If my help was the only help they could get, I would make any sacrifice and come; but if they would only take the trouble to walk about half a mile, to Mr Lewis’s school-room, at Westbourne Grove, he would be very glad to see them in their working clothes, and would explain everything to them much better than I could. Several of them promised to go; and as most of them were still lingering about over the fire, I said to them,—“I wish you men, would try and get out of the way of talking about ‘parsons’ as you do. I don’t mean to say that all ‘parsons’ are what they ought to be by a great deal; but the way you often speak of them is as unjust as it would be for me to speak with contempt of all working-men, because some amongst them are drunkards and thieves.” “Ah, that’s true,” said one of them. “Fair play’s a jewel, anyhow.” “It is not only the unfairness to them,” I said, “but you put yourselves very often out of the way of receiving benefit from those who do most sincerely and earnestly wish to help you. As long as we dislike people, it is hardly possible that they can do us any good. If you are not in a hurry to go, I will tell you about a man I met with lately, who was doing himself a great deal of mischief in this way.” They said they were in no hurry,—they shouldn’t do anything more that night; they were glad to stay. (I did not give them the story so fully as I have written it here. I had no notes with me; and simply told them from memory the part that would apply to our previous conversation.)