Above the fireplaces in the schoolroom, the two dormitories, and dining-hall, were tacked painted iron sheets which were inscribed with appropriate Scriptural texts. We had Bible lessons morning and evening, collects and gospels to commit to memory. Our shelves held a fair collection of religious literature,--memoirs of Wesley, Fletcher, lives of Bunyan, Fox, Milton, and others of less note, sermons, and commentaries. Twice on Sunday we had full services, and after supper the porter of the establishment, who was a Methodist of super-fervid zeal, would treat us to a lengthy and noisy prayer, which, as I think of it now, was rather a tedious string of adjurations to, and incriminations of the Almighty, than a supplication for grace to the Creator. But all these religious exercises and literature had not such direct immediate effect as this romantic novelette. I now conceived God to be a very real personage, as active to-day as in Biblical periods in His supervision of mundane concerns. I fancied God’s Presence visible in many small events, but, to obtain the Divine interposition in one’s favour, it was necessary to earnestly solicit it, and to be worthy of it by perfect sinlessness. Here was a great difficulty. It was not possible to be wholly free from sin in our circumstances. I observed that our seniors, though they punctiliously went through the forms of prayer, were none of them blameless. They were cruelly unkind, they were unjust in their punishments, they were censorious without cause, and most ungentle. They asked for God’s forgiveness for their trespasses, but were relentless in their condemnation of the smallest fault we committed. When I came to think of that beast Will Thomas, and that imp Davies, and that tale-bearer and mischief-maker Williams, my gorge rose against them, and I felt that the circumstances of Enoch’s life were not like mine.