Before I went to college I had to be “admitted”. In most Dissenting communities there is a singular ceremony called “admission”, through which members of the congregation have to pass before they become members of the church. It is a declaration that a certain change called conversion has taken place in the soul. Two deacons are appointed to examine the candidate privately, and their report is submitted to a church-meeting. If it is satisfactory, he is summoned before the whole church, and has to make a confession of his faith, and give an account of his spiritual history. As may be expected, it is very often inaccurately picturesque, and is framed after the model of the journey to Damascus. A sinner, for example, who swears at his pious wife, and threatens to beat her, is suddenly smitten with giddiness and awful pains. He throws himself on his knees before her, and thenceforward he is a “changed character”. I had to tell the church that my experience had not been eventful. I was young, and had enjoyed the privilege of godly parents. What was conversion? It meant not only that the novice unhesitatingly avowed his belief in certain articles of faith, but it meant something much more, and much more difficult to explain. I was guilty of original sin, and also of sins actually committed. For these two classes of sin I deserved eternal punishment. Christ became my substitute, and His death was the payment for my transgression. I had to feel that His life and death were appropriated by me. This word “appropriated” is the most orthodox I can find, but it is almost unintelligible. I might perhaps say that I had to feel assured that I, personally, was in God’s mind, and was included in the atonement. This creed had as evil consequences that it concentrated my thoughts upon myself, and made me of great importance. God had been anxious about me from all eternity, and had been scheming to save me. Another bad result was that I was satisfied I understood what I did not in the least understand. This is very near lying. I can see myself now—I was no more than seventeen—stepping out of our pew, standing in the aisle at the pew-door, and protesting to their content before the minister of the church, father and mother protesting also to my own complete content, that the witness of God in me to my own salvation was as clear as noonday. Poor little mortal, a twelvemonth out of round jackets, I did not in the least know who God was, or what was salvation.