His views came to a point after the reading of a book then in vogue—Wilberforce’s _Practical View_. Fifteen years after, he described the effect which that book had upon him in a letter to a younger brother. ’When I meet with an inquirer, who, under the impulse of a new feeling, has set himself in good earnest to the business of his eternity, I have been very much in the habit of recommending Wilberforce. This perhaps is owing to the circumstance that I myself experienced a very great transition of sentiment in consequence of reading his work. The deep views he gives of the depravity of our nature, of our need of an atonement, of the great doctrine of acceptance through that atonement, of the sanctifying influences of the Spirit—these all give a new aspect to a man’s religion.... But there are other books which might be as effectually instrumental in working the desired change; and in defect of them all there is the Bible, whose doctrines I well remember I then saw in an altogether new light, and could feel a power and a preciousness in passages which I formerly read with heedlessness, and even with disgust.’ We cannot dwell at more length on this most interesting struggle; enough to say that he emerged from it into the joy and peace of believing; he laid hold of Jesus Christ as his only Saviour; entered into conscious reconciliation with God; looked habitually to the Holy Spirit for all sanctifying grace; and counted it his highest honour and delight to be a fellow-worker with God, especially in all that concerned the welfare of his fellow-men. Yet it was always observed of him that while cordially agreeing with evangelical divines in the great essentials of the faith, he would accept of no position which did not commend itself to his own mind as according to Scripture. For a class of men who insisted on very minute orthodoxies, and even questioned his own soundness because he might not agree with them, he used to speak with little patience and less respect.