silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret power amongst them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up; and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life, whereby I might find myself perfectly redeemed." Apology, Prop. XI., Sect. 7. Boy as Barclay was when he returned from Paris, in spite of his precocity it may be questioned whether his surrender of Catholicism cost him much conflict of soul, though he assures us in his "Vindication," he did "turn from that way not without sincere and real convictions of the errors of it." But beyond question, it would cost him a severe struggle to surrender his proud vantage ground as a scholar, and to join a sect who taught not only that learning was not necessary to a saving knowledge of Christ, but also that it had small share in the efficient ministry of the Gospel. The battle was first fought out in his own search for peace and light. From his childhood he had been ambitious of scholarship. Conscious, as he tells us in the introduction to his treatise on "Universal Love," of abilities beyond the average, he had a pleasure in intellectual pursuits which led him to follow them up with keen relish for their own sakes. But now the appetite was to receive a check, not only that it might ever afterwards keep its right place, but that he might learn how much more effectively God can teach than can the best of men. George Fox had to learn from sad experience that even enlightened Christians cannot stand instead of God. Robert Barclay had to learn by a shorter, but no doubt sharp experience, that his favourite books could do nothing for him in spiritual religion without Christ, and that in spiritual power and spiritual discernment illiterate men might be by far his superiors. He has described the experience in his Apology, when speaking of the insufficiency of learning to make a true minister, and the possibility of being a true minister without it.