Altogether it became a fixed thought in my mind that I should need to get "old people's religion" or be lost. Indeed, that belief was very common throughout America when I was a child. Even the Presbyterians believed it, though they kept their mourner's bench out of sight. Accordingly, when I was fifteen years old, and getting to be a big boy, the crisis came; because temptations were coming in thick and fast. Going to a revival one night in the schoolhouse and finding the seats all full, I took a board from under the stove and placed it on the coal pail for a seat. As I sat there the thought came to me, "When are you going to get religion?" This was followed by another, "Wouldn't it be strange if I went to the mourner's bench to-night?" "Not for five years yet," my heart quickly responded. "Not until I am twenty years old." Being a bashful boy I felt terrified at the mere thought of taking such a step before that crowd of "rowdies" who were openly scoffing. "But," my mind said, "if you make a start in five years it will again be now." It seemed plain to me that one "now" would be about as embarrassing as another. "Wouldn't it be strange if I just went forward to-night without any regard to my feelings?" was a question that kept asserting itself. My mind swayed and tipped first one way and then the other until finally it literally fell on the side of a decision. "It is to-night." To me this seemed deeper than any other decision I had ever made,--than which no firmer decision could be made. Being thoroughly aware of its ethical significance, my heart involuntarily said, "You see, O God, what I have done." Not to have regarded myself a bound person from that time forth would have meant the perjuring of my deepest soul. It was an awe-inspiring decision at a time when God was to get either a great deal more or a great deal less of my life as the days went by. It would have been an irreparable loss to me if this great decision had not been made at that time. Even now, I thank God with a growing gratitude for helping me to make that decision. So far, the experience was perfectly normal for a Christian boy in the adolescent period,--though at that time I had never known a Christian boy. This experience of an unconditional surrender to the will of God should have brought me peace and strength; but it did not, because I utterly discredited my previous religious life as being no more than moral development. Real religion, in my thinking, would not begin until I had experienced the miracle of regeneration at the "mourner's bench."