from me forever. . . . The everlasting No had said: 'Behold thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine (the devil's);' to which my whole Me now made answer: I am not thine, but free, and forever hate thee!"" Elsewhere Carlyle writes: "Foreshadows-call them rather fore-splendoursof that truth, that beginning of truths, fell mysteriously over my soul. . . . The universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house with spectres, but God-like, and my Father's!"

It is of this experience that Carlyle says, “I found it to be essentially what Methodist people call their conversion-the deliverance of their souls from the devil and the pit. Precisely that in a new form. And there burned accordingly a sacred flame of joy in me, silent in my inmost being, as of one henceforth superior to fate. This holy joy lasted sensibly in me for several years.

nor has it proved what I can call fallacious at any time since." Carlyle was wont to assure his pious mother that his opinions, although clothed in a different garb, remained essentially the same as her own, and we may well believe him for he would lie to no man and he could not lie to his mother. But in comparing the experience of what he calls his new birth with that of Egerton Ryerson, we must remember that the one was a rugged man, hardheaded and metaphysical, and a worshipper of will and force, whilst the other was a bright but unsophisticated boy who followed without doubting

CONVERSION

his moral intuitions and affections and recognized the eternal goodness in the Son of Man. The one was like an oak tree that grew alone, through the scorching heat of summer and the winter's cold and tempests, the other was like a pine tree that grew tall and shapely in the forest.

This story of the moral and spiritual development of Egerton Ryerson has a historical as well as a psychological interest. It is an example of the change that usually attended the ministrations of the pioneer preachers, and its presence or absence is still looked upon amongst Methodists as the sign of a standing or falling church. In telling the story some of the converts, especially in later times, use language less intense and striking than that of Egerton Ryerson, and others use language almost as mystical and imaginative as that of Carlyle, but the essential things are always the same and in harmony with the inwardness of the Great Apostle's preaching, "repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

The circumstances of the early settlers and their habits of life and thought were in some respects most favourable to the work of the first preachers. The lives of the people were simple, laborious and comparatively free from the distractions and dissipations of later times. They had no relish for the fine-spun and mystifying speculations that so often befog and enervate the mind. They had not learned to question the truthfulness of the intuitive reason,

and they no more called for logical demonstrations of the Good than for logical demonstrations of the Beautiful. Their intellectual palate had not been vitiated and their digestion spoiled by daily doses of newspaper omniscience or by a supping of the devil's broth in low comedy and fiction. Whatsoever things commended themselves to their simple minds as lovely and of good report, those things were beautiful and good to them beyond all dispute. And they must either revere and obey or feel that they were in opposition to the Eternal order. When, therefore, the pioneer preacher came to those people, he found the way open to their hearts and minds. And the preachers were, as a rule, men of the people, and they knew their hearers though they did not always know Greek. They preached the facts of the inner life and of the gospel of the grace of God, rather than theories about the facts and the gospel; and above all things, they sought to help the people to the supreme moral choice which brought inward peace and supplied a fixed principle of life.

A passing notice may here be given to the scenes of the early religious experiences and labours of the first makers of this country. Except in the cities and towns a regular religious service seldom occurred more than once a week. In many places it would take two or three or even six weeks before the pioneer preacher could complete his round of hundreds of miles. But when the work of the year

EARLY RELIGIOUS SERVICES

was slack and the weather favourable, special religious services were held as if to compensate for the usual dearth of religious privileges. In the larger places what were called "protracted services" were held, when evening after evening for two or three weeks the preacher and his helpers brought all their powers of instruction and persuasion to bear on their hearers. These services were commonly held in the winter season; but in the pleasant summer weather, between the spring work and the harvest there were held in the sparsely settled districts camp meetings, when for a week or ten days the people would dwell in tents and give themselves to religious exercises. They would then return to their homes, some of them to have few opportunities for public worship for the rest of the year. As the places for regular religious services multiplied, these protracted meetings and camp meetings gradually fell into disuse, but in the old time they often served a good purpose.

Returning from these observations on the religious life of Canada in the early days, observations intended to show something of the environment in which Egerton Ryerson grew up, we resume the story of his own life on the religious side. From his thirteenth to his eighteenth year, no events of much note are put on record. When, however, at the age of eighteen he formally joined the Methodist Church, he was met by his father with these words: "Egerton, I understand you have joined the

Methodists. You must either leave them or leave my house." The military spirit of his early habits seems to have followed the father into his domestic life, and the young man knew him too well to expect that there would be any change in the word of command. But the son too was a good soldier when called upon to endure hardness for what he considered a sacred cause. His decision was soon made, and the next day he left his father's roof to begin the struggle of life on his own account. "In this trying time," he says, "I had the aid of a mother's prayers and a mother's tenderness, and a conscious divine strength according to my need." It is a further mark of his noble character that he utters no word of reproach or bitterness on account of treatment he had received, but to the end of his life speaks words of tenderness and reverence for his father.

For the next two years he was employed as an assistant in the London district grammar school and at the same time he diligently pursued his own studies. The bent of his mind even at this early period is seen in the character of the works that he read with greatest interest:-"Locke, 'On the Human Understanding'; Paley's 'Moral and Political Philosophy,' and Blackstone's 'Commentaries,' especially the sections of the latter on the Prerogatives of the Crown, the Rights of the Subject and the Province of Parliament."

His return for a year to his father's home and his