Sometimes a brother or a sister would stand up to “testify,” and then the children opened their eyes and ears, for a misspent youth was the conventional prelude to conversion and who knew what exciting transgressions might not be revealed. Most of them did not amount to much. One would say that before he “found the Lord” he had been “a regular beastly drunkard;” but it turned out that he had only taken a pint too much once or twice at a village feast; another claimed to have been a desperate poacher, “a wild, lawless sort o’ chap;” he had snared an occasional rabbit. A sister confessed that in her youth she had not only taken a delight in decking out her vile body, forgetting that it was only the worm that perishes; but, worse still, she had imperilled her immortal soul by dancing on the green at feasts and club outings, keeping it up on one occasion until midnight.

Such mild sins were not in themselves exciting, for plenty of people were still doing such things and they could be observed at first hand; but they were described with such a wealth of detail and with such self-condemnation that the listener was for the moment persuaded that he or she was gazing on the chief of sinners. One man, especially, claimed that pre-eminence. “I wer’ the chief of sinners,” he would cry; “a real bad lot, a Devil’s disciple. Cursing and swearing, drinking and drabbing, there were nothing bad as I didn’t do. Why, would you believe it, in my sinful pride, I sinned against the Holy Ghost. Aye, that I did,” and the awed silence would be broken by the groans and “God have mercy’s of his hearers while he looked round to observe the effect of his confession before relating how he ‘came to the Lord.”

No doubt the second part of his discourse was more edifying than the first, but the children never listened to it; they were too engrossed in speculations as to the exact nature of his sin against the Holy Ghost, and wondering if he were really as thoroughly saved as he thought himself; for, after all, was not that sin unpardonable? He might yet burn in hell. Terrible yet fascinating thought!