I took the most favourable view I could of all that took place at these meetings, but when I had done my best I could not approve of all. Still most of us believed that the Revival was the result of a special operation of the Holy Spirit; and though my views on the subject have modified somewhat I am not prepared to say that there was no truth in that belief.

An earnest, honest young man went along with me to many of those meetings; and, of course, we often expressed to each other our opinion of the meetings as we came home. I was sometimes well pleased with the meeting and was quite sure that the Holy Spirit had been doing a good work there; when my friend on the other hand was just as sure that the meeting was a failure, and that for some reason the Spirit's presence was not there. At other times my friend was pleased when I was disappointed. This caused me some trouble. I asked myself, "How does this come? I know that I am converted, but I have not the smallest doubt that James Clark is converted also. How comes it, then, that the Holy Spirit says one thing to me and a different thing to James Clark about the same meeting?" As time went on I observed that a speaker who moved the emotions pleased James, even if there was a good deal of what I considered confusion and mistake in what he said. I was better pleased with the man who spoke to the intellect. James taught me a useful lesson. He taught me to put less value upon our states of mind or private convictions as tests of what was true, or false, or good and bad in religion. I saw more clearly from that time on, that the Holy Spirit had revealed the will of God in the Bible, and that that book would have to be the final test; and that there was a danger sometimes in thinking that our states of mind and emotions were caused by a direct operation of the Holy Spirit, when some other causes had to do with producing these results.

That friend helped me in another way. If he did not understand a portion of Scripture he made it a subject of prayer. And whatever came into his mind after he had earnestly asked God to reveal the meaning to him, that was to him, beyond all question, what the passage meant. This led him sometimes to put the most unlikely interpretations upon passages. The man who does not ask God's help will never be likely to know much of His will, but James helped me to become quite certain that it was not God's will that prayer should enable us to dispense with study.

I was married in September, 1859. Three months afterwards I could not find suitable work about Carluke. My father and my brother had returned to Cumberland and were getting along well enough, so I decided to also return to Cumberland, to the Cleator Moor district. Before my wife and I left Scotland, circumstances had caused us to have some doubts about infant baptism and some other matters in connection with the Church, so we determined, when we went to England, not to join any religious body until we had time to think over things which we were in doubt about. Though we did not connect ourselves to any religious body, we generally went to a Methodist meeting on the Sunday evenings. Their earnestness impressed us, but some of the things they did we could not fall in with. One local preacher in particular carried things to a pitch that, though we felt the excitement, our understanding rebelled against it. In the after meeting he would start three or four all at once, with the result that you could not hear distinctly what any of them was saying. Add to that a number of men all over the meeting shouting, "Amen," "Praise the Lord," etc., the preacher all the while going up and down among the seats shouting one thing and another, pushing his fingers up through his hair, and talking to anyone who seemed moved by the uproar. We felt the excitement, but we also felt that we could take no hand in it. As we were coming out from one of these meetings, my father asked one of the leading men if he ever read about a meeting like that in the New Testament. "Well, no," he said, "but good men have found out that this is the best way of converting people." We had to decide that we could not make our home there.

We had been in England about six months when Mrs. Anderson observed, in the Whitehaven papers, advertisements by a people who professed to be seeking to return to Christianity as it was instituted at the first. That was what we were wishing to get at, if they were up to what they professed. It meant a four-miles walk, but I was at their hall in good time next Sunday evening. I was the first of the audience and took a seat near the door. The preacher came along and said, "It is a big hall, sir, and it will not be filled and my voice is not too strong; will you, please, come nearer the front?" As we passed down the hall he asked where I came from. "From Cleator Moor just now," I said, "but from Scotland originally." He then informed me that one of their elders was a Scotchman, and if I cared he would introduce me to him at the close of the meeting. I thanked him and said that I would be pleased if he did so. I was pleased with the preacher and was introduced to the Scotch elder at the close of the meeting. It was a summer evening, and I accepted the invitation to drink a cup of tea with the Scotchman before I went home. We talked about a number of things, and I felt that at a few points I was not able to defend the religious body which I had been connected with. When he referred to infant baptism, I said that I did not feel inclined to uphold that; that I had been thinking less or more about it, and I had to confess that so far I had not been able to find proof for it. He said that, if I made up my mind to join them, I should find they were not like the Baptists in one respect, in that they would not ask me for my Christian experience before I was baptized. He said that he considered that practice was just as inconsistent as it would be for a minister to refuse to marry a couple until they could give him their married experience. "Then," I said, "you question that I am a saved person." "Yes," he replied, "I question is you can lay claim to a Scriptural knowledge of pardon." I said to him, "Do you think that I do not love the Lord Jesus Christ as sincerely as you do?" He said, "I do not doubt that, young man." I then asked, "Do you think that I am not as willing to follow Him as you are?" He said, "I do not doubt that either." "Then what do you mean?" I asked. He then asked, "Are you married?" "Yes." "Did you love your wife as well immediately before the marriage ceremony as you did immediately afterwards?" "Yes." "Did the marriage ceremony change your heart at all?" "No." "Did it change your state?" "Yes, it put me out of a single state into a married state." "And might not God have an ordinance that had to do with changing your state, while it had nothing to do with changing your heart?" "Well," I said, "it is possible, but what about the fact?" "Here is the fact, young man," he said, and then quoted Mark 16:16: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." "Now salvation is a state, young man; where does it come in, in that passage, after baptism or before it?" I would have given a good deal to have got over that passage and others which the old man put before me, but I saw no honest road through. The old man went a mile towards home with me. In parting he laid his hand on my shoulder and said: "Now if we are right, come and help us, and if we are wrong, in pity come back again and let us know where." Had he simply said that believers should be baptized, I was not in a position to strongly resent that; but when he questioned my right, according to the Scriptures, to say that I was pardoned, I did resent that strongly, still I could not say that he had treated any passage unfairly. He presented passages that seemed to clearly teach that we must repent or be lost. And if repentance had anything to do with it, then salvation was not by faith alone, and I had been teaching salvation by faith alone. Then he had presented passages which seemed to teach that baptism had a closer relation to pardon than I had thought. Up to this time I was satisfied that I could produce passages to prove that salvation was by faith alone. I could not see yet that the view which I had taken of these passages was wrong. On the other hand, I could neither set aside the passages which the old man had presented, nor could I harmonize the one set of passages with the other. Such was my state of mind as I found my way back home.

I was employed underground at that time. The manager was a local preacher who commanded a good deal of respect. On the day after I had the conversation with the Scotch elder, the manager was passing the place where I was working, and stopped for a short talk as he sometimes did. I told him that I had been to Whitehaven to hear a man preaching who held that believers should be baptized, and I asked him what he thought about that matter. "Well," he said, "if you think that it is right to be baptized, get it done, but if you do not see it to be right, it makes no matter." "But," I said, "if God has commanded it, Mr. F., it will surely be right whether I think it or not; and if God has not commanded it, it seems to me that it will be wrong to do it in His name; I do not see that my thinking or not thinking can make it right or wrong." "Well," he replied, "it does look like that, my lad; but look here, I have known people go and get baptized, and then turn out worse than ever." "That may be," I said, "but have you not known people join the Methodists, and then turn out worse than ever?" He said, "Yes, I have." "Did that prove to you that Methodism was wrong?" "No, it did not." "And why should the other thing prove to you that baptism is wrong?" "Oh, well," he said, "if you think it is right get it done, but I still think that if you do not see it, it makes no difference. Good morning." This conversation left me certain that if there was anything against believers' baptism, Mr. Fee did not know it, and I would have to fight my own battle so far as he was concerned.

Thinking the matter over, I decided that it was safe to get baptized. There was no doubt that believers were baptised, and I saw no certain proof that infants were baptized. I was not sure that the elder that I had the talk with was right in holding it as a condition of pardon, but there was no doubt that a believer was a proper subject of baptism; I would obey, and then whatever was in it was mine, and I would have time to think it out afterwards. I talked the matter over with my father; he was pretty much in the same mind as myself. So we went both together to Whitehaven next Sunday and were baptized.

That was about the end of June or beginning of July, 1860. Our eldest child - a daughter - was born just about that time. It was a good while before Mrs. Anderson was about again, and we had time to talk matters over while she was getting stronger. When she was able, she also was baptized. And we all enjoyed the fellowship of the Church of Christ in Whitehaven. It was a time of great blessing to all of us.