not "saved." The natural, instinctive type he was, asserted its claim. He became a genuine saint. Also, to the very end, he remained that other delightful thing, possible only to simple hearts, a boy.
Both my parents, thus, believed in Jesus, with a faith of that simple, unshakable order that could feel no doubts. Their lives were consistent and, as must always be the case when fine characters are possessed of a perfectly sincere faith, they stood out in the world of men and women as something strong and beautiful. Edmund Gosse, in "Father and Son," has described the mental attitude of the type; William James might, equally, have included my father's case as a typical "conversion" in his "Varieties of Religious Experience."
The effect upon the children--there were five of us--followed naturally. My father, apart from incurring much public odium owing to his official position, found himself, and us with him, cut off from the amenities of the social life to which we were otherwise born. Ordinary people, "worldly" as he called them, left us alone. A house where no wine was served at dinner, where morning and evening prayers were de rigueur, a guest even being asked to "lead in prayer" perhaps, and where at any suitable moment you might be drawn aside and asked "Have you given your soul to Jesus?" was not an attractive house to stay in. We were ostracized. The effect of such disabilities upon us in later life was not considered, for it was hoped each and all of us would consecrate ourselves to God. We were, thus, kept out of the "world" in every possible sense and brought up, though with lavish love and kindness, yet in the narrowest imaginable evangelical path which scents danger in knowledge of any kind not positively helpful to the soul. I, personally, at that time, regarded the temptations of the world with a remote pity, and with a certainty that I should never have the least difficulty in resisting them. Men who smoked and drank and were immoral, who gambled, went to theatres and music-halls and race-meetings,
belonged to the submerged and unworthy
