He knew that he tried to do what was right, that he kept all the commandments, prayed night and morning, and that he had this instinctive love of God; but, according to the Methodists, all that was not enough. There must be a moment, they held, in every man's life when he becomes actively conscious of salvation; for every man there is a road to Damascus. Seaward Lackland had not yet come to that great crisis, and he waited for it, wondering what it was and when he would come to it.
He began to be troubled about his sins. The Bible said that every evil thought was a sin, and he did not know how many evil thoughts had come into his mind since he had become conscious of good and evil. A heavy burden of guilt weighed upon him; he could not put it aside; the more he thought of God, the more conscious did he become of that awful gulf which lay between him and God. Conversion, he had heard, bridged that gulf, or your sins fell off into it and were no more seen, even if, somewhere out of sight, they still existed, and would exist through all eternity. He would have despaired but for the hope of that miracle. And if I die, he said to himself, before I am converted?
He had always gone regularly to chapel on Sundays and as often as he could on week-days, but now he began to stay to the prayer-meetings after the service, and the minister at St. Ives noticed him, and often prayed with him and talked with him, but to no avail. A year went by, and he grew more despondent; even his love for God seemed to be slackening. One winter evening he heard that a famous revivalist was coming to Lelant. He thought he would go and hear him, then something seemed to urge him not to go; and he walked half-way there, and then back again, unable to make up his mind. Then, thinking that it was the devil who was trying to keep him away, he turned and walked resolutely to Lelant.
When he reached the chapel the service had begun. They were singing 'Jesu, lover of my soul,' and the preacher was standing inside the communion-rail (he liked to be nearer the people than he could be in the pulpit), and, as Seaward had the first glimpse of his face, he was singing as if every word of the hymn meant something wonderful to him. His eyes were wide open and shining; he held the closed hymn-book in both hands, rigid in front of him, and the people seemed already to have begun to feel that magnetic influence which he rarely failed to establish between himself and his hearers. After the hymn he stretched out his hand with a sudden gesture, and the people stood motionless for a moment and then gradually sank down on their knees as he began to pray rapidly. He seemed to be talking with God as if God were there in the midst of them, and as he passed from supplication into a kind of vivid statement, meant for the people rather than for the ear of God, there seemed to be a dialogue going on, as if the answers which he gave were hardly his own answers. He ended abruptly, and, without the harmonium, started an almost incoherent marching-song which was well known at all revivals. 'Hallelujah, send the glory!' he sang, and the voices of the people rose louder and louder and feet began to beat time to the heavy swing of the tune. Then he read the lesson and, without a pause, gave out the text, and began to speak.
Seaward Lackland had stepped into a pew near the door, and in the furthest corner of the chapel. Something in the preacher's voice had thrilled him, and he could not take his eyes off the long lean face, with its eyes like two burning coals, as it seemed to him, under a high receding forehead, from which the longish hair was brushed straight back. A huge moustache seemed to eat up the whole lower part of the face; and, as the man spoke, you saw nothing but the eyes and the quivering moustache. He began quietly, but, from the first, in the manner of one who has some all-important, and perhaps fatal, secret to tell. An uneasiness spread gradually through the chapel, which increased as he went on, with more urgency. People shifted in their seats, looked sideways at their neighbours, as if they feared to have betrayed themselves. Seaward felt himself turning hot and cold, for no reason that he could think of, and he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Near him he saw a young woman begin to cry, quite quietly, and a man not far off drew long breaths, that he could hear, almost like groans. The preacher's voice sounded like pathetic music, and he heard the tones rather than the words, tones which seemed to plead with him like music, asking something of him, as music did; and he wanted to respond; and he realised that it was his sin that was keeping him back from somehow completing the harmony, and he heard the preacher's voice talking with his soul, as if no one were there but they two. And God? God, perhaps.
By this time many people in the chapel were weeping, men groaned heavily, some jumped up crying 'Hallelujah!' and when the preacher ended and said, 'Now let us have silent prayer,' and came down into the aisle, and moved from pew to pew, one after another, as he spoke to them, got up, and went to the communion-rail, and knelt there, some of them with looks of great happiness. As Seaward saw the preacher coming near him, he felt a horrible fear, he did not know of what; and he rose quietly and stepped out into the night. But there, as he stood listening to some exultant voices which he still heard crying 'Hallelujah!' and as he felt the comfort of the cool air about him, and looked up at the stars and the thin white clouds which were rushing across the moon, a sense of quiet and well-being came over him, and he felt as if some bitter thing had been taken out of his soul, and he were free to love God and life at the same time, and not, as he had done till then, with alternate pangs of regret. 'If God so loved the world,' he found himself repeating; and the whole mercy of the text enveloped him. He walked home along the cliff like one in a dream: he only hoped not to waken out of that happiness.
From this time, year by year, Seaward Lackland grew more eager to do some work for God. He had made few friends among the young men and women of his own age; to the women he seemed at once too cold and too earnest, and the men were not quite certain of the comradeship of one who had so much book-learning, and who was so full of strange ideas. He did not mean to be unfriendly, but he had not the qualities that go to the easy making of friendships; and he found no one, neither man nor woman, with whom he had anything in common. The men respected him, for he was a good fisherman; but the women had for the most part a certain contempt for this large-boned, dull-eyed, heavy-jawed young man, who was never at his ease when he was with them, and who waited on no occasions for meeting them when they might have liked his company. The minister at St. Ives had noticed him and asked him sometimes to come and have a talk with him in his study. One day Lackland, warmed out of his reserve, had been talking so well that the minister said to him: 'I think we must have you as a local preacher, Lackland. What do you say to it?' He said quietly: 'I would like to try, sir.'
A few weeks afterwards, when the quarterly 'plan' was handed in at the Lacklands' cottage, and Mrs. Lackland had unfolded it eagerly, to see who were appointed to take the services at Carbis, she came suddenly upon a name which startled her so much, that the broad sheet of paper fluttered off her knees to the floor. 'My boy,' she said, as Seaward picked it up, and handed it back to her with a smile, 'I have been praying for this ever since I dedicated you to the Lord. Now I hardly know what there is left for me to pray for.'
'Pray that I may be steadfast in the faith, mother,' said Seaward.
'I will, my son; but I wouldn't mind trusting him for that.'