Stop, poor sinner, stop and think
Before you further go.
Will you sport upon the brink
Of everlasting woe?
On the verge of ruin stop,
Now the friendly warning take,
Stay your footsteps or you'll drop
Into the burning lake.
The last hymn does not appear in the present-day Primitive Methodist hymnal. Needless to say, I have long ceased to use the hymn. It was too horrible for my humanitarian spirit. I might say that at my first service I was not quite sure that I held the book the right way up, as I was not quite certain of the figures. I had, however, committed the hymns to memory correctly, and also the lesson, and I made no mistakes. In those days we used to give out the hymns two lines at a time, as very few people could read, and they could possibly remember the two lines. There was no musical instrument in many of the small village chapels at that time. My wife went with me to my first appointment and listened. My first text was taken from the first chapter of John: "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." I would not like to say the sermon was a very intellectual one. It was, however, well thought out as far as my limited knowledge would allow me to do so, and in preparing it I had the assistance of my wife. We had spent nights in thinking it out, and it certainly was orthodox in the extreme. I made rapid progress with my education under the tutorship of my wife, who would sit up very late at night to teach me. She would sit on one side of the fireplace and I on the other. I would spell out the words and she would tell me their pronunciation.
By the time the next plan came out I could just manage to read my lesson and hymns, but not until I had gone through them many times with my wife and had mistakes rectified.