Page:A History of Horncastle from the Earliest Period to the Present Time.djvu/93

74, as well as Hebrew, Greek and Latin. His mother's influence had given him a serious bent of mind, and he early acquired strong religious convictions. His biographer says of him "He tells, in child-like simplicity, how, when only four or five years old, he pondered over thoughts of heaven and hell, the last judgment, and other solemn subjects. During the next 20 years his inner life was one of hopes and fears, doubt and faith, conflict and victory."

His mother, going to Burslem on business, borrowed of a Wesleyan friend, some religious books, among them being Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, Allen's Alarm, and a sermon by Wesley on The Trinity, Her son Hugh naturally read these, and Wesley's sermon made a great impression upon him. One Sunday morning he was sitting in his room, reading Fletcher's Letters on The Spiritual Manifestation of the Son of God, when he declares that he was led "to believe with his heart unto righteousness, and with his mouth to make confession unto salvation." This was in his 27th year, A.D. 1799. He joined the Wesleyan society in June of that year, the special occasion being a love feast at Burslem, to which he was taken by an aged neighbour, a farmer near Bemersley, named Birchenough, at whose house services were conducted, who offered him a ticket which constituted him a member, and thus in his own words I was "made a member without knowing it."

As we shall presently see Hugh Bourne became one of the two originators of the Primitive community, the other was his friend and neighbour William Clowes, a sketch of his career was published some years ago, from which we cull the leading particulars. He was born at Burslem 12th March, 1780, his mother, a daughter of Aaron Wedgewood, being a near relation of Josiah of that name, the inventor of the famous Wedgwood pottery. At ten years of age (1790) he began work in his uncle's pottery, which he continued for several years. At that time dancing, gambling and pugilism were the chief amusment of the factory men and colliers of Staffordshire, and for some years he led a wild life of dissipation, yet this was accompanied, at times, with a sense of self-condemnation and spiritual consciousness. "When I was ten years old," he says, "I remember being at a prayer meeting conducted by Nancy Wood, of Burslem, in her father's house, when, convinced of the sin of disobedience to my parents, I wept bitterly." Conflicts between good and evil continued to disturb him for several years. When a young man, at a dance in Burslem, he was so suddenly convicted of sin, that he abruptly withdrew. Shortly afterwards he married, but he and his wife quarralled so violently that he left her, and went off, taking with him only his mother's prayer book. After some wandering, without a penny in his pocket, he returned and begged his wife to attend the Wesleyan Chapel regularly with him, but she refused. He then, prayer book in hand, took an oath that he would serve God and avoid dissipation. This oath, however, was broken; but once more in the early hour of a cold January morning he went forth, and seeing a faint light burning in a window, he entered the house, to find a few humble methodists gathered for an early prayer meeting. There, he says, he "knelt unnoticed, but there he "died to sin, and was born of God. This, I said, is what they call being converted. I was fully persuaded that I was justified by faith, and had peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." From that day, Jan. 20th, 1805, he began a new life.

The time now approaches when the two, Hugh Bourne and William