Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/272

 But eventually he abandoned it for, as he believed, a higher, if less remunerative, occupation.

Inspired from his youth up with philanthropic sentiments, Picton had become an enthusiastic Sunday-school teacher; and this experience led him to think of the ministry as a suitable sphere of action. He was never very orthodox in his religious beliefs: how could a mind capable of such profound speculation so be? But he had an eye to his main object,—the moral elevation of the poor and ignorant; and he decided that the pastoral fulcrum of Independent Nonconformity was the best for his purpose, which may be doubted. Accordingly, at nineteen years of age, he resumed his studies, and was entered simultaneously as a student of the Lancashire Independent College and of Owens College, Manchester. At the latter institution he stood first in classics at his final examination. In 1855 he took the master's degree in classics at London University, and his academic studies were at an end. In 1856 Mr. Picton's career as an Independent minister began. The start was not promising. Suspected of heterodoxy, he was black-balled by the zealous shepherds of the Manchester ministers' meeting, who appear to have applied to him pretty much the now somewhat obsolete argument, " He is an atheist. Ecce signum! he doesn't believe in the Devil."

The orthodox pastors, however, had gone a step too far. Public opinion strongly manifested itself against such an act of barefaced intolerance; and, by a suspen-