"At length I went home but the figure was before me wherever I went. Ringing in my ears was the announcement of the play, 'the awful appearance of Horra.' I went to bed with it; I rose with it. The Sabbath came; I went to the House of God. I sat under the preached word, but I could hear nothing. Doddridge was still my companion. I read like a dying man, not a moment did I lose, but it seemed as if a day or two at furthest I should be in hell. I continued in this state until the Saturday following, embracing every moment of reading and crying to God."

"At length, near mid-day, while at my work, I took up the book reading the part where Doddridge takes leave of the soul that is resolved to continue its course of evil. My case became desperate, and I thought, 'Well, I will try once more and this shall be my last time.' I went into a corner of the office and fell upon my knees and such a flood of argument, such energy and pleading was poured out upon me as I shall never forget. I had never experienced the like before. Plea after plea was presented at the mercy seat. Hast thou not said, 'I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me?' 'Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' 'All that the Father giveth Me shall come unto Me, and him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.' 'Oh hear me, pardon my sins, give me a new heart and renew within me a right spirit,' and then that verse came so powerfully to my mind,

'Then will I tell to sinners round,
What a dear Saviour I have found,
I'll point to His redeeming blood,
And say, behold the way to God.'

Oh! I thought, if He were to pardon me, it might bring many sinners to Him. My arguments were exhausted; I had said all I could say, yet it was to be a never-forgotten season, for it seemed as if I could have taken Heaven by storm.

"I rose from my knees, walking round another part of the room; I stood pondering over my state; when all of a sudden, and in the most unlooked-for and altogether unexpected way, those most suitable and timely and precious words were spoken to my heart with a power which I can never describe, 'Son, be of good cheer, thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee.' O the light, the love, the joy, the holy, heavenly transport which instantly flowed into my soul. My sins forgiven. What such a guilty wretch as I forgiven, forgiven? My sins, my guilt, my burden! why, where are they! I am in heaven surely. A light and a beauty and a grandeur gilded the place, humble as it was. Everything was tinged with a glory brighter than the most brilliant rays of the setting sun. I forgot myself and everything. I felt caught up as it were into the third heaven, and could not understand what it all meant except that my sins were pardoned and that I, who sometime was far off, was brought nigh by the precious blood of Christ. I felt as though I could not live; the chariots of heaven were surely on their way. I looked up to the heavens and expected every moment that my Saviour and my Lord would burst through the clouds."
 
"It was in a new world, and when I was reminded that it was dinner time, where I was and what I was, I could scarcely tell. My thoughts, affections and desires were in heaven, whence I did indeed look for the Saviour. To describe that enjoyment would be an utter impossibility. No human tongue can define heavenly joys or in anything like adequate terms set forth the rapture of those who appear one moment to be on the verge of eternal destruction and the next on the very threshold of Heaven; one moment a rebel doomed to die and the next a son and heir, a joint-heir with Christ, standing without fault before the throne as free from the feeling of sin or the dread of the consequences as Himself. In a word, what it is to be one moment in hell, the next in heaven, the tongue of the redeemed in glory must tell, for neither I nor any other finite creature can do so. I thought, 'Adored be His holy Name, I shall soon see Him as He is and then my dis-embodied spirit, my ransomed soul shall more fully tell, what here I can but feebly lisp and stammer out in most broken and imperfect language.'

This experience took place in Southampton on Saturday the 21st June, 1826, when he was 15 years old. We have to remember that he was writing of this experience in 1878 when he was 69 years old.