330 The Fundamentals visit to the race course I could shake off my sense of heavi ness and distress. As I reached the course the gates were closed to allow a race being run without danger of interruption, and as I came to those gates the horses dashed by, and I saw the only horse-race I have ever witnessed in my life. At that moment a young man—almost as young as my- self touched his hat and, holding out a small piece of paper to me, said, I beg pardon, s ir; would you kindly read this?” I thought that he wanted me to read it for him, so I took it and looked at it as if to help him. What was my aston ishment to find only these (printed) words on the paper: “Reader, if you died tonight, would your soul be IN HELL?” I simply turned and fled like a terrified coward (as I was), no longer thinking of the races, but only how to escape from the judgment of God and from the awful grasp of the devil, both of which seemed to be equally terrible. I had some six or seven miles to go to my tutor’s, but I believe I accomplished this distance (uphill) in an hour, so eager was I to flee from the wrath that I had invoked. But still, as it will be observed, I was only convicted of my own folly, and was not resting my soul on Christ. “By the law is the knowledge of sin,” and “The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” “Knowing the terrors of the law” God had, through His messenger, “persuaded me” so far that I was utterly ashamed of the past; but though the impres sion was deep, I dare not say what would have happened if the good Lord had not raised up in a remarkable way other helpers for my soul. My tutor’s kind words now began to impress me, and my good friend Henry Wright wrote me beautiful letters; but (for the few weeks that remained before I was to meet the temptations of Cambridge) perhaps my chief and most valu able helper was a young farmer named Stephens, who
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