ABOUNDING GRACE is connected with my conversion. As early as twelve or thirteen years of age, God was pleased to exercise my conscience about my sins. But I loved the world and would not give it up, so in spirit said, “Go Thy way for this time,” which He did. Many other times in His grace He came to me, but always got the same answer, until He gave me up.
Coming west (from Massachusetts) I listened to infidel teachings and quite drank them in. In August, 1868, I went back to visit Mother. I had learned to value her for her faithfulness to me (a bad boy), in the many and severe whippings she had given me in my childhood, seeking to turn me from the error of my ways. Mother spoke to me about eternal things. I argued against her with my infidel views, and fairly closed her mouth.
After this she said, “William, do you read your Bible and pray every day?” “No!” I replied. She said, “If you do this, my boy, you will get light,” and she left the room wringing her hands and the tears just rolling down her cheeks.
Left thus alone in the room, the Lord made me feel how I had grieved my mother, whom I loved, and He led me to realize there was one thing I had not done — I had not read my Bible and prayed every day. And I made up my mind to try it, partly because I knew it would please Mother (though I did not tell her my purpose), and partly to test my infidel stand, that I had so strongly maintained. So I left the room and got a Testament that I had owned when a boy, and put it into my pocket.
Going to bed at night I read the first chapter of Matthew and knelt down beside the bed to pray. I had no interest in what I read and what I prayed; only I remember thinking while on my knees, “I would hate to have anyone catch me in this position.” However, I had taken up the matter as a test and would not be changed from it.
Things went on this way until about the end of the year. Then the Lord began working in my soul, making me think I was not as good as I thought I was, and I sought to make myself better. But the more I tried to make myself better the more unhappy I became, until I saw myself only fit for hell.
Then the Lord came and showed me that trying to make myself better was wrong — that faith is the only way in which peace with God is secured. So giving up doing, and resting only on God’s Word, I was brought into peace, the first Lord’s day in 1869. To Him be glory.
—W. E. CLOUGH
ML-09/29/1963