TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Quaint Cornish Miner
BILLY BRAY, the King’s Son, was born in the little Cornish village of Twelveheads, near Truro, in 1794. His father was a godly man, but died in early manhood, leaving Billy to the care of a devout grandfather—one of the early Methodists who gladly suffered persecution with Wesley during his visits to Cornwall. Under the sheltering roof of this pious man Billy spent the first seventeen years of his life.
Arriving at the age of seventeen, he passes from the sheltering and gracious influences of a godly home to the perilous conditions of a life shorn of all restraint, and among companions wholly given to vice.
To quote his own words: “I became the companion of drunkards, and during that time I was very near Hell. I remember once getting drunk in Tavistock ; when going home we met a large horse in the way ; it was late at night, and two of us got on the horse’s back ; we had not gone far before the horse stumbled against a stone, and, turning right over, both of us were nearly killed. At another time I got drunk, and while fighting with a man my hat fell into the fire and was burnt. I stole another to wear home, and narrowly escaped being sent to jail for it.”
As if to indulge the more freely in wild rioting, he took lodgings in a public-house. “There,” he says, “with other drunkards, I drank all night long. But I had a sore head and a sick stomach, and worse than all, horrors of mind that no tongue can tell. I used to dread to go to sleep for fear of waking up in Hell ; and though I made many promises to the Lord to be better, I was soon as bad or worse than ever. After being absent from my native county seven years, I returned a drunkard.” Marriage made no difference, and his poor wife had frequently to fetch him from the village drink-shop.
At this time his wife, who was a backslider, spoke to him of the joy she once possessed, and thus intensified his longing for peace. “Why don’t you begin again? he asked, and then I might start, too!” At three o’clock in the morning he got out of bed and began to pray at his bedside. He says: “The more I prayed the more I felt to pray,” and the whole of that forenoon he spent in agonising prayer.
For long days and nights he continued wrestling in prayer. He tells us that even “while working in the mine I was crying to the Lord for mercy.” Returning from the mine one evening he went straight to his bedroom, regardless of the meal that was ready for him, and dropping on his knees, he poured out his soul in earnest, believing prayer. To quote his own words: “I said to the Lord, ‘Thou hast said, They that ask shall receive, they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the door shall be opened, and I have faith to believe it.’ In an instant the Lord made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt. I shouted for joy. I praised God with my whole heart for what He had done for a poor sinner like me; for I could say, ‘The Lord hath pardoned all my sins.’ I think this was in November, 1823, but what day of the month I do not know. I remember this, that everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a man in a new world. I spent the greater part of my time in praising the Lord. I could say with Isaiah, ‘0 Lord, I will praise Thee, for though Thou were angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortedst me ;’ or like David, ‘The Lord bath brought me up out of a horrible pit of mire and clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.’
Thus triumphantly he passed from darkness into light; from the bondage of sin into the glorious liberty of the children of God ; and the thrill of Emancipation filled his soul with joy and his lips with song! He was now twenty-nine years of age, having spent twelve years in the “far country” seven of them in Devonshire and five in his native village.