TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A Great London Merchant
SIR GEORGE WILLIAMS, of the famous firm of Hitchcock, Williams, & Co., St. Paul’s Churchyard, founder of the Y.M.C.A., was saved when serving his apprenticeship in a drapery establishment at Bridgwater, Somerset. His testimony in after years was as follows: “I entered Bridgwater a careless, thoughtless, godless, swearing young fellow,” and, we would add, left it an earnest whole-hearted Christian. In writing to a friend of these early days, he said: “There were two other apprentices whom I soon found were different from myself. I was much given to swearing, and I saw increasingly that they were going to Heaven, but that I was on the downward road to Hell. I now began to pray, but even on my knees oaths would come to my lips.” The consistent Christian lives of fellow-apprentices greatly influenced him.
At the age of 16 he was saved through a Gospel sermon preached by the minister of the Congregational Church. Little information can be obtained as to the text of the discourse delivered, but it was the means in the hand of God in leading him to know Christ as his Saviour. Many years afterwards when visiting Bridgwater at the opening of the new Young Men’s Christian Association building he said: “It is not easy to forget one’s first love. I first learned in Bridgwater to love my dear Lord and Saviour for what He had done for me; I saw in this town two roads, the downward and the upward road; I began to reason, and said to myself, ‘What if I continue along this downward road, where shall I get to? where is the end of it ? what will become of me?’ Thank God I had kept in the clean path; nevertheless I was on the downward road; I saw that this road would certainly lead me to spend my eternity with the devil and his angels, and I said, ‘Cannot I escape? Is there no escape?’ They told me in this very town of Bridgwater how to escape—confess your sins, accept Christ, trust in Him, yield your heart to the Saviour. God helped me to yield myself wholly to Him. I cannot describe to you the joy and peace which flowed into my soul when I saw that the Lord Jesus had DIED FOR MY SINS, AND THAT THEY WERE ALL FORGIVEN.”