TWICE-BORN MEN
REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE
Compiled by HY. PICKERING
A London Restaurateur.
JOHN PEARCE, of the Restaurants, at one time in London known as “Pearce & Plenty,” also as ” J.P. Restaurants,” who began life in poverty, and left £51,000. After beginning with a “Gutter Hotel,” he passed through many vicissitudes, the greatest event being thus recorded.
In his early years he worked in a provision merchant’s shop. The owner of that business was in the habit of having morning prayers, and this experience caused young Pearce to think. Then he began to attend Wesley’s Chapel in the City Road. One day there was a bill exhibited in his employer’s shop window, which stated:
“A Converted Thief, a Converted Costermonger, and a Converted Infidel will speak.”
This was something new. William Carter, the preacher-sweep, was bringing these friends with him, and so Pearce went to see and hear. Then he discovered that Carter had a Mission for the unwashed of Southwark in a hall that seated a thousand people. Pearce walked three miles the next Sunday. It was there he found what he had been seeking, and his life was changed. “It was a wonderful thing,” was his own verdict, never to be gainsaid.
His own words in later life will be of interest in revealing something of his Christian life. “As a young man I felt the danger of the unsaved man sitting next me. Nowadays you’re not responsible for your neighbour. He’d resent your speaking to him about Eternity. We’re all too jolly respectable. I’m not blaming others. I’ve altered myself. It’s the spirit of the times. We used to have to fight for our religion. It needed some pluck. Now no one persecutes you; no one bothers to criticise you; no one cares. We used to talk of the fear of God, and conviction of sin. A man had to choose between Heaven and Hell. Those first preachers I knew were not intellectual preachers, but they knew their Bibles.”