Rowland Hill on Being Called an Enthusiast
ROWLAND HILL, in once addressing the people of Wotten-under-Edge, raising himself, exclaimed, “Because I am in earnest, men call me an enthusiast. When I first came into this part of the country, I was walking on yonder hill, and saw a gravel-pit fall in and bury three human beings alive. I lifted up my voice for help so loud that I was heard in the town below, at a distance of nearly a mile; help came, and rescued two of the sufferers. No one called me an enthusiast then; and when I see eternal destruction ready to fall on poor sinners, and about to entomb them irrecoverably in an eternal mass of woe, and call aloud on them to escape, shall I be called an enthusiast now? No, sinner, I am no enthusiast in so doing; and I call on thee aloud to fly for refuge to the hope set before thee in the gospel.”—Sel.