Not an Enthusiast

The energy of manner of the late Rowland Hill, and the power of his voice, are said to have been at times overwhelming. While once preaching at Wootton-under-Edge, his country residence, he was carried away by his feelings, and raising himself to his full height, exclaimed, "Beware, I am in earnest; men call me an enthusiast, but I am not; mine are the words of truth and soberness. When I first came into this part of the country, I was walking on yonder hill; I saw a gravel-pit fall in and bury three human beings alive. I lifted up my voice so loud, that I was heard to the town below, a distance of a mile. Help came and rescued two of the poor sufferers. No one called me an enthusiast then,—and when I see eternal destruction ready to fall upon poor sinners, and about to entomb them irrevocably in an eternal mass of woe, and call on them to escape by repenting and fleeing to Christ, shall I be called an enthusiast? No, sinner, I am not an enthusiast in so doing."