Weaver was a collier, a
semi-professional pugilist in his younger days, who became a much
beloved evangelist. Fighting, after drinking, seems to have been
the sin to which he originally felt his flesh most perversely
inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding, which
consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling
that, having once fallen, he might as well be hanged for a sheep
as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another
man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with
cowardice for refusing as a Christian man;--I mention these
incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied in the
later conduct which he describes as follows:--
"I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a
fellow-workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. I
said to him:--
"'Tom, you mustn't take that wagon.'
"He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him
that God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed again, and
said he would push the wagon over me.
"'Well,' I said, 'let us see whether the devil and thee are
stronger than the Lord and me.
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