CHARLES H. WELCH
66
Berean Expositor both of which services being carried on under great financial strain, meant that we were engaged
for twelve years before our marriage could be arranged. This took place on July 30th 1914, and war broke out on
August the fourth.
Immediately following my conversion, my father and I, being quite ignorant of denominational differences,
began to visit various places of worship, and eventually made our spiritual home at the Rotherhithe Free Church.
After sitting under the Evangelical ministry of Thos. Richardson for some time, I with a few others felt impelled to
be baptized, and this ordinance was administered at Charrington Hall, in East London.
After a little interval I was invited to give a series of Bible studies at the Drummond Road Baptist Chapel, which
is immediately opposite Peek Frean's Factory, shown in a sketch on page 72. This series was among my earliest
ministry.
At that time, in the vestry of the chapel, one could be conscious of a battle of smells, the aroma of Colonial
biscuits meeting the smell of mustard pickles arising from Dodman's Pickle Factory just behind the chapel. That
conflict at least is over, for on the site of the pickle factory now stands a church hall, which suggests that in spite of
many adverse movements in the neighbourhood the work thrives.
We now arrive at an important moment in this story, which formed another turning point in the history of the
earthen vessel.