Beecher’s powerful message had urged the “unredeemed” to seize the moment of their own salvation by voluntarily renouncing sin and filling their lives with God’s controlling will. Rushing to his room, Phillips threw himself on the floor, begged God to assume mastery over his life and to remove from him all impulses to commit evil. Soon after, at Latin School, Phillips began to hold earnest conversations with his friends about “the trinity, atonement or some other point of orthodox theology.”32
