At this particular camp-meeting, in my eighth year, the following incident occurred. On a Saturday a young man by the name of Coffee preached. I sat in what was known as the altar, on a rude bench, my feet not touching the ground. I recollect with great clearness the text, and the deep solemnity with which he announced it; namely, “Will a man rob God?" (Malachi.) I said then and there to myself, If God should ever call me to preach the gospel, that will be the first text I will preach from.

After my conversion, I purposely emphasize that word, my convictions took on more definite form and seriousness touching my call to the ministry, without, however, my ever opening my mind to any one about it. I really was strongly inclined not to be communicative on that particular subject. I went to learn a trade in my fourteenth year, soon after conversion, and left home to do so. I observed the same fidelity in my Church duties as at home.

After learning my trade, I went West in my eighteenth year. My class-leaders and pastors, under whose watchful care I placed myself wherever I stopped for a longer or shorter time, began to interview me on my proposed life work, and put pertinent and direct questions to me as to whether I felt called to preach. I usually put them off by saying that my education was too limited to seriously think of preaching with my educational equipment, without directly admitting that some time I intended, if God opened the way, to enter the ministry. This state of experience in the various places I lived in, in Ohio and Indiana, continued to call me out on this question. I now, from 1844 to 1848, gave myself seriously to the task of preparation; first, by going to school and working at my trade (tailor) to earn means to attend better graded schools.

I attended the Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio, in the year 1847, with great profit and "batched." During the long vacation I went down to Indiana to visit some relatives at Rising Sun, and was induced to go to Asbury University (now DePauw), where I remained four years and completed the course in that school. These were years of great self-denial and hard work. I lived on seventy

five cents a week, and worked at my trade on Saturdays for two years of the four. Then I was given a few classes to teach in the Preparatory Department of the college, which, with great economy and hard work, enabled me to pass to graduation in June, 1852.

It was while in Asbury University that I passed through a severe conflict and struggle on the question of my call to the ministry. This struggle culminated in the year 1850. It was on this wise: I had been just as faithful in my private and public religious duties as in the years past; but some things occurred in my college life to throw doubts on the genuineness of my Divine call to the Gospel ministry. Some of my valued student friends believed honestly that I was making a mistake in looking to the ministry as my future calling, and were free to tell me so. They said that I was mentally and otherwise fitted for the profession of the law, and if I entered the ministry I never would reach my best. I, of course, listened to them with some seriousness, because I knew that I had known a few cases where I believed some had made this mistake, and it was possible that I might be of that number.

I had at this time of doubt this occurrence to further increase my perplexity. I was called upon by the literary society, of which I was a member, to make a welcome address on a public occasion to a former graduate of the university. There was a very large audience present at the time. In the audience was the judge of the District Court and the president of the State Law School of Indiana. At the conclusion of my address (as I afterward learned), the president of the law school asked the judge who I was, and what my future calling was to be. He was informed that I was to enter the ministry. He replied that I was making a mistake; that I was "cut out for the law." At the conclusion of the address of the gentleman who followed me, the president asked the judge what that man's calling was, and was told he was a lawyer. Said the president, "He ought to be a minister." This opinion of the president of the law school came to me in an unexpected way, and greatly increased my doubt and perplexity.

My only recourse as a Christian was to take the case to God in prayer, and have it settled once for all. This I did. Days and weeks the conflict raged. This is about the way the discussion took place in my mind. How was I to account for my childhood impressions, if God was not speaking to me through my religious nature? In my childhood plays with unsophisticated companions, when we played Church, as children do, I was almost uniformly chosen to be the preacher without my putting myself forward. How was I to account for the almost continual urging of this subject on my attention by class-leaders and ministers, who could not know that I ever personally had such thoughts, for they were strangers to me, who was constantly changing locations. Add this, that I was strongly inclined to conceal my own conscious convictions. Again, these men could have no sinister motive to urge this question upon me, a mere strippling, poor in worldly goods and lacking in education. How came it that these strangers should have convictions exactly answering to my own, that had never been divulged to any mortal? And then at times I found one side of "the natural man" averse to the life of a Methodist minister, from a financial point of view, as I then observed it. It meant sacrifice and poverty then, as it does not always now. This was also to be considered from a Christian standpoint. Were my student friends, who were not all Christians, as competent to give an unbiased opinion on such a subject as ministers and godly men?

But in this discussion with my doubts I felt called upon to consider what was implied in entering a profession that was more in harmony with my mental cast of mind, as some of my friends and distinguished judges thought they saw in me. Grant that there was promise of promotion, wealth, political preferment, and all that, that there were not in the ministerial calling. Were there not also greater dangers and temptations, that most lawyers seem unable to resist? There are many cases, from my point of view, that I could not consent to take for my clients. These I had to reckon with; so, in looking carefully and prayer

fully over the whole ground, I decided to be a mediocre minister of the gospel, rather than a successful lawyer. All this took place in the year 1850, in my third year in college.

MY FIRST SERMON.

Soon after I accepted license to preach, and was called upon to use my license. This was a time of anxiety and no little trepidation. But what was to be the text and theme? Strange to tell, there came vividly to mind the promise I had made to myself, when eight years old, if God should ever call me to preach the Gospel it would be the text that young Coffee used at that memorable (to me) camp-meeting in Central Pennsylvania, "Will a man rob God?" (Malachi.) I made as careful a preparation as my spare time from my college studies permitted. As I remember the plan of the sermon, it was this:

INTRODUCTION.-We can not rob God of His essential attributes, but we may rob Him—

1. Of our moral influence;

2. Of the right use of our talents;
3. Of our reasonable services; and
4. In the misuse of our property.

There was a Methodist local preacher in the college town who was curious to hear my first effort, and proposed to take me to the country schoolhouse where I was to preach. I accepted the offer. He sat behind me in what served as a pulpit. When I reached the point of the misuse of property that God lodged in our hands as His stewards I struck fire. I had collected some statistics on the misuse of God's money on the single article of tobacco in the United States. The amount was appalling. I not only charged tobacco-users at large, but especially Church members, with guilt in this misuse. I pronounced it downright robbery, and a flagrant sin and curse. I then paid my respects to many ministers of the Gospel, who were guilty of this robbery, in addition to the filth attending it in many congregatons of that day. I had a jury and the accused before me, and a judge on the bench, and before I ended I had some conviction that I had missed my call

ing, and that there was a lawyer in court that day. I heard afterwards that several in the congregation were of the opinion of the president of the law school, that I had missed my calling.

After the congregation was dismissed, and the local preacher and I repaired to the buggy to return to town, he administered this rebuke to me: "Young man, the next time you attempt to preach, preach the Gospel." I replied that I thought I had. I was certain I had; but was sorry that he had regarded the sermon as particularly personal in this case, as the sequel proved. He had befouled the stand with tobacco expectoration, while I was trying to discourage the evil. There was silence on the journey home between us, and I feared there was ill-feeling on his part and sorrow on my part. In about two weeks from that time he met me on the street, and extending his hand, which I cordially met, he said: "Brother, I owe you an apology for the manner in which I criticised your sermon. I want to tell you that I have quit the use of tobacco, and thank you for the timely and forceful sermon you preached that day." I congratulated him on his success and accepted the apology.

At the close of that day's effort I had some fears that I was not cut out for a preacher; but later I revised that opinion somewhat, for in two or three months from that time a gracious revival of religion occurred under my labors at that same schoolhouse, when about forty persons were converted, and, strange to say, two of the converts became Christian lawyers. This greatly helped me in the decision I had made, and prevented entire discouragement at a critical time in my experience. I continued to preach every Sunday during my college life at some place in the country schoolhouses, with as much acceptability as is common among beginners.

MARRIAGE AND WESTERN PIONEERING.

The next day after graduation, in 1852, I married Miss Ann S. Cowgill, the daughter of one of the judges heretofore mentioned, who called forth the opinion that