Excerpt from Sermons From the Pulpit

The very slight miscellaneous training he had received, was as defective in kind as limited in extent, and with heart and will to go forward in the great work before him, he felt from the first, and at every step, that something beyond the ordinary food and shelter of mind, was neces sary to prepare him for the pulpit. He saw that deter mined and earnest reliance upon his own efforts was his only resource, and relying upon Divine aid, he sought to apply himself accordingly. Without guide or model, with no one to direct or strike out a course for him as a student, he was left to project and explore his own path, or be content with what he was likely to become, from the mere force of circumstances.

With strong intuitive perceptions and sympathies, in relation to the good and the beautiful in nature and mo rals, with irrepressible yearnings to learn and toknow; the means and expedients to which he would be driven, as the only possible condition of ability and influence as a minister, can be readily imagined. He soon found that while improvement, in the field of thought and labor he had chosen, had some fixed and necessary elements, many of its phases were altogether doubtful and tentative, and that all depended on trial and effort, and under the stim ulus and pressure of duty and necessity, the tension of strong desire and unrelaxed endeavor, yielding to the tendencies of his nature without rule or model, except the ideal of his own perceptions, he appealed for aid to what ever was likely to avail him. He was the pupil, and sought to learn of whatever there was about him, from which he could derive instruction or aid. Reading, re fiection, Observation and experience - inward springs and outward relations - all the affinities and influences of mind.

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