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forth and for ever, let me know Christ for you, for your household, for your commerce, for your political economy, for your public affairs, for the State, for the nationChrist, the Healer and the Redeemer."

True ordination takes place by the imposition of the hands of heaven; and they who have not received their commission from Jesus Christ Himself are no ministers at all.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY MINISTRY IN THE WEST.

S soon as a young man has completed his academical course of preparation for the Gospel ministry, a very

important and delicate question at once presents itself for a definite, final answer. Up to this point, perhaps, life has not been a very serious reality. It may have flowed on quite pleasantly, like a stream through the heart of a lovely vale; but now it must take a turn and cut a new bed for itself. Right in front there stands a high rock, and unless great caution is exercised the river of life will here take a wrong course and at last empty itself into the wrong sea. How many a young man has wrecked himself on this rock of difficulty! How often the central ruling disposition of a young man's heart has been unwittingly revealed to the world by his very choice of a parish! It is highly expedient, therefore, it is even absolutely necessary, that every theological student should make a long and solemn pause over the question, "Where shall I go? in what sort of a parish should I make my first settlement?" Upon his solution of this difficult problem will depend very largely his success and usefulness in life. Mr. Beecher, filled through and through with the missionary spirit, placed himself at the disposal of Divine Providence, saying, "I am willing to go whithersoever there is most need of me. I am God's servant, let Him send me where He will. Here am I, O

Lord, send me." Providence sent him out West, to labour among people who were ignorant, indifferent, and spiritually in a state of profound torpor. He went to Lawrenceburg, Dearbon county, Indiana, in 1837, and was settled there as a Presbyterian minister. It was certainly a small beginning; some would call it a mean beginning, not in any respect whatever desirable, but Mr. Beecher himself thinks even now that it was the very best start in life he could possibly have had. It gave him the very introduction to human nature that every earnest young minister needs. Mr. Beecher has given us a most interesting account of the state of religion at Lawrenceburg when he went there, and of the manner in which he at first carried on the work of his ministry. He says: "I went to a small town in Indiana, the last one in the State towards Cincinnati, on the Ohio River. It had perhaps five or six hundred inhabitants. It had in it a Methodist, a Baptist, and this Presbyterian Church to which I went. The church would hold perhaps from two hundred and fifty to three hundred people. It had no lamps and no hymn-books. It had nineteen female members; and the whole congregation could hardly raise from two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars as salary. I took that field and went to work in it.

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Among the earliest things I did was to beg money from Cincinnati to buy side-lamps to hang up in the church, so that we could have night service. After being there a month or two I went to Cincinnati again, and collected money enough to buy hymn-books. I distributed them in the seats. Before this the hymns had been lined out. I recollect one of the first strokes of management I ever attempted in that parish was in regard to these hymn-books. Instead of asking the people if they were willing to have them, I just put the books into the pews; for there are ten men that will fight a change about which they are consulted to one that will fight it when it has taken place. I simply made the change for them. There was a little looking up and looking round, but nothing was said. So after that we sang out of books. Then there was nobody in the church to light the lamps, and they could not afford to get a sexton.

Such a thing was unknown in the primitive simplicity of that Hoosier time. Well, I unanimously elected myself to be the sexton. I swept out the church, trimmed the lamps, and lighted them. I was literally the light of that church. I did not stop to groan about it, or moan about it, but I did it. At first the men-folk thereabout seemed to think it was chaff to catch them with, or something of that kind; but I went steadily on doing the work. After a month or so two young men, who were clerks in a store there, suggested to me that they would help me. I 'did not think I wanted any help; it was only what one man could do.' Then they suggested three or four of us taking one month each, and in that way they were worked in.

"It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Having something to do in the church was a means of grace to them. It drew them to me and me to them. None of them were Christian young men ; but I consulted them about various things, and by-and-bye I brought a case to them. I said, 'Here is a young man who is in danger of going the wrong way and losing his soul. What do you think is the best means of getting at him?' It made them rather sober and thoughtful to be talking about the salvation of that young man's soul, and the upshot was that they saved their own. They very soon afterwards came into the Spirit, and were converted, and became good Christian men.

"Now, while I was there, I preached the best sermons I knew how to get up. I remember distinctly that every Sunday night I had a headache. I went to bed every Sunday night with a vow registered that I would buy a farm and quit the ministry. If I have said it once, I have said it five hundred times, that I spoilt a good farmer to make a poor minister."

He was evidently determined to do as much good to his fellow-beings as he possibly could. It was his "good fortune to be pitched into the ministry headlong, without anything to do but to make men better." All will doubtless agree that there could be no better way of entering the sacred ministry than that. Had he gone into it with any other intention, his whole career would have been a miser able failure, and not an unsurpassed success as it has

unquestionably been. He had a most excellent capital on which to begin the great business of his life-namely, health, strength, good education, zeal, consecration, sympathy with suffering humanity. His stock of theology may not have been very large, but his stock of piety and earnestness was by no means small, and it stood him in good stead. He applied himself with all his might to hard, indomitable mental work. He became a prodigious reader of the old sermonizers. His great favourite, his right-hand man, was South, whom he read through and through, and on whose methods he formed much of his style and handling of texts. He had other bosom friends among the standard authors from whom he obtained a vast amount of instruction and assistance, such as Barrow, Howe, Sherlock, Butler, and Jonathan Edwards particularly. While studying these world-famed sermonizers of the past, he preached many sermons whose framework was founded upon their discourses. But he was far from being satisfied with himself while in this state of apparent bondage to other minds; and after the delivery of many a sermon he would say to himself, "That will never do; I would not preach that again for all the world." However he was learning, and his progress was manifest to all. But it would be a mistake to suppose that it was alone from books he derived help and inspiration even at this time. There was an unwritten volume from which he learned many a lesson of priceless value, and that volume was the daily life of common people. He made it a point to live in constant fellowship with actual life. His habitation was with living men. He would never meet a man on the street that he did not

get from him some element for a sermon. Speaking of Lawrenceburg as a good place to train a young minister, he pays a touching tribute to the memory of an old woman who was conspicuously pious, and who exerted a powerful influence upon himself, in these tender beautiful words: "Old mother Rice taught me more practical godliness than any one else, except my own father; and if I had the making of a Catholic calendar, I would enrol her as a saint. She was a labouring-woman, the wife of an old drunken retired sea captain. They were so poor that they had to

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