"What have you learned about Moses, my boy?" "The king's daughter, she found him when he was a baby, in a box in the rushes down by the river, and took him home to nuss him." "Did she nurse him herself?" 66 "No, she hired a woman to nuss him, and it was his own mother; but she didn't know that."

what did Moses do then? "

man." man?"

"And

"He grew to be a "And what did he do when he was a "He killed another man.” "Then what did he do?" "Buried him in the sand." "What did he do after he had buried him in the

sand?" "He run away and went to keeping sheep on the prairie.” "Did he stay there all his life?" "No, he quit that because he saw a bush afire." "Did that scare him, so that he ran away and left his sheep?" "No, something talked to him in the bush, and told him to go back home; and it was the Lord what talked to him." And what did the Lord say?" "He told him to take his boots off." And here ended our lesson on the early life of Moses, at which I smiled and said, "You have done well, my boy,- very well indeed."

So the schools prospered, and in some fair degree the ministry to the poor. I liked my work, and, so far as I can judge now, would

have been glad to go right on with it to the end of my life; but this was not to be. There is an inscription over the main doorway of the old castle at Harewood, some miles from Ilkley, which runs, "Vat sal be sal." I think of it sometimes as I muse over the years,- "What shall be shall," and also those lines of Cardinal Newman" A strong and gentle pressure tells me I am not self-moving, but borne upward on my way."

Rev. George A. Noyes was the minister of the church in Chicago. I went at once to report my arrival, and he greeted me warmly, and with his wife, then and still my dear friend, made me welcome to their home whenever I was

pleased to come. He also asked me to preach for his people on the second Sunday after I arrived. This was a risk, but he took it, the dear good fellow! But there I was less than a month from my anvil and fire, with horny hands and not very fair to see after all the scrubbing.

My heart was in my mouth, as we say, and the word was not written. It was something from the text, "They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest," a word I had said in the home church when I was in good

standing. There was no such help from on high as that which came to me on the moorside and in the small schoolhouse. Still there were those in the church who would tell me after many years how they still remembered the sermon. Please do not think I am blowing that trumpet again: one and another did tell me they were glad to hear me that day, and this was welcome; for you see it was in some sort my "trial sermon," and I should be glad to try again, as I presently found I must.

Brother Noyes-for this he was - had made up his mind to resign and go East. He had "approved himself a minister that needeth not to be ashamed," and I was present in a company of the members when they besought him to stay; but he said he must resign, and this he did very soon.

Then the foretelling of the old miller came true about the spare rail. It was a far cry in those days to Boston, where the church must go for men to supply the pulpit from which again they might choose another minister. Brother Noyes had said in his parting words that, while the pulpit was vacant, he was glad to say here was a man meaning me who would take the services; and I will not tell

you what he said besides. They sent out good men from New England, each, if I remember, for a month; anl I heard them all, to my delight, Dr. Briggs, Dr. Thompson, Dr. Sears, Charles Brigham, Mr. Woodbury, Dr. Stebbins of Portland, and more I do not remember, who have all done their good days' work and gone to their rest. But between those who came out to fill the pulpit there would still be gaps when the supplies did not meet and tie, and then they would fall back on the spare rail they had always with them, so that the church was never closed for a single Sunday. I think the church paid me something for over time, but do not remember what it was,- all I was worth no doubt. But my great reward lay in the sermons I heard from the men who came out, and brought of their best, as was meet and right. These were of a worth to me I cannot estimate. They were my theological school: each one had his message and his lessons for me, and how greedily I drank them in, to be sure! I knew what I did not believe and would not preach; they gave me great and noble affirmations and some insight of the way to state them, so that to this day I am grateful for what I learned from their lips and their hearts.

XIV

I was more than content in my ministry-atlarge. The church gave me a free hand, and my heart was in the work. Nor did I care much for the distinction drawn for my guidance between God's poor and the others, because I could not make it work. I began very soon also to dream of a religious service we might hold in the upper room where we held the weeknight and Sunday sessions of the schools, a service which might bloom out into a church for my poor; but this was not to be.

Chicago is a three-quarter city, or, if this term touches her dignity, we will say a threesided city, the South Side, the West, and the North. The first church of our name was built on the South Side, which was then, and is still, the centre of the great city, and had grown strong in the ministry of Brother Rush R. Shippen, who is still to the fore with the eager heart and fervent fire of his earlier years, no white ashes where the fire was, as it seems to his lovers and friends. The city had given