Nor may these special interventions be wholly appropriated by the great men of the world.  On the contrary, they not unfrequently condescend to bless the very humblest.  The same great thought, the same skilled hand and the same infinite power that were necessary to pile up the grandest mountain ranges and hollow the ocean’s bed, were also required to create a single grain of sand and assign it its place as a part of the grand whole.  So, while great and honorable men pass into the world’s history as the proteges of a special providence, let it also be remembered that the humbler ones, though their names may never be chronicled, are not forgotten by the All Father.  If willing to be led, they shall not want a kind hand to lead them.  And even though rebellious at times, and at others shrinking from the proffered responsibilities, yet a loving Father cares for the trembling and feeble ones, as well as the brave and the strong, and kindly leads them into the paths of peace.

I have not written thus, good reader, in these opening pages, to find a starting place for the record that is to follow.  On the contrary, these utterances hold a special relation to the writer and the labors of the last thirty years.

Soon after my conversion, and before I was eighteen years of age, I received an Exhorter’s license.  I was then engaged in teaching and found my time largely occupied by my profession.  Yet, I occasionally held services on the Sabbath.  During the ensuing four years I retained the same relation.  I was often urged to accept a Local Preacher’s license, but declined, thinking I was too much occupied in the other field to make the necessary preparation for this.  And, besides, I had now reached a point of great perplexity and trial with reference to the ministerial calling as a profession.  Not that I entertained a serious thought of accepting it, but, on the contrary, was wholly averse to it.  But, strangely enough, while I was thus, both in feeling and convictions, opposed to the measure, every one else seemed to accept it as a matter already settled that I would enter the Itinerant field.  From the good Rev. John B. Stratton, the Presiding Elder of the Prattsville District, New York Conference, within the bounds of which I then resided, and his immediate successor, Rev. Samuel D. Ferguson, down through all the ministry and laiety of my acquaintance, I was made the special subject of attack.  But from what all others thought to be my duty, I shrank with a persistence that admitted of no compromise.  The plan I had marked out for myself contemplated, ultimately, the position of a Local Preacher, and a life devoted largely to literature and business.  On this plan I fully relied, and thought myself settled in my convictions and fixed in my purpose.  Yet I am not able to say, that at times it did not require some effort of the will to keep my conscience quiet and my thought steady.  A young man, from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, who was subject to so