many attacks, especially in high places, and who constantly felt himself preached to and prayed at in almost every religious assembly, must be more than human, not to say less than a Christian, to bear up under such a pressure.  I clearly saw that one of two things must be done, and that speedily.  Either I must yield to the manifest demand of the church or “go west.”  I chose the latter.  Nor was this decision mere obstinacy.  There were several things to be considered and carefully weighed and determined before entering upon a work of such grave responsibilities as the Itinerant ministry.  First of all, the question must be settled in a man’s conviction of duty; then the question of one’s fitness for the work; and, finally, the financial question could not be ignored.  To enter the Itinerancy involved responsibilities that could only be sustained under the deepest convictions that can possibly penetrate a human soul.  The minister is God’s ambassador to lost men.  He can only enter upon this work under the sanction of Divine authority.  Having entered he is charged with the care of souls, and if these shall suffer harm, through his inefficiency or want of fidelity, he must answer in the Divine assizes for the breach of trust.  Well may the best of men say, “who is sufficient for these things?” Then add to this grave responsibility, the certain and manifold trials which must come to every man who enters the Itinerancy.  His very calling makes him a spectacle to men, and necessarily the subject of adverse criticism.  He is the messenger of God and yet the servant of man.  On the one hand, clothed with the authority of heaven, and on the other reduced to the condition of a servant.  Expected to deliver the high message of the King of Kings, and yet receives his pulpit under the suffrages of man.  Before he receives his appointment, he is not unfrequently the subject of a sharp canvass from one end of the Conference to the other, and after he receives it he is liable to find himself among a people, who had rejected him in the canvass, and now only acquiesce in the decision from sheer necessity.  But if he escape Scylla in this particular, he is certain to drive upon Charybdis in another.  Granting that his relations and labors may be acceptable, he falls upon the inevitable necessity of devoting his time and labor, during the vigor and strength of his days, for a meager compensation, and then pass into old age, and its attendant infirmities, as a dependancy, if not a pauper.  And now let me submit; with such a picture hung upon the canopy of the future, and who shall say it is overdrawn? is it a matter of surprise that a young man should hesitate before accepting the position of an Itinerant?

But it will be said:  “There is another side to the picture.”  True, and thanks to the Great Head of the church that there is.  But the other side can only be seen when the beholder occupies the proper stand-point, and this position I certainly had not attained at the time of which I write.  In this matter, as in most others, our mistakes arise from partial views and limited observation.