The sermon was fully written, and was on the weird battle between the Gideonites and Midianites, my text being in Judges vii. 20, 21:  “The three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal; and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.  And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran, and cried, and fled.”  A brave text, but a very timid man to handle it.  I did not feel at all that hour either like blowing Gideon’s trumpet, or holding up the Gospel lamp; but if I had, like any of the Gideonites, held a pitcher, I think I would have dropped it and broken that lamp.  I felt as the moment approached for delivering my sermon more like the Midianites, who, according to my text, “ran, and cried, and fled.”  I had placed the manuscript of my sermon on the pulpit sofa beside where I sat.  Looking around to put my hand on the manuscript, lo! it was gone.  But where had it gone?  My excitement knew no bound.  Within three minutes of the greatest ordeal of my life, and the sermon on which so much depended mysteriously vanished!  How much disquietude and catastrophe were crowded into those three minutes it would be impossible to depict.  Then I noticed for the first time that between the upper and lower parts of the sofa there was an opening about the width of three finger-breadths, and I immediately suspected that through that opening the manuscript of my sermon had disappeared.  But how could I recover it, and in so short a time?  I bent over and reached under as far as I could.  But the sofa was low, and I could not touch the lost discourse.  The congregation were singing the last verse of the hymn, and I was reduced to a desperate effort.  I got down on my hands and knees, and then down flat, and crawled under the sofa and clutched the prize.  Fortunately, the pulpit front was wide, and hid the sprawling attitude I was compelled to take.  When I arose to preach a moment after, the fugitive manuscript before me on the Bible, it is easy to understand why I felt more like the Midianites than I did like Gideon.

This and other mishaps with manuscripts helped me after a while to strike for entire emancipation from such bondage, and for about a quarter of a century I have preached without notes—­only a sketch of the sermon pinned in my Bible, and that sketch seldom referred to.

When I entered the ministry I looked very pale for years, for four or five years, many times I was asked if I had consumption; and, passing through the room, I would sometimes hear people sigh and say, “A-ah! not long for this world!” I resolved in those times that I never, in any conversation, would say anything depressing, and by the help of God I have kept the resolution.