judgment greatly
contributed to her husband's success. He was a year at Mount Morris, the
seat of the Rock River Conference Seminary, at which he studied while
pastor in the community. For two years, 1860 and '61, he was at Galena,
and found in his congregation a quiet ex-army officer, named Ulysses S.
Grant, who afterward said when introducing him to President Lincoln,
"Dr. Vincent was my pastor at Galena, Ill., and I do not think that I
missed one of his sermons while I lived there." Long after the Civil War
days Bishop Vincent expressed in some autobiographical notes his
estimate of General Grant. He wrote: "General Grant was one of the
loveliest and most reverent of men. He had a strong will under that army
overcoat of his, but he was the soul of honor and as reverent as he was
brave." After two years at Rockford--two years having been until 1864
the limit for a pastorate in American Methodism--in 1865 he was
appointed to Trinity Church, Chicago, then the most important church of
his denomination in that city.

Chicago opened the door of opportunity to a wider field. The pastor of
Trinity found in that city a group of young men, enthusiasts in the
Sunday School, and progressive in their aims. Dr. Vincent at once became
a leader among them and by their aid was able to introduce a Uniform
Lesson in the schools of the city. He established in 1865 a _Sunday
School Quarterly_, which in the following years became the _Sunday
School Teacher_, in its editorials and its lesson material setting a new
standard for Sunday School instruction. His abilities were soon
recognized by the authorities in his church, and he was called to New
York to become first General Agent of the Sunday School Union, the
organization directing Methodist Episcopal Sunday Schools throughout the
world, and in 1868, secretary and editor. He organized and set in
circulation the Berean Uniform Lessons for his denomination, an
important link in the chain of events which in 1873 made the Sunday
School lessons uniform throughout America and the world. It is the
fashion now to depreciate the Uniform Lesson Plan as unpedagogic and
unpsychologic; but its inauguration was the greatest forward step ever
taken in the evolution of the Sunday School; for it instituted
systematic study of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament; it
brought to the service of the teacher the ablest Bible scholars on both
sides of the Atlantic; it enabled the teachers of a schoo