means rare. I cannot say, as M. Renan did, that there was never a breath
of scandal with respect to his fellow-students in his Romanist Academy;
but the class of young men who had come to study for the ministry was
not, with very rare exceptions, of a high order, either in a religious or
intellectual point of view. In this respect I believe there has been a
great improvement of late.

My pulpit career was short. At times I believe I preached with much
satisfaction to my hearers; at other times very much the reverse. De Foe
writes: "It was my disaster first to be set apart for, and then to be set
apart from, the honour of that sacred employ." My experience was
something similar. I never had a call to a charge, nor did I go the
right way to work to get one. I felt that I could gladly give it up, and
yet how could I do so? I had a father whom I fondly loved, who had set
his heart on seeing me follow in his honoured steps. I was what they
called a child of many prayers. How could I do otherwise than work for
their fulfilment? And if I gave up all thought of the ministry, how was
I to earn my daily bread? At length, however, I drifted away from the
pulpit and religious life for a time. I was not happy, but I was happier
than when vainly seeking to pursue an impossible career. I know more of
the world now. I have more measured myself with my fellows. I see what
ordinary men and women are, and the result is--fortunately or not, I
cannot tell--that I have now a better conceit of myself. I often wish
some one would ask me to occupy a pulpit now. How grand the position!
how mighty the power! You are out of the world--in direct contact with
the living God, speaking His Word, doing His work. There in the pew are
souls aching to be lifted out of themselves; to get out of the mud and
mire of the world and of daily life; to enter within the veil, as it
were; to abide in the secret place of the Most High. It is yours to aid
them. There are those dead in trespasses and sins; it is yours to rouse
them. There are the aged to be consoled; the young to be won over. Can
there be a nobler life than that which makes a man an ambassador from God
to man?

Yet they were pleasant years I spent at Coward College, Torrington
Square, supported by the liberality of an old wealthy merchant of that
name, the friend of Dr. Doddridge, and at Wymondley--to which Doddridge's
Academy, as it was termed, was subsequently moved--where we