ust 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.

A few years since I visited Niagara Falls. Before leaving Buffalo a
friend admonished me to avoid looking upon the descending floods until I
should reach Table Rock, as this precaution would give me a more
satisfactory impression. These instructions were more easily given than
observed. I found it required no small share of nerve to pass down the
near bank of the river with the eternal roar of its waters pouring into
my ears, cross over Suspension Bridge, spanning the rushing tides below
still tossing and foaming as though an