one day, finding Rev. Dr. Van Vranken, one of our
theological professors (blessed be his memory), sauntering in the campus
of Rutgers College, I asked him, with much trepidation, if he would by
letter introduce me to some officer of the Reformed Church at
Belleville, N.J., the pulpit of which was then vacant. With an outburst
of heartiness he replied: "Come right into my house, and I will give you
the letter now." It was a most generous introduction of me to Dr.
Samuel Ward, a venerable elder of the Belleville church. I sent the
letter to the elder, and within a week received an invitation to occupy
the vacant pulpit.

I had been skirmishing here and there as a preacher, now in the basement
of churches at week-night religious meetings, and now in school-houses
on Sunday afternoons, and here and there in pulpits with brave pastors
who dared risk having an inexperienced theological student preach to
their people.

But the first sermon with any considerable responsibility resting upon
it was the sermon preached as a candidate for a pastoral call in the
Reformed Church at Belleville, N.J. I was about to graduate from the New
Brunswick Theological Seminary, and wanted a Gospel field in which to
work. I had already written to my brother John, a missionary at Amoy,
China, telling him that I expected to come out there.

I was met by Dr. Ward at Newark, New Jersey, and taken to his house.
Sabbath morning came. With one of my two sermons, which made up my
entire stock of pulpit resources, I tremblingly entered the pulpit of
that brown stone village church, which stands in my memory as one of the
most sacred places of all the earth, where I formed associations which I
expect to resume in Heaven.

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