he first
gathering of this name took place in a grove on the banks of the Red
River in Kentucky led by two brothers McGee, one a Presbyterian, the
other a Methodist. In those years churches were few and far apart
through the hamlets and villages of the west and south. The camp meeting
brought together great gatherings of people who for a week or more
listened to sermons, held almost continuous prayer meetings, and called
sinners to repentance. The interest died down somewhat in the middle of
the nineteenth century, but following the Civil War, a wave of
enthusiasm for camp meetings swept over the land. In hundreds of groves,
east and west, land was purchased or leased, lots were sold, tents were
pitched, and people by the thousand gathered for soul-stirring services.
In one of the oldest and most successful of these camp meetings, that on
Martha's Vineyard, tents had largely given place to houses, and a city
had arisen in the forest. This example had been followed, and on many
camp-meeting grounds houses of a primitive sort straggled around the
open circle where the preaching services were held. Most of these
buildings were mere sheds, destitute of architectural beauty, and
innocent even of paint on their walls of rough boards. Many of these
antique structures may still be seen at Chautauqua, survivals of the
camp-meeting period, in glaring contrast with the more modern summer
homes beside them.

At first Dr. Vincent did not take kindly to the thought of holding his
training classes and their accompaniments in any relationship to a camp
meeting or even upon a camp ground. He was not in sympathy with the type
of religious life manifested and promoted at these gatherings. The fact
that they dwelt too deeply in the realm of emotion and excitement, that
they stirred the feelings to the neglect of the reasoning and thinking
faculties, that the crowd called together on a camp-meeting ground would
not represent the sober, sane, thoughtful element of church life--all
these repelled Dr. Vincent from the camp meeting.

Mr. Miller had recently become one of the trustees of a camp meeting
held at Fair Point on Lake Chautauqua, and proposed that Dr. Vincent
should visit the place with him. Somewhat unwillingly, yet with an open
mind, Vincent rode with Miller by train to Lakewood near the foot of the
lake, and then in a small steamer sailed to Fair Point. A small boy was
with them, sitting in the prow of the boat, and as it touched