will give up sin," or
anything of that sort, I simply cried, "Take this awful burden off my
heart, and I will preach the Gospel." But no one could be less fitted by
natural temperament for the ministry than I. From early boyhood, I was
extraordinarily timid and bashful. Even after I had entered Yale College,
when I would go home in the summer and my mother would call me in to meet
her friends, I was so frightened that when I thought I spoke I did not
make an audible sound. When her friends had gone, my mother would ask,
"Why didn't you say something to them?" And I would reply that I supposed
I had, but my mother would say, "You did not utter a sound." Think of a
young fellow like that entering the ministry. I never mustered courage
even to speak in a public prayer-meeting until after I was in the
theological seminary. Then I felt, if I was to enter the ministry, I must
be able to at least speak in a prayer-meeting. I learned a little piece by
heart to say, but when the hour came, I forgot much of it in my terror. At
the critical moment, I grasped the back of the settee in front of me and
pulled myself hurriedly to my feet and held on to the settee. One Niagara
seemed to be going up one side and another down another; my voice
faltered. I repeated as much as I could remember and sat down. Think of a
man like that entering the ministry. In the early days of my ministry, I
would write my sermons out in full and commit them to memory, stand up and
twist a button until I had repeated it off as best I could and would then
sink back into the pulpit chair with a sense of relief that that was over
for another week. I cannot tell you what I suffered in those early days of
my ministry. But the glad day came when I came to know the Holy Spirit as
the Paraclete. When the thought got possession of me that when I stood up
to preach, there was Another who stood by my side, that while the audience
saw me God saw Him, and that the responsibility was all upon Him, and that
He was abundantly able to meet it and care for it all, and that all I had
to do was to stand back as far out of sight as possible and let Him do the
work. I have no dread of preaching now; preaching is the greatest joy of
my life, and sometimes when I stand up to speak and realize that He is
there, that all the responsibility is upon Him, such a joy fills my heart
that I can scarce restrain myself from shouting and leaping. He is just as
ready to help us in all our work; i