his impassioned soul, making every theme
he touched luminous and radiant.

Putting no emphasis on the mere technicalities of religion, he made his
pulpit flame with its power. He was the special inspiration of young
men, and the disheartened took courage under the touch of his words and
rose up healed. It will take all time and all eternity to tell the
results of his Christian utterances. There were some who thought that
there was here and there an unsafe spot in his theology. As for
ourselves we never found anything in the man or in his utterances that
we did not like.

Although fully realising that I was approaching a crisis of some sort in
my own career, it was with definite thankfulness for the mercies that
had upheld me so long that I forged ahead. My state of mind at this time
was peaceful and contented. I find in a note-book of this period of my
life the following entry, which betrays the trend of my heart and mind
during the last milestone of my ministry in Brooklyn:

"Here I am in Madison, Wisconsin, July 23, 1893. I have been attending
Monona Lake Chautauqua, lecturing yesterday, preaching this morning.
This Sabbath afternoon I have been thinking of the goodness of God to
me. It began many years before I was born; for as far back as I can find
anything concerning my ancestry, both on my father's and mother's sides,
they were virtuous and Christian people. Who shall estimate the value of
such a pedigree? The old cradle, as I remember it, was made out of plain
boards, but it was a Christian cradle. God has been good in letting us
be born in a fair climate, neither in the rigours of frigidity nor in
the scorching air of tropical regions. Fortunate was I in being started
in a home neither rich nor poor, so that I had the temptations of
neither luxury nor poverty. Fortunate in good health--sixty years of it.
I say sixty rather than sixty-one, for I believe the first year or two
of my life compassed all styles of infantile ailments, from mumps to
scarlet fever.

"A quarter of a century ago, looking at a pile of manuscript sermons, I
said again and again to my wife: 'Those sermons were not made only for
the people who have already heard them. They must have a wider field.'
The prophecy came true, and every one of those sermons through the press
has come to the attention of at least twenty-five million people. I have
no reason to be morose or splenetic. 'Goodness and mercy have followed
me all the days of my life