rvices for four weeks. I spent part of my
vacation at East Hampton, L.I., going from there for two or three short
lecturing trips. I find that I can never rest over two weeks. More than
that wearies me. Of all the places I have ever known East Hampton is the
best place for quiet and recuperation.

I became acquainted with it through my brother-in-law, Rev. S.L.
Mershon. His first pastorate was at the Presbyterian Church in East
Hampton, where, as a young man, I preached some of my first sermons.
East Hampton is always home to me. When a boy in grammar-school and
college I used to visit my brother-in-law and his wife, my sister Mary.
Later in life I established a summer home there myself. I particularly
recall one incident of this month's vacation that has affected my whole
life. One day while resting at Sharon Springs, New York, walking in the
Park of that place, I found myself asking the question: "I wonder if
there is any special mission for me to execute in this world? If there
is, may God show it to me!"

There soon came upon me a great desire to preach the Gospel through the
secular printing-press. I realised that the vast majority of people,
even in Christian lands, never enter a church, and that it would be an
opportunity of usefulness infinite if that door of publication were
opened. And so I recorded that prayer in a blank book, and offered the
prayer day in and day out until the answer came, though in a way
different from that which I had expected, for it came through the
misrepresentation and persecution of enemies; and I have to record it
for the encouragement of all ministers of the Gospel who are
misrepresented, that if the misrepresentation be virulent enough and
bitter enough and continuous enough, there is nothing that so widens
one's field of usefulness as hostile attack, if you are really doing the
Lord's work. The bigger the lie told about me the bigger the demand to
see and hear what I really was doing. From one stage of sermonic
publication to another the work has gone on, until week by week, and for
about twenty-three years, I have had the world for my audience as no man
ever had. The syndicates inform me that my sermons go now to about
twenty-five millions of people in all lands. I mention this not in vain
boast, but as a testimony to the fact that God answers prayer. Would God
I had better occupied the field and been more consecrated to the work!

The following summer, or rather early spring,