lowed already--ministers enough, and too many, if one may judge
by the number of applicants for every unoccupied place."

"Nay," replied James, "my place is not here. I know, if all accounts are
true, that my profession is not overflowed in our Western States, and
there I mean to go."

"And is it possible that you can contemplate such an entire sacrifice of
your talents, your manners, your literary and scientific tastes, your
capabilities for refined society, as to bury yourself in a log cabin in
one of our new states? You will never be appreciated there; your
privations and sacrifices will be entirely disregarded, and you placed
on a level with the coarsest and most uneducated sectaries. I really do
not think you are called to this."

"Who, then, is called?" replied James.

"Why, men with much less of all these good things--men with real coarse,
substantial, backwoods furniture in their minds, who will not
appreciate, and of course not feel, the want of all the refinements and
comforts which you must sacrifice."

"And are there enough such men ready to meet the emergencies in our
western world, so that no others need be called upon?" replied James.
"Men of the class you speak of may do better than I; but, if after all
their efforts I still am needed, and can work well, ought I not to go?
Must those only be drafted for religious enterprises to whom they
involve no sacrifice?"

"Well, for my part," replied the other, "I trust I am willing to do any
thing that is my duty; yet I never could feel it to be my duty to bury
myself in a new state, among stumps and log cabins. My mind would rust
itself out; and, missing the stimulus of such society as I have been
accustomed to, I should run down completely, and be useless in body and
in mind."

"If you feel so, it would be so," replied James. "If the work there to
be done would not be stimulus and excitement enough to compensate for
the absence of all other stimulus,--if the business of the ministry, the
_saving of human souls_, is not the one all-absorbing purpose, and
desire, and impulse of the whole being,--then woe to the man who goes to
preach the gospel where there is nothing but human souls to be gained by
it."

"Well, Stanton," replied the other, after a pause of some seriousness,
"I cannot say that I have attained to this yet. I don't know but I might
be brought to it; but at present I must confess it is not so. We ought
not to rush into a state and employment