This meeting was the beginning and earnest of the blessings and success
that has attended Bro. Penn's labors for more than nine years past,
while in his life we see that,

"Defects thro' nature's best productions run.
The saints have spots, and spots are in the sun,
And that he, with all of Adam's race,
Are only 'sinners' saved by grace."

Yet we rejoice and praise God for what has been manifested in his growth
and development in his work mentally and spiritually, for the life,
power and efficiency infused into our churches by his ministrations--for
his rebukes, exposures and denunciations of sin, in and out of the
Church; for holding up Christ at all times, as the only hope of lost
sinners; for tearing away the mask of a heartless formality in the
profession and practice of religion; for the thousands of all classes
and ages in the forests and prairies of Texas, where he has pitched his
great gospel tent, and in the cities of Galveston, Houston, San Antonio,
Dallas, Ft. Worth, Mobile, Memphis, Louisville, St. Louis, and in the
cities of California, in scores of crowded places of worship; in smaller
towns and in the country, who have been brought to Christ as lost
sinners through his instrumentality; and that at all times and through
his whole ministry he has declared "the whole counsel of God," and made
no compromises with error and heresy.

As to the disquisition of Maj. Penn, which frowns on the modern dance,
we ask for it a careful reading and an honest and practical application
of its facts, arguments and illustration, as the prize, practical essay
of the age on this subject, so far as is known. That it is clear,