In the church at Somerville, New Jersey, where I was afterwards pastor,
John Vredenburgh preached for a great many years. He felt that his
ministry was a failure, and others felt so, although he was a faithful
minister preaching the Gospel all the time. He died, and died amid some
discouragements, and went home to God; for no one ever doubted that John
Vredenburgh was a good Christian minister. A little while after his
death there came a great awakening in Somerville, and one Sabbath two
hundred souls stood up at the Christian altar espousing the cause of
Christ, among them my own father and mother. And what was peculiar in
regard to nearly all of those two hundred souls was that they dated
their religious impressions from the ministry of John Vredenburgh.

I had no more confidence in my own powers when I was studying for the
ministry than John Vredenburgh. I was often very discouraged. "DeWitt,"
said a man to me as we were walking the fields at the time I was in the
theological school, "DeWitt, if you don't change your style of thought
and expression, you will never get a call to any church in Christendom
as long as you live." "Well," I replied, "if I cannot preach the Gospel
in America, then I will go to heathen lands and preach it." I thought I
might be useful on heathen ground, if I could ever learn the language of
the Chinese, about which I had many forebodings. The foreign tongue
became to me more and more an obstacle and a horror, until I resolved if
I could get an invitation to preach in the English language, I would
accept it. So one day, finding Rev. Dr. Van Vranken, one of our
theological professors (blessed be his memory), sauntering in the campus
of Rutgers College, I asked him, with much trepidation, if he would by
letter introduce me to some officer of the Reformed Church at
Belleville, N.J., the pulpit of which was then vacant. With an outburst
of heartiness he replied: "Come right into my house, and I will give you
the letter now." It was a most generous introduction of me to Dr.