happiness. I would have called upon men to turn from error and dangerous
apathy, before their very strongholds. Powerful in the possession of
truth, I would have thundered the saving words before their marketplaces
and exchanges--at the very fortresses in which the world deems itself
chiefly secure, with Mammon at its head, Satan's chief lieutenant. I
would have called around me the neglected and the poor, and in the
highways and in the fields disclosed to them the tenderness and
loving-kindness that I had found, that they might feel, in all their
fulness, if they would turn from sin, and place their trust in heaven.
It was pain and anguish to be silent. Not for my own sake did I yearn to
speak. Oh no! There was nothing less than a love of self in the panting
desire that I felt to break the selfish silence. It was the love of
souls that pressed me forward, and the confidence that the good news
which it was my privilege to impart would find in every bosom a welcome
as warm and ready as it would prove to be effectual. To walk abroad in
silence, feeling myself to be the depositary of a celestial revelation,
and believing that to communicate it to mankind would be to ensure their
participation in its benefits, was hardly to be borne. There was not a
man whom I encountered in the street, to whom I did not secretly wish to
turn, and to pour into his ear the accents of peace and consolation; not
one whom I did not regard as a witness against me on that great day of
trial, when every man shall be judged according to his opportunities. I
spoke to Mr Clayton. He encouraged the feeling by which I was actuated,
but he dissuaded me from the manifestation of it in the form which
I proposed.

"There was no doubt," he said, "that every place was consecrated where
truth was spoken, and the Spirit made itself apparent. No one could deny
it. Much fruit, he did believe, might follow the sowing of the seed,
whose hand soever scattered it. Still there were other and nearer roads