rounding towns and villages. Some greeted me from South Salem, Katonah, Mount Kisco, Poundridge, Hopewell; even over the Connecticut line, they had come from Stamford, New Canaan and Greenwich, and I know not how many other places. Among them were some who had been present fifty years ago and heard the boy's first sermon. One of them said he remembered the text, and he repeated it without hesitation. Of course all those who were heads of the congregation then are in another congregation now. But Mrs. Green who sat by my mother's side on that day, in front of the pulpit, died only a year or two ago. All the ministers and elders who united in clothing me with the right to preach are ministering spirits now. But the children of that day are the elders, and have taken the places of their parents in the church on earth.

To such an assembly it was my strange privilege and pleasure to speak. It was natural to begin with an apology for being so young when preaching a semi-centennial, and the excuse or justification is that I was so very young when I preached the first time. Not many begin to preach before they are legally entitled to vote. But I did. And as I entered the ministry in 1833, it is obvious to any intelligent and reflecting person that the subsequent years, until the present, have been among the most interesting and eventful since the death of Christ. These events were passed rapidly in review, and as they were called to stand for a moment to be viewed in the light of truth and history, it seemed to be a glorious privilege to live in such a century and to have a part, however humble and obscure, in the progress of such an age. The revolutions abroad and at home, the rise and fall of governments and parties, the progress of the church, its divisions and reunions, the triumphs of the gospel in our own and foreign lands, the mighty movements in the world of science and art, with their wonderful inventions and discoveries-these and other themes were obviously to be considered. But to touch them singly in an hour was nearly impossible, and they could be thrown on the curtain of the mind for an instant only, before a new

picture came into view. When the panorama had passed and I came down from the desk, these friends, old and young and new, gathered around, and a lively scene of congratulation followed. The excellent pastor, Rev. J. H. Hoyt, earnest, able and much esteemed, presented them to me one by one, and nearly all assured me they had known me from their earliest childhood; and as some of them were not young, it served to help me to a consciousness of the flight of time. One of my friends, Mr. A. Williamson, formerly a classical instructor in the village, carried me to his house, where two sons and six daughters, and now the grandchildren, are like pillars and polished corner-stones of a wellordered household, whose God is the Lord. After dinner the sons drove with me off into the country to the old church, the identical one in which I first preached, which Mr. Palmer, who gave the new one, removed to this more rural region, and here union services are maintained. The same pulpit and pews are here, and we held a brief service, a memorial service, in which I said a few words, and we sang hymns of praise. In the evening the village church was again opened, and hearers from the Episcopal, the Baptist and the Methodist congregations assembled with the Presbyterians, and Mr. Palmer and the pastor addressed them, and once more, the third time, I sought to say some things that might do them good. And now at the close of this service Mr. John G. Clark, an elder of the church, and son of Elder John Clark with whom I was lodged long time ago, took me in his carriage with his wife and Mr. Mead of Greenwich, Conn., and carried me a mile and a half into the country to his house, the same one in which his father and grandfather lived before him. We gathered the household for evening prayers, and talked of all the ways by which God had led our fathers. Then Mr. and Mrs. Clark led me up-stairs, and into the same bedchamber where I slept fifty years ago, and there committed me to the tender care of Him who giveth his beloved sleep.

It had been a day of as much physical and mental labor and spiritual excitement as any day of the half-century past.

And I was glad to say, "Now I lay me down to sleep," which I did in a chamber of imagery, where the visions of other days, of "parents passed into the skies," of bright and sometimes troubled scenes of a busy lifetime, shone in the darkness on the wall.

The next morning was crisp, frosty and cheery. Some of the good neighbors called, among them Mrs. Heroy, widow of their late beloved pastor, and then Mr. Clark drove with Mr. Mead and me across the country at a brisk and glowing pace, every pulse bounding in the exhilarating air, the hills and valleys clothed in royal purple and gold, till we reached the station at Mount Kisco, where I took the rail at 9 A.M., and returned to the city.

HALLOWING THE FIFTIETH YEAR.

IN the autumn of the year 1834 I came to the village of Ballston Spa, in the towns of Ballston and Milton, in Saratoga County, State of New York. A young stranger, I sought the house of one to whom I had a letter of introduction, and the result was an engagement to preach six months on a salary at the rate of five hundred dollars a year. Before the half-year expired the people gave me a call, and I was ordained and settled as their pastor in the month of June, 1835. The church itself was organized a few weeks only before I came, and it was therefore convenient and appropriate to hallow the fiftieth year after its formation and after my ordination at the same time. And that has brought me away earlier than usual from the city into the delicious atmosphere of this rural region.

Mine was a short pastorate. One brief year of labor and I was laid aside. And this suggests a caution to young ministers and their people. In the zeal of their youth, the fresh pastor rushes upon his work as though he were not, in part at least, made of flesh. Conscious of great vitality, and un

ance.

It was very

taught by experience, he is ready to preach whenever he has a chance, as if there were no limit to his powers of endurHis people, delighted with his ardor, energy and willingness, multiply opportunities and invite him more and more abundantly. The more he does the more they want him to do. I once said to a congregation, “You are very unkind to your young pastor." They were hurt by the charge, and wanted an explanation, which they received in such words as these: You are so much interested in his work that you call upon him for labors far beyond his strength, and you will soon break him down, perhaps kill him, and his blood will be required at your hands." They did crush him, and would have put him to death out of sheer love and thoughtlessness, but he fled while he had strength to go, and they saw his face and heard his voice no more. much that way with me and my people. It is always cold, very cold, in winter up here in Saratoga County. Take one day's work as a sample of many. The mercury stood in the morning twenty-eight degrees below zero, and did not rise more than ten or fifteen degrees during the day. At ten o'clock in the morning one of the elders called for me with an open cutter [a one-horse sleigh], and we went from house to house among the farmers, making pastoral visits. We made them short, to get over as much ground as possible. Before I was fairly thawed in one house we put out into the biting frost again and drove to another, sometimes taken into the kitchen, where the big fireplace was a comfortable spot for a half-frozen man, sometimes taken into the best room, where there had been no fire at all; and so we worked through the day, taking dinner at one house, tea at another, and fetching up in the evening at "Factory Village School-house," where I preached to a packed congregation, steaming with the heat of a red-hot cast-iron stove. At ten o'clock I reached home, after twelve hours' incessant talking, under the worst possible circumstances for the preservation of health, the most favorable to throat and lung disSuch excursions were frequent. The same elder was my usual attendant; I always went at his invitation, and he

ease.

came for me so often that I had to say he was the most incorrectly named of any man in the eldership, for he was Henry Doolittle.

How long could a young man, of slender build and delicate lungs, expect to hold out who preached three times every Sabbath, and held two or three meetings in the week, and made such pastoral visits in a congregation scattered four or five miles in every direction? It was miserable economy of life and health. And the pastor and people were equally at fault in the matter. They asked and he did not refuse. Every Sabbath evening, after two full services, the men in the village would get up a team, sometimes two or three teams, and carry me off four or five miles into the country, where notice had been given of preaching in a school-house, and there we would have an earnest meeting, in which the laymen participated while I did the speaking. Sometimes I lodged among the farmers on Sunday night, but more frequently rode home in the cold after a steambath in the crowded school-room.

Elder David Cory gave me a hint about subjects for sermons that has been of use to me ever since.

He was giving me his company and a ride to the County Poorhouse, where I was to preach. I said: "It is about time for me to get a text; how would this do-To the poor the gospel is preached '?" Mr. Cory thought a moment, and said: "Yes, very well, very well; but I think it is hard enough to be poor without being told of it.” I saw the point, and preached to them without the most distant allusion to my audience as paupers, but only as saints and sinners for whom the riches of grace were freely provided.

To come back to this field after fifty years was intensely interesting. I could not expect to find many of those among the living to whom I had preached half a century ago, but it was wonderful to me to find so few above the ground. The present excellent pastor, the Rev. A. R. Olney, received me with the greatest kindness, and we sat down to look over the records of the church and see the names of the dead and the living. They were carefully registered and numbered in