1052
THE KING’S ' üBUSINESS
rection, repentance, faith, justification by faith, and all the hundred doctrines, were discussed as thoroughly as I was able, and pressed home, and were manifestly made efficacious by the power of the Holy Ghost. The means used were simply preaching, prayer and conference, meetings, much private prayer, much personal conversa tion and meetings for the instruction of earnest inquirers. I was obliged to take much pains in giv ing instructions to inquirers. The practice had been, I believe, universal, to set anx ious sinners to praying for a new heart, and to using means for their own conver sion. The directions they received either assumed or implied that they were very willing to be Christians, and were taking much pains to persuade God to convert them. I tried to make them understand that God was using the means with them, and not they with Him; that God was willing, and they were unwilling; that God was ready, and they were not ready. In short, I tried to shut them up to present faith and repentance, as the thing Go mechanics, and other classes of men, I bor rowed my illustrations from their various occupations. I tried also to use such lan guage as they would understand. I ad dressed them in the language of the com mon people. I sought to express all my ideas in few words, and in words that were in common use. Before I was converted I had a different • tendency. In writing and speaking, I had sometimes allowed myself to use ornate language. But when I came to preach the Gospel, my mind was so anxious to be thoroughly understood, that I studied, in the most earnest manner, on the one hand to avoid what was vulgar, and on the other to express my thoughts with the greatest simplicity of language.- SODOM AND LOT On the third Sabbath that I preached there (Antwerp, N. Y.), an aged man came to me as I was entering the pulpit, and asked me if I would not go and preach in a school-house in his neighborhood, about three miles distant, saying that they had never had any services there. He wished me to come as soon as I could. I appointed the next day, Monday, at five o’clock in the afternoon. It was a warm day. I left my horse at the vil lage, and thought I would walk down, so that I should have no trouble in calling along on the people, in the neighborhood of the school-house. However, before I reached the place, having labored so hard on the Sabbath, I found myself very much exhausted, and sat down by the way and felt as if I could scarcely proceed. I blamed myself for not havng taken my horse. But at thé appointed hour I found the school-house full; and I could only get a standing-place near the open door. I read a hymn ; and I cannot call it singing, for they seemed never to have had any church music in that place. However, the people pretended to sing. But it amounted ft> about this-: each one bawled in his own way. My ears had been cultivated by teaching church music; and their horrible discord distressed me so much that, at
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