nearly as can now be practiced; and its blessed effects are every where to be seen. Go. where you will, and you meet with Methodist preachers and Methodist societies. Not so with the Episcopal and Presbyterian denominations; they are found in the cities, the large villages, and sometimes, in populous and wealthy neighborhoods, where respectable societies can be procured. But there are, I believe, numerous poor and thinly settled regions of country where their ministers have never yet impressed their foot-steps. We are required to go and search the lost sheep of Israel. Others follow on, and often gather up that which has been sown, the toil of our hands. With my present views, then, I could not conscientiously be an Episcopal or Presbyterian preacher, or anything but a Methodist. The peculiar doctrines of the Presbyterian church are directly at variance with my own opinions, and I prefer the economy and discipline of the Methodist, to those of the Episcopal church. You are correct in you conclusions, though A WRONG PREMISE. 195 wrong in your premises, that the course for me to pursue, is, unquestionably, the one which I am pursuing. Affectionately, CHARLES R. BALDWIN. RECOUNTS HIS LIFE AND CONVERSION. CHAPTER XVI. TO MRS. ELIZABETH H. GARBER. NEAR POINT PLEASANT, Jan. 14, 1834. My Dear Niece: I am no friend to apologies, and yet, I feel that one is due from me, for not having answered your kind letter, written many months ago. The truth is, I did write, but having somehow lost or mislaid your letter and not remembering your address, I knew not where to direct my answer. I am no wiser in this respect, now, than 1 was then, but by sending to Staunton, I doubt not you will receive this through the kindness of some of your friends there. Since you have received any communication from me, my personal history has been various and eventful, as you have probably heard. At the date of my last letter, if I mistake not, EXTRAORDINARY CHANGES. 197 I was a member of the Presbyterian church. Six months ago I was a practicing lawyer. Now, having forsaken my home, my business, my worldly prospects, and, for a time, even my little child, for the sake of Christ and the gospel, I am riding a laborious circuit and calling sinners to repentance. Singular, but not an unexampled change. Similar, and by far more extraordinary ones have occurred in all ages of the church. By faith, Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompense of reward. "What things were gain to Paul, these he also counted loss for Christ, for whom he had suffered the loss of all things, that he might be found in Christ, and might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, if, by any means he might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Such was the ambition, the generous self-devotion of these men. They looked to no earthly reward, "but confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims here, they sought a city which was to come, whose builder and maker is God." And Jesus was not only the author, but the finisher of their faith-their deaths were triumphant in the Lord. If Moses was not permitted to enter the earthly Canaan, he yet found an inheritance in the heavenly, and was afterward with Elijah, admitted to an interview with his Redeemer on the Holy Mount. And Paul, in the near prospect of death, could say, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but to all them also, that love his appearing." "Oh what are all my sufferings here, |