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AVING gone into a new country with my father when I was a child, my early educational advantages were very limited. As I have said before, three months out of the twelve was about all the schooling I had for a number of years. The first teacher that greatly impressed me was Miss Mary Huggins, the sister of Lieutenant Huggins, a well known officer of the regular army. She was a faithful teacher and a lovely Christian woman. I went back into the schoolroom after the dismissal of school once and found her upon her knees praying, and she talked to me earnestly about the Christian life and urged me to he faithful to God. I never forgot her words.

     When I was 19, viz., in the spring of 1870, I left my father's farm and with five dollars in my pocket and a little trunk full of clean clothes, some of which I had ironed myself, my mother being ill, I started to the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis.

      I don't think a boy ever left home with more fear and self-distrust than I had. It was a great question with me whether I had enough intelligence and learning to go through school or whether I could make my way or not, but I determined with all the will power I had to either get an education and support myself or die in the attempt.

      I remained seven years in the university, making my own way and buying my own books. I frequently boarded myself and had some remarkable experiences while doing it. I bought what I thought at the time was a small amount of dried apples and proceeded to cook them, and, to my surprise, they increased to remarkable proportions and filled all my dishes. I laughed and my friends

 

laughed with me, but all these experiences in self-support were a help to me. I sawed wood, built fires, did odd jobs, swept the floors, worked on the university farm, took care of churches in the city; in fact, did all l could in an honest way to maintain myself.

     I shall always have a great sympathy and great respect for young people who are working their own way in order to get an education.

      I graduated on the 7th day of June, 1877. At that time I had a larger trunk, full of better clothes, a fine print Bible which my teacher had given me ten years before, ten dollars in cash and my diploma entitling me to the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

      The university life of every person is very important and the memories there are very lasting.

      Here I came in touch with men and women of different mold and type from what I had ever seen; they were people of education and refinement. They gave me a glimpse of a new world into which I was very desirous of entering.

      Colonel W. W. Folwell was then president of the university. He was always a great friend. and a high inspiration to me. Some of his words of warning and instruction are as fresh as ever in my mind today. What a wonderful position has a teacher of the young!

      Dr. Jabez Brooks, my professor of Greek, is very dear to me yet, though he has long since ceased to teach on earth and has gone to be with God. Professor Virgil Walker, professor of Latin, and John G. Moore, of German, were men who impressed me greatly. My classmates and fellow students, after forty years, are before me as vividly as ever and are still holding an influence for good or evil in my life.

      It is very interesting for me to look back forty years to my university life. My classmates who are living today

are very much the same that they were in our school life. "Men are only boys grown tall; hearts don't change much after all." How very important that in our youthful and early life we should establish principles and habits which will bring the best harvest of good in the hereafter!

      There is one most surprising thing to me in this matter of my education, and that is, that my education is going on all the time. At the time of my graduation in the university my education was barely begun; I have learned more in the last three years, since I was 60, than I ever learned in any previous decade--and I am going on to learn. I have a thirst for knowledge. I also have an ability to learn that I did not have in my younger years. I can see quickly and accurately what I never saw before. I would not be at all surprised if we should go on in the pursuit of knowledge, not only through all time, but through eternity.

ANY a man has had a false call. Sidney Smith says, "This life is like a table bored with round and square holes, and there is a round and square block for every hole; but sometimes the round block gets in the square hole and then it doesn't go down."

      So it is with men and women in choosing their occupations in this world. Many a good blacksmith or farmer has been spoiled by the idea that the individual belonged in the pulpit.

      But all such cases ultimately work out, because a man must drift to his place both here and hereafter. But there is very frequently a temporary loss of both time and money.

      My call to the ministry was very clear; it began early. As I have stated before, when I was 8 years old I received deep impressions and clear communications from God, and those messages referred, and had to do, not only with my state of heart, but my future calling.

      My call consisted of three things. First--A deep heart impression that I was to be a minister of the Gospel. And that feeling never changed and never left me. I never had any thought of doing anything else but preaching the Gospel. Now I claim that where such impressions are permanent and forceful, it is really divine. It is from God. Second--I had the call of the church. By the call of the church I mean that one or more Godly persons spoke to me of their conviction that I should be a minister of God. How many times I have had the question asked me, "Don't you think God wants you to preach?"

      After the first prayer that I ever made in a church

my Sunday School teacher, Mr. George Smith, exclaimed, "Charles, God has called you to preach the Gospel!"

      When I gave my first oration at the University of Minnesota, at the beginning of my junior year, Dr. Folwell, then president of the university, inquired of my classmates, "Did Charlie write that production?" They replied, "Yes." Then with great emphasis he exclaimed, "Then he'll preach--without a doubt, he'll preach!"

      They evidently saw a fitness and a talent in the direction of the ministry.

      Third--The Supernatural Sign. If you turn to the book of Judges, third chapter, you will find that Gideon required a sign from God before he would go against the enemies of Jehovah, and God gave him that sign. The fleece that he put out was both wet and dry alternately.

      I, too, had a supernatural sign which was miraculous. I believe that God Himself makes the sign and He never duplicates His signs. My sign was very singular and to me very wonderful.

      I was attending service at the First Methodist Church in Minneapolis a month before my graduation, and I heard a church letter read by the pastor, signed by the presiding elder of that district. I knew just enough about the Methodist law to know that the presiding elder would not have signed that letter if there was a pastor in charge of that church.

      I instinctively knew that the church was without a pastor. I sat there in my seat without moving my lips or disturbing anybody, and made God a promise that if he would bring it about that the church in Litchfield should be without a pastor when I graduated at the close of next month, and if I should be called there without any effort on my part, that I would go to fill that church and that I should never doubt thereafter His divine call for me to enter the ministry.

      That matter came about as I said to God. I was called to that church; I was appointed to it for three successive terms, and from that day to this I have never doubted my divine call.

      You will see the same kind of a divine sign recorded

in the Scriptures in the selection of the wife for Isaac as is recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of Genesis.

      You will remember that Abraham called his aged and trusted servant to his bedside and made him swear by the God of heaven that he would get a wife for his son Isaac in the land of Mesopotamia, and when he came to the well at which Rebecca met him, he told God how he wanted the matter to work out, just as I told God in my case. It is a very great thing to know that we are in the right place; it gives us strength and courage in times of trials and troubles, which is of great benefit.

      Old Dr. Tyng, of New York, said that a man's call consisted in his ability to preach Christ and of the willingness of people to hear him. But where the divine call is clear, that man can preach Christ and the people will hear him.

      I was licensed to preach at St. Paul, Minn., August 23d, 1876. I preached my first sermon at the First M. E. Church, Minneapolis, in the month of November, 1876. I was stationed as a supply under the presiding elder, Dr. Cyrus Brooks, of St. Paul, at Litchfield, Minn., entering on my work at that station June 17th, 1877; that was only ten days after my graduation.

      I joined the Methodist conference at Faribault, Minn., September, 1877, and have been in charge of a church ever since.

      I have given above the date of my first sermon, and also that of taking active charge of the pastorate. But that was not the first of my preaching by any means.

      When I was a boy on the Minnesota farm we hauled logs to the sawmill in the winter across the lake on the ice and, having a gentle team, when once I reached the lake I would hang the lines on the standard of the sled and, walking behind the load, I would preach to the sawlogs. And, by the way, I have preached to sawlogs since.

      I remember at one time I preached on one of these occasions so loud, and became so interested in my theme, that the neighbors on the opposite side of the lake a half mile away heard me and they flocked to their doors and listened to my preaching.

     Such incidents as I have just related were common with me, and there was not a shadow of a doubt in my own heart nor in the minds of those who knew me concerning my future work, and the years that have passed have only demonstrated that my conclusions were well founded.

N THE morning of June 17th, 1877, having packed my trunk at the university, I took the train from Minneapolis for Litchfield, Minn. No one will ever know the fear that I had on entering this work; while I realized my call was clear and divine, I knew that my preparation for the active work of the ministry was very deficient.

      As I look back with the light I have at present I can see no great ground for my distrust of either God or myself; but then the whole matter with me was untried and I was afraid. I was, however, absolutely sincere and had walked up and was walking up to all the light I had.

      I was a true, pure and honest young man, and whenever God can find such timber He will hold to it and use it. I want to encourage every honest young man, and if they will keep on in the way of obedience and paths of duty, they will be sure to succeed. I arrived in the village where I was to preach and hunted up one of my members, Mr. Wait Dart, a genuine Christian. I went into one of the stores to make inquiry about where I would find my members, and I found out later that when I left the store the question was asked by the people, "Who is that young man?" I received the information that most of the people took me to be a traveling man making his first trip on the road and they were quite surprised when they found out it was their new preacher from the university.

      The ladies of the congregation had selected a room and furnished it for me, and the people being poor, I was to board with first one family and then another for my meals; the arrangement was very successful and I enjoyed it.

      I only took to my new field two sermons--one that I stole from a brother preacher at Minneapolis. But after all, my theft was a tribute to him and his ability, for it was about the only sermon I had up to that time understood as preached by the many whom I had heard.

      It was on the subject, "God is love," and I really understood enough of what the preacher was saying to take out my pencil and paper and write down the points of why he thought God was love and some conclusions that he drew. I made that sermon my own.

      Moody says, "If you haven't a sermon of your own, get up and tell what you heard some other man preach, and the truth that you can work over in the crucible of your own heart and mind is yours." My other sermon was one I borrowed from my father; it was yellow with age, but precious to me. It was a great question to me at that time what I would do when these two sermons gave out.

      To my great joy, as the Sunday approached, the former pastor made a short visit to his old parish, and he was to preach in the morning and I was to preach at night. This was a great relief to me. I was pretty certain I could get through the first Sunday if that arrangement went through. But as fortune decreed, the smallpox broke out in the village that week and the old preacher got scared and left town, being afraid he would catch something and die.

      I was left at the last minute to preach both morning and evening. With the cold chills running up and down my back and the cold perspiration breaking out on my forehead, I went into the pulpit, gave out the first hymn, there being a large congregation present to hear the new preacher, and kneeled to offer the first public prayer I had ever made as introductory to a public service. I prayed as I thought I ought to for the people and myself, and thought it would be a proper thing to close with the Lord's prayer. I started in on it, got frightened and forgot it.

      But I passed this failure over as lightly as I could and faced the audience on the general subject of "God

© 2003 for the NEGenWeb Project by Pam Rietsch, Ted & Carole Miller.