“I was sexton in the church. There were no lamps there, so I went and bought some, and filled them and lit them. I swept the church and lighted my own fires. I did not ring the bell, because there was none. I opened the church before every meeting, and shut and locked it after every meeting. I took care of everything in the church.” Here in this little frontier village, then upon the very borders of civilization, began his real work. For twenty-four years he had been preparing for this step. Now it must be determined whether his life should be a success or a failure. The year passed uneventfully, and it was not until September, 1838, when he applied for ordination, that he got his first taste of trouble. At this time the division between the Old School and the New School Presbyterian churches was about to take place, and two General Assemblies, afterwards called the Old School General Assembly and the New School General Assembly, were, a short time later, convened in Philadelphia. A resolution was introduced into the Oxford Presbytery that no man should be licensed or ordained by that body who did not connect himself with the Old School Presbyterian Church, dropping from their care those who declined to do so. This resolution, it was thought, was probably aimed at Mr. Beecher[3]—an attempt to strike the father over the shoulders of his son. For the actual division and separation of the Presbyterian Church into Old and New School was in no small measure the result of the controversy carried on for several years previously against Dr. Lyman Beecher. The doctor in 1832 had, as we have seen, accepted the presidency and professorship of doctrinal theology in Lane Seminary. He had been brought up in, and had been connected with, the Congregational Church until this time. While he entertained no revolutionary spirit, he had some expectation that the free spirit of New England thought, and that loving spirit of voluntary co-operation which he had enjoyed so in his New England pastorate, might be infused into the forms of Presbyterianism. The idea of an intimate friendship and co-operation between the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in the United States had always been dear to him. ----- Footnote 3: “It is no inconsiderable matter in these days that Dr. Beecher has at least one son who, after a full and free examination before the Oxford Presbytery, has been pronounced to be orthodox and sound in the faith; and that, in order to exclude the son of the arch-heretic, a new term of ministerial communion had to be introduced” (Extract from letter of Dr. Bishop, President of Oxford College, to Mr. Beecher in 1838). -----