Such a work was too large, too high and too deep for minds filled with false sectarian ideas. Hence God chose for his servant to stand at the head of this great and last dispensation, a man whose mind was unwarped by false education; but one of large capacity; possessing breadth and freedom of thought, of sanguine, fearless temperament: a child of nature, with a conscience unseared by worldly guile and a stranger to motives other than those dictated by an honest purpose; and withal, full of implicit confidence in God--a confidence born of a living faith in the fact of Deity's existence, and a consciousness of the rectitude of his own intentions and life. As ill-founded as the objection based upon his humble parentage and station in life is that objection which arises out of the fact that he was evil spoken of by the world. Let not the reader here confound reputation with character. They are quite distinct, I assure you. The latter is what one is; the former may be a fool's estimate of one; or, even worse, it may be and often is a thing created by liars and knaves--formed by misrepresentations and set on its feet by malice. When favorable it is often obtained without merit, and as often lost without deserving. But with character it is not so. That stands independent of the estimate of fools or the misrepresentation of knaves. It is formed in great part by ourselves; in part by our surroundings; in part by God. It is what we are irrespective of what the world may think or say of us. I have said so much that the reader may be reminded that a man's character may be good, while his reputation may be villainous; or _vice versa._ There is nothing, therefore, that is so unsafe a criterion by which to estimate a man as by what the world says of him--by his reputation. Especially is this true of the servants of God. Commissioned as they usually are to reprove the world of sin and unrighteousness, and to call mankind to repentance, they have appeared as rude disturbers of the peace and ease of mankind--iconoclasts bent on breaking the images on which men set their hearts. The world does not love them, and what it hates it maligns--and thence, with the world, springs the reputation of the servants of God. The balances in which they are weighed are false, hence the announcement of their value from that source is untrue.