"So I did not lose by that transaction in any way. With no little suffering on four separate occasions, contrary to the judgments of all around me, I have thus left every friend I had in the world, and gone straight into what appeared positive ruin, so far as this world was concerned, to meet the demands of conscience. But I have trusted God, and done the right, and in every separate instance I can now see that I have gained both for this world and the next as the result. "During all the period of my lay preaching, both in Nottingham and London, I had to grapple with other difficulties. What with one thing and another I had a great struggle at times to keep my head above the waters, and my heart alive with peace and love. But I held on to God and His grace, and the never-failing joy that I experienced in leading souls to Christ carried me through." How can anybody fail to see how much more the masses are likely to be influenced by the preaching, no matter how defective oratorically, of one who has thus lived in the midst of them--living, in fact, their very life of anxiety, suffering, and toil--than by that of men, however excellent, who come to them with the atmosphere of the study, the college, or the seminary? And yet, after having been trained for a year in the rough-and-ready oratory of the streets, subject to interruptions and interjected sneers, The General was called upon, in order to be recognised as fit for registration as a lay preacher, to mount the pulpit and preach a "trial sermon"! Accustomed as he had become to talk out his heart with such words and illustrations as involuntarily presented themselves to the simple-minded, though often wicked and always ignorant crowds, who gathered around the chair on which he stood; able without difficulty to hold their attention when he had won it, and drive the truth home to their souls, in spite of the counter-attractions of a busy thoroughfare, he took very hardly to the stiff, cold process of sermonising and sermon-making such as was then in vogue, and it was some time before he had much liberty or made much progress in the business. Still, in due time he was passed, first as a lay "preacher on trial," and later called as fully qualified to preach at any chapel in the district--this latter after a second year's activities and a "second trial sermon." When he once got on to this sermon-making line he took the best models he could find--men like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and, above all, C. G. Finney, who he could be certain had never sought in their preaching for human applause, but for the glory of God and the good of souls alone.