DR. VINCENT: Dr. Wilkinson, in his address the other day, made reference to the fact that I myself had never enjoyed college opportunities. I did enjoy the very best academic opportunities up to the time that I should have entered college, but circumstances, which seemed very much like Providence, interposed at that crisis in my life, where the question was settled by three contingencies. I suffered from a bronchial affection, and my friends regarded me in great peril physically. I submitted three questions to three men after serious thought and earnest prayer, and resolved to be governed by the decision of the three men if they should decide in the same line. To one, an able scholar and a most efficient preacher, and a man occupying a high position in the church, I submitted the question of my intellectual fitness, and gave him a long account of my intellectual history. To another man, my father, I submitted the financial part of the business. That was a question that he alone could settle. To a distinguished physician, one of the ablest in New York City, I submitted the question of my physical health. Now, said I, if these three men combine in their decision, I shall consider the question settled in that way. If they differ, I shall consider it still open. The decision of all three was quite in a given line, and I entered very soon into the active ministry. The fact that I lacked the _prestige_ of the college was humiliating to me to the last degree. It made me morbid for years. I was too honest to impose on people, and therefore too likely to betray myself where no good could come of it, and where there was no necessity of it. But my humiliation led me to do this thing: To turn my theological studies and the preparation of sermons into means of mental discipline; to acquire the habit of laying hold of a subject, and of holding on to it, and persisting in holding on to it until I could master it, so that if I did not have more than a smattering (and I did have a smattering of Greek and Latin and Hebrew to begin with), I would have the discipline of thinking on subjects and of tearing them open on my own account. I tried to do that through all the years of my active ministry. I drew up for myself a sort of C. L. S. C. thirty years ago, and took glimpses of all that the boy examines in college, so that the C. L. S. C. of to-day developed out of it, and different as it may be, it is the result of bitter experience and immense effort, so far as I was personally concerned.