A young man of some attainment in letters, who taught school under the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” being anxious to rid himself of a sense of duty to preach the gospel, decided to go off to another state where his church connections were unknown. He did so. After he had quit the train and put down his baggage at the home of a family who had consented to entertain him, and as evening drew on, he was requested by his hostess to attend the preaching which was to come off at a neighbor’s house that evening (there was no church house). The young man went. A pen picture of the preacher is given after this fashion: Lean, brown skin man, whose shirt showed much of his breast; whose feet were sockless and in shoes which left the toes uncovered; whose stiff locks held a comb. He told us of a wicked city that was laying beneath the pending judgments of God. It needed a message of warning--only this, and it would face about and clothe itself in humble penitence. God had the message, and He imparted it to the messenger and ordered him to go. Here the preacher drew a picture of Jonah: He is shrinking from his glorious charge--has his back toward Nineveh, and is fleeing in an opposite direction; is boarding a ship that he may go to regions over the sea; is going down into the hold of the ship; is fast asleep. Here the storm and the raging deep receive notice: A cloud rises and quickly covers the skies; winds attend it with a fury hitherto unknown to the shipmen, who seem at once to discern in the storm the tokens of judgment; the sea is wild; the sailors, as a last resort, awake Jonah and cast lots; the lot falls upon Jonah, and he is cast into the maddened sea, where a sea monster swallows him. At this point, changing his voice more into the imperative tone, the preacher said: “I ’spect there is a Jonah here to-night, and I warn him to take the message of his God and carry it to poor, lost sinners who do not know their right hands from their left; I warn him to go before he shall be in the belly of hell.” The reader is left to imagine how this affected the young school teacher who was fleeing from his duty. In some parts of Limestone county the people use an improvised lamp, the oil vessel of which is a snuff bottle. This is a rough vessel, but it holds the oil which feeds the flame. This reminds us of Mr. Spurgeon’s beer-bottle candlestick. Well, I want to say that God used these men, whatever were their imperfections--they had power. But we have had help from without.