I had crossed the mountain barrier between the East and the West, and was then in the Mississippi Valley--merely though on its border. Its hills and vales, its forests and prairies, its rivers and lakes, were all before me towards the setting sun. Compare the West _then_ to the West _now_. Never since earth’s foundation was laid, has any country exhibited such rapid progress in so few years. The West has made a thousand years growth in twenty-five years. And is it destined to continue to grow at that rate? The signs of the times indicate that it is even so. The most vivid imagination can form but a faint conception of the future greatness of the West. Columbus, romantic and extravagant as were his visions, could not have dreamed of half the glory of the future West. Here fiction has already become fact, and dreams realities. I effected arrangements to travel and preach in Pennsylvania and Ohio, for I soon learned that our friends were few in the West, and that I should have to travel extensively. I submitted to my fate and went to work. Visited several places in Pennsylvania, but meeting with little encouragement, I passed into Ohio, where I found more friends. Preached in many places in the Western Reserve, generally had large congregations, and found many devoted believers in the Great Salvation. A large portion of the population of the Reserve were from the Eastern states, and they brought industrious habits, correct moral principles, and liberal religious sentiments with them--the right kind of soil for Universalism to grow in. But where wheat grows, there grows chaff, and I encountered some intolerable bigotry in that region. In Ashtabula a vinegar-faced gentleman accosted me thus: “I understand you are a Universalist preacher.” “You have been correctly informed. Universalism is only another name for the gospel. ‘A rose,’ you know, ‘by any other name would smell as sweet.’” “Sweet! Universalism the gospel! It is neither sweet nor the gospel. It is a loathsome spawn from hell, the meanest of all the devil’s mean works, and you ought not to be allowed to teach it to immortal souls. I would put a stop to such preaching had I the power.” “Very likely you would, for you look like a villain. The mark of the beast is on you, and you would, doubtless, like to be about your master’s business. The world has been cursed a long time with the spirit you possess, and with men of your character, and that spirit, and that breed are not yet dead. Bigots and hypocrites like you, nailed the Savior of man to the cross, stoned Stephen, murdered the apostles, and crucified, burnt, hung, beheaded, and quartered, the saints of God in all ages.” “If I believed as you do, I would take my fill of sin.” “You are full of sin _now_.” “What do you preach for?”