for Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, the Arcadian spot made famous in the volume of Campbell’s “Gertrude of Wyoming.”  I spent five months there supplying the pulpit of the Rev. Mr. Mitchell, who was absent to recruit his health.  In the Autumn I received an invitation to take charge of the Presbyterian Church of Burlington, N.J., founded by the princely and philanthropic Dr. Cortland Van Rensellaer, son of the Patroon at Albany.  It was the very place for a young preacher to begin his work.  The congregation was small, and, therefore, I obtained an opportunity to study individual character.  It was a very difficult field of labor, and it is good for a minister to bear the yoke in his youth.  My work at first was attended with many discouragements.  I preached as pungently as I was able, but no visible results seemed to follow.  One day the wife of one of my two church elders came to me in my study, and told me that her son had been awakened by the faithful talk of a young Christian girl, who had brought some work to her husband’s shoe store.  I said to the elder’s wife:  “The Holy Spirit is evidently working on one soul—­let us have a prayer meeting at your house to-night.”  We spent the afternoon in gathering our small congregation together, and when I got to her house it was packed to the door.  I have attended thousands of prayer meetings since then, but never one that had a more distinct resemblance to the Pentecostal gathering in “the upper room” at Jerusalem.  The atmosphere seemed to be charged with a divine electricity that affected almost every one in the house.  Three times over I closed the meeting with a benediction, but it began again, and the people lingered until a very late hour, melted together by “a baptism of fire.”  That wonderful meeting was followed by special services every night, and the Holy Spirit descended with great power.  My little church was doubled in numbers, and I learned more practical theology in a month than any seminary could teach me in a year.

That revival was an illustration of the truth that a good work of grace often begins with the personal effort of one or two individuals.  The Burlington awakening began with the little girl and the elder’s wife.  We ministers must never despise or neglect “the day of small things.”

Every pastor ought to be constantly on the watch, with open eye and ear, for the first signs of an especial manifestation of the Spirit’s presence.  Elijah, on Carmel, did not only pray; he kept his eyes open to see the rising cloud.  The moment that there is a manifestation of the Spirit’s presence, it must be followed up promptly.  For example, during my pastorate in the Market Street Church, New York, (from 1853 to 1860), I was out one afternoon making calls, and I discovered that in two or three families there were anxious seekers for salvation.  I immediately called together the officers of the church, stated to them my observations, instituted a series of meetings for almost every evening, followed