The miners called him the “Wandering Jew.”  That was behind his back.  To his face they addressed him as Father Newton.  He walked his circuits in the northern mines.  No pedestrian could keep up with him, as with his long form bending forward, his immense yellow beard that reached to his breast floating in the wind, he strode from camp to camp with the message of salvation.  It took a good trotting-horse to keep pace with him.  Many a stout prospector, meeting him on a highway, after panting and straining to bear him company, had to fall behind, gazing after him in wonder, as he swept out of sight at that marvelous gait.  There was a glitter in his eye, and an intensity of gaze that left you in doubt whether it was genius or madness that it bespoke.  It was, in truth, a little of both.  He had genius.  Nobody ever talked with him, or heard him preach, without finding it out.  The rough fellow who offended him at a camp-meeting, near “Yankee Jim’s,” no doubt thought him mad.  He was making some disturbance just as the long bearded old preacher was passing with a bucket of water in his hand.

“What do you mean?” he thundered, stopping and fixing his keen eye upon the rowdy.

A rude and profane reply was made by the jeering sinner.

Quick as thought Newton rushed upon him with flashing eye and uplifted bucket, a picture of fiery wrath that was too much for the thoughtless scoffer, who fled in terror amid the laughter of the crowd.  The vanquished son of Belial had no sympathy from anybody, and the plucky preacher was none the less esteemed because he was ready to defend his Master’s cause with carnal weapons.  The early Californians left scarcely any path of sin unexplored, and were a sad set of sinners, but for virtuous women and religion they never lost their reverence.  Both were scarce in those days, when it seemed to be thought that gold-digging and the Decalogue could not be made to harmonize.  The pioneer preachers found that one good woman made a better basis for evangelization than a score of nomadic bachelors.  The first accession of a woman to a church in the mines was an epoch in its history.  The church in the house of Lydia was the normal type—­it must be anchored to woman’s faith, and tenderness, and love, in the home.

He visited San Francisco during my pastorate in 1858.  On Sunday morning he preached a sermon of such extraordinary beauty and power that at the night-service the house was crowded by a curious congregation, drawn thither by the report of the forenoon effort.  His subject was the faith of the mother of Moses, and he handled it in his own way.  The powerful effect of one passage I shall never forget.  It was a description of the mother’s struggle, and the victory of her faith in the crisis of her trial.  No longer able to protect her child, she resolves to commit him to her God.  He drew a picture of her as she sat weaving together the grasses of the little ark of bulrushes, her hot tears falling upon her work, and