Many were converted in the vicinity, a strong company of believers was raised up, and a Second-Advent camp-meeting was held there in the autumn of 1844.
At Bowdoinham Ridge my labors were well received. A protracted meeting was being held with that church by Elders Quinnum and Hathern. They and the church fully co-operated with me, and a good work followed. On the last day I spent in this place I spoke forenoon and afternoon, then invited sinners to come forward for prayers, and joined in prayer for them. When we arose from our knees the sun was just setting, and I had sixteen miles to go to my next appointment, which was that evening. A friend held my horse at the door. I had labored excessively, and was so hoarse that I could hardly speak above a whisper, and my clothes were wet with sweat. I needed rest. But there was my next appointment. The people would be together in about an hour, and I had sixteen miles to go. So I hastily said farewell to the friends with whom and for whom I had labored, mounted my horse and galloped away toward Lisbon Plains, in a stinging cold February evening. I was chilled, but there was no time to call and warm. My damp clothing nearly froze to me, but I galloped on. As I rode up to the door of the house of worship, an aged Freewill Baptist minister was saying to the crowd:
“I am sorry to say to the congregation that we are disappointed. The speaker we expected to hear this evening has not come.”
As this minister raised his hands to dismiss the people with the benediction, I cried: “Hold! I am here!”
“Good!” cried the minister; and the people sat down. They had been waiting for me more than an hour. With a few words of explanation of my late arrival, I commenced to speak; but I was so thoroughly chilled that my chattering teeth would cut off some of my words. However, I soon warmed up, and felt freedom in speaking.
But where was my poor horse. His turn had come to be wet with sweat, and to shake with cold. A friend stood at the door watching for my arrival, who took the poor creature, and, as I supposed, took care of it. But he simply tied it to the fence with a rope. Heated, wet, and without blanket, it had to stand in the keen wind one hour and a half, trembling with cold until it was ruined. The next morning there was seen in the poor creature a clear case of chest-founder. It is a shame to treat God’s poor creatures thus. I learned from this sad circumstance never to leave my horse without full directions as to its wants.
The large house of worship was crowded with attentive hearers three times each day, till my time came to hasten to the next place. On Sunday, the Presbyterian minister had thirteen hearers. On Monday he came to hear me, and as I passed down the symbols of Daniel viii, and began to apply the specifications of the little horn of that chapter to the historical facts of Rome, he broke in upon me, saying:
“You mislead your hearers. Antiochus, and not Rome, is the subject of this prophecy.”
“Please wait, sir,” was my reply, “till I have finished speaking, then you can talk as long as the people wish to hear you. Be patient, and hear me while I show that Rome, and not Antiochus Epiphanes, is the subject of the prophecy.”
The matter was made quite plain, and the minister was told that he could speak. He rose, but his subject was the temporal millennium. All his propositions and proof-texts, which he tediously brought forward, had been examined in my first lecture. But it seemed necessary to briefly reply, notwithstanding it was little more than to repeat the same in the ears of nearly the same congregation. As I closed, a tall, rough-looking, red-shirted lumberman rose up in the house and said: