The good farmer stopped his oxen, and assisted me in unloading my horse, which, when I had mounted, galloped off as well as before.
Rain came on, and the firmly-trodden drifts became soft, so that my horse with my weight upon him would frequently sink to his body in the snow. I rode all day with my feet out of the stirrups, and as he would plunge into the snow, I would instantly slide off and relieve him of my weight, that he might better struggle out, or if he could not do this alone, assist him by lifting where most needed.
April 5, I reached my father’s house, and, after resting a few weeks till the ground settled, returned to my field of labor, and was rejoiced to learn that the spirit of reformation had swept over the entire field. But the time had fully come for the people in farming districts to hasten out upon their lands, and I found but little chance to get a general hearing excepting on Sunday. However, I soon had a call to labor in East Augusta.
But before going to this place I dreamed that an ox, with very high horns, was pursuing me with very great fury, and that I was fleeing before him for my life. He followed me so closely that I sprang into a house near by and bolted the door. The ox broke down the door and entered. I left the house through an open window, and escaped to the barn. The ox broke down the barn door and entered. I escaped by another door, and as my last resort for safety, crept under the barn floor. The ox tore up the planks with his horns, and drove me from under the barn. And as he was pursuing me in the open field, I felt his horns goading my back. At that moment wings were given me, and I arose and flew with ease to the roof of the house. The disappointed ox stood looking at me, frequently shaking his horns, and appeared wild with rage. My deliverance was complete, and exultingly I flew from the house near the head of the ox, then quickly arose to the roof of the barn. This repeated several times, I awoke. This dream made quite an impression upon my mind, but soon passed from me, and I thought no more of it until brought to my mind by what occurred in connection with my labors at East Augusta.
As I entered the school-house to meet my first appointment, the only person present was a tall, athletic man, in the middle age of life. As it was a cool evening, he was kindling a fire. He spoke to me in a tone of kindness, but eyed me closely. I was afterward told that Walter Bolton, for this was his name, was an infidel. He was regarded as a good citizen, but had never before been known to take any interest in religious meetings. He attended all my lectures, and seemed deeply interested, and I often heard remarks from his neighbors like this: “What has got hold of Walter Bolton to call him out to these meetings? I never saw him in a religious meeting before, unless it were a funeral.” We will leave Mr. Bolton for the present, and pass to other features of this series of meetings.
During the week I gave lectures each evening to small congregations. But Sunday morning, at an early hour, the house was crowded. My subject was the millennium. I labored to show,
1. That those texts usually quoted to prove the conversion of the entire world, did not prove what they are said to prove.
2. What those texts do teach. In speaking upon Isa. lxv, I showed that it was not in this mortal state, upon this old sin-cursed earth, that the leopard would lie down with the kid, and the lion eat straw like the ox, but in the new earth, as plainly declared by the prophet. That beasts, restored from the effects of the curse, would be no more out of their proper places in the earth restored, than when created upon it before the fall.
3. That certain texts in the Old and New Testaments, in most distinct and emphatic language, teach that at no period of man’s fallen condition will all men be holy.
At the close of this discourse, a Universalist preacher present arose and said: