During that day I had asked the Lord many times to give me one soul as a comfort and testimony. I went into Bro. Goddard's shop by as direct inspiration as any man ever did anything by its dictation.
I traveled a few weeks with Elder Gates, when I received an appointment to take the presidency of the Norwich Conference.
I wrote to Apostle F. D. Richards, who then presided over the mission, asking him to give me a little more time to get accustomed to preaching and to read up my Bible. I soon received the following answer:
"The presidency of the British Mission wishes to know if Elder C. V. Spencer intends to stand up to the rack in this country."
When I read it I immediately wrote in reply:
"I shall start to Norwich by the next train, and don't care a groat whether there is any hay in the rack or not."
A sister was then washing my clothes, and I had quite a time to induce her to let me have them then; but, at last, she wrung them out as dry as she could and stuffed them into my carpet-bag. Only a few minutes elapsed before I was on the way to Norwich.
I do not think any man ever entered upon the discharge of his duties as president with more distrust than I did; and I wish to record here that the great good afterwards accomplished was God's work, for He worked through me. I only knew enough to speak and act as directed by the Holy Spirit. The conference was represented to me as having refused to sustain, for its president, the man suggested by the presidency at Liverpool, and was otherwise in a somewhat peculiar condition. Under these circumstances I was set to work; how weak I felt, I cannot express in words. For months afterwards people would say to me, when meeting was over, "I heard your knees knock together when you first began to speak."
At the second meeting I held, a man jumped up and said, "We know you be of the devil!" I understood in a moment that the battle for my victory in that region had to be fought right then. I turned and silenced him immediately. When I ceased speaking, the people were as meek as children. I never had any more trouble in that branch, and the work revived in the whole conference. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the power and manifestations of God were, I think, as noticeable to the presidency at Liverpool as they were to me.
During the entire mission I was greatly blessed with dreams and manifestations from the Lord. On the day the revelation on plural, or celestial, marriage was first made public in "Freemason's Hall," London, one of our most noted and eloquent preachers was called upon to speak. His effort was a dry and barren failure, patent to everybody present. There were over two hundred prominent Elders sitting on the stand.