17. Paysons only Pastoral Charge,

Paysons only Pastoral Charge This was in Portland, Maine. He was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church of that place, Dec. 16, 1807. He served the Church with remarkable fidelity and success for twenty years; indeed, lived and died with them and for them. This was the more remarkable as he was so uncompromising in his preaching and intercourse with his people. His remaining in one charge for a lifetime shows him to have been remarkably free from a worldly and ambitious spirit. It was his prayer that if God had any worldly blessings in store for him he would be pleased to give him grace instead of them, or change them into spiritual blessings. He writes, " I can hardly help praying, sometimes, that he would take away all he has bestowed, so that I shall not sin against such goodness." He felt " to bless God that when his roots began to shoot into and cleave to the earth, he plucked them up before they were too deeply and firmly fixed."