defence against the spirit of this world—a bar to the inroads of vanity."
From this temptation it was a refuge for him to dwell constantly on the sovereign grace of God, to regard his elevation as utterly unmerited, and to say, "He raiseth the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory."
However, the tendency in him was so strong that, notwithstanding his opposition to all attempts on the part of a man to help himself, he found the necessity of self-mortification. Instead of the hair shirt and the flagellating whip, he fastened round his neck the collar of service, and engraved upon it S. S., the "Sinner Saved;" and further, published to the world all the degrading circumstances of his early history.
It does not seem much to give up the hope of being able to earn ten or eleven shillings a week, to be willing to risk so poor a pittance to obey a divine call; but little as it was, Huntington conceived that it was vastly rewarded. "For some few years before I was married," he writes, "all my personal effects used to be carried in my hand, or on my shoulders, in one or two large handkerchiefs; but after marriage, for some few years, I used to carry all the goods that we had gotten on my shoulders in a large sack. But when we moved from Thames Ditton to London we loaded two large carts with furniture and other necessaries, besides a post-chaise well filled with children and cats. But at this time God had given me such a treasure in my sack that it was increased to a multitude; we were almost a fortnight in getting away the stuff." This idea that the attainment of wealth and influence were marks of divine favour led him, as it has done thousands of his religious fellow-countrymen, into new temptations, bringing at last undreamt-of sufferings and degradations of a far more profound and enduring character than these he attempted to inflict on himself.
Like John Clare, and most men who have passed their early lives in the country, it was a great desire of his heart, when he found money began to flow freely into his treasury, to have a little farm. So in 1798, sixteen years after he had come to London, he took a house and farm at Hendon. He had taken no heed of the Apostle's word, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the
