After four years in New Jersey young Vincent was transferred in 1857 to Illinois, where in succession he had charge of four churches, beginning with Joliet, where he met a young lady teacher, Miss Elizabeth Dusenbury, of Portville, N. Y., who became his wife, and in the after years by her warm heart, clear head, and wise judgment greatly contributed to her husband's success. He was a year at Mount Morris, the seat of the Rock River Conference Seminary, at which he studied while pastor in the community. For two years, 1860 and '61, he was at Galena, and found in his congregation a quiet ex-army officer, named Ulysses S. Grant, who afterward said when introducing him to President Lincoln, "Dr. Vincent was my pastor at Galena, Ill., and I do not think that I missed one of his sermons while I lived there." Long after the Civil War days Bishop Vincent expressed in some autobiographical notes his estimate of General Grant. He wrote: "General Grant was one of the loveliest and most reverent of men. He had a strong will under that army overcoat of his, but he was the soul of honor and as reverent as he was brave." After two years at Rockford—two years having been until 1864 the limit for a pastorate in American Methodism—in 1865 he was appointed to Trinity Church, Chicago, then the most important church of his denomination in that city.
Chicago opened the door of opportunity to a wider field. The pastor of Trinity found in that city a group of young men, enthusiasts in the Sunday School, and progressive in their aims. Dr. Vincent at once became a leader among them and by their aid was able to introduce a Uniform Lesson in the schools of the city. He established in 1865 a Sunday School Quarterly, which in the following years became the Sunday School Teacher, in its editorials and its lesson material setting a new standard for Sunday School instruction. His abilities were soon recognized by the authorities in his church, and he was called to New York to become first General Agent of the Sunday School Union, the organization directing Methodist Episcopal Sunday Schools throughout the world, and in 1868, secretary and editor. He organized and set in circulation the Berean Uniform Lessons for his denomination, an important link in the chain of events which in 1873 made the Sunday School lessons uniform throughout America and the world. It is the fashion now to depreciate the Uniform Lesson Plan as unpedagogic and unpsychologic; but its inauguration was the greatest forward step ever taken in the evolution of the Sunday School; for it instituted systematic study of the Bible, and especially of the Old Testament; it brought to the service of the teacher the ablest Bible scholars on both sides of the Atlantic; it enabled the teachers of a school, a town, or a city to unite in the preparation of their lessons. Chicago, New York, Brooklyn, Boston, and many other places soon held study-classes of Sunday School teachers, of all grades, of a thousand or more gathered on a week-day to listen to the lectures of great instructors. The Plainfield (N. J.) Railroad Class was not the only group of Sunday School workers who spent their hour on the train passing to and from business in studying together their Sunday School lesson.
Soon after Dr. Vincent assumed the charge of general Sunday School work, having his office in New York, he took up his residence in Plainfield, N. J., a suburban city which felt his influence and responded to it for twenty years. Having led the way to one summit in his ideals, he saw other mountain-heights beyond, and continually pointed his followers upward. When he succeeded to the editorship of the Sunday School Journal, the teachers' magazine of his church, he found a circulation of about five thousand. With the Uniform Lesson, and his inspiring editorials, it speedily rose to a hundred thousand, and a few years later to two hundred thousand subscribers, while his lesson leaves and quarterlies went into the millions. With voice—that wonderful, awakening, thrilling voice—and with a pen on fire, he appealed everywhere for a training that should fit Sunday School teachers for their great work. He established in many places the Normal Class, and marked out a course of instruction for its students. This was the step which led directly to the Chautauqua Assembly, which indeed made some such institution a necessity.
The Normal Class proposed a weekly meeting of Sunday School teachers or of young people seeking preparation for teaching, a definite course of study, examinations at regular stages, and a diploma to those who met its standards. Dr. Vincent conceived the plan of bringing together a large body of teacher-students, who should spend at least a fortnight in daily study, morning and afternoon, and thus accomplish more work than in six months of weekly meetings. He aimed also to have lectures on inspiring themes, with a spice of entertainment to impart variety. While this ideal was rising before him and shaping in his mind, he found a kindred spirit, a genius in invention, and a practical, wise business man whose name was destined to stand beside his own in equal honor wherever and whenever Chautauqua is named—Lewis Miller of Akron, Ohio, the first and until his death in 1899 the only president of Chautauqua.
Lewis Miller was born on July 24, 1829, at Greentown, Ohio. He received in his childhood the limited education in "the three R's—reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic," usual in the country school; and at the age of sixteen was himself a school teacher. In 1849, twenty years old, he began work at the plastering trade, but at the same time was attending school. He became a partner in the manufacturing firm of Aultman, Ball and Co., which soon became Aultman, Miller and Co., and was removed from Greentown to Canton, Ohio. Here, about 1857, Mr. Miller invented and put into successful operation the Buckeye Mower and Reaper, which made him famous, and with other inventions brought to him a fortune. His home was for many years, and until his death, at Akron. From his earliest years he was interested in education, and especially in education through the Sunday School. He became Sunday School Superintendent of the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Akron, and made it more than most of the Sunday Schools in that generation a school, and not merely a meeting for children. He organized a graded system and required his pupils to pass from grade to grade through the door of an examination in Bible knowledge. He was one of the earliest Sunday School superintendents to organize a Normal Class for the equipment and training of young people for teaching in his school. At a certain stage in the promotions every young man and young woman passed one year or two years in the Normal Grade; for which he arranged the course until one was provided by Dr. Vincent after he became Secretary of Sunday School work for the denomination in 1868; and in the planning of that early normal course, Mr. Miller took an active part, for he met in John H. Vincent one who, like himself, held inspiring ideals for the Sunday School, and the two leaders were often in consultation. It was an epoch in the history of the American Sunday School when Mr. Miller built the first Sunday School hall in the land according to a plan originated by himself; its architectural features being wrought out under his direction by his fellow-townsman and friend, Mr. Jacob Snyder, an architect of distinction. In this building, then unique but now followed by thousands of churches, there was a domed central assembly hall, with rooms radiating from it in two stories, capable of being open during the general exercises, but closed in the lesson period so that each class could be alone with its teacher while studying.
Mr. Miller was also interested in secular education, was for years president of the Board of Education in Akron, always aiming for higher standards in teaching. He was also a trustee of Mount Union College in his own State. Two men such as Vincent and Miller, both men of vision, both leaders in education through the Sunday School, both aiming to make that institution more efficient, would inevitably come together; and it was fortunate that they were able to work hand in hand, each helping the other.
These two men had thoughts of gatherings of Sunday School workers, not in conventions, to hear reports and listen to speeches, not to go for one-day or two- or three-day institutes, but to spend weeks together in studying