Places. "Uncle Daniel." Will Price. Visit Ind. 1881.
Return. Golden Rule.
But to return a few years in the events of my humble life, I find
that I attended my first State Teachers' Association in Kansas in
1869.
After I quit teaching I took up regular farming but kept up Sunday
preaching all these many years. Preaching at Farmington, Pardee,
Pleasant Grove, Crooked Creek, Lancaster, Wolf River, Holton, Whiting
Goff, Round Prairie, Valley Falls, Atchison, Hiawatha, Highland,
Netawaka, Corning, Dyke's School House, Topeka, Winthrop, Winchester,
Easton, Nortonville, Effingham, Muscotah and Williamstown. Of course
I did not preach regularly very long for many of these places but
simply made evangelical visits. But for some of them I preached
regularly a number of years.
I preached in Wolf River in Brown County for two years. Every
preacher likes to have wherever he preaches a place, or home, he can
call his headquarters. Well, at Wolf River Daniel Miller's home was
my home. Uncle Daniel Miller (everybody called him Uncle Daniel) was
a devout disciple, and one of the most charitable and hospitable men
I ever knew. Uncle Daniel was a well-to-do farmer and many were the
poor who received from his charitable hand wood, hay, corn, meat,
potatoes, apples and money. And, if the preacher's sum was lacking
he footed the bill.
I remember one Sunday morning after the sermon I had a double wedding
which I solemnized in one ceremony, and Uncle Daniel had no bill to
augment that day. I usually received for preaching from $5 to $10
per day. But that day I had more than twice that amount.
Many years after the wedding referred to above, I saw a notice in the
newspaper that the Hon. Will Price, candidate for the senate, would
speak in Woodman Hall. I attended the meeting. The speaker came to
me and taking me by the hand said, "Elder, how-do-you-do?" I said,
"How do you do? But I do not know you." He said, "Do you remember
the double wedding on Wolf River some years ago?" "Yes," I said,
"But you are certainly not the young, bashful, scared, Will Price of
that event." "I am he" he said, and sure enough he was he. But now,
so different, large, handsome, wise and brave. All boys ought to
grow to be men, for men are what we need in this old, sinful,
abnormal world.
In 1881 after I had been away from old Indiana my native home for
about fourteen years, I returned and visited the scenes of my early
life. Many were the changes--a passing of the old, and a coming of
the new, bringing to me a mingling of sadness and gladness. Sad,
that so much I loved before and gone. Glad that so much new had come
that was good. Everywhere I had been known I was greeted with much
love, respect and honor. So I was constrained to preach again at the
old altars. And one young man even persuaded me to marry him to a
pretty girl because he said he wanted to marry her and she was
willing. So I preached again at old Liberty where I had preached and
taught more perhaps than at any other place in the State. I took for
my subject "Unbelief." using as a text the prayer of the poor man
whose son had a dumb spirit,--"Lord, I believe. Help thou mine
unbelief." But, where all may seen to be gladness and joy and faith,
sin, or its effect, is always lurking around somewhere nearby.
As I was preaching I recognized in the back part of the audience a
man with tears in his eyes. He was a strong intelligent man of the
community. He was about my age and fifteen years before this time,
when we were both younger I heard him confess with his mouth that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and I with by own hands baptized him
into Christ.
After the sermon as he came to me, I said, "Sir, what mean these
tears, are they tears of joy or tears of sorrow?" He answered,
"Tears of sin, I suppose, for while I was listening to you preach I
was only wishing that I could have the strong faith which you seem to
have." He had lost his faith by forgetting his first love. "He that
loves not, obeys not. Not everyone that saith to me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of
my father, which is in Heaven, Jesus."
Notwithstanding the many attractions of interest, love and friendship
among my relatives, and friends of old Indiana I had not been there
four weeks until my heart was fully set to return to Kansas. And why
not? Had I not left there a dear wife and five little children?
Count, boys, how old you were then. Clara and Edith also. Edith was
less than a year old. But I had fondled her so much upon my knees
and call her by "Great Blue Eyes" and sang to her so much
"Baby Bunn baby bunn
Great Blue Eyes
Looking now so merry
Now so very wise."
That upon my return home on the night train, when on entering the
home in the darkness of the night, that I might not frighten anyone I
call out, "Where are my big blue eyes?" Little Edith being awake and
hearing me, cried out at once, "Papa, Papa."
Upon my return home I resumed my work. Crooked Creek was one of my
regular places for preaching quite a while. I remember preaching
there a sermon on the Golden Rule so called. In my discourse I used
the same basic principles and words that Christ used in his Sermon on
the Mount. But afterwards a certain disciple said, "It is no use to
preach that way, for no one can live up to such teaching." But it
turned out in a few years afterwards that that disciple made, (and is
to this day) one of the most faithful, obedient and sacrificing
members of the Church of God. Thus it seems that the Word preached
may kill or make alive. In this case it seems to have done both.
In the labors of my life as a preacher, my work was mainly confined
to the churches, and not to the world. I knew nothing however but to
preach the gospel and teach the word. So I think the gospel is the
power of God to salvation to both saints and sinners.
At another place one had heard, believed and wanted to be baptized,
but her husband said, "He who baptizes my wife endangers his life."
I said to the believer, "I will risk it." I baptized her. In two
weeks I preached again and at the end of the sermon that poor man
came to me and said, "I have been wrong. I want to confess Jesus and
be immersed." I baptized him. Some years after that I preached the
funerals of both. Their lives had not been perfect but in their
deaths there was hope. We live by hope. We are saved by hope. Let
us hope in God. Hope is one of a trio of the greatest principles in
the world.
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