Last words and old-time memories. Original and compiled from the most authenic records

Front matter

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Preface

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I have no apology to offer for publishing another good book. "Good books," says John Milton, "are the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose for a life beyond life. They garner up the wisdom and piety of one generation, and preserve it for after-generations. They form a spiritual telegraph between the past and the present, along whose wires the sanctified thoughts and emotions of Isaiah and Paul, and other good men, may speed to our hearts to quicken our faith and fire our zeal. Without them the scholar and the divine are like the mechanic without his tools; with them, the mechanic may become the scholar and the divine. They constitute the great store-house of truth for the world."

Rev. Dr. E. Went worth, after looking over the "General Minutes for 1875," truthfully remarks: "In looking over the accounts given of the last hours of these departed ministerial brethren we may say, without undue boasting, 'Our preachers die well.' Some went suddenly, some in great pain, and some sunk into unconsciousness and so passed quietly away. But in every instance where there were opportunities for testimony to the power of religion to save in the dying hour it was freely, often triumphantly, given. It refreshes our hearts to look over this precious death-roll. In this fast and fastidious age religious obituaries are regarded as stale reading even by churchmembers. Few styles of reading are more edifying than biography ; and obituary is only condensed biography. Religious obituary, like religious biography, is profitable reading, enjoyed by thousands, and useful both to mind and heart.

Last words — words spoken in the presence of death, eternity,

IV PREFACE.

and a nearness to God,— are a treasured legacy to survivors. Of the poorest and meanest son of Adam, even of the criminal on the gallows, it is eagerly asked, 'How did he die V 'What were his dying words ?' What wonder, then, that Christians prize the dying testimonies of the saints, and that there is a widespread desire, quite beyond the circle of actual acquaintance, to learn how our departed fellow-mortals wrestled with the grim destroyer ! "

I am glad to say that the reader will find that question satisfactorily answered in these precious records by the dying testimony and last words of more than three hundred and twenty-five ministers of the gospel and several well-known laymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

I hope that as a church we never forget that for the vantageground we are now permitted to enjoy we are deeply indebted to instrumentalities long since passed away.

I have not attempted in this volume a descriptive view of the adventurous scenes of the Christian pioneers of Methodism in the East, West, North, or South, but simply to record the glorious truth that after having "waxed valiant in-^ight' they died in great peace, or with swelling notes of triumph in their last hours.

In examining the means of the unprecedented success of the first Methodist preachers in the country, I have arrived at the conclusion that while they always aimed directly at the salvation of souls, their success may be chifly ascribed to their great simplicity and earnestness of manner in preaching the gospel. There was nothing studied, formal, or artificial. The vast concerns of eternity were felt to hang upon the hour ; and like judicious husbandmen they aimed at securing the fruit of their labor at once, and in due season.

I have no fear but that my humble effort will be appreciated by my brethren in the ministry, to whom this volume is affectionately dedicated.

Maxwell Pierson Gaddis.

Oakwood, Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 10, 1880.