The digital copies of this book are available for free at First Fruits website.
place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits
Preface
Long have the people clamored for me to write my life. I did not want to do it, but found myself actually incompetent to resist the united appeals of my friends, who girdle the globe. I am intimately acquainted with many of the Lord's dear people from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to the Lakes, while my travels in Europe, Asia and Africa, in the providence of God, have given- me many happy acquaintances in all of these countries.
The Lord has let me live seventy-three years, given me a splendid education, a bright conversion, a glorious sanctification, permitted me to preach fifty-three years and write forty-eight books and booklets. I have no dark chapter in my biography.
Though, as I believe, I was converted at the age of three years, I inadvertently lost it; but was reclaimed at the age of sixteen, when the Lord so revealed Him- self to me as to enable me ever since to walk in the light of His kingdom. He kept me through all the pre- carious and slippery paths of childhood, and youth/' so fortifying me against the seducing enchantments incident to the juvenile, as to keep me out of their seductive quarrels and to enable me to lead a moral life, without ever contracting the vicious habits which blight the innocency of childhood and blacken the escutcheon of youth in the overwhelming majority of cases. He has so wonderfully kept His healing hand on my body that I have never been a bed-ridden invalid. Though terrible ailments have taken hold on me, He has always healed me so quickly that I lost no time comparatively and was never missed from the battle-field.
While my dear father and mother were utterly unable financially to give me a collegiate education, God, in His signal mercy, not only permitted me to prosecute a thorough classical course, but has permitted me to travel three times in Europe, Asia and Africa, and within recent years to go around the world again, travelling through the great historic countries and the most important missionary fields. God is no respecter of persons. He loves your children as dearly as your humble servant. Let them read my biography and see how I began as a penniless boy, but finally prosecuted a thorough collegiate education. I have preached for fifty-three years with the constant blessing of God on my labors, and am still on the battle-field, pressing the war for God and souls, having preached as much by pen as by speech. I have travelled extensively for the glory of God and the establishment of His kingdom in all the earth, so my life's history will be an inspiration to your children to do likewise. There is nothing in it which will not prove a blessing to the reader.
My life has been quite eventful. God sanctified me fifteen years before the Holiness Movement reached the Great South, where I was born and reared, and He used me to preach entire sanctification from the Atlantic Ocean to Mexico in anticipation of the oncoming movement. You will also find in this history a ten years' war with the Campbellites and everything you need on the great baptismal controversy, in which all need light and grace to walk in it.
This book will be about the size and make of my large Commentaries and will sell perhaps for $1.50. You and your children cannot do without it.
God bless you.
W.B. GODBEY
