following it with a condensed prayer to God to baptize him with the Holy Ghost and fire, symbolized by the "clean water sprinkled on him" (Ezek. 36:25), pleading with God to give him long life in the footprints of his noble, preaching father, John the Baptist, and the valiant host gone on before, and let him blow the silver trumpet to the spell-bound multitudes while his noble father shall play on his golden harp, walking the golden streets; when the Lord turned down from heaven a landslide into the soul of the Baptist preacher, so that he leaped and shouted over the house like an angel, when at a later date, in the good providence of God, I found him pastor of the church.

(i) As baptism tightens up the parental obligation to bring up the child for God, and proves a grand encouragement to the child, as in case of your humble servant, when I got old enough to recognize, remember, and appreciate, and my sainted mother was so blessedly used by the Holy Spirit in my happy conversion; meanwhile she told me that she had given me to the Lord in baptism and that I belonged to Him by an everlasting covenant and that I was to live long upon the earth and preach the Gospel, and when the world was on fire would shout with the angels in the air, and I believed it all, as I did not think she could tell a lie or make a mistake, and it seemed to me that I could actually see the tall archangel standing on the blue summit overhanging my childhood home and blowing his mighty trumpet; the dead leaping into life and with the living all climbing the skies and gathering before the great white throne to receive their everlasting.

doom; meanwhile the world is wrapped in fire and I believed just what she said, that I would shout among the angels; (j) and consequently I proceeded at once, in the appreciation of my call, to preach to the children, as you know, that children play everything they see the grown-up people do, as Jesus refers in His preaching (Matt. 11), "You are like unto children sitting in the market place and calling one to another, we have piped unto you and you have not danced, we played,”—i. e., played wedding, "and you have not reciprocated it," as in the old world today much is made out of weddings and funerals. Once in Jerusalem, in order to visit an old friend, I had to pass through a house where a wedding had taken place ten days antecedently, and found the festival still running, tables spread, and the ambrosial edibles and potables ready day and night, so they actually put their hands on me and would not let me leave the house without participating their nuptial festival.

(k) Then he proceeds, "We have mourned unto you and you have not lamented, John came neither eating nor drinking,”—i. e., no boarding-house, as he lived on the locusts which he picked up whenever he wanted them, as they now superabound in that wilderness. Bedouin Arabs live on them; I trow, like John, sweetening them with honey, which still abounds, the benefaction of the wild bees, depositing it in the rock crevices and hollow trees, "and you say he hath a demon; the Son of man came eating and drinking and you say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine drinker; yet wisdom is justified of her children,"-i. e., John

lived under the law, preached it in thunder-bolts and lightning-shafts, shaking the people over hell till they fell sprawling in the burning sand, prayed through till they shouted the victory; the mountains roaring and reverberating with the lugubrious wail of the panic-stricken mourner, commingled with the triumphant shouts of newly born souls; the very power that shook old Sinai with earthquakes and lightning-shafts, sending panic to the teeming thousands who hung on the eloquent lips of the happy Baptist, like lightning on the spirits of the clouds.

(1) Thus we see Jesus referring to the children playing wedding and funeral, reminding me of my childhood when we played everything that we saw the people do in the ramifications of domestic, social, and religious life; myself always recognized as a preacher, as sincere then as now, the call dating back to my happy consersion in my mother's lap before she took off the baby clothes, for which I can never praise the Lord enough, as it headed off the devil so I never tasted beer, and though reared in sight of a still-house in the worst whiskey state in the world (good old Kentucky); do not know the taste of any of Satan's drinks; never used tobacco; know not the taste of coffee; use no tea, chocolate, or any other nervine, which breaks down the constitution so I would not have preached these sixty-five years, and doing more now than perhaps any other person you can find, including the teaching of the Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and my editorial work, this being my 230th book on Bible holiness, all telling the people the sure way to heaven.

CHAPTER II

BOYHOOD

I

INCLUDE the first twelve years of my

life in my

childhood, the next eight, in boyhood, the next fifteen, in youth, then forty-eight, in my manhood, followed by my valedictory, which I will tell you more about when we reach heaven. Ten years ago, when I reached my seventy-sixth birthday I wrote Happy Octogenarian, including the eighth decade of my life; the first five years expiring with my eighty-first birthday, cognomened "Octogenarian Sunny-side," followed by the ensuing five years, "Shady-side," running down to my eighty-sixth birthday; when this book takes the field and runs five years, "Nonagenarian Sunny-side," expiring with my ninety-first birthday, if He lets me stay, when the "Shady-side" will follow the ensuing five years winding up with with my ninetysixth birthday; when, if He still keeps me on the battlefield, I will enter the tenth decade of my life, "Sunnyside, Happy Centennial," running down to the one hundred first year, if he should let me stay, followed by the "Shady-side" five years, running down to my one hundred sixth birthday.

(m) Therefore if the Lord lets me live ten years, you will see another book, Happy Centennial, giving my life, during my tenth decade. I give you this in

formation simply to post you in reference to my humble work for the Lord; at the same time praying for you all that God may honor you in the verification of the sacramental host seen by the Apocalyptic prophet, "come up through great tribulation (the lot of all saints), having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb;" hoping and praying that He will keep His hand on you and His arms around you, that you may have the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, kindly co-operating with your humble servant in the spread of Scriptural holiness throughout the whole world, thus expediting Satan's defeat and our Lord's glorious appearing to reign in righteousness "forever and ever and ever" (Dan. 7:18).

(n) Born and reared amid the great primeval forests of my native land, when a little bit of a lad I became a celebrated climber, like a squirrel climbing the fruit trees which abounded, as my preaching father was a noble frugiculturist, surrounding his home with diversified species of delicious fruits, so much to the delight of us children, as five girls and four boys lived to be grown, all now in glory except Josiah, two years my junior, who is preaching at Fayette, Missouri; but the forest trees I would climb after the wild grapes which abounded along with other delicious fruits; thus keeping my parents alarmed lest I should fall and thus lose my life at that early day when they were so anxious for me to live long to preach the Gospel.

(0) A majestic red oak stood on a beautiful hill across a lovely vale in full view of our home and was H. N.-3.