W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

throughout the Movement, which now girdles the world. Hence you see how multitudinous are the open doors
on all sides, ringing out their Macedonian cry, “Come over and help us.” I would be most delighted to spend
life's evening with my dear old companion, whom God has made an angel of mercy, shining along my
pilgrimage these forty-four years; and meanwhile my preaching son and son-in-law do beg me hard to quit work
and give them a chance to take care of me and their mother as long as we live. Here you see what sanctification
does for us. If I did not have it, I would certainly accept that kind offer and superannuate, but it really makes us
young forever, opening for me a thousand delectable doors, which I would be so delighted to enter, as I love the
work so dearly that I surely will continue on the battlefield till the chariot descends and the angels bid me mount
aboard. Therefore life's evening with the sanctified is infinitely better than the most successful blooming youth
without it.
I remember when I was a student in college I read in the Latin language in the course of study, “Cicero on Old
Age.” This prince of Roman orators and champion statesman with his trenchant pen undertakes to show up the
possibilities of the bright, cheerful, contented, happy, sunshiny old age.
His argument is really able for a heathen philosopher. He shows up the facilities of science, literature,
philosophy, poetry, aesthetics and the pagan religions to fill old age with perennial flowers, ever ripening fruits,
and glorious sunshine. However the end of his life by suicide casts a shadow over all of his eloquent and able
writings on the serenity, tranquillity, placidity, quietude and resignation which characterized the declining years
of the philosopher. When the decisive battle of Actium sealed the doom of the Republic in which Cicero had
spent his life, and he saw it go down in the gloom of an eternal night and the Monarchy superseded it, yielding
to the temptation of a broken heart he committed suicide. If that great orator and statesman had only enjoyed the
light of Christianity, he could have shouted victory for his own soul while the Republic went down. No tongue
can tell the unutterable glories of the full salvation which sweetens declining years, and makes us bloom in
immortal youth forever.
Chapter 14
THE EXODUS
It is more suitable, as a rule to write the life of a person after the journey is over because we then have access to
all of the facts. Now I have gone through mine from the cradle to the final exodus,
I.e., the departure out of this world, which someone else will have to write, after I shall have exchanged the
battlefield for the Mount of Victory, labor for rest and earth for Heaven. Of course the writer of this last chapter,
if it ever is written, must have an intimate acquaintance with the subject of the biography. Rev. H. C. Morrison,
of the “Pentecostal Herald,” has known me intimately all his life. I am twenty-four years his senior. I heard him
say in a great sermon which he delivered to an immense campmeeting audience, that I passed him while he was
a little bare-foot boy, put my hand on his head, lifted up my voice and said, “O Lord, make a preacher of this
boy.” He says that moment he heard the call from Heaven, which never evanesced from his juvenile mind, but
he held on and developed into the noble preacher of the Gospel we all so much appreciate he is not only my
Gospel son, but the consanguinity of my dear wife; she and his mother both being Durhams members of the
same good old English family, their grandfather, John Durham the first Methodist class-leader in Kentucky,
coming over the Cumberland Mountains from old Virginia, with Daniel Boone, the pioneer.
As life is uncertain, I will in this connection also give the name of my son-in-law, Rev. F. M. Hills, so he and
Brother Morrison can mutually follow the leading of the Spirit in the matter, the one serving as the alternate of
the other.
I will avail myself of this opportunity to write my last will and testament. In the providence of God all of our
children have gone to Heaven but one, my son William H., who is a faithful preacher of the Gospel, and has
faith in God to feed him like He feeds the birds and to clothe him like the lilies. Therefore I shall not will him
nor any of my consanguinity one cent, but leave it all for the missionaries, when I am gone. I have no real estate,
never did own but one hundred and seventy-three acres of land, and donated every inch of it to Kentucky