W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

When love Divine first found me;
Wherever falls my distant lot,
My soul shall linger round thee.
“And when rise from the vile world
Up to my home in Heaven,
Down will I cast mine eyes once more,
Where I was first forgiven.”
That wood was soon afterward cleared up and turned into a corn-field, but my heart, in all my wanderings these
fifty-seven years, three times traveling in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and once around the world, has ever turned
back to that hallowed spot, dearest to me in all the earth. I verily expect to remember it through all eternity.
There the battle of long and weary years between faith and doubt, grace and sin, Christ and Satan, Heaven and
Hell, culminated in glorious victory for my poor soul.
I, was converted in the Baptist meeting, where nothing was said about sanctification. Indeed, the Methodists a
that time were silent on it. My conversion was clearly witnessed to by the blessed Holy Spirit, who gave me
power in public prayer to the delight and astonishment of the people, who shouted the praises of God for the
blessings which descended on them during my prayers; meanwhile I was faithful in duty and always ready to
give a reason for the hope that was within me, with meekness and fear. But I soon found an aching void within
which the world could never fill.
Painfully realizing that I needed something more to satisfy my longing soul, I talked to preachers and pilgrims,
who told me not to be discouraged, because, it was the inward conflict which they all had, and that I must
endure it during this life.
Reading the old Methodist books, I found much on sanctification as a second work of grace, but in the absence
of a teacher or even a witness to it, I did not know how to seek it. Our country was all flooded with water
religion, preached by the Campbellites everywhere, who make it a condition of pardon and salvation. As they
constantly fought experimental religion, which I knew to be true, because I had it, I had no inclination to fall in
with them; but the Baptist brethren, with whom I got converted, practiced immersion, and among all there was
so much said about it, that I, being ignorant and deeply solicitous to, be right, and knowing I needed something,
therefore came to the conclusion that the thing for me to do was to be immersed. Consequently I called on a
Methodist preacher to favor me with the ordinance. I found him very unwilling and disposed to argue me out of
it. I told him it was not worth while to spend time over it, because I had made up my mind to receive it. My
father was a preacher and he was satisfied I would be. Therefore, loathe to give up the Methodist preacher, as he
felt sure I would go to the Baptists, he consented to accommodate me, giving me the time and place when he
was going to immerse some people and charging me to tell no one, but to come along and fall in with the
candidates and he would wait on me along with the balance. At that time the Methodist preacher had
conscientious scruples about re-baptizing people; they are not so particular now. Consequently I came at the
time appointed and he immersed me with the others. I received it in good faith, hoping that it would supply the
deficiency which I realized in, my experience, but in this I was mistaken; I soon found the same aching void
within.
Four years from that time I began to preach in the Methodist Church, and have been at it these fifty-three years.
I preached fifteen years under a woe, feeling, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.” Nineteen years after
my conversion, in December, 1868, the Lord gloriously sanctified me, giving me that wonderful satisfying
portion which I sought in immersion and a thousand other ways, but finally found when I gave up everything
else and took Jesus for everything in time and in eternity. I have always been very grateful to Brother William
Johns, my neighbor boy about ten years my senior, for immersing me at my request. I have always been glad
that under the circumstances I did satisfy my own conscience, doing the best I could. I took it for the full
satisfaction of my longing soul, which is but another name for sanctification, but found to my sorrow that it
could not do it.
In the preceding paragraph I made allusion to our forensic club, with which I identified myself when a small lad.
During the seven years which transpired after I had learned about all I could in the common schools of that
country, as above mentioned, God, in His providence, sent that able mathematician into our community, who