W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest
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education, taking the entire regular classical course, finally graduating June 30, 1859, and receiving my Latin<br />
diploma. It cost me one thousand dollars, every cent of which, in the providence of God, I made by teaching, as<br />
my dear father and mother were not able to give me any financial help.<br />
On our graduating day, when we twenty young men delivered our orations and received our diplomas, six of us<br />
were preachers and, sad to say, about six drunkards, and the other eight gentlemen of correct lives. During those<br />
six years I saw many young men go out from college, not only without salvation, but on the slippery steeps of<br />
dissipation which precipitate their incumbents into the bottomless pit. I have been praising the Lord all my life<br />
for a father and mother who were too poor to give me money on which to dissipate. The greatest intellectualist<br />
in our class, a younger man than myself, has already gone to a drunkard's grave, leaving the world as he lived,<br />
utterly regardless of God. If my parents had been rich, I, like my classmates and college chums, would have<br />
been exposed to those awful temptations which plunged them in ruin and, as we fear, eternally. Oh, what a<br />
mistake Christian parents make to pile up money for their children when they are so likely to use it to pay their<br />
way to Hell! What a glory if they had only given that money to evangelize one thousand millions of poor<br />
heathens through the ages sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.<br />
I do believe that I will praise God forever in Heaven for giving me parents who never had one dollar to give me<br />
to defray my expenses to Hell. But they did give me a patrimony which outshines all the gold that ever glittered,<br />
and all the diamonds that ever sparkled, and all the rubies that ever radiated.<br />
That inheritance is God's precious Word and the testimony of <strong>His</strong> glorious redeeming grace in their own hearts;<br />
and an humble Christian home, where God was feared, loved, and obeyed. Well does Solomon say, “Wisdom is<br />
better than riches.”<br />
I much regret the deprivation of a classical education which has supervened in the last forty years.<br />
The proportion of students in colleges now prosecuting the regular classical course is much smaller than it was<br />
during the years of my college life. This is in harmony with the general trend of the age to superficialism, which<br />
is manifest in every department of practical life at the present day; e. g., in architectural, for while the buildings<br />
of all sorts are vastly more fastidious, showy, and ornamental, they are lamentably deficient in solidity,<br />
substantiality, and durability. This you will observe in every ramification of the arch. We are constantly<br />
constrained to deplore this tendency in the spiritual realm, where we observe it most obvious and significant<br />
throughout, I. e., superficial conviction, insubstantial conversions and unsatisfactory sanctifications; superficial<br />
professions all along the line of evangelistic work.<br />
Especially do we observe this superficialism in the educational realm. Learning in all departments has caught<br />
the impatient fugitive spirit of the age, dashing through with all possible expedition, rushing to a superficial<br />
graduation, reaching the end prematurely and going out into the world professionally ready for business, when<br />
the diploma is but a farce and a burlesque. The old style four years' course, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and<br />
Senior classes, which had long prevailed in all the regular colleges, is about given up and superseded by<br />
irregular classification, in view of expediting the graduation. It is high time for us to halt and heed the apostle<br />
James, “Let patience have her perfect work.” We hear them say, “I must finish my education, get out preaching,<br />
or off into my missionary field.” There is always a wide open door for all to preach who will while they are<br />
prosecuting their education. Here we have great Cincinnati, with her suburban cities, comprising half a million<br />
people, open wide for evangelistic work, and you find it so everywhere; therefore there is no apology for losing<br />
time in response to your call to preach. If you ever succeed in this life, you must learn the great problem of<br />
harmonizing perpetual study with incessant labor, in the field of disinterested philanthropy to which you are<br />
called. The most blessed collegiate education you will ever receive, instead of winding up your student life only<br />
begins it, thus qualifying you to dispense with the constant help and guidance of teachers, paddle your own<br />
canoe across the stormy river of probationary life and secure a safe landing on the golden shore of a glorious<br />
immortality. If you are ever a success in any department of intellectual labor, you must be a student all your life,<br />
surviving the migratory abstractions of transitory allurements and reaching that concentration of mentality<br />
which will make you an incessant student.<br />
(1) You need a classical education to qualify you to successfully study the blessed Bible. This is obvious<br />
from the fact that it was never written in your vernacular nor that of any other person now loving on the earth,