W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

transferring Harmonia College. Many of the students followed us thither. There we labored at teaching and
preaching till the war was over, and, responsive to the earnest desire of my dear wife, who had become
homesick, we returned to Perryville and there reopened Harmonia College. During the eighteen years of my life
as a teacher God signally honored my labors. He permitted me to see much encouraging fruit meanwhile,
whereby my heart has been cheered in all of my subsequent pilgrimage. Meeting my students I find many of
them efficient preachers of the Gospel, and pillars in the Church of God.
Such was my enthusiasm to do all the good I possibly could that, in addition to the college of two hundred
students, I also had a circuit which the Conference had given me to serve as pastor. Rest assured I was a most
indefatigable laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. I preached Saturdays and Sundays and frequently at night
during the five school days of the week. I had been preaching at Wesley Chapel, one of my churches five miles
in the country, every night during the two weeks preceding the Christmas holidays, and after their arrival
holding meetings during the day as well as the night. Meanwhile the Lord turned on us a glorious revival,
characterized by deep conviction and powerful conversions. However, there was nothing said about
sanctification, as no one in attendance (in 1868) had the experience or knew anything about it. We had some
splendid local preachers, who were thought to be literally full of religion, and overflowing, and it is certain that
God signally blessed their labors, but they were utterly ignorant of sanctification. I had read about it in John
Wesley's catechism when a little boy, and later in his other books, as, you know every young Methodist preacher
is obliged to read them. I had found them full of Christian perfection, but being utterly ignorant of the matter
experimentally, I contented myself with my own intellectual exegesis, arriving at the conclusion that uncle
John's head was muddled on regeneration and sanctification, and that he actually mixed them up, using them
interchangeably. However, I had been convicted for it all the nineteen years which had elapsed since my
conversion, and incessantly seeking it in my blind way, like everybody else, I suppose, by works, thinking I
would grow into it in due time.
At one of my churches I had met an old woman, utterly illiterate, who claimed the experience, and I believe had
it. As she was incompetent to read the Bible, of course she could not expound it scripturally; yet the testimony
of old Sister Baxter, whose house was the preacher's home when on duty in that neighborhood was so clear and
her testimony so positive, corroborated by an unearthly radiance lingering in her face and flashing from her
eyes, that it had an effect to convict me. Yet I soliloquized, “Here am I, a collegiate graduate, having read the
Bible from my childhood, surely I ought to know more about it than this old sister who does not know her
alphabet.” During the preceding collegiate vacation, I was traveling in the Louisville Conference and fell into a
protracted meeting at Pleasant Run. There I found a glorious revival sweeping along; audience fine, altar well
filled, and the meeting running all day, with basket dinner on the ground after the old style. The pastor put me
up to preach. In those day I studied hard and made sermons, as I thought, adapted to all occasions; Therefore I
selected a revival sermon as I considered it, and delivered it to the best of my ability, feeling that I was really
meeting all demands. I concluded with the usual invitation. The mourner were so convicted that they came as a
matter of course till they got satisfied. While the altar service was in progress and the saints were praying for the
mourners and exhorting them, a very old woman, a mother in Israel, looking for the fiery chariot, got hold of the
pastor's arm, pulled up and, as she was partially deaf, doubtless spoke louder than she thought, for I distinctly
heard her sobbing utterances: “Oh, Brother Donaldson, please do not put up that little fop any more, lest you
ruin our revival.” It was to me a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. I went away and fell on the ground and wept
bitterly, meanwhile soliloquizing: “O Lord, is it possible, after preaching fifteen years and toiling so hard to
work my way through college, that after all I am nothing but a 'little fop'! O Lord, do, for Jesus' sake, have
mercy on me and give me the needed light and help me to walk in the same.” Though nothing was said in that
meeting about sanctification, the verdict of the dear mother in Israel, who called me a “little fop,” broke my
heart and I never survived it. She was like the mother in Israel who threw the stone on the head of Abimelech,
when besieging the city with his army, and slew that great military chieftain.
The Holy Spirit used those two mothers in Israel to culminate the conviction which had been lingering in my
heart for nineteen years, while I had resorted not only to immersion, but to a thousand other good works, only to
be disappointed in my fond aspirations to satisfy my longing soul. Jesus was standing by me all the time,
offering me the panacea for all my woes, the elixir for all my griefs, His own precious blood shed on Calvary;