W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

heart. I was once where you are and as surely on my way to Hell as Sam Page in his saloon. God loves you as
dearly as the drunkards, gamblers, swearers, and debauchees; and if you do not seek and find the Lord, get your
sins forgiven and receive intelligent salvation, you are as sure of hell as the poor reprobates who plunge
headlong into the vulgar vices.”
As God, in His providence, through a preaching father, a sainted mother and a Christian home, fortified me from
the cradle, I have wasted no time in the devil's workshop; but have ever been diligently employed in laudable
industries, physical, intellectual and spiritual. Nobody on the face of the earth can rise up and say aught against
my life so far as the eye of the world is concerned, yet I was a sinner; but my sins were on the inside, except
unhygienical treatment of my body, for which I alone was to suffer. Being a church member from my infancy,
and my life irreproachable, so far as the world could discriminate, I was really a practical hypocrite. That word
in the Bible means one who plays at religion which he does not possess. I doubt not but that the great majority
of church members of this day are in the same dilemma. You see throughout the Bible that the hypocrite abides
the common destiny with the liar, the thief, murderer, drunkard, blasphemer, adulterer and fornicator.
We Americans, as a rule, are all of European extraction. Very recently the Asiatics, especially from China and
Japan, have been coming to our country. I can only trace my Anglican paternity and my Hiberian maternity but a
few generations. My great grandfather was powerfully converted under the preaching of Bishop Asbury, one
hundred and fifty years ago. He came home shouting aloud, called up his thirty Negro slaves whom he held in
bondage under the laws of old Virginia, told them his experience, fell on his knees and prayed for them, got up
and thanked them for their good behavior and obedience, and told them they were his slaves no longer, to go and
be free; all he asked of them was to meet him in Heaven. So you know he got a genuine case of conversion,
because it cost him fifteen thousand dollars, which he cheerfully paid in setting them all free. Though we always
lived in slave states, there never was a Negro in our family afterward. My grandfather was powerfully converted
in a Methodist campmeeting when my father, his oldest child, was old enough to recognize and remember. He
came home at midnight shouting the praises of God, and told grandmother that he was converted. Then he read
the Scriptures, sang a song and prayed, and always afterward kept it up, morning and evening. I here give you a
few lines of the song he sang that night: “How happy every child of grace,
Who knows his sins forgiven;
This earth, he cries, is not my place,
I seek a place in Heaven.
“A country far from mortal sight,
E'en now by faith I see;
The land of rest, the saint's delight,
A Heaven prepared for me.”
Some time after his conversion he emigrated to Kentucky and settled in the woods. There were many deer and
other wild animals in that country. Near their house was a deer lick, whither the animals were in the habit of
coming a short time before day. An old hunter in the neighborhood was in the habit of coming before day and
hiding in a suitable position to shoot deer when they came to the lick. The Lord gave my grandfather six sons
and about the same number of daughters to live to be grown. Five out of these sons became Methodist
preachers, and so lived and died. The daughters were as bright and spiritual as the sons: but the old fogy notion
that women should not preach embargoed their privileges and kept them out of the ministry. This old hunter
relates that the family was in the habit of rising very early and all getting ready to go to their work by sunrise;
he, while watching for the deer, would see them going away in different directions in the morning for secret
prayer, and when they would meet in the house they generally raised an old-style shout.
The last time I ever saw my grandfather was while I was his presiding elder. I visited him when ninety-six years
old, when he had me assist him in making an invoice of his family, which at that time numbered five hundred
souls, twenty-five of whom were licensed preachers of the Gospel.
As all names have originated from circumstances, of course our family received its name from the fact of their
eminent godliness, the original name being “Godly.” Some one at some time writing it happened to replace the
“l” by a “b.” In England the name is spelled “Godbey” in France it is generally spelled “Godfrey,” e.g., Godfrey
of Bouillon, who was the celebrated commander-in-chief of the armies of the Crusaders who captured