Phineas F. Bresee - A Prince In Israel - Media Sabda Org

Phineas F. Bresee
A PRINCE IN ISRAEL
By E. A. Girvin
INTRODUCTION
In presenting to the public this biography, I keenly realize my inability to meet the requirements
of such a work, the incompleteness of the materials at my command, and the impossibility at this
time of obtaining a proper historical perspective. When a worthy and comprehensive biography of
Dr. Bresee shall be written -- and the time will surely come when such a work will be accomplished
-- a vast quantity of materials now in existence, but not within my reach, will be availed of in the
preparation of such a biography. To do justice to the life of a man so great as Phineas F. Bresee,
years should be spent in gathering data. From those who were most intimately associated with him,
should be elicited the great wealth of rich biographical material which lies dormant in their
memories. His letters, hundreds and perhaps thousands of which are scattered over this country,
should be collected. This data, including the thousands of sermon outlines which he left behind him,
should be subjected to the most painstaking scrutiny. To digest and analyze such a mass of facts, sift
therefrom that which might be most suitable for historical purposes, and incorporate it into the
finished product of a biography, would call for the very highest intellectual powers on the part of the
historian, and would require many years of careful research, compilation and literary labor. I have
had neither the ability, the data, nor the time which are requisite to the proper performance of this
task. On the other hand, I have had many things in my favor as a biographer. Chief among these was
my intimate friendship with Dr. Bresee for more than a quarter of a century, my close association
with his family since his decease, and the fact that for three years or more prior to his death, I
enjoyed the privilege of taking down in shorthand, as the words fell from his own lips, the story of
his life. We devoted many evenings to this work. Our custom was to go up into his study, and he,
while lying on the lounge, would review his eventful career. Frequently during the course of these
reminiscences, he would pause for the purpose of commenting informally upon some of the persons
and incidents included in his narrative.
It was also my privilege to converse with him on a vast range of topics. While much of our
conversation was of a private and personal nature, and much more related to the deep things of God,
and to the progress of the great work in which we were both so vitally interested, still Dr. Bresee
would give frequent expression to his views of current events.
I conducted a voluminous correspondence with him in the earlier years of the Nazarene
movement, but all his letters to me were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906,
and between that time and the date of my coming to Los Angeles in 1911, our correspondence
diminished both in frequency and importance.
When the complete biography of Dr. Bresee shall be written, this book will be only one -- though
perhaps the chief one -- of the documents used by the writer of the greater and more comprehensive
work. John Morley states in his introduction to the life of Gladstone, that during the preparation of
that work three hundred thousand papers passed through his hands, and that in addition to them, he
had had access to a diary kept by Gladstone for forty years.