[578]
any portion of our ___domain from the nation.
Indeed, I would not advocate it anywhere except where a plain promise of independence has been given.
It is a fitting close to my life story to lift up my heart in thanksgiving to my Heavenly Father for the mercies and blessings which he has unceasingly showered upon me and mine.
It is fifty years this spring since my conversion-when in Tampa, Fla., I began to have a sense of the presence of the Spirit of God.
I then took the Old and New Testament story of Christ as giving me the Messiah of promise.
To me He was and is the manifestation of the Infinite One.
And in His name I have prayed and hoped and trusted.
His precept-Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself-expresses the aim and aspiration of my soul.
True, I have often violated my own conviction of right, yet my religion has been a great help and comfort to me. To be a member of a Christian church, as I have always been since that Florida experience, to participate in its worship from Sabbath to Sabbath, and to contribute to its activities, I have counted as duties-yes, far more, as the most satisfying of privileges.
The people of God-those who hold and have held tenaciously and sincerely to the Lord God as revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, both before and since the appearance of our beloved Master upon the earthconstitute one people-one great church.
For any good man to stand aloof and not identify himself with any branch in a thorough and practical way surely would not be best for him nor for his fellow men. By separate personal action, however intrinsically good one might be, the whole world could
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Baker and Taylor. 1908.
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