Chapter 9
So far in writing up my story I have said nothing about the books I
have written. It might be
a good idea here to just give a little sketch of them.
The first book that I wrote
was "Sunshine and Smiles." I wrote this book in 1902 and the
We sold out the first edition of 5,000 copies and as you will remember
I told you of going to
Boston to join Dr. Fowler in the fall of 1902. By the time we had
traveled as far west as Chicago,
the Christian Witness Company secured the copyright and we enlarged the
book some and they got
their copyright in 1903. Many editions of this little book have been
sold, and it has been a blessing
to humanity wherever it has gone. A good portion of my experience has
been translated into two or
three languages. A portion of it was translated into Chinese and
Japanese by some missionaries.
Some friends have translated a good part into the Spanish language and
given it out in tracts, so the
reader will see it has been a blessing. In 1904 I wrote a little book
called "The King's Gold
Mine," the conversion and sanctification of the disciples before the
day of Pentecost. This little
book has had a large sale. That same year I wrote a little booklet,
"Walking with God or the Devil,
Which?" This has also had a large sale. In 1905 and also 1906 I wrote a
beautiful book that was
called, "The Pitcher of Cream." This book was published by Dr. H. C.
Morrison along with the
other two pamphlets that I had written. "The Pitcher of Cream" is a
beautiful, cloth-bound book of
160 pages. When a man goes to writing books and gets it into his blood
he must work it out some
way, so by 1908 I began to study that remarkable character recorded in
John 11th and 12th
chapters, the story of Lazarus. By 1909 I had this book ready for the
press. Dr. Morrison also
brought out this book. It is made up of sixteen chapters: The Sick Man,
The Dead Man, The Bound
Man, The Entombed Man, The Putrefied Man, Christ Went to Town, Christ
the Resurrection and
the Life, Christ Inquires for the Dead Man, Christ Sought the Dead Man,
He Found Him and Wept
Over Him, The First Command to the Church-Take Ye Away the Stone,
Lazarus Called out of the
Tomb, Lazarus Set Free, Lazarus Feasting with the Lord, Lazarus
Persecuted, and Lazarus the
Great Soul Winner. I believe this little book has been a blessing to
tens of thousands.
By 1912 I was writing
another book. I took my time and went through the Bible and found
all the beautiful things that transpired on the mountains of sacred
history. By 1913 I had my book
ready for the press, and the book was named, "Mountain Peaks of the
Bible." Dr. Morrison also
published this book. This is a very beautiful book which has had a
large sale and blessed humanity
wherever it has gone. By the time I had "Mountain Peaks of the Bible"
on the press I was giving
every spare minute of my time to writing a book of sermons. I completed
this book early in the fall
of 1913. I wrote seventeen sermons. The title of the book is "Honey in
the Rock" and was
published by God's Revivalist Publishing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The headings of these
sermons are as follows: Why I Believe in Scriptural Holiness, The
Abundant Supply, The Two
Works of Grace, The Three Ways, Exploits, A Fixed Heart, Christian
Perfection, The Blood of
Christ or Our Hope of Heaven, The Holy Anointing Oil, The Dangers of
the Soul, The
Threefoldness of Salvation, The Blameless Life, Repentance and Danger
of Neglecting It, The
Necessity of Conversion and Sanctification, The Four Confessions, The
Three Last Testimonies
and The Eye of God.
The next book that I wrote
was "My Hospital Experience." As the reader and my friends
know, on the first day of June, 1919, in San Francisco I was struck by
an automobile, knocked
about thirty feet, was taken up with nine broken bones and dislocated
joints. I lay on my back for
nearly six months growing my bones back. The devil said I would die and
many of my good friends
thought I would but I said I would get well and preach holiness all
over the United States and I
believed around the world. My expenses ran to about $600 per month and
I was out of the field six
months. I made the best wages I almost ever made in my life while I was
lying in the hospital
growing my bones back. The money came in to pay all the bills. It came
from every quarter of the
United States and some from across the ocean. In fact, I went to the
hospital with ten dollars and
all those bills were paid and I came out with a big rag tied up with
money. I won't say here how
much it was but it was a large sum. It had been left by my good friends
and sent in through the mail.
I will not try here to give my hospital experience as it is already in
book form published by the
Pentecostal Publishing Company at Louisville at 15c each or seven for a
dollar. This little
pamphlet has had a big sale.
By 1920 I was
hammering the keys of my old typewriter again, bringing out another
book.
This, I think, was one of the most beautiful books I have written. The
title of this book is "Bees in
Clover." It has nearly two hundred pages, beautifully bound, large,
clear type and it is published
on the finest quality book paper. This book is published by the
Nazarene Publishing House, at
2923 Troost Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, and was copyrighted in 1921.
To my way of thinking
there are more beautiful things in this book than any I have ever
written. But no sooner was "Bees
in Clover" off the press than I began to gather up beautiful things
from the writings of men and
women and other things that the Lord has given me as I preached and
travelled and by 1924 I had
written another book and I gave it the title of "Nuggets of Gold." This
book also was published by
the Pentecostal Publishing Company of Louisville, Kentucky, of which
Dr. H. C. Morrison is
president. So the reader will see that I haven't been lazy and have not
lain down on the job, but
from the day God converted me until this good hour I have had my face
set as a flint to go to
heaven and carry everybody I possibly can with me. So here I am now
writing another book that
will in a few weeks be on the press and then I hope it will be read by
my friends by the tens of
thousands from ocean to ocean.
When I began telling about
my books you will remember we had come to our great General
Assembly in 1911. This was held in the fall. At the close of this
General Assembly, W. B. Yates
and I went to Louisville, Kentucky, to hold a meeting for Rev. Howard
Eckel, who was pastor of
the First Church of the Nazarene there, and at the same time District
Superintendent of Kentucky
and Tennessee, so you will see this old boy had a great job. Then
Brother Yates and I had meetings
together off and on for a number of years. That winter we went to
Florida and held meetings in
Webster and Taylorsville and went down as far as Fort Ogden on the west
coast. The Lord gave us
some very great revivals.
In the spring of 1913 we came back
from Florida and had a great meeting in Thompson,
Georgia, with dear Brother Bob Edlemonton and his brother H. L. but
better known as Henry, who
came down from Atlanta and stayed with us. If ever four old boys had a
good time it was these
Edlemonton fellows and Yates and Robinson.
From there we made a run to
East Liverpool, Ohio. We had a beautiful room in the home of
Brother Homer Taylor and Sister Pearl, his good wife. Brother Ben
Harker, who at that time was
in charge of what is known as the People's Mission, one among the best
I had ever seen up to that
time, stood by us nobly and we had great crowds to preach to and some
of the hardest cases I think
I have almost ever met were gloriously saved in that meeting. Since
those good days our precious
Brother Harker has been translated and has gone to live with Jesus.
At the close of this
convention Brother Yates went to some point in Kentucky and I went to
Meridian, Mississippi, and held a meeting for the Beeson brothers. I
was there over Easter
Sunday, and Brother Joseph H. Smith brought a great message on the
"Resurrection" on that day. In
our two weeks we had over two hundred and fifty at the altar. Beloved,
those were great days in
the holiness movement. If the holiness movement could have been
received by the people called
Methodists I believe that hundreds of thousands would have been saved
and sanctified that will
probably be lost forever. Of course, in those days when people were
driven out of the church for
the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification they naturally had
to go to schoolhouses, brush
arbors, old storehouses, courthouses and under the old gospel tents,
but thank God for the tens of
thousands that I have seen go down crying and come up flying, washed in
the beautiful stream.
Beloved, the end is not yet; God
is still on the throne and the government is still on His
shoulder, and of the increase of His government and peace there shall
be no end.
Before I get too far into
1913 I must not forget to tell you that in 1912 I sold my home in
Peniel, Texas, and moved to Pasadena, California. I located on the
school grounds of what is now
the Pasadena College. My home is on Bresee Avenue at 1169 but I have
given but very little time
to my home and to this beautiful climate. Of course, the reader will
understand that I have come out
home about once a year for rest, and evangelistic work for about three
weeks up and down the
coast. 1914 found me with a slate for three years ahead. Sometimes I
received as many as nine
hundred calls in a single year, preaching from four to five hundred
times a year and travelling from
25,000 to 35,000 miles annually.
In the fall of 1914 Rev. M.
Edward Borders, who was then pastor of our church at Malden,
Mass., began to write me to give him a great convention in April, 1915.
I had so many calls that I
didn't see how I could go but finally Dr. C. J. Fowler wrote me one of
the most beautiful letters I
ever read and pleaded for me to make one more trip through New England,
that he wanted to be
with me some more before he went up and I finally arranged the date. I
worked through Kentucky
and Tennessee during the latter part of the winter and early spring. By
March I had reached
Columbus, Ohio. There we had a handful of members and Brother Robert
Kell was their pastor. I
went up and while there we secured the big Presbyterian church that
they own today. They were
unusually kind and gave us such easy terms that it was easy to buy so
we bought the church and
moved in, but it had been closed up for three or four years and oh, the
dust and cobwebs in that
building. It took a number of our Nazarene people almost a week to
clean it up and if ever two
boys worked it was Bob Kell and Bud Robinson. We cleaned up the big
stoves in the basement
and got everything ready down there. We went to a big grocery merchant
and told him we wanted
him to supply us with groceries until that meeting closed. He said to
us, "Anything that you men
want in my store come over and get it," so we marched over and laid in
a good supply of
groceries, which our good Nazarene women cooked. We had all day
meetings for a month and
made no charge for meals but we put up a little box in the dining room
with a hole in it with the
words, Free Will Offerings. During the month we fed up eighty dollars
worth of groceries and only
served dinner.
I will never forget one rich
old Methodist brother from out of town who was at the altar
and got blessed. We marched him down to dinner and after he got all the
roast beef and mashed
potatoes he could eat he said, "Whom do I pay now?" We said, "Sir, the
only way we collect
money here is in this box, whatever you wish to pay put it in there."
He walked up and put a twenty
dollar bill through that hole and said, "This is the greatest day of my
life; to go to a meeting and get
saved and sanctified and have all I can eat and nobody to present a
bill beats anything I ever
experienced in my life."
During this meeting of
a month we had over five hundred at the altar. We took in twice as
many members as we had and the offerings came up and overflowed
everything. It is remarkable
how people give when God comes to town. We hadn't been there long until
the boys at the railroad
Y. M. C. A. put in a special plea for us to give them one afternoon of
each week so we went there
and had a great time and the revival reached the railroad shops, and
the railroad boys began to
request noon meetings, so we would go over there and give them a great
rally. I think we went four
or five times while in Columbus. During this campaign there were three
Presbyterian Sunday
school superintendents beautifully sanctified. In that meeting big
Brother Beckett, who had been
saved in the Billy Sunday meeting, who had been train caller in the
great Pennsylvania railroad
station for thirteen years, knelt at the altar and God sanctified him.
Bless his memory; in a few
years he had been translated. Some two years ago his good wife followed
on.
Beloved, it is remarkable
the number of people I have seen converted or sanctified that
many years ago have gone to live with Jesus. While I am on that point,
in Long Beach, California,
in the great building on the docks, while we were touring the state in
January, 1920, in a
coast-to-coast campaign, I gave the story of my life and there were
people from twenty-five states
and fifty different cities that had been converted or sanctified in my
meetings who stood up and
testified to it. So you will see that I have got to walk straight. We
used to say when we were
preaching and the people would jump up and down and shout, that all we
required of them was that
they walk straight when they came down, so the Lord requires at my hand
what I required at the
hands of the people.
At the close of the
great campaign in Columbus I ran over and gave two days and nights at
Marion, Ohio, and from there I went to Boston. I got off the train at
the old South Station, and was
met by Brother William McDonald and his good wife and a young lady that
was keeping house for
them and, if I am not mistaken, Brother Border's older daughter, Miss
Irene Borders. It was a
wonderful trip through Boston in those days in an automobile. I was
entertained in the home of
Brother McDonald and there the Lord gave us a most glorious revival. I
will never forget the
scenes around the altar. The people became so interested that they
would come to church and fill
the church almost an hour before preaching would begin and when I would
come over the only way
I could get in would be to go around and come into the church through
the big door that opened into
the parsonage. I don't think I ever worked with a man in all my
experience that had a greater
influence in the city than Brother Borders had. He had a fine backing
in his church. One of the most
cultured gentlemen of New England, Brother Peavy, was the chairman of
his church board and
Borders and Peavy were like Jonathan and David. To me Brother Borders
was one of the most
interesting preachers I had ever met. He told me some days nothing
could be done while maybe
within twenty-four hours the same thing that could not have been done
the day before could be
done. He said, "Brother Bud, you have got to do everything at the
psychological minute." I had
carried with me my trunk packed full of books and people began to call
for them, but Brother
Borders would shake his head and say, "I will tell you when to open it.
When the psychological
minute comes I will notify you." So one night when we had the house
packed until they were
standing around the walls, Brother Borders came in with a big grin and
his eyes sparkling and
said, "Unlock your trunk at once; the psychological minute has
arrived." I opened my trunk and
within a few minutes he sold every book and had orders for fifty more
and we wired Chicago to
send them next mail. He had just remodeled his big church and had it
newly decorated until it was
a beauty and he needed $1500 to pay up that bill. One Sunday morning he
walked up and said,
"The psychological moment has arrived," and laid his watch on the
pulpit and in ten minutes the
people had given him $1800.
But going back just a little
before that when Brother Borders had taken the church, if my
memory serves me correctly, there was a mortgage for $7,000 and that
old boy had raised every
dollar of that and paid it and burnt it and had had his church
remodeled for the Robinson campaign.
The first two weeks I was
with him we had some great noon meetings at the city hall. There
was a young man that worked with him that was named Robinson though no
kin to Bud. The last
week that I was with Brother Borders the New England District Assembly
met in his church. The
people came from all over New England; he had good homes for everyone
and fine entertainment. I
have never seen a District Assembly entertained in my life better than
it was at that time. Dr. H. F.
Reynolds, General Superintendent, presided at this great assembly and
Brother Washburn was
District Superintendent. It was at this assembly that they elected
delegates to the General Assembly
to meet in Kansas City in the fall. It was very interesting and I
remember good Brother Lanpher,
who is pastor of our First church in Portland, Maine, got up and
offered a resolution to
memorialize the General Assembly to drop the word Pentecostal from
their name and go back to
the first name that Dr. Bresee gave the church when it was organized,
and take the name The
Church of the Nazarene. They had some mighty interesting speeches. I
think that the motion put
before the assembly was lost, but I thought it was beautiful for the
brethren of the East who were
the founders of the Pentecostal Church to memorialize the assembly to
drop the word Pentecostal
from the church name. They gave for their reason that the great band of
Pentecostal people called
the unknown tongues people were known far and wide by that name and
that many people had
somehow confounded the Nazarenes with the other folks. But the name was
not dropped until the
General Assembly in Kansas City in 1919. There the word was dropped and
the church has been
known as "The Church of the Nazarene" until the present time. We had at
that great assembly our
beloved Brother George Franklin who was outgoing missionary to India.
He made a very great
missionary speech and called mourners and filled the altar.
At the close of this
assembly I rested up for a couple of days and then went to Lowell,
Mass., where our beloved Brother Riggs and Brother Beers were the
pastors of the great church
there. I was with the brethren thirteen days and we had a real good
convention. My home at that
time was with a fine family by the name of Cove. Miss Mary Cove has
been an active missionary
worker in this country. From there I went down to Portsmouth, Virginia,
and held a meeting in the
First Friends church. At that time Brother Claude Rome was pastor. My
recollection is that he
stayed at that church for nine years, and before that Brother C. H.
Babcock, of national fame as
preacher, orator and writer, was pastor for seven successive years. The
Lord gave me a fine
meeting with Brother Rome. I suppose if I were to try to describe every
meeting that I held, it
would make this book entirely too large.
From the east coast of
Virginia I made my way back into Ohio. During the summer I was on
about seven great camp grounds; visiting Roscoe, Ohio; Jamestown, North
Dakota; Red Rock,
Minnesota; Indian Springs, Georgia; Wichita, Kansas; and on from place
to place until late in the
fall. I held campmeetings right up until the General Assembly in Kansas
City, then after that went
on with my work as before.
Chapter 10