Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner

by A. L. Byers

The next tour of any considerable extent was one that took them into the Southland. This trip was made in November, 1890. They intended to make the trip by boat down the Mississippi, but found the water at a low ebb and traveling very slow. They took a steamer at Cincinnati, but had to wait two days before it started; and then it took them four days to reach Cairo. After waiting three days for a boat overdue from St. Louis, they made the rest of the journey by rail, and landed at Meridian, Miss. In this part of the country Brothers Bradley and Bozeman and others had opened up the work. The people were very hungry for the preaching of the word. Brother Warner and the company spent several weeks in the eastern part of the State. His bold manner in uncovering sin and false religion occasioned considerable opposition from various sectarian sources. The country was cursed with a false holiness element called "Straight Holiness," representing the Good Way, a paper then published at Fort Scott, Kans. Its teachers failed in the South to be uncompromising against tobacco and other evils and they incited no little opposition and prejudice against the New Testament standard held by Brother Warner. At Beech Springs, Miss., the mob element was encountered, as is shown by the portion of Brother Warner's report here given:

At that place there are a few Babylon hearts of the most pernicious hue, men steeped and dyed in tobacco and drunk on Babylon's worst wine, the wrath of which they infuse into the baser sort. Brothers Bradley and Bozeman have both been threatened in that place with violence and, we believe, even with murder, and we could expect the same animus toward us. Hence, the second night several pieces of brick and clubs came crashing through the window, all doubtless hurled in wrath at us. Nearly half of the sash was broken in and the glass flew over the house. The unsaved were much frightened, and the whole house was thrown into confusion. The glory of God was greatly upon us through all the evening, and with the cowardly onslaught the heavenly tides so wondrously swelled in our soul that we had to leap for joy in the midst of the uproar. Oh, the mighty river of peace and joy! The excellent tide of glory only subsided into sleep at a late hour, and it arose again with our waking in the morning. We stood only about seven feet from the window and nearly opposite; but the hand of God protected us from serious harm. However, the Lord saw he could overrule a slight glancing wound on the side of our face and nose for his glory, and so permitted the same. It was very evident in the meeting the next day that either Satan had made a great mistake or else his children were more wicked than he wanted them to be, so that he could not restrain them from their wicked deed, which proved a great blessing to the cause of Christ. All the saints were able to see more clearly than ever before the track that Christ and his primitive saints had trod. And about all testified that they had reached a clearer experience, stronger faith, and more joy in the Lord through the last night's meeting than ever before. The meeting that day was indeed very glorious.

The spiritual condition of the people as countenanced by the "Straight Holiness" teachers in that part of the South is set forth in the report written from Spring Hill, near Meridian:

Our last report was from Oak Grove neighborhood. When we entered there we found the powers of darkness and wickedness fierce and black. Threats were breathed about and written notices deposited in the dark. After one night's meeting in the old meeting-house, which is a neighborhood building, it was locked up. We went into the small schoolhouse near by and the Lord most wonderfully blessed our souls. Satan then had the schoolhouse locked, and though certain citizens had jerked the staples out of the old meeting-house and the doors stood wide open, and the Methodist class-leader, being in favor of the right and truth, invited us to enter, yet because others were raging we preferred to hold a little service in the public road, in the bright moonlight. God blessed the songs, prayer, and a few words of exhortation, and all the people seemed touched. Nearly every person present kneeled during prayer.

All these circumstances God overruled to the good of the people and the cause of Christ. The schoolhouse was again opened, and we went on a few nights longer, with glorious victory. Only a few sought the Lord; but there was a general blessing effected on the community in the removal of prejudice and hatred out of many hearts that had been influenced through lies and slanders, such as of promiscuous kissing, free-love, etc., propagated chiefly by the little Fort Scott-creed sect.[21]

It is a bad and fallacious cause that depends upon defamation of others. The course these schismatics resort to occasions some persecution and no little hatred, and even danger of violent treatment, which they will have to answer for in the day of judgment. But the cause thus bolstered up can not stand, and truth crushed down by foul means is sure to rise again; and just in proportion as there has been evil-speaking against the truth will it enlist the hearts of the honest, and at the same time forfeit all confidence in and elicit contempt for such as have defamed it and its lovers. In accordance with these principles truth rose triumphant at Oak Grove. The people saw we had been slandered, yea and Jesus Christ also.... The Lord has raised up many friends for the whole truth in that place, and could we have remained long enough to make a thorough effort, doubtless a number of souls would have been saved. But the way is opened for the true work of God to prosper there. Some who were much prejudiced when we went there, seeing that the truth of God is in us, had their minds changed, and their countenances were divested of the sour and took on the pleasant. God bless the people of that community.

From that place we came to Spring Hill, several miles east.... Here were a few pure children of God, whom we found yoked up with a majority who were professing salvation and yet "walking after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness." In our lifting the standard of God's Word against such inconsistencies, the wicked spirits were stirred in the baser sort, so that many threats of violence were blown about in the neighborhood. But the hand of God being over us, we suffered no harm....

Oh, how our soul longs to be excused of this most unpleasant task of lifting the gospel standard of holiness where profession has been countenanced in lives of filth and idolatry! The preacher that simply tells the people he could not use tobacco, and even earnestly admonishes men to quit, and yet receives the testimonies of men who use it, sets at naught the Word of God, pampers men in their sins, and prepares a storm of persecution to fall on the head of the man who comes after him showing the real Bible line between the works of God and the works of the devil, between real holiness of heart, soul, spirit, and body on the one side, and all filthiness of the flesh and spirit on the other. If holiness-teachers, on going into a new field where people know nothing about the doctrine and experience, would faithfully tell them at once that entire sanctification, the second work of grace, cleanses out of man all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, which includes all unholy tempers and appetites, that it can be obtained only by abandoning every sinful and unclean habit and giving the whole man—soul, body, and spirit—up to God for perfect purity of life and being, no person is prepared to contradict him, and such as conclude to seek that grace will expect to pay the full price....

But when men are allowed to profess holiness without contradiction and yet practise the sin of tobacco-using or anything else contrary to godliness, they, in imagining themselves holy while living in unholiness, as well as sinners in general, learn to associate holiness and filth, and the difficulties in rooting out the abomination, are many times increased. Men, by getting a degree of blessing of God upon their souls in consequence of abandoning some evils, or at least imagining themselves blessed, take the same as an endorsement from God upon the filth they yet continue in. The longer they continue in their delusion the more they are confirmed in it and the more they will fight for their idols. And their practise justifying the lusts of the wicked, these are ready to assault and abuse God's ministers, who must declare the whole counsel of God. And so a lax preacher gives place for the devil and wrath of men to assault the faithful herald of God that follows him. So by the fruits of the devotees of rehashed Methodism in the Fort Scott creed, which has cursed the South and filled hearts with bitter hatred toward all who follow Christ, and by their strife and contentions having brought a general contempt upon the name of holiness, and also by their lack of radicalness against sin in every form, our work here is beset with dark mountains, which God alone can remove, but which, thank his holy name, have been much obliterated in all places where we have labored.