In the meantime there had opened up a rather unique method of evangelistic work. Bro. G. T. Clayton, who had been engaged in the Eastern field, had planned an Ohio River campaign. He had purchased a boat 26 × 80 and fitted it up for a dwelling and a meeting-hall. The plan was to float down the Ohio and tie up at every town on each side of the river and hold meetings for a season. January and February of 1894 were spent on this Floating Bethel, as it was called, with Brother and Sister Clayton. By this means he could do writing and at the same time hold meetings.
Late in May, 1894, he held a discussion with an Adventist leader. He attended during this summer, as usual, the general camp-meetings and grove-meetings. He began the erection of a house on the camp-ground near Grand Junction and by the following winter it was sufficiently completed that it could be occupied.
We are making some quotations from his New Year's Greeting for 1895. Little did he know that this would be his last message of this kind. He died in December of that year.
To all our dear friends and readers we devoutly wish a happy New Year. May each of you enter the year with a holy zeal to glorify God in your soul and body, which are the Lord's. Nothing better can we wish you than the meekness of Christ in your heart and life and the omnipotence of faith in your work for him.
How solemn and awful the place where we stand today! We have been carried down the stream of time until we approach its very outlet into the boundless expanse of eternity. Upon us have fallen the ends of the world. We are called in the providence of God to take a part in the last great struggle against the principalities and wicked powers of this sin-stricken earth. Oh, how significant to us are the words of John, "Beloved, it is the last time"! The harmonious testimony of all truth and of current facts on earth show us that we are rapidly approaching the last day of the last days.... But we know nothing with any degree of certainty. God alone knows the awful day and hour, and we may err even in naming the approximate time. Yea, before another New Year's bells ring on earth the trump of God may proclaim the death of time. One thing is sure, the Lord's coming is not very far off, and men of all creeds and faiths seem to agree in this....
... In great weakness of body we began the erection of a house last September. Bless God, he has in every way wonderfully blessed us in this work; and now we expect in a couple of weeks to move into our house on the camp and take up the writing of prophetic truth with a physical and consequent mental energy we never before possessed.
We were consecrated to go to the foreign lands, and indeed thought the Lord would soon send us forth. But he showed us we were physically unfit. However, we may yet go. Our only wish is that God may get the greatest possible glory out of all our remnant of time and feeble abilities, coupled on to his omnipotent power and infinite wisdom.
At the close of the Grand Junction camp-meeting of that year, the last year of his life, he wrote the poem After the Battle.
Lo, they are gone; that armored host