It is indeed a pleasure to me to contribute a few lines of kindly remembrance of our departed brother D. S. Warner. It was the good pleasure of our heavenly Father that my dear wife and I live with Brother and Sister Warner as members of their household for some fifteen months before he died. I can say with all truth that the gospel he preached he lived. He was always cheerful, kindly, and affectionate in brotherly love to all about him, ready to give wise and fatherly advice and counsel. He was very devoted and much given to prayer in his home. He spent much time in his library with his books and translations of the Scriptures, and did much writing and correspondence, his wife assisting him much. The book Salvation; Present, Perfect; Now or Never, he wrote at this time and he read the manuscript to us before it was printed.
He loved to talk of God's dealings with him; how God led him step by step out of error and confusion and many deep difficulties, how he was violently persecuted by false brethren, how his wife became deceived and separated from him, etc. He would tell of how God revealed to him the sect Babylon of the Revelation and gave him to understand that he must cry out against her and expose her sins; how Babylon loomed up before him as a great black mountain, and that God was taking him as a worm to thresh it, and how he shrunk back at the thought of being thrown against such a seemingly impregnable wall, "God made me see," he said, "that I was nothing but a little mouse, but that he had his hand over me," then he would feel encouraged.
What God accomplished through him some of us know something about, and the results are glorious. Verily he being dead yet speaketh!
Curtis W. Montgomery,
27 Chestnut St.,
Marcus Hook, Pa.
In the winter of 1888–89 Bros. Geo. T. Clayton and Charles Koonce came to our community, near Cochran's Mills, Armstrong Co., Pa., preaching what was generally termed "a new doctrine," a "turning the world upside down." I was a boy sixteen years old, and the first night of the service walked four miles to the meeting. The first sermon made a deep impression on my mind. During that meeting quite a congregation was raised up for the truth.
A few weeks after the close of this meeting, Brother Warner and company came. They arrived in spring wagons from Blanco, Pa., a distance of about thirty miles. I was working with my father in the field when they passed down the road, singing The River of Peace, and shouting, "Halleluiah!" We never witnessed such a scene. Singing and shouting along the public road was characteristic of Brother Warner's company in those days. At night people would rush to their windows to hear the singing, and remark, "The angels are coming."
In this meeting Brother Warner's preaching was all doctrinal. It was all new to us; but I never was able to shake off the convictions that fastened on my heart that these people had the truth. I said I wanted their kind of religion.
In August of 1892 we attended the Perryville (Pa.) camp-meeting. I well remember going to the depot from the camp-ground for some baggage, and of meeting on the way Brother Warner and company, who had just arrived. At first they did not recognize me; but when I said, "Praise the Lord," Brother Warner arose in the spring wagon and lifting his hand to heaven shouted at the top of his voice, "Halleluiah! praise our God for eternal salvation!" and all the company joined with loud amens and, "Glory to God!"
At this meeting also Brother Warner's preaching was about all doctrinal. The great fundamental truths of full salvation, holiness, the church, unity, the downfall of sect Babylon, and the command to come out of her, the great apostasy, the last reformation, divine healing, etc., were preached uncompromisingly. I will say, brethren, this kind of preaching confirmed the saints and brought out clearly the holy remnant from the folds of confusion and drew the line in the manner that people knew the way to Zion and rejoiced in their freedom. Sinners were soundly converted under this preaching. They were not born dead. People usually came through at the altar shouting. It was not unusual during a sermon to see one hundred saints on their feet shouting and Brother Warner leaping and crying, "Fire! fire!" We all got this inspiration, and leaping and shouting were characteristic of most of the early preachers in the pulpit.