Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Spencer Houghton Cone – Bread Winner at an Early Age – This is Your Last Warning! – PART FOUR

Thomas E Kresal – November 26, 2019

Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Spencer Houghton Cone – Bread Winner at an Early Age – This is Your Last Warning! – PART FOUR

It might be supposed that during his experience as an editor, actor, politician, and commander, his religious impressions were almost entirely obliterated. And this seems to have been the case, for he says, “While I commanded the Baltimore Union Artillery Company, I do not recollect attending public worship more than twice in two years; so carried away was I with military ardor, politics and war that they completely engrossed my mind.” But a mother’s care and prayers were yet to be rewarded. They that sow reap, though the harvest seem long ripening. The still small voice must be heard — the son of many prayers be gathered in the fold of God. Hear his own graphic account of his conversion.

“In the month of November, 1813, after breakfast, I took up the newspaper, and saw among other things a large sale of books at Wood’s Auction Rooms, and said to myself, I will look in as I go to the office, and see what they are. I did so, and the first book I took up was a volume of the works of John Newton. In an instant my whole life passed in view before me. I remembered taking that book out of the College Library, while at Princeton, and reading Newton’s Life to my mother. His dream of the lost ring reminded me forcibly of my dream of the well, and I felt an ardent desire to own the book and read the dream again.

I left the Rooms, having first requested Mr. Wood, who was a particular friend, to put it up for sale as soon as he saw me in the evening, as it was the only work I wanted. he promised to do so, and I immediately went out towards our office, which was nearly opposite; but I had scarcely reached the middle of the street, when a voice, “like the sound of many waters,” said to me –This is your last warning. I trembled like an aspen-leaf — I felt myself to be in the grasp of the Almighty — and an earthquake could not have increased my dismay. Sermons heard when only eight years old, on the Balm of Gildead, and on the Lamb of God — the dream — all were painfully present, and I thought my hour of doom had come. I went out the office, took down the daybook to charge the new advertisements, but my hand trembled so that I could not write, and I put the book back in its place. I went out into South Street — then walked up and down Market Street in a crowd till dinner time, to drown, if it were possible, my thoughts and feelings. But all in vain. The sound still rung, not only in my ears, but through my heart, like the sound of a trumpet — This is your last warning.

Thomas E. Kresal from – S. H. Ford, editor, Repository and Review, 1855, pp. 546-558.

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