Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Spencer Houghton Cone – Filled the Pulpit – PART EIGHT

Thomas E Kresal November 30, 2019

The worth of souls was presented to my mind with irresistible force; I never once thought of the want of word to tell the story of the cross, nor of the crowd of hearers, but directed them to Ephesians ii:10 — ‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them;’ and spoke for an hour with fervor and rapidity. Wonderfully did the Lord help me that day; and I felt it to be so easy to preach Jesus, and I was so ready to spend and be spent in his service, that I consented to an appointment for the next Lord’s day.

“My third sermon was from Malachi iii:16 — ‘Then they that feared the Lord, spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it,’ etc., and he gave me that day a soul for my hire, to encourage my heart and strengthen my hands — blessed be his holy name forever! Oh, what am I, or what my father’s house, that to me this grace should be given, ‘to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ?.’

“Brother C. B. Brown now asked me if I was licensed to preach. I said, no. He said he had never heard me, but from the report of many of his people, and from what everybody said out of doors, he had no doubt I was called to the work. At his suggestion, I wrote to Baltimore for my letter of dismission, received it the next Saturday, and preached for the First church on the Lord’s day morning. After service, brother Brown stopped the members and read my letter, upon the credit of which I was immediately received. He then asked the members if they had any doubt of my being called of God to the work of the ministry. They said no. And upon the motion of Deacon Enoch Reynolds, I was unanimously licensed, June 24, 1815, to preach the gospel of the blessed God.

In the afternoon brother Brown informed the church that he should set out the next day to visit his aged parents in New Jersey, to be absent six weeks, and should leave brother Cone to supply his pulpit. He had not spoken a word to me upon the subject, and I told him it would be impossible, for I had preached all I knew. He said I could preach or shut up the house as I pleased, and so left me.

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