God saved me in Virginia. I was a wicked, sinful man—a drunkard and gambler with no hope on earth. When God reached me, He reached one of the worst characters in my neighborhood.
On the farm, I raised tobacco and drank whiskey. At one time I had 28,000 sticks of tobacco in the barn. I used to say I would drink up all my profits and go to Hell, and my wife could go back to her parents. When I heard the Gospel story I had been fixing to go on another drunk—I had been on many before. I had often left my wife and little baby with hardly enough to eat and scarcely any clothes to wear while I got drunk. I would come into that home in a drunken condition and shoot at the cats or anything else. But God lifted me out of such a sinful life. I went to an altar and prayed. I left all my sins and burdens there, and the Lord took them all out of my life and gave me a happy home.
I had thought I couldn’t possibly give up raising tobacco; I thought it was the only living I could make. I needed to make a living: I had a mortgage against my home for $1969, and was getting further behind every day. But God gave me a good job, and soon the mortgage was paid.
After God saved me, I swept out the old tobacco barn where I used to chew and blaspheme. I started praying in that old barn where I had once gone to end my life. It was one night when my wife had gone to pray by her bedside for her drunken husband, I wrote a note and put it under my plate. The note said, “You will find my body in the old tobacco barn, and my soul in Hell.” After I had tied the rope around my neck, I heard a voice. It was the voice of my wife down by the bedside praying. God prevented me from doing that awful deed.
When I had been saved for some years, a preacher came to Virginia preaching restitution. After the sermon he asked me about my lack of spiritual progress. He said, “When you get down to pray, what are you looking at?” I said, “A five-dollar gold piece—and it gets bigger all the time.” He wanted to know what I was going to do about it, and I said I would make it right sometime. I told him the story behind the gold piece: I was driving the woman I worked for to church. As she stepped out of her carriage she dropped a five-dollar gold piece from her purse and it hit the sand. She didn’t see it, so I just put my “number ten” on it and hid it. After hearing this, the minister told me I would have to make restitution for it.
Later that evening, I climbed into my buggy with my wife and child and started for home. As the old mule’s hooves hit the Macadam road, they seemed to say, “Make res-ti-tu-tion! Make res-ti-tu-tion!” For five miles that mule preached restitution to me. When I got home I was glad to put the mule in the stable and go to bed. But my conscience kept bothering me. I tossed and turned, and the bedsprings seemed to say, “Res-ti-tu-tion! Res-ti-tu-tion!” Finally I told the Lord if He would let me live until morning, I would make it. Then I turned over and went to sleep.
The next morning I said, “Wife, don’t cook any breakfast for me. I’m going.” I got behind the mule and traveled five miles. I rapped at the woman’s door, and said, “Here is a five-dollar bill. I want to make restitution.” Then I told her all about it, and I received her blessing.
I thought that was the end of it, but God resurrected my memory. It cost me two hundred dollars before I had all my restitutions made. I paid up, and God gave me the victory.
I am rejoicing today that God delivered such a wicked man as I was.
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