<TITLE>04. Par 33-42</TITLE>L-33 And I'd go in. He said, "Just come with me." And we went to the laboratory, and there he picked up a little glass tube and he shook it. And there seemed to be a streak in it. He said, "That is the meningitis germ and it's in the baby. We drew this from the spine to release the spasm." And he said, "In this we find that it's tubucular meningitis." Said, "It nursed it from its mother." And said, "If that baby should live, it would be crippled, afflicted." But he said, "By the mercies of God, the baby is going to be with its mother."
I said, "Doctor, I want to see the baby."
He said, "You can't do it, Billy, because of Billy Paul, your boy." Said, "You would pack the germ back to him."

L-35 And after trying to encourage me the best that he knew how, when he left the building, I slipped around and went down into the basement. And when I got there, the hospital at that time wasn't fixed as it is now, and the window was up and the screen was out, and some flies had got into the little fellow's eyes. And I shooed the flies away and looked down at her little body, all drawed, and her little legs moving back and forth. And I said to her, "Sherry, honey, do you know daddy?"
And it seemed like that she was trying to wave her little hand to me: about eight or nine months old. And I looked at her. And she was suffering so hard, a little innocent baby, until one of her little baby-blue eyes crossed. So much pain, oh, I would've took it at any time in her stead.

L-37 And I knelt down on my knees with the doors closed, and I said, "O God, Father, there lays my wife, the baby's mother laying yonder in the undertaker's morgue. There's Billy Paul on the bed, sick. And here's my baby, dying. You surely, Lord, won't take her. I love her. And she resembles her mother. I want to raise her. Won't You please, O God, spare my baby's life?"
And as I looked up... And as you all know, I've always been subject to visions. It seemed like a black sheet begin to unfold, coming down, as if God took my prayer and throwed it right back in my face. And I said, "What have I done, God? Have I transgressed Your laws, that I should have this punishment? If it is, You just reveal it, and I'll repent. I'll do anything, but don't take my baby." And I seen she was going anyhow. I raised up.

L-39 And then the tempter came to me. There was the one time in all my life that I can call, was the crucial moment, my Gethsemane. When I was just barely holding to the bed, the devil said, "There you are. That's the reward for trying to serve Him. You mean that He'll take that young twenty-two-year-old mother, and lay her yonder as a corpse in the morgue, and will take the precious baby, your own flesh and blood, and slam your prayer right in your face? And then you mean to say that you'll serve Him?"
I was standing between opinions. It had to be decided. Then I put my hand over on her little head; I said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the Name of the Lord." I felt relief.
I said, "Sherry, honey, daddy cannot go where you are now, but daddy can come someday. I'll lay you on the arm of mother and bury you, but daddy will see you again someday."

L-42 Mr. Isler, who's probably sitting present now (I can't see through the crowd.), the ex-state senator here of Indiana. I was going up the highway. Mr. Isler, I guess you can well remember it.
I had my hands behind me, going up to the graveyard right after the flood, weeping. I used to go up there in the evening. An old turtledove would set over in the tree and would sing to me. It seemed like down through the breezes of those pines and trees, seemed like the song would whisper through it, saying:
There's a Land beyond the river,
That we call the sweet forever,
We only reach that shore by faith decree;
One by one we gain the portal,
There to dwell with the immortal,
Someday they'll ring those golden bells for you and me.


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