<TITLE>20. Par 70-73</TITLE>L-70 I remember the time standing at my latest temptation, my hardest. My wife was laying in the morgue, a corpse. My little baby was laying dying. Healthy little child a few hours before, but it tookin' meningitis. And I went to the hospital. They had it in an isolated ward, and the flies was all over it's little eyes. I was just a young minister, about twenty-five years old, mother dead, the baby laying dying. I went in reverently, got down on my knees, and I said, "Lord God, what have I done? Has there been anything that I've done to transgress You? Are You doing this... Or, why You tearing my heart apart? Don't take my little baby." I said, "Lord, I love that little thing so much." She was just big enough that when I come around the corner and blow the horn, she'd raise her little hands out and go, "Goo, goo, goo." And I just love little children.
And there she laid there. The meningitis had drawed her, just in a few hours, her little blue eyes had cross, her little hand trying to wave good-bye to me. Oh, I couldn't stand it. I thought, "Oh, God, what can I do?" I knelt down to pray, and when I prayed, looked like a black sheet come down. God refused to hear me. What about that? I raised up and looked at the little thing.

L-71 And Satan come to me. He said, "Now, will you serve Him? Now, what do you think about Him? Your daddy died about a--two weeks ago in your arms. A doctor killed him with a dose of medicine." Said, "Your brother, less than a month ago, was killed up there on a--on the road, and you picked him up and his blood running out of his body, where a drunk run over him." Said, "There lays your wife down here in the morgue. And now, He's taking your baby out of your arms." Said, "You still love Him?"
I said, "Though He slay me, yet I love Him. If He sends me to hell at the judgment day, He's just. I love Him anyhow."
Something happened one day down in my heart. He'd put love in there. It's part of me. And it's more me than I am myself.
I laid my hands over on her little head. I said, "God bless you, sweetheart, Sherry. I am going to take you in a few minutes when you die and lay your little body on mama's arms. When I take you up there in the graveyard and I bury you. But daddy will see you again someday, sweetheart."

L-72 The Angels come and took her little soul away. Packed her down and put her on the arms of her mother. I went out there and you heard the undertaker say, "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and earth to earth." And as the old yellow clay clods dropped upon the little casket, the breeze come down through the trees seemed to say,
 There's a land beyond the river,
 They 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 will ring those golden bells for you and me.
And old turtledove flew up there in the tree and begin cooing. I thought it might be the soul of my baby. Then it left me. I know it wouldn't leave me.

L-73 How I remember taking little Billy, here. We went to put a flower on the grave the next easter. Just about the break of day. He had the little flower hugged up in his arms. And as he walked along, I took off my hat as I walked to the grave. He reached over, took off his little hat (he was about four years old). He set the flower down on his mother's grave and put his little hands up, begin to cry.
He said, "Daddy, is my mama down there?"
I said, "No, honey. She's not there. No, little sister is not there either. But they are in a land beyond the river." Yonder someday, this grave will open. She was a Holy Ghost borned again saint. And some glorious day that grave will open, and I'll see them again. Just as sure as I'm standing in the pulpit, I'll meet them again. I'll see my baby.


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