James G. Baldwin Autobiography of Rev. James G. Baldwin

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. I would rather some one else would write the story of my life. I have feared that there would be a temptation to introduce too much of the ego, that so many capital I's would be needed that the printers might be embarrassed in providing this important letter. However, it has come to me of late that my own life and labors are better known to myself than to any one else. Why then should it be a duty to be dreaded, or to be left to another who could not know the ins and outs of my life as well as myself? If the critic would permit I should be glad to write it in my individual style, so that those who have heard me preach and sing and pray would say, That is Baldwin.<br><br>I do not wish to write out all my mistakes and crookedness, but I shall try to chronicle as much as I may of the good that it has been mine to do and enjoy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.<br><br>The time in which I have lived has been the most wonderful in the history of the world's progress. For many generations men appeared to be content to move in the treadmill rounds of their ancestors. Within my own lifetime it was deemed a wicked interference with the laws of the Almighty to invent a vehicle that would travel more than fifteen miles an hour, but I have lived to see the age of express trains, aeroplanes, and wireless telegraphy.