The Autobiography of Brantley York

What our civilization would be today but for the old time preacher, it is hard to say. His tremendous faith and religious zeal may have filled his imagination with many realities that have no significance for the cold, practical, calculating eye of today; and judged by the standards of today he loses. But in pioneer days of nearly a century ago, when settlements were isolated and remote from culture and commercial activities; when the inbreeding of fatuous ideas was turning civilization back toward primitive man; when post offices, newspapers, literature, Sunday-schools and secular schools were unknown to vast wild areas; when Christianity was graded little higher than the animism of the Red-man, the old time preacher was the one, and about the only, apostle of enlightenment that the back districts heard, and his everlasting influence is felt. Wherever he went he preached a burning gospel, and the household gods of these hardy woodmen beamed with a simple truth. Wherever he hitched his horse and threw down his saddle-bags, he found a welcomed resting place, and the neighbors would follow a trail for miles leading to his abode, and sit the long night by the great open fire listening to the stories of the world beyond. Politics and commerce, men and measures, were his theme; and before the night grew still he would draw forth his New Testament and explain to the simple woodmen the still more simple plan of salvation. Such were his methods, and his coming and going, events of state importance, wove into their primitive lives some of the culture and the hope of the race until they became a part of the warp and woof of humanity. What our civilization would be today but for the coming of the old time preacher, it is hard to say, but a picture of neglected and forgotten humanity can be imagined. One of these apostles of enlightenment was the Reverend Brantley York, the blind teacher and preacher, whose autobiography tells of the labors of a century almost, and pictures the backwoodsman in his daily routine. The social, moral, religious and industrial life is given as the author tells the story of his own life from infancy to past his fourscore years.