Page:Daniel Minort Baxter - Bishop Richard Allen and His Spirit (1923).pdf/82

74 your own. Allen’s spirit tells us to build not only churches and schools, but homes and businesses for ourselves. Allen’s spirit is not a pauper spirit, it is a spirit to have something—some of this world’s goods. He preached the redemption of the soul, but he never neglected to preach the salvation of the body. Allen’s spirit is an equal rights spirit, it believes in doing unto others, what you would they do unto you. Its motto is, “God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother.”

One day when the cares of my business pressed heavily upon me and I wondered would it be possible for me to pull through, I paused for a moment and put aside everything, slammed my desk cover down, and stepped around the corner to Mother Bethel and proceeded down into the vault where the sainted ashes of our patron father Richard Allen rest, I breathed there his spirit afresh, as I imagine I saw him in his conflicts, trying to establish the sacred heritage we enjoy to-day. I saw him in the spirit preaching behind his tall stand, which was too tall for Bishop H. B. Parks who tried to deliver the centenary sermon from it in 1916, I saw him in