Story of My Life

IN puttng forth this volume its author has yielded to the insistent desire of many of his friends. It is now some five years since he retired from the more active work of the ministry; but that ministry in its unselfish devotion to the service of mankind, in its entire and unchallenged loyalty to revealed truth, in its loving, glad consecration to the will of God at the cost of sacrifice and hardship, holds a large place in the grateful memory of thousands who will hail with delight the appearance of this volume.

It is, we think, to be regretted that some other pen than his own has not given us the portraiture of his life, for only so could it be true to that which men have seen of him in the arena of conflict with evil, and which many now see in the repose of a mission well-nigh accomplished. His pen refuses to record the traits which give luster to his life—the things long since recorded in the memory of those who have known him best, and things now seen in his attractive and beautiful age.

In the "Address of Welcome to the Orator of the Philisonian Society" we see the style which marks the man of seventy-eight years. It is interesting to trace the identity of mental trend and habit through all the productions of his pen from "The Prize Essay" to "The Story of My Life." There is development, increase of power, extension of outlook, but mental habitudes are the same. Whether it be the young man of twenty-three or the veteran of seventy-eight, his approach to his theme and his method of handling it are identical. The average man begins his literary life with a composite style which is neither his own nor another's. He seeks the outlook and

expression of the heroes of his studies and the masters of his classroom, and attains neither, though there is a strange commingling of the mental coloring of them all. With change of masters and heroes his style changes. Who has not been amused in looking over essays and orations, yellow with time and which won the applause of his fellow-students, as he has traced the impress of Virgil in one, of Homer in another, and of his favorite professor in them all. The time came when he sought his own outlook and tried to formulate his own conceptions in the language of his own individuality. By this patient process he won a style which was his own. But W. S. Turner's style seems to have been his own from the beginning.

In "The Prize Essay" entitled "Industry the Road to Success," written in his twenty-third year, may be seen one of the secrets of his life's achievement. What must have been the industry of the man-his constitution never vigorous-who as student worked his own way through college, and as presiding elder traversed vast districts, yet so kept himself in touch with the classics and abreast of scientific and philosophical thought that he was competent, on call, to fill a professor's chair in the University of the Pacific. Such industry awes us and rebukes the folly of those who complain of the hardships to which the Church of to-day calls its ministers.

Much of the history of California and of this Inland Empire is interwoven with the life of this man of untiring industry and self-sacrifice. In his travels as a minister he knocked at the door of the pioneer, visited the camps of miners and lumbermen, was the honored guest in homes of refinement, was in touch with all classes over a vast territory, impressing all by his unpretentious culture and piety, and ministering to all by the breadth and sincerity of his human sympathies and by the message of love which he brought from the Heavenly Father. Who can gather up the fruits of such a life, or fix limits to the influence so widely cast and yet so direct and personal? As teacher and president of seminary and college, who can know the measure of his molding power upon the civilization of a

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Story of My Life: Followed by an Appendix Containing Characteristic ...