“The announcement of Dr. Warner’s death has cast a deep sadness over the conference. No other conference can feel his loss as we feel it. In a peculiar sense he was ours. No man ever had the hold upon our preachers that he had. We can scarcely realize that he has gone from us to return no more. He may have made mistakes in some things, like other men, but he was a good man. That his soul during his last earthly hours should he ‘wonderfully filled with the peace of God,’ is just what we might have expected. For thirty years he endured the hardships of a West Virginia itinerant, sometimes traveling day and night, and making the greatest sacrifices to build up the church he loved. Naught but devotion to God’s cause ever led him to do so much for it. But his work now is done. Perhaps we should not grieve over his departure, but we cannot help doing so. The entire conference weeps. Said a brother, ‘Why didn’t the Lord take me, and spare Brother Warner?’ This expression serves to show how keenly his loss is felt.” Bishop N. Castle held the next conference at New Haven. During the session I received a telegram that I had been nominated by the prohibitionists of the fourth district for Congress, a compliment which I appreciated all the more because the honor came unsought. Yes, I was a prohibitionist, and am yet, and expect to remain one until something better claims my support. The four hundred votes cast for the ticket in the district represented a thoughtful, moral, courageous element of which I have always been proud. Only such people, as a rule, vote the prohibition ticket. As I entered upon the fourth year of district work I determined it should be my last, at least for a while. I had been kept away from my books already too long, and consciously realized that, while I might be gaining a little some ways, I was losing in others. The church cannot find its highest ideals in men who live wholly outside their libraries. It is study—familiarity with the thoughts and methods of others—that broadens a preacher. The map studied by many of us is too small, and needs to be enlarged so as to extend the vision. If we would see and know things, we must look and search after them. The man is exceedingly unfortunate who, having eyes, refuses to see, and having intelligence, neglects the acquisition of knowledge. My advice to the young man at the threshold of the ministry is, “Buy good books and read them; study your discourses thoroughly and with an eye to somebody’s salvation, and then give the people the very best that God has put in you.”