' When they sang 'John Brown died
that the slave might be free' they were singing more than a
record of John Brown's generous motive; it was a record of one of
God's strange counsels. 'For God chose the foolish things of the
world that He might put to shame the things that are strong, and
the base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that He might
bring to nought the things that are, that no flesh should glory
before God.' Verily, then, it might seem worth while to set the
story of John Brown in such a plain, brief form as to make it
available for busy folk who have no time to read longer accounts
of him. If it sets some thinking of the ways of God rather than
admiring John Brown, that will be just what he would have
ardently wished who desired always that God should be magnified
in his body, whether in the fighting which he never loved and
never shirked, or the hanging which he often foresaw and never
feared.
CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD AND THE VOW
The birth of John Brown is recorded in the following laconic
style by his father in a little autobiography he wrote for his
children in the closing days of his life. 'In 1800, May 8, John
was born one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing
else very uncommon.
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