One sister, with tears in her eyes, said:  “He preached my mother’s funeral.”  Another said:  “He used to visit us in Ohio; and we always loved so much to see him come.”  A brother said:  “I traveled with him over two thousand miles, and he was always one thing.”  Others said:  “The meeting is lonesome without him.”  “He was at our love feast in Pennsylvania the year he was killed,” said another.  It would be vain to attempt to follow up all the affectionate memories that were expressed by the loving throngs of sanctified hearts that surrounded his tomb.

In this book elder John Kline is set forth not as dead, but as alive; as living and moving amongst us again.  His life work stands recorded on earth as well as in heaven.  With untiring perseverance Brother Kline kept a record of his work every day for a period of twenty-nine years.  These records contain two great facts common to the life of every man, woman and child.

First fact.—­Where he spent the day and night.

Second fact.—­How he spent the day and night.

A truthful record of these for many, made public, would blast their reputation abroad and blight their peace at home.  But not so with our beloved brother.  Whilst it is true that he had no expectation of his Diary ever being published, it is equally true that it does not contain a single entry of which he has cause to be ashamed before man or God.  That the entries are faithful and true needs no proof other than the testimony that thousands still living are ready to bear to his untarnished name as a man honest and honorable in all things.

As a Christian, the beloved ministering brethren who spoke at his funeral are to-day not ashamed to apply to him the same words they applied to him then, and which were taken as the subject of discourse on that occasion.  In speaking of his appointment to the ministry they took these words:  “And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost.”  Acts 6:5.  They also added the other words spoken of Stephen in the eighth verse of the same chapter, a man “full of grace and power.”  Can anything loftier be said of a man’s qualification for the work of the ministry?

As Stephen was the first Christian martyr, and Brother Kline the last then known, they closed their discourses in heartfelt realization of these words:  “And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.” We all took part in the lamentation—­the writer himself being present and speaking on the occasion—­and felt that the ruthless hand of violence had wickedly torn from our midst a friend and counsellor whose place could not be filled by any other.

As a kind-hearted, loving mother puts her child’s best new dress on it before taking it to church or in public, so have I endeavored to clothe the diary of Brother Kline in a suitable attire of Sunday clothes.  I sincerely believe that the work in this form will be highly acceptable to the Brotherhood at large; and as Brother Daniel Hays says in a letter to me, “productive of much good.”