Brief Recollections of George W. Walker

The life of the late Rev. George Washington Walker, by Rev. Maxwell P. Gaddis, is a volume filled with matter at once historical, feelingly religious, and possessing the attractions of romance, though its facts and incidents are strictly true, and without exaggeration. The volume, too, gives proof of considerable skill in practiced writing, and such as no one could easily produce without a previous schooling in such composition, which Mr. Gaddis has the good fortune to possess. The subject of the book furnishes matter, in his very useful life, considerably in advance of ordinary men; for Mr. Walker was a man, in many respects, above the ordinary rank of common ministers; and this will be the conclusion to which the readers of the volume will come.

The account of the conversion of Mr. Walker's parents, himself, and the whole family, from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism, furnishes a most useful part of the book. The entire family was one of superior intellectual and moral qualities, inheriting a family nobility above common respectability. They were all trained with great diligence in the peculiarities of Romanism. To all of these they conscientiously and honestly adhered, till the light of truth and the influence of grace united, led them off, step by step, from the errors and corruptions of Popery, to the knowledge of the truth, and the experience of its privileges, and the practice of its duties. In their conversion, too, will be seen, graphically portrayed, the power of the Bible to instruct Roman Catholics, the influence of a good life on the part of Protestants to convince them of their errors, and lead them to Christ. It will be seen, too, that persecution of Protestants, or heretics, even unto death, if necessary, is an inseparable part of the creed of Rome, and it is one of the last things which a conscientious Romanist will give up. This was the case with Rev. G. W. Walker – it must be the case with all, as Mr. Walker himself stated up to his dying day; and when he renounced this doctrine of Rome, at his conversion to Christ, all the others were thrown to the winds with it.

The volume possesses great worth in furnishing a historical, convincing proof of the power of the religion of the Bible, and of Protestant institutions gradually undermining Popery. The history of the Walker family is the history of many thousands of Roman Catholic families, who have been delivered from the errors and superstitions of Rome, and have been brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Multitudes of Romanists, both of native American origin and of foreign birth, have been saved from the darkness, the guilt, the power and pollution of sin, and have taken the Bible for their rule of faith, in the place of the commandments and ordinances of Rome. And, indeed, only few of the children of foreign Romanists continue in the faith of their parents, and fewer still of their grandchildren. There are now less than two millions and a quarter of professing Roman Catholics in the United States; whereas, there would be now over five millions, were parents, children, and grandchildren to remain in the faith in which they were originally instructed. The part of this volume which gives such interesting and reliable information on this subject, in the case of the Walker family, possesses surpassing interest.

Maxwell Pierson Gaddis (1811-1888) was a prolific author and Methodist itinerant preacher. His best known book is his autobiography "Footprints of an Itinerant," which has been reprinted dozens of times.