| 743 him: 'Your life is spared for this time, that you may warn sinners to repentance.'
"A few years after this he was very sick, when he had the dream of hearing John the Baptist preach, and saw great crowds flock to his service. Also recognized some difference in the construction of scripture as given by John and as had been father's understanding. Later he heard James Blakeslee and some one else preach,-Mormon missionaries,-and I think it was then that father was sent for to come over and put them down. He went, but the preaching was so much like John the Baptist's that as a result James Blakeslee baptized father. I think this was in 1836, or else 1837. [The Church Record has it April 1, 1838.-H. C. S.] Six months later mother was baptized by an Elder Savage.
"In 1838 he left Ontario with team, and traveled into Missouri, arriving at Far West just in time to be driven out. . . . They took refuge in Illinois, settling at Commerce, afterwards known as Nauvoo. They were glad to live on corn bread and water, the bread made of meal grated on a hand grater mixed up in water, while some of the saints by the side of them lived sumptuously. . . . But father soon got to work at his trade, and his devoted wife, my mother, (God bless her soul,) with her hands in the wash tub, though she had four little children to care for, viz,: Samuel H., Louisa, Julia, and John E., soon had plenty to eat and wear."
In June, 1838, he was ordained an elder by James Blakeslee. While at Far West he was ordained to the office of seventy.
In Nauvoo, Elder Gurley was called to go on a mission; and, selling his only cow to raise means to provide necessary supplies for his family, started out with full faith in his mission. The first night from home he tarried with a Mr. Cline who inquired if Elder Gurley had provided for his family; and when he learned that he had and how, he presented him with another cow. It was probably of this mission that Elder A. W. Moffet, now of Pleasanton, Iowa, writes under date of June 6, 1900, as follows:-
"The winter of 1840, the Episcopal Wesleyan and Protestant
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