James Smith Coleman was born on this day (February 23) in 1827. He was saved by grace when he was eleven-years-old, after which he joined the Beaver Dam Baptist Church in Kentucky. When he reached adulthood he was elected county sheriff, but one evening after attending a revival meeting, the Holy Spirit convicted him to leave his post and to become a gospel preacher. His church agreed and when Coleman began preaching, the power of God followed him everywhere.
Bro. Coleman was gifted with a clear and quick mind and an orator’s tongue. He was often asked to participate in debates with other preachers over doctrine, and often he consented.
On one occasion he was asked to debate the subject of believer’s baptism with a Methodist named William Caskey. As the debate developed Caskey declared that when the Bible states that complete households were baptized it must have included infants and so babies are Biblical candidates for baptism.
In his rebuttal Bro. Coleman stated: “I am surprised at Brother Caskey’s limited information concerning Lydia’s household. He has inferred that Lydia had children under the age of accountability, and that, therefore these children were baptized. I am surprised, Sir, that you do not know that Lydia was a widow, and a traveling cloth merchant, and that she never had but one child, and that was a daughter, who married a red-headed, one-eyed shoemaker, and had moved off to Damascus, and had not been at home for years, and that her household at that time consisted of herself and servants who assisted her in her business. I am surprised, Sir, that you did not know this.”
Thoroughly confused, Caskey said, “Dr. Coleman, how do you know what you have just said?” The Baptist preacher paused, then filled his lungs before declaring, “I inferred it, sir, just like you inferred that there were children in the household.” The Bible says no such thing. The audience roared with laughter and the meeting promptly came to a close.
The rest of the story is that one of Methodist Caskey’s leading church members, W. Pope Yeaman, subsequently became a Baptist, serving the Lord in Baptist churches in Missouri and further west.
