C. A. Stiles is not a familiar name.  He was not famous.  He didn’t do anything outstanding to draw attention to himself.  But he was faithful to his Saviour.

C.A. was born in 1836, near Charleston, South Carolina.  Following his salvation, he was baptized not long before his twentieth birthday, joining the First Baptist Church in Sumter.  A year before the Civil War, he entered Furman University, but he left school in order to join the Confederate Army where he was wounded and discharged.  In 1869 he was ordained to the ministry, eventually serving in six different churches, some of them at the same time.  He was often so poor that he had to walk between churches, but this didn’t keep him from his God-given tasks.  Brother Stiles’ life was filled with tragedy, but, again, he continued faithful unto the end.  For example, in grief he buried three wives and many of his own children.  Three daughters, but no sons survived him.  His oldest son was fifteen, when he was killed as the result of an explosion on the river steamer Marion.

On this day in 1908, the members of the forty-year-old Good Hope Baptist Church, gathered together to hear their pastor once again, but on this occasion they were disappointed.  He was in glory rejoicing with his Saviour, having died the day before at the age of seventy-two.

– This Day in Baptist History III, David Cummins