The Life of Joseph Bates

Life sketches of great and good men are given to the world for the benefit of generations that follow them. Human life is more or less an experiment to all who enter upon it. Hence the frequent remark that we need to live one life to learn how to live. The life of Elder Joseph Bates was crowded with unselfish motives and noble actions. That which makes his early history intensely interesting is the fact that he became a devoted follower of Christ, and a thorough practical reformer, and ripened into glorious manhood a true Christian gentleman, while exposed to the evils of sea-faring life, from the cabin-boy of 1807, to the wealthy retiring master of 1828, a period of twenty-one years. It was during his sea-faring life, while separated from the saving influences of the parental, Christian home, and exposed to the temptations of sailor life, that the writer of the following pages became thoroughly impressed with moral and religious principles, and gathered strength to trample intemperance and all other forms of vice beneath his feet, and rise in the strength of right and of God to the position of a thorough reformer, a devoted Christian, and an efficient minister of the gospel.