THE EMANCIPATION OF ROBERT SADLER
Authors ROBERT SADLER with MARIE CHAPIAN
Publisher BETHANY HOUSE
ISBN 0-7642-0940-6
Originally published in 1975 eleven years before the death of Robert Sadler this book has been republished and is also available for the Kindle. Apparently later in life Robert felt it right to begin to speak of his earlier days as a slave and the long story of his escape and the twists and turns that brought him into the Christian life of service in ways rare to read of. It is a stirring tale and one that will surprise. The idea that children could be sold into slavery as late as 1910 will amaze. For those who have made simplistic easy judgements about the strife between black and white in the southern states of the USA will have their eyes opened. Sadler was enslaved and illiterate, he ran away after nine years of captivity knowing virtually nothing of the ‘outside’ world. Apparently his father sold a number of his children to serve on the Beal Plantation in near Anderson, South Carolina for the sum of eighty-five dollars. Robert had a damaged eardrum, suffered with a speech impediment and all in all everything would seem to vitiate against the rather wonderful path he took. There is a transparency, simplicity, humility and honesty to be found here. It is a delight to follow this man and see the triumph of God’s grace in his life. Embedded here are some jewel like sentences that expose the victory of faith. Absence of bitterness, unrestrained compassion, the giftedness that God loves to impart to those who will simply trust Him. It seems wise that the biographer, evidently helped in the authorship of this book by Marie Chapian, kept the things of his past hidden until he felt God’s prompting to share them toward the latter part of his life. Time is grace where God works and thus we get context, something of the whole picture. The way God uses those things of our past, the pain, abuse and deprivation as in Robert’s case, led to that time when we can appreciate with wonder the profound difference between the way of slavery to this dark world and the liberty of the children of God in God’s kingdom. “So many thoughts twirl in my head…. I want to think back as far as I can remember-think on things I had long ago buried and let stay buried. There were things I never told anyone. Now is the time to tell it, though. Help me remember it, Lord, so I can tell just the way it was.” Well worth the read, the story of the great grace of God triumphing over all the works of evil in a most definitive way in the life of one man of tragic and simple background.
