Anecdotes and Illustrations

One Sunday afternoon we drove with our Gospel wagon down to a street in the city that was given up to vice in the lowest forms. We stopped in front of one of these dens of iniquity and began to sing Gospel hymns. The women flocked to the windows and out on to the street. Some of them were very drunk. One of the most drunken, urged on by her companions, made a sudden rush and sprang up the steps of the Gospel wagon and in among our workers. There was a great laugh, but instantly I said to the driver, “Drive on.” And we went up the street carrying the drunken woman away to the dismay of her friends. We took her to our rooms and she soon became very much sobered.

Wise Christian workers pointed her the way of life and she was soon in tears and before long on her knees looking to God through Christ to forgive her sins. The devil had overreached himself.

An Angry Father Converted

When I lived in Minneapolis a child of a man deep down in sin had been converted. This greatly angered the father. One day I was holding an open-air meeting at the foot of Washington Avenue. The father thought he saw his opportunity to have revenge. He got a basket of rotten eggs, and went up on the top of an adjoining building to throw the eggs at us as we held the meeting. But as he stood on the top of the building and was about to throw the eggs, the Spirit of God touched his heart and brought him under the deepest conviction of sin.

At the close of our meeting that night in our hall, a tall muscular man with a hardened face that bore the marks of long-continued sin, came to me overwhelmed with grief and asked me to pray for him. He said, “This afternoon when you were speaking down at the foot of Washington Avenue, I went up on the top of the building with a basket of rotten eggs to rotten-egg you, but I became overwhelmed with a sense of sin and I have come up here tonight for you to tell me what to do to be saved.” It was easy work to lead him to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as the One who had borne all his sins in His own body on the cross, and the man left the hall that night rejoicing in the knowledge of sins forgiven.

Are You a Murderer?

I was sitting one day with a very brilliant lawyer in the city of Minneapolis, who was beginning to go down through drink. He was partly intoxicated this day. I said to him, “John, you ought to be a Christian.” “Oh,” he said, with a laugh, “I don’t believe as you do. I am one of these new theologians. I believe in the larger hope. Now, honor bright,” he continued, “do you believe in hell, Torrey?” “Yes,” I replied, “I do.” “Honestly, do you believe in hell?” “I do.” “See here, suppose I should drop down dead right here, what do you think would become of me?” I said, “John, if you should drop down dead right here, you would go to hell and you would deserve to.” He bristled up full of anger and said, “What have I done?” I said, “I will tell you what you have done. You have got your wife’s heart right under your heel, and you are grinding the life right out of it.” He could not deny it. He knew it was true. I said, “You are doing something worse. You are trampling under foot the Son of God who died on the cross of Calvary for you.”

How many a young man is killing his mother by his wild, reckless, dissolute life. I was once stopping in a beautiful home, fine house, spacious grounds, many servants, horses and carriages, lawns and parks, everything that money could buy. Now to have gone into that home and not have known what lay beneath the surface, one would have said, “The lady at the head of this house must be perfectly happy.” But I found out while I was there that the mother of the household, so far from being perfectly happy, was perfectly miserable. When all the rest of the household were asleep, she would arise in the silent hours of the night and walk up and down the broad halls of that mansion with a breaking heart. She could not sleep. She had a wayward boy in New York City and did not even know where he was. Some months afterward I stood by the grave into which that woman had been lowered, and that wayward son stood by my side. The doctor’s verdict was that that woman died from a stroke of apoplexy, but I said in my heart, “This woman died of murder, and this man beside me, her son, is her murderer.”

I told this story once in Melbourne, Australia, in the Town Hall at the businessmen’s meeting. Scarcely had I finished the story when a man thirty or thirty-five years of age in the back part of the room sprang to his feet and came rushing down the aisle crying aloud, “I am a murderer. I am a murderer. I have killed my mother.” He was a notorious infidel and drunkard. He had often blasphemed Christ from the public platform in that city, but this day the arrow went home, his sin was laid bare. He went into a side room and fell upon his knees and cried to God for mercy. After the meeting was over, I went and knelt by his side, where an aged Episcopal clergyman was talking to him. “Oh,” he said, “is there pardon for me? For one who has spoken so blasphemously as I have from the infidel platform in this city?” I showed him that there was pardon for the chief of sinners, that there was pardon for one who had killed his mother by his reckless life and even for one who had blasphemed the name of the Saviour who had died on the cross of Calvary for him, and done all he could to get others to blaspheme Him too, and that day he went away trusting in the Saviour, whom he had once blasphemed.

What joy there must have been in that mother’s heart that day in the Glory if word of her son’s conversion was taken to her.

A Bartender's Jest

An honest German couple in Chicago kept a saloon on the west side. It did not seem to have ever entered their heads that there was anything wrong in keeping a saloon. One day the woman was a little ill and complaining about the saloon. A company of colored people across the road were holding meetings and claiming that God answered their prayers. The bartender said jestingly to the saloon keeper’s wife, “Why don’t you go over and let the niggers pray for you?” She replied, “I believe I will.” She went over and they did pray for her and she was not only healed but led to accept Christ and saved.

She came back to the saloon and told what the Lord had done for her. After that every day she would go into the saloon, sit down with the men at the tables and urge them to accept Christ. The bartender was now frightened and said to the saloonkeeper, “You had better stop your wife’s talking, or she will spoil your business.” He said, “I don’t care if she does.” Soon he was converted himself and they both gave up the business and became active out and out Christians, and for years have been members of the Chicago Avenue Church.

Big Interest

One afternoon I got out of a streetcar to go to a home where my wife and I were to take tea with some friends. After paying my fare I had but seven cents left—all the money I had in the world. I did not even know where the money was coming from to buy breakfast for my family next morning, and yet I had no care as God had supplied our needs so often, I knew that He would now. A young woman got on the car and went to the front end of the car and dropped her five cents in the box. The driver opened the door and shook his head and said, “That five cents is bad.” She said, “That is all the five cents I have.” “Then,” he said, “you must get off the car.” The young woman was in great perplexity. I thought of my seven cents in my pocket, all the money I had, but I went to the front end of the oar and dropped five cents in the box and relieved the young woman’s embarrassment. I felt no poorer. I had no doubt that before I needed money, money would come. After going to the house of the friend, I went over town. As I was passing along the street a gentleman whom I knew got out of a carriage and went to his horse’s head. He saw me passing and held out his hand and said, “How do you do? How are you getting on in your work?” I told him I was getting on nicely. “Well,” he said “I want to give something for your work,” and he took out his pocketbook and gave me $200. The five cents had brought quick interest.

The Champion Heavy Weight Pugilist Converted

When we were in Launceston in Tasmania, I received a letter from a man asking me to visit his wife. He said his wife had been an invalid for many years and they had tried all the physicians in Launceston. He noticed in the papers that I was a doctor and he thought an American doctor might succeed where their home doctors had failed. It was evident that the man had mistaken me for a physician. A few nights after this man followed up his letter by coming around to the meeting to interview me personally. He was the champion heavyweight pugilist of Tasmania. He had not come to hear a sermon but to implore me to visit his sick wife. But he got there in time to hear the sermon. The subject was “Heroes and Cowards,” and he was greatly interested. In it I told the story of a North Carolina farmer’s son whose father at great sacrifice had sent him to college, and then when the father went to visit the son, the son was ashamed of him before his gay college companions. As I pictured this farmer with glad heart driving towards the college town to visit his son and then his son’s denial of his father, the pugilist grew very angry. He wanted to thrash that ungrateful son, but then the thought came to him, “You are meaner and more ungrateful than he. You owe more to God than that son owed his father and yet how are you treating Him?” Filled with shame at his ungrateful treatment of God, when I gave out the invitation, the pugilist rose to his feet and then came forward and turned around and faced the audience, most all of whom knew him by reputation, and publicly confessed his sin and his acceptance of Jesus Christ.

He immediately went to work for Christ, and about the last sight we saw as the steamer pulled out of Launceston and sailed down the river was Jim Burke, towering above the crowd waving goodbye to us with his red hymnbook.

A Child's Prayer Answered

A Christian worker going through the tenements in the east end of London looking for unfortunates to help, came one day into a wretched room in the upper story of one of the large tenement houses. There seemed to be no one in the room and the worker was about to leave when he noticed a ladder leading up to a hole in the ceiling. Something impelled him to climb the ladder. When he had put his head through the hole in the ceiling, the garret at first was so dark he could not see, but as he became accustomed to the darkness, he saw a child lying on a pile of stuff in the corner.

“What are you doing here, child?” the worker said. “Hush,” the child said, “don’t tell Father.” “But what are you doing here?” The child showed the worker his back bearing the marks of the awful beating that the drunken father had given him. The worker said, “You cannot stay here. You will die here. I will go and get you help.” As the worker was about to withdraw, the little fellow said, “Would you like to hear a hymn that I learned at the Sunday school?” The worker stopped a moment to listen and the child repeated the familiar verse,

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child.

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

Fain would I to Thee be brought,

Gracious Lord, forbid it not

In the kingdom of Thy grace,

Make a little child a place.”

Telling the child to keep quiet and he would soon return, the worker stole away for help. He found a place to take the child and soon returned to get him. Again he climbed the ladder and put his head through the hole in the ceiling, but everything was quiet. He spoke to the child but there was no answer. The child was dead. His prayer had been heard.

“In the kingdom of Thy grace,

The Lord had given the little child a place.”

“The Lord had given the little child a place.”

Common Stones Turned Into Diamonds

If it were announced that I were to speak in this hall tomorrow morning to the businessmen of the city upon a process which I had discovered by which common ordinary stones taken out of the street could be transformed into real diamonds, and if the businessmen of this city knew I really had discovered such a process, and this was the only occasion upon which I was to explain it, do you think there would be anyone here to hear the address? The building would be packed to its utmost capacity. The businessmen of this city would begin to gather hours before the appointed time of the meeting. They would camp out all night before the doors and a few moments after the doors were open, the building would be filled, and when I had finished describing the process, they would not wait for the benediction, but would rush out into the streets and into the country roads, and you would see leading men of this city, forgetting their dignity, down on their knees in the dirt and mud hunting for stones. If some friend should come along and say, “What are you doing there down in the dirt?” they would say, “Don’t bother me.” If they should still inquire, “What are you doing?” they would reply, “Looking for stones.”

I can tell you that very thing. I can tell you how to go out into the streets and alleys of the city, out into the roads and lanes of the country, and stoop down into the mud and mire of sin, and take up the common ordinary rude stones, lost men and women, and by the glorious art of the soul winner, transform them into diamonds worthy of a place in the Saviour’s eternal diadem. Is not that worthwhile? Is there any other work in the universe that really is worthwhile?

Conquered by Compassion

One night I was preaching in one of the suburbs of Chicago, and when I gave out the invitation an enormous man rose to his feet. He weighed 290 pounds. I thought to myself, “You have caught a big fish tonight.” After the meeting was over, I went down and sat beside him and talked to him. He said, “Let me tell you how I came to accept Christ tonight. I have been a churchgoer all my life, but I only went to criticize, and when men got up in the prayer meeting to talk I took out a little notebook which I kept, and wrote down what they said, and then kept tab on them during the week to see how their life agreed with their profession, so I came to say to myself, ‘All Christians are hypocrites.’ My heart became as hard as a stone. I was perfectly indifferent. Some months ago, I was taken very ill, and the doctors said I must die, but I was not at all afraid to die. I had become so hardened by the criticism of professors of religion that even death had no terrors for me. But one day a retired minister came and asked if he might pray for me. I said, ‘Yes, you can pray for me if you want to. I have no objection, if it will do you any good, it won’t hurt me any. Yes, pray if you want to, if you will enjoy it. It won’t disturb me.’ He knelt down beside my bed and began to pray, and I watched him out of the corner of my eyes. I was keeping tab on him to see if he was real. I thought I was dying but I was not a bit frightened. I was perfectly callous and hardened, but as I lay there watching him out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a tear rolling down his cheeks. I said to myself, ‘Here is this man, a perfect stranger to me, with no possible interest in me, and yet he is weeping over my sins and my lost condition.’ That broke my heart. That is why I am here tonight. That is why I got up and asked for prayers; that is why I have taken the Lord Jesus.”

I tell you, you will win more men and women by your tears than you will ever win by your arguments.

Converted at Nine Years of Age

A child can be a true Christian. Some people do not believe that. Some people think a boy or girl must grow up until they are twenty or twenty-one, or at least until they are fifteen or sixteen before they can understand what it means to be a Christian. This is a great mistake. Boys and girls that can understand anything can understand that Jesus died for them and that He rose again and is able to help and keep them day by day, and they can take Jesus and trust Him as their own Saviour.

Long, long years ago over in Western Asia, there was an old man ninety-five years of age with long beard hanging down upon his bosom, and long white hair hanging down upon his neck. His name was Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. A new Roman governor came to Smyrna who bitterly hated Christianity and determined to stamp it out of his province. His councilors said to him, “If you are going to stamp out Christianity, you would better deal with Polycarp, for he is the best and most influential Christian in Smyrna.” Polycarp was away from Smyrna in the country at the time but the governor sent for him and had him dragged to Smyrna. When Polycarp was brought before the governor, he said to him, “Are you a Christian?” “Yes, I am a follower of Jesus.” “But,” said the governor, “you must renounce Jesus and sacrifice to the idols or I will throw you to the lions and they will tear you limb from limb.” But Polycarp refused. The governor grew more angry and said, “Unless you renounce Jesus, I will have them burn you at the stake.” Polycarp replied, “These eighty and six years have I served my Lord and He never did me any harm, and I cannot deny my Lord and Master now.”

They took old Polycarp out and tied him to the stake. They piled the fagots around him and they came with a torch and touched the light to the wood. Hotter and hotter grew the flames and Polycarp’s flesh began to burn, but the aged saint stood there triumphant, rejoicing to suffer for the name of Jesus.

He was ninety-five years old when he died. He had been a Christian, according to his own testimony, eighty-six years. Polycarp must have been converted when he was nine years of age.

It is plain that a boy can be a Christian and a good one too. It is also plain that the good children do not all die young. Ninety-five years of age is not very young to die.

Converted by President Wolsey's Singing

When Mr. Moody visited New Haven in 1878 I was a student in the University there. The ripest scholar in the University at the time, if not the ripest in America, was President Wolsey, Ex-President of Yale University. One night a young man went up to hear Mr. Moody preach and President Wolsey sat on the platform, and when they sang the old Gospel hymns, President Wolsey, himself a gray-haired scholar, joined in singing the hymns with all his heart. That young man said, “Well, if one of the greatest scholars in America can sing those hymns in that way, there certainly must be something in it,” and he was converted, not through Mr. Moody’s preaching, but through President Wolsey’s singing.

A Converted Jewess

When after an absence of two years from America, I returned to spend a month with my church in Chicago, I found that a young Jewish woman, a very brilliant woman in the work she had to do, had been converted during my absence. Her conversion was very genuine. She was full of love to Christ as Jews generally are when they are converted. She went to the place where she worked, a well-known house in Chicago, and commenced talking of Christ to the other employees. Some of them did not like it, and they went to the head of the firm and said, “Miss is constantly talking to us about Christ. We don’t like it.” The manager of the firm called her in and said, “We have no objection to Christianity, no objection to your being a Christian. We think it is a good thing, but you must not talk it about this establishment.” “Very well,” she said, “I will not work in a place where I cannot take Christ with me and talk for my Master.” She had a family to support, an aged mother and other members of the family, and did not know where she was going—just converted from Judaism to Christianity. But she would not give up her loyalty to her new Master. “Very well,” they said, “you will have to lose your position.” “Very well,” she said, “I will give up my position before I will be disloyal to Jesus Christ.” They said, “Very well, go back to your work.” She went back to her work expecting every day to receive her dismissal. At the end of the week she received a letter from the manager. “Here is my discharge,” she said as she tore it open. The head of the establishment said, “We have a place of greater responsibility than the one you now occupy and with a larger salary than you are getting. We think you are just the person for the place, and we offer it to you.” They saw she could be trusted. Businessmen are looking for men and women whom they can trust.

Could Not Get Over Her Father's Life

I once received an anonymous note asking me to call on the lady principal of a school. She was a woman of very brilliant gifts but professed to be an utter unbeliever. I called one day at the school and received a very cordial reception, but the woman said, “I do not believe anything. I do not even read the Bible because it seems wrong for one to read it and disbelieve everything in it as I do.” As I talked with her, she insisted that she was confirmed in her unbelief, and that there was no possibility of her being led out of it. But suddenly she began to weep and I said to her, “Why are you crying?” “Oh,” she said, “there is one thing I cannot get over, and that is my father’s life. My father was a minister of the gospel, and whenever I think of the holy life he lived, I feel that there must be something in Christianity. I cannot get over his life.” She had tried hard to do so, but she had failed utterly.

Starting out from this point, I was able to tell her how she could find out for herself that beyond a peradventure the Bible was the Word of God, and Jesus Christ the Son of God. She promised to follow the plan suggested, and I afterward had the privilege of receiving her into membership in the church.

But my reasonings would have been of no avail if she had not been prepared to listen to them by the insurmountable argument of her own father’s holy life. The best argument for Christianity is a Christian life.

The Curse Coming Home

I recall a man who was a daily drinker all his life. I don’t think that man was ever drunk in his life. He despised a drinker but he also laughed at total abstinence. I have heard him ridicule it time and time again. He had three boys, carefully reared in most respects but reared to his ideas about drinking, reared to think that moderate drinking was the proper course, reared to despise a drunkard, but also to ridicule total abstinence. Every one of these three boys grew up to be a drunkard.

The rum seller is bound to reap in his own family, if he has one. A friend of mine of very wide experience, I think the widest experience of any friend I ever had, once said to me that he had never known a rum seller, who did not sooner or later feel the curse in his own home. One time I was holding meetings in an American city. Riding through the streets one day a friend pointed out a man. “There,” said he, “is a man who has run a saloon the most persistently of any man in our community. The saloon is prohibited among us, but he has done everything in his power to overthrow or circumvent the law. His own brother committed suicide through the effects of drink, and every member of his family is ruined by drink.”

A Deacon Who Went Fishing on Sunday

One night when I arose to preach in the Chicago Avenue Church I saw sitting just to my left in the front seat underneath the gallery one of my deacons and side by side with him a flashily-dressed and hard—looking man. I at once concluded that he was a sporting man and I said to myself, “Deacon Young has been fishing today.” It is a good thing to have deacons that go fishing on Sunday—fishing for souls. Every little while as I was preaching, I would turn around and look at that man. His eyes were riveted upon me. He was paying the closest attention. Evidently the whole scene was strange to him and some power, mysterious to him, had taken hold of him. When we went to the inquiry room below, Deacon Young brought him along. I was late talking to inquirers that night, and about eleven o’clock Deacon Young came over to me as I finished with one inquirer and said, “Come over here and talk to a man that I have.” I went over. It was this big sporting man. He was shaking and groaning with emotion. “Oh,” he groaned, “I don’t know what is the matter with me. I never felt like this before in all my life. I never was in a place like this before,” he continued. “My mother keeps a gambling house in Omaha, and we are Roman Catholics, but this afternoon as I was going down the street over here, I saw some of your men holding an open-air meeting. As I passed, one of them rose to speak. I had known him before when he was leading a wild life, and out of curiosity I stopped to listen. I listened until he was done speaking and then continued on my way, intending to go down on Cottage Grove Avenue to meet some men to pass the afternoon gambling. But I had not gone two blocks before some strange power took hold of me and brought me back to the meeting. When the meeting broke up, this man (pointing to Deacon Young) brought me to your church to the Yoke Fellow’s Supper, and then to the meeting afterward, then took me upstairs to hear you preach. Then he brought me down here. Oh,” he groaned again, “I don’t know what is the matter with me. I feel awful. I never felt this way before in all my life.” “I will tell you what is the matter with you,” I said. “You are under conviction of sin. The Spirit of God is dealing with you. Will you take Christ as your Saviour?” The huge man fell on his knees on the floor and commenced to cry to God for mercy. Jesus Christ met him there. His sobs ceased, a look of peace came into his face and he left the building rejoicing in Christ.

A Deep Spiritual Concern for Your Soul

In a small country town there was an infidel blacksmith. He was a hard-headed, well-read man, strong in argument. An old deacon in the town became deeply interested in this infidel blacksmith and determined to lead him to Christ. He studied up as best he could all the infidel arguments and the answers to them. When he thought he had all the infidel arguments and answers at his fingers’ ends, he called on the blacksmith and engaged him in conversation, but the blacksmith was far more than a match for him in argument and in a few moments had fought the old deacon to a standstill. The old deacon knew that he was right, but he could not prove it to the blacksmith. He burst into tears and said, “Well, I cannot argue with you, but I simply want to say, I have a deep spiritual concern for your soul,” and then left the shop.

The deacon made his way home and went in to his wife and said, “I am only a botch on God’s work. God knows I am sincere and that I really do desire the salvation of the blacksmith but I could not meet him in argument. He laid me out cold in five minutes.” Then the deacon went into his own room by himself and knelt down. “Oh, God,” he cried, “I am only a botch on Thy work. Thou knowest that I sincerely desired to lead the blacksmith to Thee, but I could not talk with him. Oh, God, I am only a botch on Thy work.”

But soon after the deacon had left the blacksmith shop, the blacksmith went into the house and said to his wife, “Deacon brought up an argument today that I never heard before. He said he had a deep spiritual concern for my soul. What did he mean?” His wife was a canny woman and said, “You had better go and ask him.” The blacksmith hung up his apron and went cross lots to the deacon’s home. Just as he stepped on the front porch, through the open window he heard the deacon’s prayer, “Oh, God, I am only a botch on Thy work. Thou knowest that I sincerely desired to lead the blacksmith to Thee but I could not talk with him. Oh, God, I am only a botch on Thy work.” He pushed the door open and went into the room where the deacon was kneeling and said, “Deacon, you are no botch on God’s work. I thought I knew all the arguments for Christianity and could answer them but you brought up an argument I never heard before. You said you had a deep spiritual concern for my soul. Won’t you pray for me?” and the blacksmith broke down and accepted Christ. Real earnestness and love succeed where all argument fails.

Despondency Changed Into Abounding Joy

There came to me one night at the close of a meeting a man with as sad a face as I had ever seen. He asked me to pray for him. I tried to show him the way of life. He would listen intently but did not seem to be able to grasp it. Night after night he would come to me with the same look of hopeless gloom in his face. I was afraid the man would go insane. In fact, I afterwards learned that he had at one time been in an insane asylum. He would profess to accept Christ, but when I showed him the Word of God that “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,” and tried to impress him with the fact that he had God’s own assurance for it that he had everlasting life, he seemed utterly unable to grasp it and would go away with a despairing look, asking me if I would still pray for him. This went on for weeks and I almost dreaded to see the man approaching me.

But one night as I was about to strike a match to light the gas Peter N. Came in through the front door as I struck the match and lighted the gas. I saw there was a still brighter light in his face. The gloom was all gone. He was radiant. The Spirit of God had shone in his heart. He had full assurance of sins forgiven. His gladness was not for a day, nor for a week, nor a month but continuous. He gave himself to God’s work with an earnestness that I have seldom seen equaled. He was a skillful workman, receiving large pay, but he gave almost his entire income to the Lord’s work, keeping scarcely anything for himself to live on. Indeed I sometimes felt he did not keep enough to live on. Out of working hours, he was always witnessing for Christ in public or in private.

Hopeless gloom had been transformed by the power of the Spirit of God into triumphant joy.

Do You Believe That, Sir?

One night when I was speaking in a hall on the ground floor in Washington Avenue, there staggered into the room a man very much under the influence of liquor. He had once been prominent in his home town, postmaster of the town, but he had gone down through drink. He had drifted to Minneapolis. For a while he served beer in one of the lowest dens in the city, but afterward became too low even for that and was kicked out onto the street. This night everything he had in the world but one small coin was gone. As he entered the hall which by mistake he had taken for a saloon, his hat was on his head, a cigar in his mouth and he began to stagger down the aisle. A lady by the door stepped up to him and kindly asked him to take off his hat and let her have his cigar. Then she conducted him down the aisle to a seat near the front. Just as he took his seat, a man who had formerly been in the deepest depths of degradation was giving his testimony to the saving power of Christ. The drunken man leered up at me as the other man gave his testimony and said with a hiccup, “Do you believe that, sir?” “Yes, sir,” I replied, “I know that story is true. I know this man, and what is more the same Jesus that saved him can save you.” Then as the other man finished his testimony I turned to him and said: “Joe, take this man out into my office and talk with him.” He took him out into my office and talked with him and kept him there until the meeting was over. Then I went out and found him partly sobered and was able to point him to Christ. He went away that night with the knowledge of sins forgiven. He was taken to a cheap lodging house where he spent the light. The next day he found work, very humble work but enough to pay for his lodging and food. In a little while he found a better position and soon a still better one. He entered the employ of one of the large railways entering Minneapolis. He soon won the confidence of his employers. He was beginning to think about going to Chicago to prepare for Christian work when his health broke down. The company that employed him were very kind to him and sent him to the southwest in the hope that he would recover his health but he gradually failed and in a few months died of rapid consumption. At his death his mother, who had rejoined him sent me a letter telling of his last days, days of triumph, and also sending me the last picture he had had taken. For years that picture stood on my mantel with his story written on the back of it. To have looked into the face one would never have thought that it was the face of a man who had been down into the deepest depths of degradation. It was a frank, open, genial, true Christian face. But the same Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who transformed this man’s life can transform yours.

Earth Has No Sorrow That Jesus Cannot Heal

Some time ago, in America, there were a gentleman and his wife who had a very happy home. The man was prosperous in business in the city of Cleveland, but there came a reverse in business, and the man lost everything he had in the world. The home was broken up; his eldest daughter had to go out to work for a living. His two boys were too young to work. His wife had to leave him and take the two boys and go away to one of the southern states to the home of a sister, and act as housekeeper to make a living for herself and boys. The father went to Chicago, to see if he could not retrieve his fortunes. He met with success and cheering letters full of promise of a brighter day were sent to the wife in the south. But one day she received a telegraphic dispatch saying that her husband was very ill, and that she had better come on to Chicago at once. She took the train. It was a long journey. She reached Chicago at night and went to the hospital to which her husband had been taken.

By some mistake, the authorities of the hospital said to her, “You cannot see your husband tonight; come at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and you can see him.” With a heavy heart she went to the place where she stopped, and went back to the hospital at nine the next morning. As she rang the bell, they met her at the door and said, “Your husband died last night.” She took him out and buried him, and so great was her loneliness and her sorrow, and so frequent her weeping, that it affected her eyesight. She went to a physician. The physician told her that it was not very serious, that she could go back to Mississippi and her eyes would soon be well. She supposed that he was a regular practitioner but she found out too late that he was a Christian Science physician, and was trying to cure her by making her think she was not ill. She went back to Mississippi. Her eyes got worse and worse. She went to a regular physician. He said, “Madam, your case is hopeless. If you had come to me a few weeks ago, I could have helped you. Your trouble has gone so far now that there is absolutely no hope for you. You will be totally blind.” In a few days she was totally blind—home broken up, husband buried, eyesight gone. She came on to Chicago. She dropped into our church; she heard the gospel, she heard about Jesus. She came to Jesus with all her overwhelming sorrow, and Jesus gave her rest.

If you come to the prayer meeting at our church any Friday night, you will see sitting there a woman with a refined, beautiful face, dressed in black, eyes closed, perfectly sightless, but in that face you will see a serener and profounder joy than you have ever seen in many faces. Very likely, you will see her rise to her feet in the course of the meeting with a face radiant with the sunshine of heaven, and tell how wonderfully God has blessed her; and you may hear her say what she often says, that she thanks God she has lost her sight, for out of her great trouble she was brought to Christ and found a joy that she never knew before.

There is a place where there is a cure for every sorrow. That place is at the feet of Jesus.

Fighting Whiskey

One of the most notoriously bad characters that ever lived in New York was Orville Gardner. He was the trainer of prizefighters and companion of all sorts of hard characters. His reputation was so thoroughly bad that he was called “Awful Gardner.” He had a little boy, whom he dearly loved, and this boy died. A short time after his boy’s death, he was standing at the bar in a New York saloon, surrounded by a number of his boon companions. The night was sweltering, and he stepped outside the saloon to get a little fresh air. As he stood out there and looked up between the high buildings at the sky above his head, a bright star was shining down upon him, and as he stood looking at the star, be said to himself, “I wonder where my little boy is tonight?” Then the thought came to him quick as a flash, “Wherever he is, you will never see him again unless you change your life.” Touched by the Spirit of God, he hurried from the saloon to the room where he knew his godly mother was. He went in and asked his mother to pray for him. They spent the whole night in prayer and towards morning “Awful Gardner” had found peace and gained the victory. He was the victim of an overwhelming appetite for drink, and had in his house a jug of whiskey at the time. He did not dare to keep it and did not know what to do with it. Finally he took it down to the river, got into a boat and rowed over to an island. He set the liquor on a rock and knelt down, and as he afterward said, “Fought that jug of whiskey for a long time,” and God gave him perfect deliverance. But what should he do with the jug? He did not dare break it, lest the fumes set him wild. He did not dare leave it, lest someone else get it. Finally he dug a hole in the ground with his heel and buried it. He left the island a free man.

He became a mighty preacher of the gospel. It was through listening to him preach that Jerry McAuley was set to thinking, and that thinking afterward led to his conversion.

First Sober Christmas in Ten Years

One afternoon a wild looking Scandinavian rushed into the office in Minneapolis. My assistant, Mr. George Sanborn, was in the office. Mr. Sanborn is not a large man, and the Scandinavian was a big, burly fellow. He rushed towards Mr. Sanborn as if he were going to do him personal violence. Though small, Mr. Sanborn was fearless. He sprang to his feet and said, “What do you want?” “I want sympathy,” the man cried. “No,” said Mr. Sanborn, “you want Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone can help you.” In a moment the man was subdued and sank upon his knees, and Mr. Sanborn explained to him the way of life and he accepted the Saviour.

On the following Christmas Day at our testimony service, this man arose and said, “I am so happy today. This is the first sober Christmas that I have spent in ten years. Jesus Christ has saved me.”

Forgiven by Both Fathers

Some years ago an English farmer, William Dorset, was preaching in London. In the course of his sermon he said, “There is not a man in all London whom Jesus Christ cannot save.”

At the close of the meeting a lady missionary in London came to him and said, “Mr. Dorset, did you say that there wasn’t a man in all London that Jesus Christ cannot save?” “Yes, madam, that is what I said.” “Well, there is a man here in London I wish you would see. He says that he is beyond salvation.” “I will go and see him tomorrow morning,” replied Mr. Dorset, “if you will take me to him.” They started out early the next morning for East London, stopped before a high, wretched tenement building. “You will find him,” she said, “in the top story in the back room. You had better go up alone as he will talk more freely with you than if someone else is with you.” Mr. Dorset began to climb the stairs. Each flight of stairs seemed more wretched and filthy than the one that preceded it. At last he reached the top story and found the door hanging by one hinge which he pushed open as best he could. There was not a window in the room but when his eye became accustomed to the darkness, over in the corner he saw a young man lying on a pile of filthy straw. He walked softly across the floor and leaned over the young man and said, “My friend.” The young man looked up with a start and said, “You are mistaken, sir, I am not your friend; you are not my friend. I haven’t a friend in the world.” “Yes, you have,” said Mr. Dorset, “I am your friend and what is better Jesus Christ is your Friend too.” “No,” he replied, “Jesus Christ is no Friend of mine. I have disobeyed His laws. I have trampled Him under foot all my life, and He is no Friend of mine.” “Yes, He is,” insisted Mr. Dorset, and sat down by his side and from the Bible proved that Jesus Christ was the Friend of sinners and his Friend. The young man listened to the story of redeeming love and at last put his trust in Jesus Christ and found pardon. Then he turned to Mr. Dorset and said, “My Heavenly Father has forgiven me. I could die happy if I only knew my earthly father had forgiven me also.” “I will go and see him,” said Mr. Dorset. “No, I don’t wish you to do that. You would only be insulted. My father does not allow my name to be mentioned in his presence. He has taken it off the family register. He has not allowed my name to be mentioned to him for two years.” “I will go and see him anyway,” said Mr. Dorset. He secured his address, and hurried to the West End of London where the father lived. It was in a beautiful mansion. He was met at the door by a liveried servant and taken into the reception room. The father, a fine-looking English gentleman, soon came into the room, and extended his hand in a cordial way towards Mr. Dorset. “I have come to speak to you about your son Joseph,” said Mr. Dorset. The father dropped his hand as if he had been shot. “I have no son Joseph,” he said. “I do not allow that young man’s name to be mentioned in my presence. I have had it taken off the family register. I simply want to tell you if you have had anything to do with that young man, you are being deceived. Good day.” He turned upon his heel and started to leave the room. As he was about to cross the threshold Mr. Dorset said in a gentle voice, “Well, he is your son anyway, but he won’t be very long.” The father turned around quickly and said, “Is Joseph dying?” “Yes, he is dying. I haven’t come to ask you to do anything for him. I do not ask you even to pay his funeral expenses. I will gladly do that; but his Heavenly Father has forgiven him and he says he could die happy if only his earthly father would forgive him too.” “Forgive him,” said the father, “I would have forgiven him long ago if he had only asked it. Take me to him.” The gentleman ordered his carriage and they hurried down to the wretched tenement in the East End of London, hurried up the stairs and to the dark room where the son lay dying. As the father entered the door the son looked up and said, “Father, my Heavenly Father has forgiven me. I could die happy if you would forgive me too.” “Forgive you,” cried the father as he hurried across the floor, “I would have forgiven you long ago if you had only asked it.” The boy was too ill to be moved and the gentleman sank on the floor by his side and took his son’s head upon his shoulder and he died happy, knowing that his Heavenly Father had forgiven him and his earthly father had forgiven him too. God stands ready now to forgive any sinner, even the vilest and most hopeless who will trust Him.

Give Me a Love for Souls

One time during my ministry in Chicago, I was deeply disturbed that I had so little love for souls; that I could meet men and women who were lost and be so little concerned about it; that I could preach to them and had so little inclination to weep over them. I went alone with God and prayed, “O God give me a love for souls.” Little did I realize how much the answer to that prayer involved.

The next day there came into my Bible class a man who was the most distressing picture of utter despair I ever saw. At the close of my Bible class I walked down the aisle. I saw him in the last seat. His face haunted me. I was burdened. I could not lose sight of him. I cannot tell the pain I had for hours and days as I cried to God for his salvation, but I had the joy of seeing him profess to accept Christ.

Love for souls is one of the costliest things a man can have, but if we are to be like Christ, and if we are to be successful in His work, we must have it. But don’t pray for it unless you are willing to suffer.

Give Me Back My Tears

One of the mightiest soul winners I ever knew was Colonel Clarke of Chicago. He would work at his business six days every week that he might keep his mission open seven nights every week. And every night in the week the year around five or six hundred men would gather together in that mission hall. It was a motley crowd; drunkards, thieves, pickpockets, gamblers and everything that was hopeless. I used to go and hear Colonel Clarke talk, and he seemed to me one of the dullest talkers I ever heard in my life. He would ramble along and yet these five or six hundred men would lean over and listen spellbound while Colonel Clarke talked in his prosy way. Some of the greatest preachers in Chicago used to go down to help Colonel Clarke but the men would not listen to them as they did to Colonel Clarke. When he was speaking they would lean over and listen and be converted by the score. I could not understand it. I studied it and wondered what the secret of it was. Why did these men listen with such interest, and why were they so greatly moved by such prosy talking? I found the secret. It was because they knew that Colonel Clarke loved them, and nothing conquers like love. The tears were very near the surface with Colonel Clarke. Once in the early days of the mission, when he had been weeping a great deal over these men, he got ashamed of his tears He steeled his heart and tried to stop his crying, and succeeded, but he lost his power. He saw that his power was gone and he went to God and prayed, “Oh, God, give me back my tears,” and God gave him back his tears, and gave him wonderful power, marvelous power over these men.

If we would see the seed that we sow bring an abundant harvest, we must water it with our tears. “He that goeth forth bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing his sheaves with him.”

God Does Give the Holy Spirit in Answer to Prayer

With me the doctrine that God gives the Holy Spirit definitely in answer to prayer is not a matter of mere exegesis, it is a matter of personal experience. If it were a matter of mere exegesis, I would believe it. If it was clearly taught in the Bible, I would believe it, whether I had experience or not; for I do not believe in bringing the Bible down to the level of our experience but in bringing our experience up to the level of the Bible. But with me it is a matter of certain experience. I know that God gives the Holy Spirit in answer to definite prayer as well as I know that water quenches thirst and food satisfies hunger. How often as I have knelt beside a single brother, and how often as I have knelt in a great gathering of God’s believing children, the Holy Ghost has fallen upon us as we prayed as definitely, and perceptibly, as the rain ever falls upon the thirsty ground.

I shall never forget one night in Chicago Avenue Church. The ministers of the city had been holding meetings at noon in the Young Men’s Christian Association preliminary to an expected coming to the city of Mr. Moody. At one of these noon meetings, one of the ministers of the city sprang to his feet and said, “Brother Torrey, what we need in Chicago is an all-night prayer meeting of the ministers.” “Very well, Brother E.,” I replied, “if the ministers of Chicago wish to have an all-night prayer meeting, let them come to Chicago Avenue Church at ten o’clock next Friday night, and if God keeps us there all night, we will stay all night.”

At ten o’clock the following Friday night some four or five hundred people gathered in the Vestry of Chicago Avenue Church. They were not all ministers, though there were many ministers. Indeed, they were not all men; there were some women.

Were you ever in a prayer meeting where the devil made a dead set to spoil the meeting? Well that was the kind of a meeting it was for the first two hours. To begin with three men got down by chairs near the door, and commenced to pound on the chairs and shout until some of our heads were nearly splitting, and when someone went to them and protested that things should be done decently and in order, they swore at the man who made the protest. Later still a man jumped up in the midst of the meeting and proclaimed that he was Elijah. He was not to blame. He was a lunatic. But these things disturbed many and they began to think of going home. But it is a poor prayer meeting that the devil can spoil, and hundreds of us were there with the determination to stay until we got the blessing.

About midnight God gave us complete victory, and for two hours there was such prayer in the Spirit as I have seldom heard.

A little after two in the morning while we were all kneeling in prayer, suddenly there fell upon us an awful hush. Nobody could speak, nobody could sing, nobody could pray. All you could hear was the subdued sobbing of joy unspeakable and full of glory.

The very air seemed tremulous with the presence of the Holy Ghost. It seemed to me as if, if I had looked up, I could almost have seen the Holy Spirit there visibly. I do not know how long we were held there in this awed silence before the presence of God. It was now Saturday morning. The following Sunday morning one of my deacons came to me and held out his hand and took mine and gave it a mighty grip and said, with choking voice, “I shall never forget yesterday morning to the longest day I live.”

In the early morning hours, one businessman went out of that meeting and took an early train for Missouri to transact some business. When the business was done, he said to the hotel proprietor, “Is there any meeting going on in this town?” “Yes,” he said. “There is a meeting going on in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.” He was a Cumberland Presbyterian himself and went to the meeting. When the meeting was opened, he stood up and asked if he might say a few words. The permission was readily given, and with the power of the Holy Spirit upon him, he poured out his soul to the people. In a few days I received a paper from that town saying that fifty-eight persons were converted while he spoke.

A young man went out from that meeting to Baraboo, Wis., and in a few days I received a letter from Baraboo, Wis., saying that thirty-eight men and boys had been converted in Baraboo. That same man afterward laid down his life in South Africa after a brilliant record as a missionary there.

Another young man went out in the early hours and took a train to Wisconsin, and I soon began to receive letters from Methodist ministers and others near Milwaukee asking if we had in our Institute a young man named Sam J., and adding that a young man, giving that name, had appeared among them and was holding meetings in schoolhouses and churches and the soldiers’ home, and wherever he went there seemed to be conversions. But they knew nothing about him, and he said he was a student of the Bible Institute.

Men and women went from that meeting to the uttermost parts of the earth with the power of God upon them. As I have gone around the world and visited China, Japan, India and Australia and other lands, I think in every land I visited, I have found someone who was present that morning when the Holy Ghost fell upon us.

God Is Love

When Mr. Moody built his tabernacle in Chicago, he was so anxious that everyone that came there should learn one truth, namely, that “God is love,” and so fearful that someday some preacher might stand in the pulpit and forget to tell the people that God is love, that he had these three words put into gas jets over the pulpit. So every night when the gas was lighted, there it blazed away over the preacher’s head, “God is love.” Whether the preacher told it to the people or not, they could see it for themselves in letters of fire.

One night the tabernacle was lighted but the people had not yet gathered for the evening service. A poor drunkard coming up the street saw the door a little ajar and saw the light, and then stumbled up the steps hoping to find warmth and cheer within. As he pushed the door a little wider, his attention was directed to the sentence in the letters of fire above the pulpit, “God is love.” He turned away, pulled the door to, went down the steps and went up the street muttering, “It is not so. That is not true. God is not love. If God was love, He would love me, and God does not love a miserable wretch like me. It is not true.” But all the time, the words were burning down into his soul, “God is love. God is love.”

After awhile he turned about and retraced his steps, entered the church again, and took a seat back of the stove over in the corner. The people gathered and Mr. Moody ascended the platform and began to preach. All the time that Mr. Moody preached, the man was weeping in the corner. Mr. Moody’s quick eye caught sight of him, and at the close of the service he hurried to him and sat down beside him. “What are you crying about, my friend?” he said gently. “What was it in the sermon that touched you?” The man replied, “There was nothing in the sermon that touched me. I did not hear a word of your sermon.” “Well, what was it then that touched you?” asked Mr. Moody. “That sentence,” pointing to the words in fire, “that sentence, ‘God is love,’ that broke my heart.” Mr. Moody opened his Bible and showed the man from the Bible how God loved him, and how Jesus was an all-sufficient Saviour for all who take Him. The man listened and accepted Christ, and went away that night a saved man.

May these same words burn down deep into the heart of every hearer, and may you all be won by the love of God to you to love the God who loves you.

God Save My Papa

One night a man stood at the door of the city mission in Minneapolis inviting passersby to come in. An Englishman, a stone cutter by trade, passed by. “Come in to a Gospel meeting,” the worker cheerily said to him. “What do I want with a Gospel meeting? I have no use for a Gospel meeting,” the Englishman replied gruffly, and went grumbling up the street. He was a splendid workman, making over four dollars a day at his trade when he worked, but squandering his time and his money and his life in strong drink and gambling. At times he was so desperate that he would stand upon the Tenth Avenue Bridge and look over into the Mississippi River as it flowed below and contemplate throwing himself into the river.

One Sunday afternoon, not many days after, a little girl of ten went up Washington Avenue. The Sunday-school session of the City Mission was in progress. “Would you not like to come to Sunday school?” a bright-faced Christian woman said to the little girl as she passed the door. In curiosity the little girl turned in to the Sunday school, was greatly delighted with all she saw and heard. When she heard of Jesus as her own Saviour, she very readily accepted Him and gave her whole heart and life to Him. She became greatly interested in the conversion of her father. Her mother and grandfather and grandmother and uncle and aunt were saved but her father held out. She begged the workers to come down to their home and hold a cottage meeting there, for she felt it was the only way to get hold of her father as he would not come to the meetings. The workers consented to go. It was a drunkard’s home, down on the east side flats in Minneapolis. On the appointed evening her father rose from the supper table and took down his overcoat and was about to start for the saloon, and Annie said, “Papa, we are going to have a cottage meeting here tonight, won’t you stay?” “What do I want with a cottage meeting?” “But Papa,” urged the little child, “won’t you stay for Annie’s sake?” Drunkard though he was, he loved his child. He hung up the old overcoat again and sat down on the rickety old sofa and waited for them to come. One by one workers and neighbors crowded into the house. The man felt very uneasy and wished he were at the saloon. A song was sung and the leader read a passage and they all knelt in prayer. One after another the workers prayed. The man on the sofa grew more and more uneasy and looked around for some way of escape from the meeting, but all possibility of escape was cut off. “If I ever get out of this, you will never get me into a place like this again,” the man thought to himself. One after another the Christian men and women prayed, and then all was still. Suddenly a child’s voice broke the silence, “Oh, God, will You not save my papa?” That prayer went to the heart of God and like an arrow it went to the heart of the wicked father. He dropped off the sofa on to his knees and cried to God for mercy and was saved that night.

He became one of the most indefatigable Christian workers I ever knew and when I left Minneapolis, he was a deacon in my church.

God Silences a Scoffer

On the 31st day of May, 1904, four young men were playing cards two blocks from the Chicago Avenue Church. They were sober, industrious men above the average intelligence, but not Christians. At the conclusion of their game of cards, they got to discussing religion and one of them, a shipping clerk with a leather firm on Illinois Street, said, “I don’t believe there is a God. I believe something like Ingersoll. I don’t believe there is a God, and I won’t believe there is a God until He proves it to me, but if He proves it to me by striking me deaf and dumb, I will believe it.”

There was silence for a moment or two. The he threw up his hands, staggered and fell to the floor unconscious. At first his companions thought it was a joke. Then they became frightened and ran to him and tried to pick him up, and found him unconscious. One ran for a doctor and another ran downstairs for the landlady and told her that Julian had fainted. The doctor soon came. He thought at first that the young man was shamming but soon became convinced that he was actually deaf and dumb. He was unable to account for the condition of things. The young man was not of a nervous disposition, was strong physically, and right in his mind. When he came to himself he tried to talk, his lips moved but no sound came from them. Then they handed him a pencil and paper. The first thing he wrote on the paper was, “I want my Bible.” The next thing he wrote was, “I want my mother.”

The next morning two ladies came to my assistant, Rev. W. S. Jacoby (I was out of the country at the time) and asked him to go over to see the young man. Mr. Jacoby went over about eleven o’clock. Julian sat at the table calm, quiet, well dressed, showing to all appearances that he was above the average. He shook hands with Mr. Jacoby and the people wrote on a piece of paper that Mr. Jacoby was a minister. Mr. Jacoby sat down at the table beside him and prayed God that He might guide him in what he should say. After this prayer he wrote on a piece of paper, “God loves you.” Julian wrote back, “I know it.”

Then Mr. Jacoby wrote, “What did you do?”

He wrote, “I did what I should not have done.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I did not believe there was a God. I believed what I said. Now I am satisfied there is a God, and I am wanted in His service.”

“Why do you believe there is a God?”

“Because I said I would not believe there was a God unless He struck me dumb. A look from His countenance struck me dumb; a look from His eye was as a flash of lightning.” (He had written on the paper to his companions, he had seen the flash and asked them, “Did you see the flash?” They had not seen it. It was for him alone.)

Mr. Jacoby wrote, “Did you see anything as you fell to the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sorry, and why?”

“I am, because I feel I did very wrong.”

“Do you believe that there is a God?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe that God hears prayer?”

“I do.”

Again Mr. Jacoby wrote, “God loves you.”

He wrote, “I believe He does, for I have heard a whisper calling me to His work for many years, but I turned a deaf ear to it.”

Mr. Jacoby then related to him part of his own experience, and how God had revealed Himself to him. How the voice of the Spirit had said to him once in a time of sickness, “Down on your knees,” and how he had resisted that Spirit but how God had not left him but again by His Holy Spirit called him and he had come.

Again Mr. Jacoby wrote, “God loves you, and He is filling my heart with sympathy for you. He would not do this unless He was going to save you.”

The young man wrote as an answer, “I feel that way about it but I feel I shall remain this way (deaf and dumb) until I have prepared to go and work for Him. My life is His to use as He sees fit. I shall go home and apply all my time in learning of Him and when I am fit to do His work, I shall be all right.”

Mr. Jacoby wrote, “I believe the first thing is to know Jesus Christ as a Saviour.” He then showed him John 6:37, “Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” He read it and nodded his head.

Mr. Jacoby then turned him to Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” He took his pencil and marked this passage in the Bible. He was then shown John 5:24, “Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” Pointing his finger at the word “hath,” Mr. Jacoby wrote, “The work is done, not will be or shall be, but ‘hath’ is in the present tense and means that we have eternal life.” Again he nodded his head.

Then he wrote, “I believe now there is a God. I also believe that Jesus Christ died to save all sinners. I feel that I am accepted because I believe Him and trust Him, but there is work for me to do.”

He was then shown Isaiah 53:6, and after that he was pointed to Acts 13:38, 39 (“Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things,” Mr. Jacoby pointed his finger at the “all” in order that he might see that God would forgive him for all he had done.

Then he turned to Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgression from us.”

He then showed him John 1:12, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

Pointing to the word “Sons,” Mr. Jacoby wrote, “A child has a right to call God Father.”

He then showed him other passages that would enable him to remember that God would keep him from every temptation and keep him from all sin: 1 Corinthians 10:13; Jude 24; 2 Timothy 1:12; 1 Peter 1:5.

He read all these very eagerly as he was shown them.

Mr. Jacoby then asked him, “Do you know you are saved? You write that you feel you are saved, do you believe God has forgiven you? Are you saved?”

“I am.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because I am contented.”

“How long have you thought so?”

“Since I have believed in Him.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because I know He will save if I trust Him, and I do trust Him.”

“How long is that?”

“Since you have shown me His many promises.”

He was then asked to read Romans 10:13, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

“Do you believe you are saved?”

He wrote, “I believe I am saved.” He then drew his pencil through the word “believe,” and wrote the word “know” over it.

He made a confession of the Lord Jesus Christ before his friends in the next room. By standing up in the doorway Mr. Jacoby would speak the words so they could hear and then write them so he could read them, and he answered each question with a nod.

“You believe there is a God?”

He nodded, yes.

“Do you receive Jesus as the Son of God, your Saviour?”

“Yes.”

“You believe He saves you?”

“Yes.”

“You thus publicly confess Jesus Christ as your Saviour?”

“Yes,” he wrote, “I am perfectly satisfied.”

The physician who attended him made this statement regarding the case afterward, “It would not be remarkable if he had been merely stricken speechless under certain conditions of hysteria, but in such an event there would have been physical conditions that he did not have. He seemed to be in full possession of his faculties, his ideas were coherent, and his general health was good.” The medical man could find no physical conditions or symptoms which would lead to the sudden loss of speech. It was evidently an act of God. An act of mercy more than an act of judgment.

His speech was restored to him the following July. His first words were, “The Lord be praised,” and after this his lips continued to move and he was repeating the words of the twenty-third Psalm.

He is now preparing for the ministry of the Gospel.

God Use This Stammering Tongue

One day during his great mission in London, Mr. Moody was holding a meeting in a theater packed with a most select audience. Noblemen and noblewomen were there in large numbers. A prominent member of the royal family was in the royal box. Mr. Moody arose to read the Scripture lesson. He attempted to read Luke 4:27, “And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet.” When he came to the name Eliseus, he stammered and stuttered over it. He went back to the beginning of the verse and began to read again, but again when he reached the word “Eliseus” he could not get over it. He went back and began the third time to read the verse but again the word “Eliseus” was too much for him. He closed the Bible with deep emotion and looked up and said, “Oh, God! Use this stammering tongue to preach Christ crucified to these people.” The power of God came upon him and one who heard him then and had heard him often at other times said to me afterward that he had never heard Mr. Moody pour out his soul in such a torrent of eloquence as he did then, and the whole audience was melted by the power of God.

God Uses a Weak Instrument

Before Mr. Alexander joined me in the work, he was engaged with another evangelist, much of their time being given to meetings in large tents. At one of their meetings in Iowa, a young fellow who was very illiterate was converted. Soon after his conversion, he came to Mr. Alexander and said, “Charlie, I want to go with you in the work.” Mr. Alexander said, “Fred, you could not go with us in the work. You can scarcely read. What could you do?” “Oh,” he replied, “I could take care of the tent, black your boots, do anything, but I must go with you.” Mr. Alexander thought it was only a whim and put him off, but the man was so insistent day after day that he decided to try him. He proved himself invaluable in many ways but to the surprise of all, he not only attended to the janitor work of the tent but proved a most efficient soul winner. So great was his earnestness and his spiritual power that people entirely overlooked his ungrammatical speech, and he succeeded with many cases where everyone else failed. He not only led the most desperate cases among the lower classes to Christ, but also was used among the cultured and refined. He kept an accurate record of all those whom he led to Christ. In five years he was used of God in personal work to the salvation of 1,200 persons.

Why did God so use him? Because, though he had but little, all that he had and all that he was he gave up unreservedly to God. It was a case of absolute surrender, and God kept His promise and gave the Holy Spirit to the man who obeyed Him. (Acts 5:32.)

God Won't Take Me Away Without Giving Me Another Chance

A sailor from one of the lines of steamers entering New York dropped ore night into the Berachah Mission. As he was going out, a worker stopped him at the door and urged him to accept Christ. But he refused to do so. The worker became more insistent and said, “It might be your last opportunity.” “No,” he said, “This will not be my last opportunity. God certainly won’t take me away without giving me another chance.” He resisted all the pleadings of the worker and left the mission and started for his steamer. As he went across the gangplank from the dock to the steamer, he missed his footing and fell into the water between the steamer and the dock. Before they could get him out he was drowned. It will not do to trifle with God. No man can tell that he will have another chance. The only day of which we are absolutely certain is today. The only opportunity of which we are absolutely certain is the present opportunity.

The Greatest Sin a Man Can Possibly Commit

One night I was preaching in Chicago for another pastor. At the close of the service, the minister came to me and said, “I have a young man in my congregation who wishes to be a minister. I would like to have you talk with him.” I replied, “Bring him to me after the after meeting,” and he brought the young man to me. He had one of the cleanest, finest, most open faces I ever saw in my life. I looked into the face of this young man and said, “Your pastor says you wish to enter the ministry.” “Yes, I do.” “Well,” I said, “let me ask you a question. Are you a Christian?” “Of course, I am a Christian,” he answered, “I was brought up a Christian, and I am not going back on the training of my parents.” I said, “Have you been born again?” He said, “What?” I said, “Have you ever been born again? God says, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Have you ever been born again?” He said, “I don’t know what you are talking about. I have never heard of that before in all my life.” I said, “My friend, see here; do you know that you have committed the greatest sin that a man can commit?” “No,” he said, “I never did in my life. You don’t understand me. I have been very carefully reared. My life has been a most exemplary life. I never committed the greatest sin that a man can commit—never!” I asked, “What do you think is the greatest sin a man can commit?” “Why,” he replied, “murder, of course.” “You are greatly mistaken. Will you please read what Jesus says about it?” and I opened my Bible to Matthew 22:37, 38, and asked him to read.

He read, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” “Which commandment is that?” I asked. He replied, “The first and great commandment.” “If this is the first and great commandment what is the first and great sin?” “Not to keep this commandment.” “Have you kept it? Have you loved God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind? Have you put God first in everything—God first in business, God first in politics, God first in pleasure, God first in study, God first in everything?” “No, sir,” he said, “I have not.” “What have you done then?” “I have broken this commandment.” “Which commandment is it?” “The first and the great commandment.” “What have you done then?” He replied, “I have broken the first and greatest of God’s commandments. I have committed the greatest sin a man can commit, but I never saw it before in all my life.” And so have you, though, perhaps, you never saw it before in all your life.

Guilty of High Treason

One day in Maryborough, over in Australia, a fine-looking man came to see me, an unusually fine-looking man, with splendid physique and dome-like forehead. He said, “I want to talk with you,” and I said, “Very well, take a seat, sir.” He said, “I want to know what you have against me?” “What I have against you,” I exclaimed, “I don’t know you.” “I mean this; I am not a Christian; I don’t pretend to be a Christian, but I am a moral, upright man, and no one can deny it. Now,” he said, “I would like you to tell me what you have against me.” I said, “You are not a Christian?” “No, sir,” he replied. “You have not taken Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, and surrendered your life to Him as your Lord and Master, and confessed Him as such before the world, and given your life to Him?” “No, sir,” he replied. “Then,” I said, “I charge you, sir, with high treason against your King. Jesus Christ is your King, by Divine appointment, and I charge you, sir” —and I looked him right in the eye— “I charge you, sir, with the crime of high treason against your divinely appointed King.” A dark cloud came over the man’s face. He got up, and left the room, scarcely saying a word. As he went out the door he never looked back. He walked down the long walk without ever looking back. Out of the front gate, never looking back.

Months passed away; we had been over to Tasmania and conducted a mission there, and had returned, and I was preaching in Ballarat, about forty miles away from Maryborough. After the service, a fine-looking man came to me, and said, “Do you remember me?” I knew his face, but I could not remember where I had seen him. I said, “I have seen you somewhere, but I cannot place you.” He said, “Do you remember charging a man with high treason?” I said, “I have charged many a man with high treason.” “Yes,” he said; “but do you remember charging a specific man with high treason?” Then he began to tell me his story, and I commenced to gather who he was. He said, “I am the man, and I have come way to Ballarat, sir, to tell you that you will never charge me with high treason again”; and he held out his hand, and I held out mine, and he took mine in his mighty grip—and it was a mighty grip!—and he said, “Down!” and he dropped on his knees, and I dropped on to mine, and he said, “Lord Jesus, I hand in my allegiance; I give up my treason; I take Thee as my King.”

You men ought to do it tonight. He is your King, and, every man and woman among you that does not accept Him and acknowledge Him as such tonight I charge you with high treason against Heaven’s King.

The Holy Ghost Fell Upon Us

I shall never forget a day at Northfield, July 8, 1894. It was a Sunday. I was preaching in the church to the college students gathered there from Yale, Harvard and other eastern colleges. I was speaking about the Holy Spirit. I took out my watch as I closed. It was precisely twelve o’clock. I said, “Young men, Mr. Moody has invited us up to the mountainside this afternoon at three o’clock to pray for the Holy Ghost. It is three hours to three o’clock. Three hours is a long time to wait. You don’t need to wait three hours. Go to your hotel, go to your tent, go out into the woods, go anywhere alone with God, meet the conditions, and ask God for the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and you will receive it before three o’clock.” Three o’clock came, and four hundred and fifty-six students gathered in front of Mr. Moody’s mother’s house. She was still living then. I know the number, because Paul Moody counted them as they passed through the gate. We passed down through the fields, and started up the mountainside. After going part way up, Mr. Moody said, “We don’t need to go farther now; sit down here.” We sat down on the logs and on the pine needles. Mr. Moody said, “Has anyone anything to say before we pray?” One after another—about seventy-five students, rose and said in substance, “Mr. Moody, I could not wait till three o’clock. I have been alone with God and I believe I have a right to say I have received the Holy Ghost.”

After these testimonies were over, Mr. Moody said, “I can’t see any reason why we should not kneel down here and pray for the Holy Spirit to fall upon us as definitely as He fell upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Let us pray.” Some of us knelt. Some of us lay upon our faces, and we began to pray. As we had been going up the mountainside, thick clouds had been gathering over us. As we began to pray, the clouds broke and the raindrops commenced to fall through the overhanging pine needles. Another cloud had been gathering over Northfield for ten days—a cloud big with the blessing and power of God; and as we prayed, our prayers seemed to pierce that cloud, and the Holy Ghost fell upon us.

The Holy Spirit's Power to Convict of Sin

The officers of Chicago Avenue Church were greatly troubled at one time that there was not more conviction of sin in the meetings, and had a number of prayer meetings that God might send His Holy Spirit in mighty convicting power.

Not long after that, one Sunday night as I was preaching, I noticed a man in the front seat in the gallery to my left, leaning forward listening most intently. A great diamond flashed upon his shirt front and he had every appearance of a sporting man. He proved to be a traveling man but was also leading a sporting life. In the midst of my sermon, without any intention of drawing the net at the time, but simply to drive a point home and make it definite, I said, “Who will accept Jesus Christ tonight?” Scarcely had the words left my lips when this man sprang to his feet and cried so that it rang through the church like a pistol shot, “I will,” and sank back into his seat overcome with emotion. His action produced a sensation in the audience like a shock of electricity. I saw it was no time to finish the sermon. I was not there to save sermons but to save souls, and I immediately gave the invitation. I said, “Who else in this building will accept Jesus Christ here and now as his personal Saviour?” All over the church men and women, young and old, began to rise to their feet and a large company that night accepted Jesus Christ. Among the number was an old white-haired colonel belonging to a very wealthy family in the east, but who was entirely overcome with strong drink. His family had sent him out to Chicago and boarded him at a hotel there while he drank himself to death, but that night the Spirit of God touched his heart.

How D. L. Moody Became a Worldwide Evangelist

Mr. Moody once told me this story long after the incident occurred. He went over to London in 1872, when his church lay in ashes, and while his new church in Chicago was building, not in order to preach, but to listen to others who, he thought, could preach better than he. One Sunday he was prevailed upon to preach. He got up that Sunday morning, and tried to preach. “I never had such a hard time preaching in my life. Everything was perfectly dead. I said to myself as I tried to preach, ‘What a fool I was to consent to preach. I came here to listen, and here I am preaching.’ As I drew towards the end of my sermon, I felt a sense of relief that I would be through in a few minutes. Then,” he said, “the awful thought came to me, ‘You have got to do it again tonight.’ I tried to get out of my night meeting, but I could not. I had promised to preach that night and I must keep my word.

“I went back to preach that night. The building was packed with people. There was a new atmosphere. The powers of an unseen world seemed to have fallen upon the audience. As I drew towards the close, I became emboldened to give out an invitation; so when I finished my sermon, I said, ‘If there is a man or woman here who will tonight accept Jesus Christ, please stand up.’ About five hundred people arose to their feet. I thought there must be some mistake, and I asked the people to be seated. Then I repeated the invitation in a stronger form and they all arose again. Again I asked them to be seated, still thinking there must be some mistake. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘if there are any of you who really mean to accept Christ tonight, please pass into the vestry and your pastor and I will meet you there.’ They commenced to stream in through the two doors. I said, ‘Mr. L., who are these people?’ He said, ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Are they your people, Mr. L.?’ ‘Some of them.’ ‘Are they Christians?’ ‘Not so far as I know.’

“We went into the vestry and I stood up and gave out a stronger invitation, and I asked all that really meant to accept Christ then and there to stand up. They all arose, about five hundred of them. I asked them to be seated again. I still thought there must be some mistake, so I said, ‘I am going to leave London tomorrow for Dublin, but your pastor will be here tomorrow night. If you really mean it come back and meet him.’ I went to Dublin. No sooner had I got there than I received a telegram from Mr. L. It was Tuesday morning and he said, ‘There was a bigger crowd out Monday night than Sunday. A great revival has broken out in my church. You must come back and help me.’”

Mr. Moody hurried back to London. There was a revival there that added hundreds of souls to the churches of North London. That was before he came here in 1873 for his great work—his introduction to England.

When he had finished the story I said to him, “Mr. Moody, somebody must have been praying.” “Oh,” he said, “didn’t I tell you that? That is the point of the story. There was a woman in the congregation that morning who had an invalid sister. She went home and said to her, ‘Who do you think preached for us this morning?’ and her sister guessed all the preachers who were in the habit of exchanging with Mr. L., and she said, ‘No, Mr. Moody from Chicago.’ When she said that, the invalid turned pale. She said, ‘What, Mr. Moody from Chicago? I read about him some time ago in an America paper, and I have been praying God to send him to London and to our church. If I had known he was going to preach this morning, I would have eaten no breakfast. I would have spent the whole time in prayer. Now, sister, go out of the room, lock the door, send me no dinner; no matter who comes, don’t let them see me. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in prayer.’” And while Mr. Moody stood in the pulpit where all was coldness and death in the morning, that bedridden saint was holding him up in prayer before God. And God, who delights to answer prayer, poured out His Spirit. While the multitude saw Mr. Moody, God was looking at that bedridden saint.

How Men Become Infidels

In one of our western colleges there was a time of deep religious interest. Many of the students were being converted but there were two young men in the college that set themselves against the movement. They agreed to meet on a certain evening and go into the college chapel and there blaspheme the Holy Ghost and thus get rid of their religious impressions. The appointed hour came and the two young men met at the door of the college chapel. One man’s courage failed him and he refused to go in, and do as they had agreed. He afterward was converted and became a Christian. The other went into the college chapel alone. It is not known what he did in there, but when he came out, he was as white as death. He afterward drifted into utter unbelief and became a leader in one of the well-known infidel organizations of one of our great cities. This is the way in which many become infidels. They resist the Spirit of God. They know their duty, they know they ought to accept Christ but they refuse to do it, the Spirit of God leaves them and they drift into the darkness of utter unbelief.

How the Devil Got Us an Audience

One night all of my workers that were to help me in an open-air meeting failed to come except one man. This man could not sing much better than I could, and I turned to him and said, “George, shall we go out and try to hold an open-air meeting?” And he said, “Yes, let us go anyhow.” We went to the corner where we usually held the meeting and stood in the road facing the sidewalk and began to sing to an audience of one. Our singing did not seem to attract anyone that night, but soon a drunken man came along, and thought he would have some fun. He began to shout and dance and go through all sorts of antics in the street right beside us, and the crowds began to gather together to watch him. When the crowd was large enough, I held him by the hand and said to my companion, “Now, George, give your testimony.” He commenced to tell what the Lord had done for him and also to preach a short sermon, using the drunken man as a text. When he had finished, he held the drunken man by the hand to keep him quiet and I spoke, using the drunken man as a text. Hardened characters in the audience began to say, “I would not like to be in that drunken man’s place.” But God blessed the Word and we had one of the best meetings we ever had. We had been unable to draw a crowd but the drunken man had drawn the crowd for us and then God had given us the message.

How the Sun Burst Through the Clouds

On the day of fasting and prayer in Dundee, the rain poured down in torrents during the morning hour of meeting. We were planning for a meeting at two o’clock in the afternoon in the open air. One of the brethren as he led in prayer, offered a very earnest and confident prayer that it would clear off for the open air meeting, and as he closed his prayer expressed the utmost confidence that the prayer would be heard, that we should have clear weather at that hour. A good many that listened to the prayer were uneasy at the man’s confidence and feared that God would be dishonored by the prayer not being answered. One of the ministers said to Mr. Alexander, “That man ought not to have prayed that way. The barometer is going down all the time and there is no chance whatever of its clearing up.”

I went to my room and began to pray alone to God about the various interests of the work. Before I finished the prayer, it was nearly two o’clock. I was led to pray that it would clear up and the sunshine during the afternoon meeting. As I opened my eyes, the sun burst through the clouds and streamed into my room.

There was a great gathering for the open-air meeting and God’s Spirit was present in power, but no sooner had the open air meeting closed and the workers and others gotten back to Kinnaird Hall, than the rain began again and poured incessantly.

How to Love Jesus

A little girl in London once came to Mark Guy Pearse and said, “Mr. Pearse, I don’t love Jesus. I wish you would tell me how to love Him.” He said, “Little girl, as you go away from here today, keep saying to yourself, ‘Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me,’ and I believe you will come back next Sunday saying, ‘I love Jesus.’”

The next Sunday the little girl came back to Mark Guy Pearse radiant, and she said, “Oh, Mr. Pearse, I do love Jesus. As I went away from here last Sunday, I kept saying to myself as you told me to, ‘Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me,’ and then I soon saw Him hanging on the cross and dying in awful agony for me, and my heart began to grow warm and very soon it was full of love to Jesus.”

“We love him because he first loved us.”

How to Reach a Son in a Distant Land

At the close of a meeting one day in Manchester, England, a prominent businessman of that city came to me and asked me to pray for his son. He said his son was a gifted young man, nearly forty years of age, a graduate of Cambridge University and a lawyer but that he was a wanderer, and had left his wife and child and was then wandering, he knew not where. I promised to pray for him.

The next summer at Keswick, this father came to me again and said, “I have got track of my son. He is in Vancouver. Do you know any minister in Vancouver? I want to cable him at once.” I gave him the name of a friend in Vancouver and he cabled him. But the next day, he came and said, “I am too late. The bird has flown. Will you still pray for my son?” I promised him I would.

The following November, we began our second mission in the great Tournament Hall in Liverpool. The first Sunday afternoon I preached on “GOD IS LOVE.” At the close of the service, a fine-looking man thirty-eight years of age came up to me and told me that he had decided to accept Christ. When we inquired into the matter; we found that this man was the son that the Manchester man had asked me to pray for. He had returned to England, had wandered into our first meeting on Sunday afternoon and accepted Christ. He at once gave himself to the work of winning others with great success and afterward studied for Holy Orders under the Bishop of Liverpool.

Hunted to Death by Her Own Conscience

Over in Canada there was a young girl leading a quiet life in the country. Report came to her of the greater gaiety of city life in Toronto. She said, “I will go to the city; it is too quiet here in the country. I will go to the city of Toronto, and enter into a life of gaiety.” She went to Toronto; she entered upon her gay life, and was soon caught, as so many another girl has been caught, in the whirlpool of sin, and went down into a life of shame. Days passed by; her conscience did not torment her very much. One night the Fisk Jubilee Singers were singing in Toronto, and a friend asked her to go and hear them sing. So she went to the church to hear the Fisk Jubilee Singers sing, and she enjoyed the concert very much until these black singers came to that song, the weird refrain of which runs:

“My mother once, my mother twice,

My mother she’ll rejoice.

In heaven once, in heaven twice,

My mother she’ll rejoice.”

As the strains of that refrain came floating over the heads of the audience up to where that poor girl sat in the gallery, it brought back recollections of her childhood. She was a little child again of four years of age. It was evening time. Her mother sat by the table in the sitting room. The lamp stood upon the table, and the open Bible was in her mother’s lap, and the mother was teaching her, an innocent golden-headed child of four, how to pray. The concert went on. Again the Fisk Jubilee Singers came to that refrain:

“My mother once, my mother twice,

My mother she’ll rejoice.

In heaven once, in heaven twice,

My mother she’ll rejoice.”

The hot blood rushed to the girl’s cheeks. She sprang from her seat in the gallery. Her friend tried to detain her, but she broke away and rushed down the gallery, down the stairway, out on to the streets of Toronto. On and on and on, as fast as her feet, now growing weary, could carry her; on and on and on, beneath the flickering gaslights of Toronto; on and on and on, out into the open country; and the next morning, when a farmer came to his white farmhouse door, there lay the poor girl clutching the threshold—dead. Hunted to death by her own conscience.

Woe be to the men and women whose conscience wakes up, who have no hiding place from their own conscience.

I Am a Scoundrel

One night in my own church in Chicago in the after-meeting, a gentleman who sat in the second row called me to his side. He said, “I want to ask you a question. I am not a Christian. I make no pretensions to being a Christian, but I lead a moral, upright, honest life, and the question I want to ask you is this, if I don’t accept Christ, leading the moral, upright life that I do, will I be sent to hell just because I don’t accept Christ?” I said, “You certainly will.” “Well, all I have to say is, it isn’t fair.” I said, “Wait. Suppose you had a mother, who was one of the noblest women that ever lived.” He said, “I have.” “Suppose that mother loved you with even greater love than a mother ordinarily loves her son.” He said, “She does.” “Suppose that mother would be willing to lay down her life and to die for you.” He said, “She would.”

“Very well,” I said, “having such a mother as you say you have, suppose you should do your duty by everyone else, your duty by your wife, by your children, by those you are connected with in business, by your neighbors, by the state, your duty by everyone else but that old mother that loves you, that has suffered for you, that would be willing to die for you; now suppose you turned her out on the street to starve and perish, what would you say of yourself?” He said, “I should say that I was a scoundrel.”

“Very well,” I said, “Jesus Christ is holier, better, nobler than any mother that ever lived. Jesus Christ not only loved you enough to die for you, He actually did die for you. Now suppose you do your duty by wife, by children, by neighbors, by business associates, but utterly fail in your duty to Jesus Christ, what would you say of yourself?” He had sense enough to see the point. He said, “I am a scoundrel.”

Be honest. You will have to be honest someday. Be honest with God, be honest with yourself. The claims of Christ are higher than the claims of the whole race, and if we do our duty by every fellow being and fail in our duty towards Christ, we fail at the principal point.

I Am an Infidel

When we were in New Zealand, by the delay of the steamer, we were enabled to hold one evening meeting in Invercargill. The meeting was held in the Drill Hall. The night was close. There was no way of adequately ventilating the building. Men and women fainted on every hand and were carried from the building, but still the people lingered and listened to the preaching of the Word of God. When I dismissed the first meeting, many of the people had to pass right in front of the platform. A tall man with stooped shoulders about sixty years of age came by the platform and looked up at me and scowled and said, “I am an infidel.” “You don’t need to tell me that,” I replied. “Your face shows it. You have one of the most wretched faces I ever saw.” The man passed on in silence. The next day I received a letter from him. He said, “I am wretched. How can I be anything but wretched?”

Ah, there is nothing in infidelity to meet the deepest needs of the human heart. Nothing in infidelity to transform the sorrows of life into joys. Intelligent faith in Christ fills the life with sunshine. Unbelief fills the heart with clouds and despair.

I Can Hardly Wait

In my first pastorate there was a revival of religion. It was sweeping through the town and people of all classes were being converted. Some of the infidels were greatly disturbed and sent off for an infidel lecturer with the hope of stopping the work, but his coming helped the work rather than hindered it. Many who did not dare to come out to hear the preachers had courage to go to hear the infidel lecturer and were so disgusted by his manner of presenting his position that they looked into the claims of Christ and were led to accept Him.

One lady said to her husband the night of his first lecture, “Let us go and hear Professor J. tonight at the hall.” Her husband replied, “What do you want to hear him for? You don’t believe as he does.” “I don’t know what I believe,” she replied. The husband consented to take her. As they came down the stairs of the hall after listening to the professor’s coarse ridicule of the Bible, the lady turned to her husband and said, “Well, I have found out one thing tonight anyway.” “What is that?” “I have found out that I believe the Bible.” She came to me and asked to be taken into my church. It was evident she really had accepted Christ and she entered the church and became one of the most active members in it.

But there was another lady in the community, who a few years before in a revival meeting in an adjoining town had started for the front and her husband had laid his hand upon her shoulder and forced her back into her seat. She never afterward made any attempt to become a Christian but drifted, as so many others do who resist the Holy Spirit, into rampant infidelity. When she heard that the infidels of the town had sent for this infidel lecturer she remarked to a friend, “I can hardly wait until Professor J. gets here.” She did not wait. One Saturday evening she was at the house of a friend at a card party. Ten o’clock came and they were still playing cards. Eleven o’clock came and they were still playing cards. Twelve o’clock came and they were still playing cards. The Sabbath began but they were still playing cards—Sabbath breaking and card—playing go hand in hand. In the early hours of the Sabbath morning, she sprang suddenly from the card table, clapped her hand upon her head and cried, “Oh,” and dropped dead beside the table. I would rather die somewhere else.

I shall never forget my first meeting with that woman’s husband after this awful tragedy. He had never spoken to me before, but as I entered the post office through one door, he came in through another. As soon as he saw me, he hurried across the post office towards me, held out his hand and I held out mine in deepest sympathy for the unfortunate man. I shall never forget the grasp he gave my hand. He knew his wife had gone out into a hopeless eternity and that he was to blame. O! you men, who are standing between your wives and their acceptance of Jesus Christ, there is an awful day coming for you, a day when you will look upon the white faces of your wives as they lie in the casket and will be face to face with the thought that your wives are lost forever and that you are to blame.

I Cannot Believe the Bible Because I Am a Scientist

One night one of my workers called me to deal with a man who claimed to be an infidel. I said to him, “Are you an infidel?” He said, “I am.” I said, “Will you please tell me what makes you an infidel?” He said, “Because I am a scientist and the Bible contradicts the teachings of science.” I asked him of what branch of science he made a specialty. He replied, “Chemistry.” I said, “Did you ever hear of Henry Clerk Maxwell?” He said, “No, I never did.” I suggested he could not be very well read in chemistry if he had never heard of Henry Clerk Maxwell, and further called his attention to the fact that though Henry Clerk Maxwell was such an eminent man of science, he was also an earnest Christian. I next asked him if he had ever heard of James D. Dana (the great geologist). He replied that he had. I doubt if he really had, but he was becoming rattled and did not wish to appear too ignorant. “Well,” I said, “you know that James D. Dana was one of the most eminent men of science that this country has ever produced. Now,” I said, “it was my privilege to study under James D. Dana and to know him personally, and I have heard him say that one reason why he believed the Bible to be the Word of God was because there was such a remarkable agreement between the first chapter of Genesis and the most recent discoveries in geology. Now,” I continued, “it will not do for a little six-by-nine scientist like you to say you cannot believe the Bible because you are a man of science, when men so eminent in the scientific world have found no difficulty in believing in the Bible as the Word of God.”

I Don't Know Him

A beautiful young mother in New York City returning to the building in which her little infant lay asleep was appalled to see the building in flames. The firemen could not restrain her and she dashed through the flames and rescued her child, but in doing so, she was so severely burned that her face was horribly disfigured for life. When she looked at her face in the glass after it was healed, she was shocked at her disfigurement, but was comforted by the thought that when her little daughter grew up she would appreciate the sacrifice that her mother had made to rescue her. The little child did grow up to be a young woman of uncommon beauty. She was much admired and petted.

One day there was an excursion up the river and both mother and daughter went. The beautiful daughter was on the front deck surrounded by a host of admirers, laughing and talking. The disfigured mother was on the rear deck looking after the wraps and other things. The mother had occasion to go to the front deck to speak to her daughter. As she drew near, a gay young man asked the beautiful young girl, “Who is that hideous looking woman coming?” In a low tone, the beautiful daughter said, “I don’t know.” But the words were not so low but what the mother caught them and that loving heart was broken by the gross ingratitude of the daughter for whom she had sacrificed so much.

How we shudder at the thought of such awful ingratitude, but are we not guilty of a grosser ingratitude towards our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? His visage was more marred than any man’s and His form more than the sons of men, and yet how many today are ashamed of Him and say, “I do not know Him.”

I Have Committed a Sin for Which There Is No Forgiveness

At the close of a service in our Chicago church I found a man standing by one of the chairs. He seemed to be deeply interested. The moment I began to speak to him he broke down and said, “I would like to be saved, but I have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness. I remember my mother reading me in the Bible when I was a boy that those who committed this sin could not be saved.” I asked him what the sin was that he had committed. He told me, and for a moment I could not think where there was any passage in the Bible that could by any possibility be construed into meaning that there could be no forgiveness for this sin, but suddenly 1 Corinthians 6:9 occurred to me. I said, “I think I know the passage to which you refer,” and opened my Bible and began to read, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” “Yes,” he said, “that is it. Does it not say there is no salvation for those who do this sin? Does it not say ‘they shall not inherit the kingdom of God’?” I said, “Listen, while I read the next verse,” and I read on, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” “Does it say that? Does it say that?” the man cried. I said, “Read it for yourself.” He took my Bible and read it and cried, “Thank God.” He knelt down with the tears streaming down his face and accepted the Saviour, and arose full of joy in the knowledge that his sins were all forgiven.

Some weeks after when I entered the church one Sunday morning, I saw him standing at the back of the seats with a lady between thirty and forty and a young lady perhaps seventeen or eighteen. As I stepped up to speak to him he said, “Let me introduce you to my wife and daughter.” I spoke to them about Christ and they both took Christ. Today that man is a hard-working member and office-bearer in Chicago Avenue Church. His sin was great, but even such as he could be “washed” and “sanctified” and “justified.”

I Have Heard the Biggest Joke

On our first visit to Liverpool, a well-known businessman (manager of eighty-nine butcher shops) was asked by his wife to accompany her to the meeting in Philharmonic Hall a certain evening. He consented to go but with no intention of keeping his promise. He was far more interested in prize fights than he was in evangelistic meetings. He was known all over the city as a patron of prize fights and had been a referee in many of them. When the evening to accompany his wife to the mission came, he found there was a great prize fight on. He tried to see if there wasn’t some way out of taking his wife to the hall, and slipping away to go into the fight. He tried being gruff to her, but this made no difference, she held him to his promise. Finally he said, “If I promised you to go, of course, I’ll take you.” When they got to the hall, they found the main floor reserved for men and the women were asked to go to the gallery. “Now,” thought he, “my chance for escape has come,” so he said to his wife, “You go into the gallery, and I’ll slip in down here,” but she knew him too well to be fooled that way, and insisted that he go into the gallery with her. He went but very much against his will. In spite of himself, he was soon interested.

The next night he slipped out of the house without saying a word to his wife and made his way to the Philharmonic Hall alone. The singing was in full swing when he reached the hall. Soon after getting his seat, he heard the men singing very softly,

“See! from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

He was completely overcome. He saw Jesus Christ on the cross for him, and forgetting the crowd and everything about him, he fell on his knees and sobbed. All through the evening the vision of Christ on the cross for him was before his eyes. He heard little of the sermon. He was occupied with but one thing, his Saviour dying for him. When the invitation was given out, he was the first to come to the front and profess his acceptance of Christ. He went home and told his wife that he had accepted Christ. To his surprise, she was not surprised. She said, “I knew you would do it, Ted. I have been praying for you for years, and recently we have been holding prayer meetings for your conversion, and I knew that God would answer my prayer.”

He became an active worker at once. Was constantly testifying in private and public to the saving power of Christ. Wherever he could find a mission going on, he would go and give his testimony. He was much in demand among the missions and churches to go and tell the story.

A former comrade met him one day on the street and said, “Ted, I have heard the biggest joke. I heard you were converted.” He replied, “Didn’t they tell you the rest of it? The rest of it is the best part of the joke.” “No, what is the rest?” “The rest of it is, it’s true,” and immediately he preached unto him Jesus.

About fifteen months afterward we went to Liverpool for the second mission, and this man was one of the best workers we had. He was constantly in attendance and constantly working to bring others to Christ. He bought a wagonette to bring people to the hall, and when they would try to excuse themselves from going, he would say, “If I drive around for you, will you go?” In this way he was able to bring many of his friends and neighbors to Christ.

One night I called on him for a testimony. He responded gladly and told in a thrilling way what the Lord Jesus had done for him. The man who was over him in the employ of the great firm he represented happened to be in the building and heard this testimony. After the meeting he came to him and said, “It is all very well your being a Christian, but if you are going around making a fool of yourself in this way, you will lose your position.” For a moment he was nonplussed and then replied, “I must be true to the Lord Jesus no matter what it costs, even if it costs me my position.” It did not cost him his position. On calm reflection his superior thought better of his foolish threat.

I Have Seen One of Those Before

A young fellow came to the Bible Institute from a Kansas farm to be a student. He was one of the greenest looking men that ever applied to the Institute to enter as a student. At my first casual meeting with him I thought to myself, “I wonder what that man will ever do.” He was so indescribably fresh and green. But he was full of zeal for Christ and not as green as he looked or acted.

Not long afterward one evening he was on Chicago Avenue distributing tracts to men as they passed by. It was a hard neighborhood. There had been many a murder in the vicinity. He approached one man to hand him a tract and the young desperado drew a revolver and held it at his breast. The young farmer boy was not phased in the least. “Oh,” he said smiling, “I have seen one of those before. Have a tract.” The young fellow was more completely disarmed than if the farmer had knocked him down, and immediately took the tract and walked away.

I Lied to You, Sir

At the close of a service in a tent in a section of Chicago called “Little Hell,” I went to the door of the tent to speak to the people as they walked out. A large share of the audience were Roman Catholics. I shook hands with one after another when a young Roman Catholic Irishman walked out. I held out my hand to him and said, “Why don’t you take Jesus Christ as your Saviour?” “Oh,” he said, “I am all right.” I said, “You haven’t peace.” He said, “Yes, I have.” I said, “No, you haven’t.” He said, “Perhaps you know better than I do.” I said, “No, but God knows better than either of us and God says, ‘There is no peace to the wicked’ (Isa. 57:21). Now,” I said, “either God lies or you do, but I know God does not lie and God says you haven’t peace. ‘There is no peace to the wicked, saith my God.’” The man got angry and said, “If you don’t want me to come here anymore, I won’t.” I said, “Yes, I do want you to come but I want you to understand that you don’t deceive me. I can read your heart just as well as if I could see into it, and I know there is no peace in your heart.” He said, “There is, too,” and broke away and passed out of the tent.

The next night at the close of the service as I looked over to the side of the tent to my left I saw this man on his knees with a worker beside him. In a few moments he and the worker arose and the worker came to me and said, “That young man wishes to apologize to you.” I said, “He has nothing to apologize to me for. He has never wronged me.” “Well,” she said, “he says he did and wants to apologize.” I said, “Very well, bring him over.” He said, “I want to apologize to you. I lied to you last night. I said I had peace when I had not.” I said, “I knew you hadn’t, for God says, ‘There is no peace to the wicked.’” But now the man had peace, real peace through the acceptance of Christ.

I Thought of My Mother

During our Dublin campaign, a young man came to me in great distress. He had been paying attention to a young lady, who was very worldly. He had been brought up under Christian influences, his mother being an earnest Christian woman. He told me that the preceding Sunday evening he had called upon the young lady in whom he was interested. Though it was Sunday evening, the girl’s mother proposed that they play cards. The young lady’s mother urged him to join in the game, but he refused. He said to me, “When I was invited to play cards on a Sunday evening, the thought came to me, ‘What if I should and my mother should hear of it. It would break her heart.’” How many a man is kept back from doing things he would otherwise do by the thought of how it would grieve his mother if she should hear of it. But there is One who is more keenly sensitive than the purest mother, who is grieved at the slightest departure from the path of right as no mother even is grieved, that One is the Holy Spirit. He goes with us wherever we go. He sees all that we do. He hears all that we say. Yes, He sees the most secret fancy of the heart, and if there is an act or word or thought that has a taint of impurity or selfishness or sin, He is deeply grieved. To me this is one of the mightiest incentives to a careful walk. Oftentimes when some evil thought is suggested to me by the enemy, the thought comes, “I cannot entertain that thought for a moment. If I do, the Holy Spirit, who sees it, will be deeply grieved, and I cannot bear to grieve this ever-present, faithful Friend.”

I Want to Wait a Little Longer

It is amazing how the devil blinds men and women into thinking that there is plenty of time to repent and accept Christ. One night there came into our after meeting in Chicago a man far above the average in intelligence. In fact, he occupied a high judicial position in an adjoining state. When I began to speak to him, he said, “I have lost my wife this past summer, and I have been very lonely and I have been thinking that I ought to accept Christ. I am getting to be an old man. I am seventy-six years old. Your sermon touched me deeply tonight and I decided that I would rise and that I would speak to you afterward.” “I am very glad you did,” I said. “Will you accept Christ now?” The old judge hesitated a little while, then he said, “No, I don’t think I am quite ready to do it yet. I would like to wait a while longer.” It took an amazing amount of persuasion to convince that man that seventy-six years was long enough to wait. He seemed to think that though he was seventy-six years old, there was still plenty of time to accept Christ.

I Will Feel for a Man

One night in the lecture room of Chicago Avenue Church Charles Herald was urging the people to go out and bring in the unsaved. The response to his appeals were somewhat slow, when suddenly a blind man sprang to his feet and said, “Why cannot you do as the evangelist asks you? Now I cannot see, but I will feel for a man and bring him to the meeting tomorrow night.” The next night came and the blind man was picking his way through a dark alley back of the church. He had nearly reached the gate when suddenly it occurred to him, “I have not got the man that I promised to bring.” He backed up against the wall of the church and listened. Soon he heard the feet of a man coming down the asphalt pavement of the alley way. When the man was in front of him, he suddenly sprang out and grabbed the man and said, “Come with me to meeting.” The man was startled, and thought at first he was being held up by a footpad. He was ready to do almost anything, and submissively went to the meeting. He was converted that night.

The next night the blind man brought three, all of whom, I think, were converted. If a blind man can go out and bring in people that way, certainly we that have our eyes ought to be able to bring someone with us to every meeting.

I Wish I Were a Christian

In one of my pastorates there was a man who was bitterly opposed to the church. He was one of the most self-righteous men I ever knew. He never tired of criticizing others, but maintained that his own character was so good that he had no fear of standing before God on the ground of his own upright character.

But the time came for that man to die. A cancer appeared on his scalp. It ate its way through the scalp and then began to eat its way through the skull. At last there was only a thin film of skull between the cancer and the brain. The doctor informed him that as soon as the cancer penetrated to the brain, he must die. As he lay face to face with the stern reality of death, he said, “Send for Mr. Torrey.” I hurried to his bedside and sat down beside him. “Oh,” he said, “Mr. Torrey, they tell me I have not long to live; that as soon as the cancer eats a little further through the skull and penetrates the brain, I must die. Tell me just what I must do to become a Christian.” I tried to make the way of life as plain as I knew how, but he seemed unable to grasp it. He had put off the great decision until too late, and his mind seemed to have lost all power to grasp things. At night I said to his family, “You have sat up with him night after night. I will sit up with him tonight.” They told me what to do for him and retired. All through the night I was with him. Several times it was necessary to go out into an adjoining room to get him something, and whenever I would return to the room where he lay from the bed over in the corner of the room, I would hear one constant groan, “Oh, I wish I was a Christian,” “Oh, I wish I was a Christian,” “Oh, I wish I was a Christian”; and so the man died.

He had found comfort in the thought of his own goodness in the time of health and strength but as he had lain face to face with death and eternity and God, he had seen clearly it was necessary to have some better foundation but it was too late to find it.

If Any Man Be in Christ Jesus, He Is a New Creature

I knew a man who used to go to dances at least four nights a week, and in summertime spend his days on the racecourse. He would spend a large share of his afternoons at the card table and the remaining nights on a big drunk, or something of that kind. I have known that man so touched by the finger of God that you could not get him to a ball unless you dragged him by an ox-team, unless he went to preach the Gospel. I have known him to do that. In the olden days he loved the theater, but today he would be perfectly unhappy in a theater unless be went there to preach the Gospel. I have known him to do that. In the olden days, he played cards six days out of seven but today you could not hire him to touch the cards. In the olden days, the prayer meeting would have been crucifixion to him, but there is scarcely anything he enjoys today as he enjoys the prayer meeting. In the olden days, the Bible was the stupidest book to him, though he read it every day. He loved everything in the way of literature better than the Bible and religious books. Today he loves the Bible and sometimes he thinks he won’t read anything else. I know that man well. I know him better than I know any other man, and knowing the transformation that has taken place in his life, I know that the new birth is a reality, if I don’t know anything else.

If I Could Only Have Saved Just One More

Before I close I must tell you a story. This incident is so remarkable that when I first heard it it seemed to me that it could not possibly be true. But the man that told it was of such a character that I felt that it must be true because he told it, and yet I said, “I must find out for myself whether that story is true or not.” So I went to the librarian of the university where the incident was said to have occurred and I found out that it was true. The story as I tell it to you today is as I got it from the brother of the main actor in the scene. The story is this: About twelve miles from where I live, twelve miles from the city of Chicago, is the suburb of Evanston, where there is a large Methodist university, I think the largest university of the Methodist denomination in America; at all events, a great university. Years ago, before the college had blossomed into a great University, when there were not many students in it, two young country boys came from the State of Iowa—strong, husky fellows, and one of them was a famous swimmer. Early one morning word came to the college that down on Lake Michigan, just off the shores of Evanston, there was a wreck. It proved to be the Lady Elgin. The college boys with everybody in town hurried down to the shores of Lake Michigan. Off yonder in the distance they saw the Lady Elgin going to pieces. Ed Spencer, the famous swimmer, threw off all his superfluous garments, tied a rope round his waist, threw one end to his comrades on the shore, sprang into Lake Michigan, swam out to the wreck, grasped one that was drowning and gave the sign to be pulled ashore. And again, and again, and again he swam out and grasped a drowning man or woman and brought them safe to shore, until he had brought to shore a seventh, an eighth, a ninth, and a tenth. Then he was utterly exhausted. They had built a fire of logs upon the sand. He went and stood by the fire of logs that cold bleak morning, blue, pinched, trembling, hardly able to stand. He stood before that fire trying to get a little warmth into his perishing members. As he stood there he turned and looked out over Lake Michigan, and off in the distance, near the Lady Elgin, he saw men and women still struggling in the water. He said, “Boys, I am going in again.” “No, no, Ed,” they cried, “it is utterly vain to try; you have used up all your strength, you could not save anybody; for you to jump into the lake again will simply mean for you to commit suicide.” “Well,” he cried, “boys, they are drowning, and I will try, anyhow.” And he started to the shore of the lake. His companions cried, “No, no, Ed, no, don’t try.” He said, “I will,” and he jumped into Lake Michigan and battled out against the waves, and got hold of a drowning man who was struggling in this water and brought him ashore. And again, and again, and again, until he had brought an eleventh, a twelfth, a thirteenth, a fourteenth, and a fifteenth, safe to shore. Then they pulled him in through the breakers. He could scarcely get to the fire on the beach, and there, trembling, he stood before that fire trying to get a little warmth into his shivering limbs. As they looked at him it seemed as if the hand of death was already upon him. Then he turned away from the fire again, and looked out over the lake, and as he looked, away off yonder in the distance he saw a spar rising and falling upon the waves. He looked at it with his keen eye, and saw a man’s head above the spar. He said, “Boys, there’s a man trying to save himself.” He looked again and saw a woman’s head beside the man’s. He said, “Boys, there’s a man trying to save his wife.” He watched the spar as it drifted towards the point. He knew that to drift around that point meant certain death. He said “Boys, I am going to help him.” “No, no, Ed,” they cried, “you can’t help him. Your strength is all gone.” He said, “I will try, anyway.” He sprang into Lake Michigan, swam out wearily towards the spar, and reaching it he put his hands upon the spar, and summoning all his dying strength, brought it around the right end of the point to safety. Then they pulled him in through the breakers. Loving hands lifted him from the beach and carried him to his room up in the college They laid him upon his bed, made a fire in the grate, and his brother Will remained by to watch him, for he was becoming delirious. As the day passed on Will Spencer sat looking into the fire. Suddenly Will heard a gentle footfall behind him and felt someone touch him on the shoulder. He looked up and there stood Ed looking wistfully down into his face. He said, “What is it, Ed?” He said, “Will, did I do my best?” “Why, Ed,” he said, “you saved seventeen.” He said, “I know it, I know it, but I was afraid I didn’t do my very best. Will, do you think I did my very best?” Will took him back to bed and laid him upon it, and sat down by his side. As the night passed, I am told, Ed went into semi-delirium, and Will sat by the bed and held his hand and tried to calm him in his delirium. All that he thought about were the men and women that perished that day, for in spite of all his bravery many went down that day to a watery grave. Will sat there and held Ed’s hand, and tried to calm him. “Ed,” he said, “you saved seventeen.” He said, “I know it, Will, I know it; but oh, if I could only have saved just one more.”

Men and women of Birmingham, you and I stand this afternoon beside a stormy sea. Oh, as we look out at this tossing sea of life round about us on every hand there are wrecks. Will you and I sit here calmly while they are going down, going down, going down, going down to a hopeless eternity!

Men and women, let us plunge in again and again and again and again, until every last ounce of strength is gone, and when at last in sheer exhaustion we fall upon the shore in the earnestness of our love for perishing men, let us cry, “Oh, if I could only save just one more.”

An Infidel Converted Beside a Coffin

A young lady in the Bible Institute, Chicago, started to call upon every family on a certain street in the poorer quarter of the city. One day she pushed open a door and found a man lying ill in bed, dying with consumption. When she began to speak to him, he told her crossly that he was an infidel and did not believe in the Bible. She spoke a few words and left. The next day she took him a glass of jelly, and the next day took him some other delicacy and a few days after that something else. She kept up her kindly ministrations for about a month. One Sunday afternoon she came to me as I was leaving my Bible class and said, “There is an infidel dying down on Milton Avenue. I know you are very busy, but could you not take a few moments to go and see him?” “Yes,” I replied, “I will go now.” She took me to the home and introduced me to the man and left. I sat down by his bed and asked if I could read from the Bible to him. He replied that I could. I read him a part of the fifth chapter of Romans, dwelling upon the places that told of God’s love for the sinner. I read him the place where it told how Jesus Christ bore all our sins in His own body on the cross. Then I asked if I could pray. I knelt by his bed. I felt his time was short. I asked God to open his eyes to see that he was a lost sinner, and also to open his eyes to see that Jesus had borne all his sins in His own body on the cross, and to show him that he could find pardon and salvation then and there by simply trusting in Jesus. When I finished the prayer I began to sing in a low tone,

“Just as I am without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee—

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”

I sang on verse after verse. When I reached the last verse he broke in in a feeble voice (he had evidently heard the song somewhere in his boyhood days) and he sang with me,

“Just as I am—Thou wilt receive,

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,

Because Thy promise I believe—

O Lamb of God, I come, I come!”

When we had finished, I looked up and said, “Did you really come?” He said, “I did.” I talked with him a little while and found that he really was trusting in the Saviour. That night he passed away to be with Him.

His wife, who was a Roman Catholic, came to me the next day and asked if I would conduct the funeral. I said I would. Around the coffin were gathered a considerable number of his old infidel friends. I told them the story of his death; how his infidelity had failed him in that trying hour and how he had been led to see his need of the Saviour and that Jesus Christ was just the Saviour he needed, and how he had been led to accept Christ. Then I said, “Are there any of you here today who have been infidels who will accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour?” A stalwart man standing on the other side of the coffin reached his hand across to me and said, “I have been an infidel with him. I have sympathized with him in all his views, but I now give them up and take Jesus Christ as my Saviour.”

An Infidel Professor Converted

In one of my pastorates there was a lady member of our church who had a brother who was a professor of geology. He was an able man but an infidel. Sometimes he delivered lectures on the conflict between science and Christianity. His sister came to me and asked me to pray for his conversion. This I consented to do. Not a great while after she came to me one day and said, “My brother is converted,” and showed me a letter he had written her. He said he had recently begun the study of the Bible (it would have been well if he had begun the study of the Bible before he lectured on it, and he had been deeply impressed by the agreement between the teachings of the Bible and the teachings of modern science and that he had become a Christian.

If more men who talked against the Bible would get down to a real study of the Bible, they would soon give up their infidelity and accept the Bible and its Christ.

Infidelity and Licentiousness

One night when Colonel Ingersoll was delivering one of his brilliant lectures in one of our great cities a large number of medical students went to hear him. They listened with admiration and applause to the colonel’s brilliant periods, and when the lecture was over, they marched out arm in arm, a long company of them down the streets of the city, and into the vilest dens of infamy.

Some at least of those who watched them could not but note the intimate connection between infidelity and licentiousness.

Insulting God

One night one of my workers called me and said, “Come and talk to this man. He is an infidel.” I went over and talked to him. I said, “Are you an infidel?” He said, “Yes, I am an infidel.” I said, “Will you tell me why you are an infidel?” He said, “Yes, sir, because the Bible is full of contradictions.” I said, “Will you please show me one?” He said, “It is full of them.” “Well,” I said, “if it is full of them you ought at least to be able to show me one. Will you show me one?” He said, “I don’t pretend to know as much about the Bible as you do.” “What are you talking about it for then?” I asked. “Now,” I continued, “the Bible is God’s Word. God is its Author, and in throwing contempt on the Bible, you are throwing contempt upon God who is the Author of it, and Jesus tells us that men shall give account of every idle word in the Day of Judgment, and you will have to give account of this idle word you have spoken against the Bible and against God who is its Author.” He turned pale, as well he might, and said, “I did not mean to do that.” “Well, that is what you have done,” and that is what many a man is doing, speaking lightly and thoughtlessly about the Bible, not realizing that in condemning the Bible, he is insulting the God who is the Author of it, and he will have to give account of his folly in the Day of Judgment.

Is Not God's Word As Good As Mine?

Preaching one night in Minneapolis in my own church on the text “Quench not the Spirit,” the power of God came in a wonderful way upon the audience. When I stepped down from the pulpit, I found in one of the front pews four persons kneeling in great distress of soul, two brothers and two young ladies whom they had brought with them to the meeting. These brothers came from an utterly godless family and were regarded as hard young men, but the Spirit of God had taken hold of them that night in mighty power. Three other workers spoke to three of the four who were kneeling in prayer and brought them out into the light, and I undertook to talk to the older of the men. He was in great agony of soul and listened attentively as I pointed him to the passages of the Word of God that showed how Jesus Christ had borne all his sin in His own body on the Cross, and how if he would believe in Christ, be would have pardon at once. He claimed to accept Christ but be found no peace, and left the building in great distress. He was present again the next night, and again I talked with him. He claimed to have accepted Christ, but did not believe that his sins were pardoned. I took him to John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,” and had him read it over and over again. I said to him, “Hector, who does God here say hath everlasting life?” He said, “He that believeth on the Son.” I said, “Do you believe on the Son?” He said, “I do.” I said, “What does God say?” “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” “What have you?” “Oh, Mr. Torrey,” he cried, “won’t you pray for me?” I said, “Yes, I will pray for you,” and again I went over it, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” I said, “Who has everlasting life?” “He that believeth on the Son.” “How many that believe on the Son have everlasting life?”

“Everyone.” “Have you believed on the Son?”

“I have.” “What does God say about those who believe on the Son?” “They have everlasting life.” “Are you sure that they that believe on the Son have everlasting life?” “I am.” “What makes you so sure?” “God says so.” “What does God say?” “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” “Do you believe on the Son?” “I do.” “What does God say you have?” “Oh!” he cried, “Mr. Torrey, will you pray for me?” I went over it and over it again but he could not seem to grasp it. At last he arose and started slowly down the aisle to leave the building. Before he started, he said, “Mr. Torrey, will you pray for me?” I said, “I will.” I let him get part way down the aisle and then I called after him, “Hector, do you believe that I will pray for you?” “Why, I know you will,” he replied. “How do you know that I will?” “Because you said so.” “Is not God’s Word as good as mine?” I asked. The truth flashed in upon his soul in a moment. He saw that while he had been ready to believe me, he had not been ready to believe God. He took God at His Word and knew he had everlasting life because God said so, and went home rejoicing in perfect assurance that he had everlasting life and that his sins were all forgiven.

Isaiah Fifty-Three Six

I was preaching one evening in a college town in Minnesota. I noticed a fine-looking man with white hair and beard sitting near the front. Though he listened with the closest attention, the way he acted while I preached, and when I gave the invitation, made me confident that he was not a Christian. Immediately upon the close of the meeting, I made my way to him and said to him, “Are you a Christian?” “No, sir.” “Would you become one if I showed you how?” He said, “I would.” I said, “Let’s sit down and talk it over.” I opened my Bible to Isaiah 53:6 and read, “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way.” I said, “Is that true of you?” He said, “It is, sir.” I said, “What are you then?” He said, “I am lost.” “Now,” I said, “listen to the rest of the verse.” “And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” “Do you believe that?” I said. “Yes,” he said, “I believe everything in the Bible.” I said, “Do you believe that the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all? Do you believe that the Lord hath laid on Jesus your sin?” He said, “I do.” “What then is all that is necessary for you to do in order to be saved?” “Simply to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. I said, “Will you do it now?” He said, “I will.” “Let us tell God so,” and side by side we knelt in prayer. When I had prayed, he followed me in prayer. When he had finished his prayer, I said, “What are you?” He said, “I am saved. My sins are forgiven.” Then I asked him, “What are you going to do about it?” He said, “I am going back to my home and set up the family altar and unite with the church.” Some months after I met the pastor of the church that he attended in a town down on the Mississippi River and asked him what this man had done. He said, “He came back to his home, came to me and made application for membership in the church, and brought his oldest son, a grown man, with him, and together they have become members of the church.”

Jolly, but Wretched

One of the brightest memories of my boyhood is of the jolliest man I ever met. He was the center of attraction in every circle of society he ever visited. Let him go into a room full of strangers and soon everybody was at home with him and he was the center of the entire circle always. I loved him. I delighted in his company. There was no man or boy that I so loved to have around. Whenever he was present I knew there was to be merriment. He was the first man that ever took me to the theater. He took my brother next older than I and myself and his own son, but he was more fun than the whole show. It was merriment all the way to the theater; it was merriment all the way back from the theater.

Though more than forty years have passed I can remember the details of that evening yet. I think he was the brightest, cheeriest man I ever saw.

But I grew older and he grew older. When I had attained to manhood and was a preacher of the Gospel, one night he dropped into the house where I was staying. It was the dinner hour. After dinner I was to preach in New York, and I invited him to go along with me. He had become somewhat religious but not an out and out Christian. I felt confident he was not a saved man and hoped that if he went to the meeting that night I might succeed in leading him to Christ; for I was sure he loved me as I did him; so I invited him to go. He went with me.

After the meeting was over and we were on our way home, I approached him directly and personally on the point of accepting Christ. He opened his heart to me and let me see what was there, and I found that the merriest of all men I had ever known, underneath all this gaiety was one of the saddest of men. He had not found the true secret of joy, the joy that goes down to the deepest depths of the heart and that never fails, the joy of the Holy Ghost, which Jesus alone can give.

Killed by Shame

Oh, the awful heart-breaking agony of shame. In America, in New York State, we had a cashier in a bank, who was in a hurry to get rich, so he appropriated the funds of the bank and invested them, intending to pay them back. But his investment was a failure. For a long time he kept the books so as to blind the bank examiner, but one day when the bank examiner was going over the books he detected the embezzlement. He called in the cashier—he had to acknowledge his defalcation. He was arrested, tried, and sent to State’s prison. He had a wife and a lovely child, a sweet angel-like little girl. Some time after his arrest and imprisonment the little child came home sobbing with a breaking heart. “Oh,” she said, “Mother, I can never go back to that school again. Send for my books.” “Oh,” she said, “my darling,” thinking it was some childish whim, “of course you will go back.” “No,” she said, “Mother, I can never go back. Send for my books.” She said, “Darling, what is the matter?” She said, “Another little girl said to me today, ‘Your father is a thief.’” Oh, the cruel stab! The mother saw that she could not go back to school. The wound was fatal. That fair blossom began to fade. A physician was called in, but it surpassed all the possibilities of his art. The child faded and faded, until they laid her upon her bed, and the physician said, “Madam, I must tell you this is a case in which I am powerless; the child’s heart has given way with the agony of the wound. Your child must die.” The mother went in and said to her dying child, “Darling, is there anything you would like to have me do for you?” “Oh,” she said, “yes, Mother, send for Father. Let him come home, and lay his head down on the pillow beside mine as he used to do.” Ah! but that was just what could not be done. The father was behind iron bars. They sent to the governor of the State, and he said, “I have no power in the matter.” They sent to the warden of the prison. He said, “I have no power in the matter.”

But hearts were so touched that they tramped up a case and summoned him as a witness. So they made arrangements whereby the father was suffered to come home under a deputy-warden. He reached his home late at night, and entered his house. The physician was waiting. He said, “I think you had better go in tonight, for I am afraid your child will not live till morning.” The father went to the door and opened it softly. The child looked quickly up. “Oh,” she said, “I knew it was you, Father. I knew you would come. I have been praying God to send you. Father, come and lay your head beside mine upon the pillow just as you used to do.” And the strong man went and laid his head upon the pillow, and the child lovingly patted his cheek, and died. Killed by shame. Men and women, hell is the place of shame, where everybody is dishonored.

Last Opportunity Thrown Away

At one of the meetings in Bradford, a man and wife were deeply moved but they hung back and neither of them rose to accept Christ. As they went home together that night the wife said to the husband, “Would it not have been nice if we had both risen together and accepted Christ tonight?” He replied, “Yes, it would.” In the middle of the night she awakened her husband and complained of feeling ill and in a few moments had passed into eternity. It was her last opportunity to make a public confession of Christ and she had thrown it away.

After the man had laid his wife’s body away in the cemetery he came to the meeting and told the story and publicly accepted Christ.

A Letter From Stillwater Prison

I received one day a letter from a man in States’ prison at Stillwater. It read as follows: “Nearly two years ago I heard you preach on Washington Avenue, Minneapolis. At the close of the service you came to me and urged me to accept Christ. I was under deep conviction and almost yielded, but finally I said, ‘No, I will not accept Christ tonight, but I will come back tomorrow night and accept Christ.’ You urged me to accept Christ at once saying that no one could tell what would happen before another night, but I was stubborn and would not yield. I went out of the meeting, into a saloon and got drunk. The next morning I found myself under arrest for stealing an overcoat. I had not the slightest recollection of stealing the overcoat, but suppose I did steal it while I was intoxicated. I was sentenced to this place for two years. My time is almost up, but now I have accepted Christ here in prison, but if I had only accepted Him that night you urged me to down on Washington Avenue, I would not have had the disgrace of these two years’ imprisonment.”

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Two little girls came to our children’s meeting in Bristol, England, accepted Christ, and went home full of joy and enthusiasm to tell their mother the story of their conversion. When the mother heard the story from her children and saw the “God’s Sure Promise” cards they held in their hands, her heart was full.

She kept the cards with her all evening, took them to bed with her, put them under her pillow and kept her hand on them. She was afraid to go to sleep lest she should get her hand off the cards. The next day was Sunday and the meeting in the afternoon was for women only. This mother came with the cards still in her hand and when the invitation was given out stood up to accept Christ as her Saviour. Led to Christ by her own little daughters. “A little child shall lead them.”

Lost by Neglect

More people are lost in Christian lands, through simple neglect than in any other way. Millions of people drift through life neglecting, drift into the grave neglecting, drift into eternity neglecting, drift into hell neglecting. Here is a dying man, very near death, lying upon his deathbed. Standing upon a table within easy reach—and he has power to put out his hand and get it—is a goblet in which there is a healing draft. If the man puts out his hand and takes the goblet and drinks the medicine, he will be cured. If he won’t drink it, he will die. Now, what is all that is necessary for that man to do to be saved? Simply to put out his hand, take the medicine and drink it. What is all that is necessary for him to do to die? It is not necessary for him to commit suicide by cutting his throat; it is not necessary for him to assault the doctor; it is not necessary for him to even take the medicine and throw it out of the window; it is not even necessary for him to refuse to take the medicine; all that is necessary for him to die is simply to neglect to put out his hand and take it.

Every man and woman and child out of Christ is now dying the eternal death. Right within reach in the Bible and in the Christ of the Bible is the medicine that will cure you and save you, and it is the only medicine that will. What is all that you have to do to be saved? Simply to put out your hand and take the medicine. What is all that is necessary for you to do to be lost? It is not necessary to get up and curse and swear; it is not necessary for you to get up and ridicule the Bible; it is not necessary to go out and say outrageous things about God and Christ; it is not necessary to go out and commit a great immorality; it is not necessary even to say, “I won’t take the Gospel”; all that is necessary for you to do to be lost is simply to neglect to take it. You are lost already, and unless you take Christ and take Him soon, you will be lost eternally.

Here is a boat in the Niagara River away above the falls. The current there is very gentle. A man sits in the boat. There is a strong pair of oars resting by his feet. If the man wants to, he can take the oars and pull out of the current to the shore. But the man simply sits there and drifts on and on, gently at first, then a little swifter, then swifter, and now the man is in the swift current. He is already at the head of the rapids. If he should get up now and take hold of the oars with all his strength, he could not pull against the current. Men on the shore see his peril. They run along the shore, throw a rope, as has often been done, and it falls in the boat right at the man’s feet. Strong arms on the shore are ready to pull him ashore if he takes the rope. What is all that is necessary for him to do to be saved? Simply to lay hold of the rope, and the men on shore will do the rest. What is all that is necessary for him to do to be lost? It is not necessary for him to take the oars and pull on with the current; it is not necessary for him to throw himself overboard into the rapids; it is not necessary for him even to refuse to take the rope. If he will only sit still for about thirty seconds and do nothing, the current will take that boat and sweep it on, on, on over the falls over which no man has gone and lived.

That is a picture of every man and woman out of Christ. You are in the current. The current of sin is so swift and strong that no man can pull against it in his own strength. But God, standing on the shores of eternity, in His infinite love, has thrown out a rope in the Gospel of His Son, good and strong, and it has fallen at the feet of every man and woman. What is all that you have got to do to be saved? Just lay hold of the rope—just take Christ, and God will bring you home to glory. What is all you have to do to be lost? It is not necessary for you to get drunk, to commit adultery, or some other great sin; it is not necessary for you to go out and try to be an infidel; it is not necessary for you to abuse the preacher. All that is necessary for you to do is simply to do nothing. You are in the current. Do nothing just a little longer, and it will sweep you on, on, on over the awful cataract into the bottomless abyss of eternal despair.

A Lost Diamond

A quaint preacher of the olden days in our country, the Rev. Dan Baker, puts the danger of delay in the way of a story. He tells of a man who was crossing the ocean. He was leaning over the side of the vessel; it was a bright sunny day, and not a wave broke the surface of the water, just a little ripple here and there kissed by the rays of the sun. And the man, as he leaned over the rail of the vessel, was tossing something in the air, something which, when it fell through the sunlight, sparkled with singular radiance and glory; and he watched it so eagerly as he tossed it up and caught it as it fell. He tossed it up again and again and again, and it threw out its marvelous light as it fell through the sunlight. At last an onlooker came and said, “May I ask what that is that you are tossing up so carelessly?” “Certainly,” he replied, “look at it, it is a diamond.” “Is it of much value?” asked the onlooker. “Yes, of very great value. See the color of it, see the size of it. In fact, all I have in the world is in that diamond. I am going to a new country to seek my fortune, and I have sold everything I have, and have put it into that diamond, so as to get it into a portable shape.” “Then if it is so valuable, is it not an awful risk you are running in tossing it up so carelessly?” “No risk at all. I have been doing this for the last half-hour,” said the man. “But there might come a last time,” said the onlooker; but the man laughed and threw it up again, and caught it as it fell, and again and again, and once more, and it flashed and blazed with glory as it fell through the sunlight, and he watches it so eagerly as it falls. Ah! but this time it is too far out. He reaches as far as he can over the rail of the vessel, but he cannot reach far enough. There is a little splash in the ocean. He leans far over the rail and tries to penetrate with his eager gaze the unfathomable depths of deep blue ocean. Then cries, “Lost! lost! lost! All I have in the world is lost!”

You say, “No man would be so great a fool as that; that story is not true.” That story is true, and the man is here tonight.

Thou art the man! That ocean is eternity; that vessel, life; that diamond, your soul, that soul of such priceless value that Christ died to save it. And you have been trifling with it! I come to you tonight and say, “My friend, what is that in your hand which you are playing with so carelessly?” You say, “It is my soul.” “Is it worth much?” “Worth much? More than the whole round earth, ‘for what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’” “But don’t you think you are taking an awful risk?” “Oh, no,” you say, “I have been doing this for the last five years, for the last ten, fifteen, twenty years.” “Yes, but you might do it once too often.” “Oh, no,” you say, and tonight once more you throw it up. But you may throw it up once too often; it will fall too far out, beyond your reach; there will be a splash, and you will try to look after it; not into the impenetrable depths of the blue ocean, but into the unfathomable depths of the bottomless pit as it sinks and sinks and sinks, and you will cry, “Lost! lost! lost! my soul is lost!” That may be your cry someday. Come tonight, before it is too late, and put your soul where it will be everlastingly safe, in the keeping of the Son of God.

Lost Through Delay

When I was at home in Chicago, if I had a night off, I would often run out to some other city to help the ministers there. One night I ran across the line to the city of Hammond, Indiana. After speaking I gave out the invitation. Among those who were moved by the Spirit of God was a young woman. She rose to her feet and started for the front, but the young man who sat by her side caught her by her arm and said, “Don’t go tonight. If you wait a few days I may go with you.” For fear of offending this young man to whom she was engaged to be married, she sat down and threw away her opportunity.

The next week I went to speak in the opera house. At the close of the meeting two young women came to me and said, “Oh, Mr. Torrey, just as soon as you can get away from the opera house, come with us. There is a young lady who started for the front the other night but the young man to whom she was engaged asked her to wait for him and she sat down. Now she has erysipelas. It has gone to her brain. We think she is dying. Probably she will not live until morning. Come to see her just as soon as you can get away from the opera house.” As soon as I could get away from the after meeting, I hurried along from the opera house to her home. I was taken up the stairs into the room where the poor girl lay a dying. You could not recognize her. Her face was painted black with iodine. But she was perfectly conscious. I urged her, then and there to take Christ. “Oh,” she said, “Oh, I cannot.” “But,” I said, “you started to take Him the other night when I was here at Hammond.” “Yes,” she said, “but I did not take Him then. I am dying now and I cannot take Christ now. It is too late.” I plead with her. I besought her. I knew it was her last hour. I tried to persuade her that the Lord Jesus would receive her even then, that He said: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,” but she would not listen and would not yield.

When I passed out of that room of awful darkness, a young man in the hallway caught me by the hand, took me into a cold, dark room, and though I could not see him in the darkness, I could feel that he was shaking like a leaf. “Oh,” he said, “Mr. Torrey, I am engaged to marry that girl. When you spoke here last week we were both at the meeting. When you gave out the invitation, she started for the front but I detained her. I said, ‘No, don’t go. If you wait for a few days I may go with you.’ She did not go forward and now she is dying without Christ. She is lost, and I am to blame. I am to blame.”

If you tonight are anywhere near a decision for Christ, don’t put it off. Don’t let the fear of man frighten you out of taking your stand for Him.

Love Conquered

We have in America a devoted Christian woman of culture, refinement, and position, with a heart full of love to the most outcast and abandoned. She has devoted much of her life and strength to getting matrons appointed in jails and lockups for the reception and charge of female prisoners. In one city they said to her, “Mrs. Barney, no woman can manage the class of women with whom we have to do.” Mrs. Barney replied, “You never had a prisoner that I could not manage.” “We would like to have you try your hand on ‘Old Sal!’” was the laughing reply. “I would like to,” replied the gentle lady. “Well, the next time we have her under arrest, we will send for you.”

Not long after, early one morning, Mrs. Barney received word that “Old Sal” was under arrest, and she hurried down to the lockup. She asked to be shown to “Old Sal’s” cell. The sergeant at the desk protested that it was not safe. “Look there,” he said to Mrs. Barney, pointing to four policemen with torn clothes and faces, “there is a specimen of ‘Old Sal’s’ handiwork. It took those four men to arrest her and she left them in that shape.” “Never mind” said Mrs. Barney, “show me to her cell.” “Well, if you must go an officer must go with you.” “No, I will go alone. Just let the turnkey open the door, and I will go to her cell alone.”

Before going down, Mrs. Barney asked the sergeant at the desk for “Old Sal’s” right name. “Why,” he said, “we always call her ‘Old Sal.’” “Yes,” said Mrs. Barney, “but I wish her right name. What is her right name?” “It is a long time since we first booked her, and we always book her now as ‘Old Sal.’” “Look up her right name,” said Mrs. Barney. The sergeant went way back through the books and found “Old Sal’s” proper name. The turnkey opened the door and pointed to her cell down the corridor. When Mrs. Barney reached the door, she saw a wild creature with gray, disheveled hair, torn garments, and glaring eyes, crouching in the corner of the cell, waiting to spring upon the first policeman that should enter. “Good morning, Mrs.—,” said Mrs. Barney, calling her by her true name. “Where did you get that name?” said the poor creature. Without answering her question, Mrs. Barney said, “Sarah, do you remember the first time that you were committed here?” “My God, don’t I?” she cried. “I spent the whole night crying on the floor of my cell.” “Suppose,” said Mrs. Barney, “there had been some kind Christian woman here to receive you that night and to have treated you gently do you think your life would have been any different?” “Altogether different,” she replied. “Well,” said Mrs. Barney, “I am trying to get them to appoint a woman in this lockup to receive young girls when they are brought here for the first time, as you were when you were brought here that first night. Will you help me?” “I will do all that I can,” she said. All the time Mrs. Barney had been drawing nearer, and was now kneeling by her side upon the cell floor, gathering up her torn and grizzled, hair, fastening it up with pins taken out of her own hair, pulling together the torn shreds of her garments, and fastening them with pins taken from her own garments.

The work was now done, and Mrs. Barney rising to her feet said, “Sarah, we are going into the courtroom. If you will be good, they will appoint a woman in this lockup. Shall I go in on your arm, or will you go in on mine?” The strong woman looked at Mrs. Barney, and said, “I think I am stronger than you. You had better go in on my arm.” And into court they went, the gentle lady leaning on the arm of the hardened old criminal. “Old Sal” restrained herself through the whole trial, and answered the judge’s questions pleasantly.

She did forget herself once and swear at the judge, but immediately begged his pardon. Everybody was amazed at the transformation. A woman was appointed as matron of the jail, but best of all Sallie got her feet upon the Rook of Ages, and today, “Old Sal” is in the glory. Love had conquered. It always will.

The Meanest Thief in Minneapolis

I was preaching one hot summer night in Minneapolis. The room was packed, mostly with men. The windows had been taken out of the cases to get a little additional fresh air. When I gave out the invitation a man arose by one of these windows near a door. As soon as I pronounced the benediction, he shot through the door, not waiting for the after meeting. I forgot all about the after meeting and saw only that man. I do not know to this day what became of the after meeting. I reached him just as he was about to go down the stairway. I laid my hand on his shoulder and said, “My friend, you stood up tonight to say you wished to become a Christian.” “Yes.” “Why did you not stay to the after meeting?” “It is no use.” “God loves you,” I said. “You don’t know who you are talking to,” he replied, “I am the meanest thief in Minneapolis.” “Well,” I said, “if you are the meanest thief in Minneapolis, I can prove God loves you,” and I opened my Bible to Romans 5:8, “God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “Now,” I said, “if you are the meanest thief in Minneapolis, you are certainly a sinner, and this verse says that God loves sinners.” It touched the man’s heart and he went quietly with me to my office. “I was released from prison,” he said, “today, and started out tonight with three companions to commit one of the most daring burglaries that was ever committed in Minneapolis. By tomorrow morning I would either have had a pile of money, or a bullet in my body. I passed by the corner and heard your open-air meeting. A Scotchman was speaking. I am a Scotchman and my mother was Scotch. When I heard that Scotch tongue, it made me think of my mother. The other night in prison I dreamed of my mother. I dreamed that she came to me and besought me to give up the evil life I was leading. When I heard that Scotchman speak it brought it all back. I stopped and listened and my companions tried to pull me along but I would not go. They cursed me but still I stayed. When you gave out your invitation for your meeting in the hall, I followed you and listened to your sermon.”

I explained to him the way of life and he accepted the Saviour. We knelt side by side in prayer. He offered the most wonderful prayer but one I ever heard in my life, and went out of my office rejoicing in the knowledge of sins forgiven.

A short time before the meanest thief in Minneapolis but now a happy child of God.

A Music Hall Singer Converted

One night in Liverpool a music hall singer as he was about to go on the platform was handed a telegram asking him to hurry home at once, that his mother was dying. He left the music hall and started for home. In passing by the Philharmonic Hall where we were holding meetings, he heard the music and thought he would go in for a moment. Mr. Alexander was singing, “Tell Mother I’ll Be There.” He thought of his dying mother, a Christian woman, and thought of the life that he was leading and how they could not tell his mother that he would be there, and then and there he accepted Jesus Christ.

The following New Year’s Eve, he was out in a company of friends and was asked for a song. He arose and took out one of our hymnbooks and began to sing, “Tell Mother I’ll Be There,” and the power of God came upon the gathering, and the social gathering was turned into a meeting that lasted until midnight.

During our second mission in Liverpool, this man was one of our chief ushers, and one of our most faithful workers.

Never Be Discouraged

One night in Hobart, Tasmania, as my wife and I were walking home together from the meeting, she said, “Archie, I have just wasted my time tonight. I have spent the whole evening talking with the most frivolous girl I have dealt with for a long time. I made no impression whatever. I just wasted my time. I don’t believe it pays to talk to that kind of a girl.” But she went home and cried to God for that girl. The next night that girl came to her completely transformed and brought her mother with her and asked Mrs. Torrey to talk to her. They were both brightly converted. Oftentimes where we seem to have accomplished the least, we have in reality accomplished the most.

No Greater Joy

One of the greatest joys on earth is the joy of bringing others to a saving knowledge of Christ. I have heard people tell that when they were converted the whole world seemed different; that the sun seemed to shine with a new light; there was new music in the song of the birds; all nature seemed clothed with new beauty and glory. I had no such experience when I was converted. In fact, I was converted in the middle of the night, and the sun was not shining at all. But I did have such an experience the first time I led another to the definite acceptance of Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour.

Looking across one of Mr. Moody’s inquiry meetings in the city of New Haven, I saw a young lady that I had known when I was living a worldly life. I went over to her and spoke to her and invited her to accept the Saviour that I had found, but she was stubborn and unwilling to give up the world. I dealt with her for two solid hours and seemed to be making but little headway. Then at the very close she yielded and accepted Christ. When I left the building where this decision was made, it was nearly sunset in the springtime; the whole world seemed to have a beauty in it that I had never seen in it before. It literally seemed as if I had never seen such a light in the sun, nor such beauty in the flowers and trees and grass. It seemed as if I were walking on air. My heart was filled with a joy I had never known before. There is no joy like the joy of saving men and it is possible for every child of God, no matter how humble nor how ungifted, to have this joy.

No Pilot Ready

One night during a severe storm a vessel was seen beating about near the entrance to the Golden Gate, making signals of distress and asking by signal for a pilot to guide it through the gate, to the harbor within. It kept on beating about and signaling for some time, but its signals were not answered, and so after a while the imperiled ship turned its prow again towards the stormy sea, from whose perils it was seeking to escape. The ship was never heard from again.

There is many a storm-tossed vessel today seeking guidance through the golden gate into the harbor but many of us who profess to be Christians and know the way into the harbor well will not take the trouble to go out and face the storm and bring the distressed vessel safely into harbor. Thus we leave them to the perils of the deep and they are never heard of again. Oh, that God would arouse us sleeping Christians to a sense of our duty, and that we would hear the cry of God and go out to bring the storm-tossed safely into harbor.

Of Course There's a Hell

Another reason why I believe that there is “a wrath to come,” is that my common sense says so. Look here, here is a man who grows rich by overreaching his neighbors, grows rich by robbing the widow and the orphan. He does it by legal means. Oh, yes, he is too cunning to come within reach of the law. But he grows rich by making other people poor. He increases in wealth and is honored and respected. When he goes down the streets in his magnificent equipage, the gentleman on the streets turns and says to his son: “There goes Mr. So-and-so, a man of rare business ability, a man who is now one of our leading men of capital. I hope, my boy, when you grow up you will be as successful as he.” He lives in honor, dies in honor, dies respected by everybody—almost. And the victims of his rapacity, the victims of his oppression, the victims of his dishonesty lie yonder, bleaching in the potter’s field, where they have gone prematurely because of his robbery. Do you mean to tell me that there will not be a day when these men who have lived on wealth wrung from the poor widow and orphan will not have to go before a righteous God whose eyes are not blinded by a few thousands or by millions given in philanthropy or to the Church and answer for the infamy of their conduct and receive what they never received in this world, the meet reward of their dishonesty? Of course there is a judgment day; of course there is a hell. If there is not, then there ought to be. Look here, here is a man who goes through life, never giving God one thought from one year’s end to another. He leaves God out of his business, leaves God out of his social life, leaves God out of his study, leaves God out of his pleasures. God’s holy day, the Sabbath, he makes a day of selfish pleasure. God’s holy Book, the Bible, he never opens, or even scorns. God’s holy Son, Jesus, he tramples under foot. And thus the man lives, and thus he dies, going through the world ignoring the God that made him, and gave His Son to die upon the Cross to save him. Do you mean to tell me that there will not be a day when that man will have to go up before a righteous God and answer these questions: “What did you do with My holy day, the Sabbath? What did you do with My holy Word, the Bible? What did you do with My holy Son, Jesus?” Of course there is a hell, if there is not there ought to be. And you and I need a hiding-place from it, every one of us, for every one of us has sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Only Two Boys

A child can bear witness for Christ. One night I went out to a suburb near Chicago. It was a bitter cold night. After the meeting I said, “Anybody that will accept Christ tonight, stand up.” I saw something big begin to get up, and it rose higher and higher and higher, and broader and broader and thicker and thicker—he weighed two hundred and ninety pounds. An enormous man. I said, “I have caught a pretty big fish tonight,” and I had, for he has been an excellent worker ever since, but I caught two little fish that night—they looked little but they turned out big. Before leaving the building I turned up my coat collar and put on my gloves ready to go out into the cold. I got about halfway down the aisle and I saw two boys, I think one was about twelve and the other fourteen years old. I always like boys. Almost everybody had gone, and I turned and said, “Good evening, boys. What are you waiting for?” “Waiting to talk with you, Mr. Torrey.” “What do you want to talk with me about?” They said, “We want you to tell us how to be Christians.” I turned down my coat collar and took off my gloves and sat down and explained to them the way to be a Christian. They understood it, and they took Christ. After we got up, I said, “Boys, what are your names?” “Henry Harris,” “Charlie Harris.” I wrote them down in my book.

A few nights after there was a young lady sitting in the meeting, and while I preached I made up my mind that she was not a Christian. When I got through preaching I went down and said, “Good evening, are you a Christian?” “No, I am not a Christian.” “Would you like to become a Christian?” “Yes.” “Would you become a Christian if I showed you how?” “Yes.” She sat down, and I took my Bible and showed her how to be a Christian. Then I asked for her name. “Miss Harris.” “Where do you live?” I wrote it down, and I said over and over to myself, “Harris, Harris; where have I heard that name?” I turned back in my little book and I saw the names of these two boys. I said, “I had two boys here the other night with the same name as yours and they live where you do.” “Oh, yes,” she said, “they are my brothers. They brought me.”

A few nights after a lady came, and while I talked she just sat and listened, and when the meeting was over I stepped up to her and said, “Are you a Christian?” “I am not what you call a Christian. I call myself a Universalist.” “Are you saved?” “Not what you would call saved.” “Would you like to become a Christian tonight? Would you become a real Christian if I showed you how?” We sat down, and she took Christ and we had prayer together. Then I said, “What is your name, please?” “Mrs. Harris.” “I had two boys by that name the other night, who live just where you do.” “They were my two boys. They would not give me any rest until I came.”

The last meeting was in a great big skating rink, and one night a little boy, with long chestnut curls, came up to me. I said, “Good evening, my boy, what do you want?” “I want to become a Christian.” I said, “Why do you want to become a Christian?” “Because I am a sinner.” He did not look a bit like it—he looked more like an angel—but he was right; he was a sinner. “We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I sat down and took my Bible and turned to Isaiah 53:6: “All we like sheep have gone astray.” “Is that true of you, my boy?” “Yes.” “What are you then?” “I am lost.” “We have turned every one to his own way.” “Is that true of you?” “Yes, sir.” “Then what are you?” “I am a lost sinner.” “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” I said, “On whom?” He said, “On Jesus.” “Very well, what is all you have to do then to become a Christian?” “Just to believe on Jesus.” “Will you do it?” “I will.” “Let’s kneel down.” And he knelt down. I prayed and he prayed, and when he had finished I said, “What are you, my boy?” He said, “I am saved; my sins are all forgiven.” “How do you know that?”

“Because Jesus says so.” “Suppose after you go home tonight you forget and do something you ought not to do, what will you do about it?” He said, “I will tell Jesus.” “What will He do?”

“He will forgive me.” “How do you know that?” “Because He says so.” I think that boy had a better idea of salvation than some grown-up men. “Now; my boy, what is your name?” “George Harris.” The last one of the family. These two little boys that came out that first night brought the whole family to Jesus.

An Opportunity Lost Forever

I once had a friend who was a very bright scholar. He entered college at an earlier age than most men are able to enter. He was a young fellow of good habits but without settled principles. After he had been in college awhile it began to be rumored about that he was thinking of becoming a Christian. Someone came to me and said, “Frank is thinking of becoming a Christian,” but I was not a Christian myself and was not greatly interested in the information. If I had been a Christian, I believe I could have spoken the word that would have brought him over the line, but not being a Christian and not being interested in the matter, I said nothing to him about it. After a few days of indecision, he decided the wrong way. He became infatuated with a beautiful actress and followed her about the country. He never married her but he got to going to the bad. He graduated from the college a moral wreck. Not long after graduation he married the daughter of one of the best families in one of our eastern states. Of course, the marriage was unhappy.

One day, he and his young wife were preparing to go out riding together. The carriage stood at the door and he stood by it waiting for his wife. She did not appear. He hurried up to her dressing room and went in. The servants heard sharp words, then they heard the crack of a revolver, and as they rushed into the room, that beautiful young wife lay dead upon the floor with a bullet through her brain. Whether she shot herself or whether he shot her, it was difficult to say. The coroner’s verdict was that she died by her own hand. At all events, he became a haunted man. Not long after, he came to the house of a friend and said, “John, can I spend the night with you?” “Certainly,” he replied. “Can I have the room next to yours?” “Why, Frank, you can have anything in the house.” They sat up late into the night, talking and then retired. The host had fallen asleep when suddenly he was awakened by a constant rapping at his door. “What is it, Frank?” he cried. “Are you there, John?” the wretched man called. “Yes, can I do anything for you?” “No, I only wanted to know that you were there.” The host fell asleep again but was soon awakened by another rap at his door. “What is it, Frank?” he called. “Are you there, John?” “Yes. Are you sick, can I do anything for you, Frank?” “No, I only wanted to know that you were there.” Again he fell asleep, and again he was awakened by the same woeful call. All the night through the man haunted by evil memories would come and wake him by a rap on the door to find if he was there. He could not bear to be alone a moment.

The next day he left. He went west to San Francisco, took a steamer on the Pacific Ocean, and when several days out jumped overboard. Tonight his body rests beneath the waters of the Pacific Ocean. If I had been a Christian in the early days, I might have led that friend to Christ and saved all this frightful, awful tragedy. I have had the joy of leading many another young man to Christ, but that young man has passed beyond my reach forever. If you do not accept Christ today you may a year from today, and when you do there will be opportunities to work for Christ in bringing others to Him, but opportunities are passing by you today and tomorrow and next day that will never come back again.

The Other Half of the Gospel

A man came to me one day in Chicago, and said, “I want to talk with you.” Mr. Moody was away, so I took him into Mr. Moody’s room, and asked, “What do you want to talk with me about?” He said, “I am a Scotchman. When I was seven years old over in Scotland, I started to read my Bible through. Before I had read long, I came to a place where it said that if a man should keep the law of God a hundred years, and then break it, he was under the curse of a broken law. Is that right?” “Well,” I said, “the Bible does not put it in just those words, but it amounts to that. It says, ‘Cursed is every man that continueth not in all the things that are written in the Book of the Law to do them.’” “Well,” he said, “that is what I found, and I knew I had already broken the law of God, though I was only seven years old, and I was under the curse of a broken law. I was plunged into the deepest distress. Though I was only a child of seven, I wept over my sins often by day and often by night. I was in distress of soul for a whole year, but I kept on reading my Bible, and at last I got over to the New Testament, and read John 3:16, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ I saw that Jesus died for my sins, and my burden all rolled away, and I was perfectly happy. Was I converted?” “Well,” I said, “that sounds like an evangelical conversion.”

“Wait a moment,” he said, “and listen to the rest of my story. I grew up to manhood; I moved to America; I came over here to Chicago; I went to work in the stockyards, and live down there. You know it is a hard place. I have got to drinking, and every little while I go off on a drunk. Now, what I want to know is this, is there any way I can get victory over drink and over all sin?” “You have come just to the right place to get an answer to your question,” I replied, “I can tell you the way. You have only believed half the Gospel, and therefore you’ve got only half a salvation. Listen to the whole Gospel.” I opened my Bible to 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 and I read, “‘This is the Gospel that I have preached unto you... that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.’ That is the first half of the Gospel but it is only half. Listen as I read on and you will see the other half, ‘And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.’ Do you believe that half of the Gospel also? You have already believed in Christ crucified and found pardon and peace, but the rest of the Gospel is that Christ rose again. Do you believe that?” “Oh, yes,” he said, “I believe everything in the Bible.” I said, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose again?” He said, “I do.” “Do you believe He has all power in heaven and on earth as He said He had?” He said, “I do.” “Well, if He has all power in heaven and on earth, He has power to set you free from the power of sin. Do you believe that?” “Yes, I do.” “Will you trust Him to do it now? You have believed half the Gospel, you have got half a salvation. You have believed in a crucified Christ and got pardon; now will you believe in a risen Christ and get victory? Will you trust Him now as the risen Saviour to set you free from the drink and other sin?” He said, “I will.” “Let us kneel down and tell God so.” We knelt down. I prayed and he prayed. After he had prayed he looked up and said, “Lord Jesus, I have believed half the Gospel that Thou didst die in my place and I have found pardon and peace through believing it. I now believe the other half of the Gospel that you rose again and have all power in heaven and on earth and have power to set me free from drink and sin and I trust you to do it. Set me free now.”

When he had finished, I said, “Do you really trust Him to do it?” He said, “I do.” We got up. I gave him a few words of advice and we separated. In a few weeks I received a letter from him, a very short letter, but very much to the point. He said, “I am so glad I came to see you. It works.” Thank God it does work. A crucified Christ brings pardon; a risen Christ brings deliverance from the power of sin the moment you believe.

Persistence Pays

In the early days of his work in Chicago, Mr. Moody was always on the watch for children for his Sunday school. Wherever he saw a child, he would approach them and invite them to the Sunday school. One day he saw a little girl standing on the corner with a pail in her hand in which she was going to fetch beer. He accosted the little child pleasantly and invited her to his Sunday school, and she promised to come. The next Sunday Mr. Moody was on the lookout for her, but she did not put in an appearance. Then he began to hunt for her everywhere, but days passed without seeing her. One day he noticed her on the street and started towards her. But no sooner did she see him coming than she broke into a run. He began to run down the street after her. She went flying as fast as her feet would carry her. Mr. Moody was after her in hot pursuit. She turned the corner; he after her. She went down an alley, up another street, Mr. Moody still in hot pursuit. She dashed into a saloon. He dashed after her. Through the saloon she went; Mr. Moody following. Up the stairway at the rear. Mr. Moody still in pursuit. She dashed into a bedroom, and Mr. Moody never stopped. She plunged under a bed, and Mr. Moody drew her out by the leg. She proved to be the child of a widow with a large family that were living over the saloon. The circumstances of the family were anything but elevating, but Mr. Moody won that whole family for Christ. In later years, the child grown to womanhood, was one of the most honored workers in the church and the wife of a highly esteemed office-bearer.

Pray Through

A lady in Melbourne, Australia, in reading the book How To Pray was greatly impressed by one sentence of two short words, “Pray through.” It took a great hold upon her and she began to organize prayer circles all over Melbourne. Before we reached Melbourne there were 1,700 prayer circles a week and the wonderful success of the mission was largely due to these prayer circles. After we reached Melbourne, this lady told Mr. Alexander this story and it made a great impression on him. He afterward said the two words, “‘Pray through,’ gripped me like a vice.” One day he had occasion to go into a bank in Liverpool to get some money. While he was standing at the bank counter waiting for the clerk to come, be picked up a pen and began to write on the blotter in large letters these two words, which had been burned into his soul, “Pray through,” “Pray through,” “Pray through.” Over and over and over again he wrote it on the blotter until the big blotter was filled from top to bottom with the words “Pray through.” After he had transacted his business he went away.

The next day a friend to whom he kept talking as he printed on the blotter came to him and said that he had a striking story to tell him. “A businessman came into the bank soon after we had gone. He had grown discouraged with business troubles. He started to transact some business with the same clerk over that blotter, when his eyes caught the long column of ‘PRAY THROUGH.’ He asked who wrote those words, and when he was told, he exclaimed, ‘That is the very message I needed. I will pray through. I have tried to worry through in my own strength, and have merely mentioned my troubles to God. Now I am going to pray the situation through until I get light.’”

A lady who heard Mr. Alexander tell the story wrote a hymn upon it, the last verse of which runs,

“Don’t stop praying but have more trust;

Don’t stop praying! for pray we must;

Faith will banish mountains of care;

Don’t stop praying! God answers prayer.”

Prayer Answered on the Other Side of the Globe

In the early days of Mr. Moody’s work in Chicago, a reckless, worthless Scotchman used to hang around the tabernacle. He was a desperate fellow, feared by his own companions. He would carry a dagger in his stocking, and many were afraid that he would draw that dagger upon them. He seemed to have an especial spite against the meetings that were going on. One night he stood outside the tabernacle with a pitcher of beer in his hands offering a drink to every man that came out of the building. At other times he would go into the inquiry meetings and try to interfere with the workers.

One night Major Whittle was talking to two young men, who were more or less interested, and this jeering Scotchman was interfering. Finally Major Whittle turned to the two young men and said, “Young men, if you set any value on your souls, I advise you to have nothing to do with that man.” This seemed only to amuse the Scotchman. But God was working. Over in Scotland was an earnest Christian mother who was praying for her wayward son. One night he went to bed as godless as ever, but in the middle of the night, he was aroused from his sleep. He awakened under conviction of sin, and as he lay there in bed, the Holy Spirit brought to his mind a passage that he had forgotten was in the Bible. He did not even know it was there at all, though doubtless he had heard it some time in his boyhood. It was Romans 4:5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” The Holy Spirit made clear the meaning of the verse to him. Then and there, without getting out of bed, he believed on Him that justifieth the ungodly and found peace.

He at once became as active in the cause of Christ as he had been active in the cause of the devil. For nearly thirty years he has been a member of Chicago Avenue Church and is today a deacon in the church.

Some time after his conversion, he went back to Scotland to visit his old mother. They had glad times of Bible reading and prayer together, but there was another wayward son, a sailor, sailing the sea somewhere, they knew not where. One night the old mother and the converted son knelt down and began to cry to God for the wandering son and brother. That very night he was in the China Seas, though they did not know it, and while they prayed in Scotland, the Spirit of God fell in the China Seas and that son and brother was converted there on the deck of the ship.

He returned to Scotland and told his mother the good news. He entered the Free Church College and commenced to study to be a foreign missionary. He was sent out by the missionary society of the Free Church of Scotland, and after years of faithful service, laid down his life as a missionary in India.

A Prayer Fifteen Years Long

Almost immediately after my conversion, another man was laid on my heart, and I began to pray every day for his conversion. After I had been praying for some time for his conversion, the thought came into my mind that I would spend the night in prayer for him. I did not succeed in praying the whole night. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I was on my knees almost the entire night, but part of the time I was asleep, but the best I could I spent the whole night in prayer for him.

When the morning came, I thought, “Now you have prayed for him all night, write him a letter beseeching him to accept Christ.” In a very short time I received a reply making fun of me and ridiculing me for my attempts to bring him to Christ. The devil came to me and mocked me and said, “That is all your prayers amount to. What is the good of praying? Here you spent the whole night praying for him and have written him a letter and this is all you get for your pains.” But the devil did not succeed in deceiving me this time. I continued praying for him every day. I kept it up for about fifteen years, never letting a day pass without praying definitely for his conversion.

In the meantime he had moved to Chicago and so had I. I visited him in Chicago, but could get no opportunity to speak to him about his soul. Indeed, he seemed to put himself out to be particularly blasphemous when I was around in order to hurt my feelings, but still I kept on praying.

One morning, after having prayed about fifteen years, as I was on my knees before God, it seemed as if God said to me, “You need not ask for that anymore. I have heard your prayer. He will be converted.” I never prayed again for his conversion but every morning I would look up and say, “Heavenly Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard my prayer, and now I am waiting to see it.”

About two weeks from that morning he came to my house to dinner. After dinner I said to him, “Don’t you think you had better stay here all night?” He replied, “I don’t know but I had. I am just up from inflammatory rheumatism and it is damp outside and I am really afraid to go home lest the rheumatism come back.” When he awoke the next morning the inflammatory rheumatism had come back to that extent that his feet were so swollen he could not put on his shoes. For two weeks he was laid up in my house. My opportunity had come. I had him. Every morning we held family prayers in his room. My friends coming in and out of the house seeing him there took it for granted that he was a Christian and seemed to talk more about religion than usual. My children running in and out of his room seemed to talk more about Christ than they usually did, though they always loved to talk about their Saviour.

After breakfast when the two weeks were up, we started down La Salle Avenue together. We had not gone half a block when he turned to me and said, “Archie, I am thinking of going into temperance work. How do you begin?” If there was ever any one on earth that needed to go into temperance work, it was he. I replied, “The only way I know to begin temperance work right is by first of all becoming a Christian yourself.” He said, “I always thought I was a Christian.” “You have the strangest way of showing it of any man I ever knew.” “How do you become a Christian?” he next asked bluntly. “Come over to my office and I will tell you.” I took him over to my office and as Mr. Moody was away I took him to Mr. Moody’s office and though he was seven years older than I, I explained to him the Way of Life as I would have explained it to a little child. He listened eagerly and when I had finished, he knelt down and accepted Christ as his Saviour just like a little child. Those who had known him in the olden time could hardly believe that he was converted. Some in the east would not believe it until they came out and saw him for themselves. Within a year he was preaching the Gospel. He preached it up to the end.

I had been down east visiting old friends of his and mine, and returned to Chicago. Hearing that he was ill at the place where he was preaching, forty miles out of Chicago, I went out to see him, and spent the day with him. I started to tell him about the old friends I met down in the east but he said, “Never mind that. Let’s have a time of prayer.” We passed the whole day in prayer and conversation and a happy day it was.

At evening I returned to Chicago, as I was to go south the next day, I spent the night in the Institute. About six o’clock in the morning there was a rap on my door. When I went to the door and opened it, one of the students stood there with a telegram in his hand. I opened it and read, “Your brother passed away this morning at two o’clock.” I jumped on a train and hurried out to the place. When I entered the room where his body lay, and turned back that white sheet and looked into the face of my eldest brother as he lay there at peace at last, I thanked God that for fifteen years I had believed in a God that answers prayer.

Have you those that you love who are wandering far from God? There is a way to reach them. That way is by the Throne of God.

The President of a Racing Association Converted

One night in an Australian city after I had given out the invitation and a large number of people had risen and were standing, a minister sitting near me became very much excited and said, “Look there! Look there!” “Look where?” I said. “Look over there at that tall gentleman and his wife standing.” “Yes,” I said, “I see them, what of it?” “Why,” he said, “that man is the former mayor of the city and is now president of our racetrack association. What does he mean?” “Why,” I said, “I suppose he means to accept Christ. That was the proposition.” The minister was nonplussed. He did not know what to make of it. As soon as the meeting was over, I went down to where this gentleman and his wife were standing, and stepped up to them and said to him, “Did you really accept Jesus Christ this evening?” Quietly but firmly he replied, “Yes, I did. Would you like to know how I came to accept him?” “Yes, I would.” “Well,” he said, “my little boy was at your children’s meeting this afternoon and was converted. He came home full of enthusiasm and insisted that we should come tonight to hear you preach and we came and have decided to accept Christ.”

Who can tell how much is involved in the conversion of a little boy?

Publisher's Note

The value of an apt illustration can hardly be overestimated. It is oftentimes the entering wedge or the clinching conclusion for the more serious argument. At times it is both. Mr. D. L. Moody used to say that a sermon without illustrations was like a house without windows. To one of his ablest associates, one second to none as a Bible expositor, he would frequently say, “You don’t put enough windows in your sermons. No one can do it better, but you got so interested in your subject you go on and on with argument and proof texts until the audience is weary. You want to wake them up: let them see out and in through a window—use pointed illustrations.”

One does not need to say the preacher referred to was not Dr. Torrey, for his use of apt stories largely drawn from his own wide and varied experience, add largely to the effective ministry of his powerful addresses.

The collection of stories and illustrations here gathered has had Dr. Torrey’s careful revision, but for the form of publication and especially for the addition of illustrations and portraits, the publisher alone is responsible.

Rescued

One night at a late meeting in the Florence Crittenton mission in New York a drunken Scotch girl ran to the front screaming, “Pray for me! Pray for me!” After the meeting was over, the workers gathered around her. She told how she had wandered from home. How her mother lived in New York City, a poor but honest woman. They tried to get the girl to go to her home but she said no, her mother would not welcome her. They tried to get her to stay with them, but she would not, but promised that if they would see her mother the next day that she would come around the next night, and if her mother would receive her, she would go to her home.

One of the workers went the next day to the address given and found the mother. She said to her, “We have found your daughter.” The mother replied, “I have no daughter.” But when they explained to her about the night before, she said, “I had a daughter once but she left me years ago. I thought she was dead. I will take her back, but do not disappoint me now that you have raised my hopes again. Be sure and bring her.” They appointed an hour in which they would bring her that night. But the night came and the girl did not come. Hour after hour the meeting went on but the girl did not come. About midnight the meeting closed but the girl had not appeared. They held a consultation as to what they should do and some of them decided to make a visit to the low dens of iniquity in the neighborhood. At last in a sub-cellar in a little narrow room, blue with smoke, they found a crowd of men and women and the Scotch girl in the midst, wild with drink. Her good resolutions had fled and she refused to go to her mother. A policeman heard the noise and came down to see what it was and said to the girl, “Now you have a chance to lead a better life, you accept it. If you don’t, if I ever find you on my beat again, I will club you.” The girl was getting somewhat sobered but still protested that she could not go to her home because she had no shoes fit to wear. A warm-hearted Irishman in the crowd agreed to find her a pair of shoes. Where he found them at that hour of the night, I do not know, but he soon found her a good, strong pair of shoes and they started for the mother’s rooms. When they reached the rooms, they found the door locked. The mother had given up in despair and had gone to bed, but in answer to repeated rappings she came to the door. She said she would unlock the door and they could pass into the other room and as soon as she could dress she would come in. As they sat in the room waiting for the mother to come in, the daughter looked around the room, and as the old familiar objects met her eyes, her heart began to melt. The mother soon came into the room carrying a candle. As she looked at the girl seated on the sofa, she started back almost dropping the candle and exclaimed, “That is not my daughter.” “Mother,” said the girl, “do you not know me?” In a moment the mother recognized the voice and rushed to her child’s side and they were locked in one another’s arms. The visitors felt that the scene was too sacred to gaze upon and turned away. Both mother and girl were later shown the way of life, and turned their faces heavenward.

Satisfied

There was handed to me one evening in Christ Church, New Zealand, a note from a lady. It read, “Is there any place where I can find satisfaction for my soul? I have been looking for it everywhere. I have sought it in wealth, but have not found it; I have sought it in society, but have not found it; I have sought it in the pleasures of this world, but have not found it; I have sought it in study, but have not found it; I have sought it in art, but have not found it; I have been seeking it in travel, I have just returned from a tour around the world seeking for satisfaction for my heart, but have not found it. Can you tell me where I can find it?”

The note was unsigned. I read it before the meeting that night and replied, “Yes, I can tell this lady where she can find satisfaction tonight. She can find it in Jesus. ‘Whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’”

At the close of the meeting a lady came to me and said, “It was I who wrote that note.” With my open Bible, I showed the Way of Life and she accepted Jesus. The next night she came back and came forward and said, “Last night I wrote a note to Dr. Torrey asking him if there was any place where I could find satisfaction for my soul. I had sought it everywhere. I had sought it in wealth, in fashion, in society, in pleasure, in study, in art and in travel but could not find it. Last night I took Jesus Christ and I have found the satisfaction for my soul which I have been seeking all these years.”

Saved and Healed

I sat one day at my desk in my office in Minneapolis, and a hard-faced woman came in and asked me brusquely, “Have you any missionaries that you send to talk to dying people?” “Yes,” I replied. “Well,” she said, “there is a woman dying around at— Street. I wish you would send a missionary around there.” Soon after she had gone, two lady missionaries came in. I said to them, “A woman was just in here to have someone go around and talk to a dying woman. I judge from the woman’s face and the locality where she lives, that the woman who is dying is an outcast. You and Selma hurry around and speak to her.” The two missionaries were gone a long time and came back with radiant faces. They told me how the woman who was dying from an awful and incurable disease, whom the doctor had given up entirely, was rejoicing in her newfound Saviour. The two missionaries called again and were led to pray for the woman, who was now clearly converted, that she should also be raised up from the bed of sickness and healed. When they told me that they had offered this prayer, I was not at all clear that they had done wisely, for there was no human possibility of a cure, but God did hear the prayer and raised the woman up. She became an earnest active member of my church. The last I knew, which was several years after her restoration, she was still leading an earnest Christian life.

Saved at Ninety-Two

When we were in Warrnambool, Australia, for two or three successive nights, I noticed an old man sitting up in the front seats drinking in every word I said. I afterward learned that he was ninety-two years of age. One night after having come two or three times, when I gave out the invitation, this old man rose to his feet and professed to accept Christ. It was a very clear case of conversion. He said, “I have never been to a religious meeting since I was ten years of age until these meetings began, but I have been led to see myself a sinner and to accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour.” He was a very happy convert. Every day be would come and whenever he could he would bring others and he was always ready to testify to the saving grace of God. It filled our hearts with joy to think how this old man was plucked from the fire at the last moment but how much more it meant for the kingdom when some of the children of Warrnambool at the age of eight or nine accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour. This old man was a soul saved, “saved so as by fire,” but with little work accomplished for the Master. The boy of eight who was converted was a soul saved, plus fifty, or sixty or seventy or eighty years of service.

Saved Five Minutes

One evening in our church in Chicago one of the officers in going around the gallery after I was through preaching, and as the audience was going out of the church, stepped up to a gentleman and said, “Are you saved?” “Yes, sir,” he replied. He was very positive about it. “How long have you been saved?” “About five minutes,” he answered. “When were you saved?” asked the gentleman. The man replied, “About five minutes ago while that man was preaching.” He did not wait until I got through the sermon. He did not wait for someone to deal with him. He came to Jesus right there and then and Jesus saved him right there. It only takes an instant to be saved. The moment you receive Jesus you are saved. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). Will you receive Him now?

Saved in a Theater

Some of the businessmen of Minneapolis determined on an assault upon Satan in one of his strongholds in that city. “The Theater Comique,” the lowest den in Minneapolis at the time, was engaged for a series of Sunday afternoon meetings. Some good people thought it was unwise to take the Gospel down into such a den of iniquity. One of the leading businessmen of the city stood on the street corner giving out invitations to the Theater Comique meetings. A young fellow came along and took an invitation. He read it and then said to the businessman, “Do you know what sort of a place the Theater Comique is?” Mr. G. replied, “Do you suppose I have been in Minneapolis twenty years not to know?” “Well,” said the young fellow, “what are you having the Gospel preached in such a place as that for?” “When you go fishing,” replied Mr. G., “where do you go?” “Oh,” the young fellow replied, “I see it. I go where the fish are.” The fish were there in abundance and many of them were caught.

The first meeting was held on New Year’s Day. A few days after the first meeting I received a letter from Ottumwa, Iowa. The letter was anonymous but the writer said, “I was at your meeting in the Theater Comique on New Year’s Day. Years ago in England I was a Christian and a local preacher, but the first thing that I did when I walked off the gangplank of the steamer in New York was to go to a saloon, and I have been going down ever since. I had squandered $300 in the Theater Comique the week preceding your meeting, but as I sat there on the first day of the new year and listened to you preach the Gospel, the Spirit of God touched my heart and I accepted Christ as my Saviour and have started a new life.”

A year passed by. On the following New Year’s Day we were having a reception all day long in our mission hall on Washington Avenue. Several months before a man had come into our fellowship and had proven himself a very earnest active Christian and had so won the confidence of the people that he had been elected a deacon in the church and was filling the office with great acceptance. As we were sitting in the reception room of the mission, he turned to me suddenly and said, “Did you receive a letter from Ottumwa, Iowa, from a man that was converted in the Theater Comique on New Year’s Day last year?” I said, “Yes, I did.” “Well,” he said, “I am the man.” And now this man, who had squandered $300 in one of the vilest dens in Minneapolis a year before was an active and honored office bearer in a Christian church.

Show Me Myself

A godly minister was once traveling in Scotland and put up at a certain tavern. At evening time the landlord asked if he would conduct family prayer. He consented on the condition that the landlord would call all the servants of the household. The servants came in and when all seemed to be assembled, the minister asked, “Are all here?” “Yes,” said the landlord. “Not one missing?” he asked. “Oh, well,” said the landlord, “there is a poor girl we never bring in. She does the dirty work about the kitchen and is not fit to come in with the others.” “Well then,” said the minister, “I will not go on until she comes.” He insisted and the landlord yielded. Seeing her neglected appearance, the minister took a peculiar interest in her. When he was leaving the next day, he called for the girl and said to her, “I wish to teach you a prayer, and I want you to pray it until I come back again. It is this, ‘Lord, show me myself.’”

He left the hotel, but returned in a few days. He asked the landlord, “How is that poor girl?” “Oh,” replied the landlord, “she is spoiled. She is of no use whatever now. She can do no work. She is weeping all the time. She mopes and is melancholy. I don’t know what is the matter with her.” The minister knew, and asked to see her. The landlord brought her in and the minister said, “Now I wish to teach you another prayer. You have been praying, ‘Show me myself’?” “Yes,” she said, in deep distress, “and I am so wicked I can do nothing but weep over my sins.” “Now let me teach you another prayer, ‘Lord, show me Thyself.’”

Years passed. The minister was preaching in Glasgow when a neat-looking woman came up to him at the close of the sermon and said, “Do you remember me?” “No,” he said, “I do not.” “Do you remember teaching a poor girl in a hotel to pray, ‘Show me myself’?” “Yes,” he replied, “I remember that well.” “I am that girl. I prayed that prayer and got such a view of myself that I was overwhelmed with grief and despair. Then you taught me the other prayer, ‘Lord, show me Thyself,’ and He showed me Himself and my grief and despair went and I trusted Him and found salvation and He has made me what I am today.”

It is a good prayer for us all to pray, “Lord, show me myself,” and after He has shown us ourselves, let us go on and ask Him to show us Himself.

Sold Her Soul for One Dance

A young lady was once under deep conviction of sin. She saw and felt her need of a Saviour. Her minister went to her and urged upon her an immediate acceptance of Christ. “No,” she said, “I cannot accept Christ tonight. I am going to a dance next week, and if I accepted Christ I could not go to that dance, but I will promise you, Mr. S—, that I will accept Christ immediately after that dance.” Her minister tried to show her the peril of the decision she was making, but she was determined to go to one more dance and then she would accept Christ. Until that dance was past no amount of persuasion moved her. The night of the dance came and she went. She caught cold at the dance and it settled down into lung fever. She began to sink rapidly, and her minister fearing that her time had come called upon her again. He recalled his former conversation and how she had promised to accept Christ after the dance, but the dying girl was hard and hopeless. “No,” she said, “Mr. S—, I cannot accept Christ now. I refused to accept Him when I was well and strong and now I am dying and I cannot accept Christ.” He tried to show her how ready Christ was to pardon even at the last moment but she could not grasp it. All his persuasions were of no avail and the poor girl died in hopeless despair. She had sold her soul for one more dance.

The Spirit Illumined the Face of Jesus

One night a lot of our students came home from Pacific Garden Mission full of rejoicing over the number of conversions there had been that night. “We had a great time at the mission tonight,” they said, “a large number of drunkards came to the front and accepted Christ as their Saviour.”

The next day I met Harry Monroe, superintendent of the mission on the street. “Harry,” I said, “the boys tell me you had a great time at the mission last night.” “Would you like to know how it came about?” he answered. “It pleased the Holy Spirit to illumine the face of Jesus, and sinners just saw Him and believed.” It was a rather unique way of putting it but it well stated the truth. It is only when the Holy Spirit bears His testimony to Jesus that men see and believe.

The Fire Is in the Fifth Story, I'm in the Sixth

Years ago in Minneapolis, the leading paper was the Minneapolis Tribune, published in a magnificent six—or seven—story building, the finest newspaper building at that time in the Northwest. I had occasion every week to go into the upper stories of that building to see editorial friends. But there was one great defect in that great building which I had never noticed. The defect was this, that the stairway went right round the elevator shaft, so that if a fire broke out in the elevator shaft escape would be out off by the stairway as well as by the elevator. That very thing happened. A fire broke out in the elevator shaft, and it commenced to sweep up the shaft, story by story, cutting off escape by the elevator and cutting off escape by the stairway as well. But they had a brave elevator boy, who went up through the smoke a number of times until he got a large number of men down from the upper stories, and almost all the rest escaped by the fire escape outside the building or by the stair. But away up in the sixth story there was a man, a despatcher for the Associated Press. He was urged to escape, but he refused to move. There he sat by his instrument, telegraphing to all parts of the country that the building was on fire. He could have gone out of the building by the fire escape, and across the road to an instrument there, and could have done just as well; but, like a typical newspaper man, be wanted to do something sensational, and so there he sat telegraphing the news. Besides a short time before at the time of the Johnstown flood, when the dam of the river was breaking, a woman sat in a telegraph office below the dam telegraphing down the Conemaugh River to the people at Johnstown that the dam was breaking and that they had better flee for their lives. But she had remained at her post till the dam broke and swept her away into eternity and her bravery and self-sacrifice had been heralded over the world and he wished to match her brave deed. But she had done it to save life. This man sat there quite unnecessarily, merely because of his desire for notoriety. “I am in the Tribune building,” he telegraphed, “in the sixth story, and the building is on fire. The fire has now reached the second story; I am in the sixth.” In a little while he sent another message; “The fire has now reached the third story; I am in the sixth.” Soon he telegraphed: “The fire has reached the fourth story; I am in the sixth.” Soon again the message came over the wires: “The fire has reached the fifth story; I am in the sixth.” Then he thought it was time to leave; but, in order to do this, he had to cross the hallway to another room and a window to reach the fire escape. He went to his door and opened it, and, to his dismay, found that the fire was not in the fifth story but the sixth and that the hallway was full of smoke and flame, which, the moment he opened the door, swept into the room. He shut the door quickly. What was he to do?

The stairway, the elevator, and the fire escape were all cut off; but he was a brave man, and would not give up easily. He went to the window and threw it up. Down below to one side stood a great crowd, six stories down. They could not reach him with a ladder. They could not get under him to spread a net to catch him, if he jumped. There he stood on the windowsill, not knowing what to do. But presently he looked up. Above his head was a long wire guy rope that passed from the Tribune building to the roof of another building across a wide opening. Below him was a chasm six stories deep, but brave man that he was, he caught hold of the guy rope, and began to go hand-over-hand across that chasm. The people down in the street looked on in breathless suspense. On and on he went, and then he stopped. The people below could hardly breathe. Would he let go? No. On and on he went, and again he stopped, and again the crowd below gasped. “Will he let go?” He took one hand off the wire and hung high in air by one hand. “Will he let go with the other hand? Is his strength all gone? Or will he replace the other hand further forward?” The suspense is awful, but only for a moment. The fingers of the other hand loosen and down he comes through the air tumbling, tumbling, tumbling through those six stories of space, crushed into a shapeless mass below. All through mere unnecessary neglect!

Men and women, you are in a burning building tonight, you are in a doomed world; but thank God, there is a way of escape, but only one, Christ Jesus. That way is open tonight, but no one knows how long that way will be left open. I beg of you, do not neglect it, and then when it is too late lay hold on some poor guy rope of human philosophy, and go a little way, and then let go, and plunge, not six stories down, but on and on and on through the awful unfathomable depths of the gulf of eternal despair. Men and women, turn to Christ tonight!

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

The Harvest Is Past, the Summer Is Ended, and I Am Not Saved

In the early days of Mr. Moody’s work in Chicago, a man who was a constant attendant at the Tabernacle often seemed on the verge of decision for Christ. One day when Mr. Moody urged him to accept Christ, he replied, “No, Mr. Moody, I cannot. My business partner is not a Christian and if I should accept Christ, he would ridicule me.” Mr. Moody urged him to trust God and to brave his partner’s ridicule but he could not muster courage to do it. Finally he became annoyed at Mr. Moody’s constant urging of him to accept Christ, and ceased attending at the Tabernacle. For some time he was lost sight of, but one day his wife came to Mr. Moody’s house and said, “Mr. Moody, my husband is very ill. There has been a consultation of physicians and they say he cannot possibly live. Won’t you come down and speak to him before he dies?” Mr. Moody hurried to the home. He found the man in a very approachable state of mind, and he presented Christ to him. The man listened and seemed to accept Christ. To everyone’s surprise his disease took a turn for the better. His convalescence was rapid and the next time Mr. Moody called, he found him sitting up outdoors in the sunshine. Mr. Moody said to him, “Now God has been so good to you and raised you up, of course as soon as you are able to come up to the Tabernacle, you will come and make a public confession of your acceptance of Christ.” “No, Mr. Moody,” he said, “I cannot do that for if I should do that my partner would ridicule me and I cannot stand his ridicule.” Mr. Moody urged him but he would not consent to make an open confession of his faith. Finally he said, “Mr. Moody, I am going to move to Michigan and I promise you when I get over there, I will make a public confession of Christ.” Mr. Moody told him that Jesus Christ could keep him in Chicago just as well as He could in Michigan, but the man would not listen. Mr. Moody went away that day with a heavy heart.

Just a week from that day, the man’s wife called at Mr. Moody’s house again. “Oh, Mr. Moody,” she said, “my husband has had a relapse. We have had another consultation of physicians and they say it is not possible for him to live. Won’t you come down and speak to him before he dies?” Mr. Moody said, “Did he send for me?” “No,” she replied, “he did not. That is the worst of it. He does not want to see you, but I cannot let him die this way. Won’t you come?” Mr. Moody accompanied the wife to the home, went into the room where the dying man lay. As he approached the bed, the dying man said, “Mr. Moody, I don’t want you to talk to me. It will do no good. I have had my chance and thrown it away.” Mr. Moody tried to show him how there was hope even in the last hour; how Jesus said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”; that even then he might put his trust in Jesus Christ and be saved, but the man said, “No, it is too late. I had my chance and I threw it away,” and he could not be moved. Mr. Moody said, “May I pray with you?” “No, I don’t want you to pray with me. It won’t do any good. Pray for my wife and children—they need your prayers, but don’t pray for me. It is too late, I have thrown away my chance.” Mr. Moody knelt down beside the dying man’s bed and tried to pray. He said to me when telling the story long afterward, “I could not pray, My prayers did not seem to go higher than my head. The heavens above me seemed like brass. When I got up the man said, ‘There, I told you it would do no good. It is too late. I have thrown away my chance.’” Mr. Moody went home with a heavy heart.

All that afternoon as the man sank lower and lower, he kept repeating just one passage of Scripture, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended and I am not saved.” Again and again those standing around his bed heard him repeating, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended and I am not saved.” Just as the sun was sinking behind the western prairies they heard him whispering in a low tone and they leaned over to listen and in a feeble whisper he said, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved,” and thus he went out into the darkness.

A Theological Professor Doing the Devil's Work

D. L. Moody was generally considered a broad man, and so he was. No matter how far astray a man might go in doctrine, D. L. Moody would do his best to reclaim him to the truth. But Mr. Moody was a plain-spoken man as well as a broad man. One man whose views of the Bible were extremely lax used to make a good deal of Mr. Moody’s friendship for him, and that Mr. Moody was friendly towards him there can be no doubt, but Mr. Moody told me that he told this man to his face that he was doing the devil’s work. It was plain talking, but it was unquestionable truth.

There Is but a Step Between Me and Death

At one of the noon meetings for businessmen in the Lyceum Theater in Cleveland, a well-known socialist agitator sat near a Christian man. He listened attentively to what was said. After I had finished, the Christian man said to him, “D., how did you like that?” He replied, “Such reasoning as that is no good. I could wipe that out in a few minutes if they would give me a chance to talk.” The Christian man replied, “D., you do not understand spiritual things. You may be able to talk politics, but you cannot talk religion.” “Yes, I can talk politics with any orator and no one can pluck the laurels from my brow,” he replied.

The following day at noon, just a little short of twenty-four hours from the time he made his boasts, the Big Four Railroad threw him into a ditch a lifeless corpse.

Oh, if we only realized that there was but one step between us and death and eternity. How soon we would cease our empty boasting.

There Will Be No Dance Tonight

Death often throws its dark shadow across our gayest moments. I shall never forget one of the last dances with which I had anything to do. It was a charity ball for the benefit of an organization in which I was deeply interested, and though I was a theological student I was one of the managers of the ball.

On the afternoon of the day when the ball was to take place, my minister called upon me. I think he was disturbed that one of his members should be the manager in a charity ball. But as he talked with me, he did not come to the exact point of the ball. After a while a classmate, who was also one of the managers of the ball, came in and said, “Torrey, are you going to the ball tonight?” I think he did it partly to annoy me and partly to annoy the minister. I said, “Yes, of course, I am going to the ball tonight.” “No,” he said, “you are not going to the ball tonight.” I said, “I am going to the dance tonight.” He said, “You are not going to the dance tonight.” “Well,” I replied, “I guess I know and I am going to the dance tonight.” He said, “You are not going to the dance tonight, for there is to be no dance tonight. While we were making the last arrangements in the hall this afternoon, Mrs.— as she walked across the stage fell dead, and there will be no dance tonight.”

Three Silver Dollars

One night I reached home from my work very late. There was no one in the house. My family were all out at Lake Minnetonka and I was to go out to them the next morning by a very early train. I knew that they would be in need of money to buy ice and provisions and other things. When I took out my pocketbook to see how much money I had, I found to my dismay that while I had quite a little money, none of it belonged to me. It was all money that I had set apart for the Lord. The fare out to Lake Minnetonka was less than fifty cents but I did not have even enough to pay that, much less any to give the family when I reached there. What should I do? There was no possibility of my seeing anyone before the train left; for most people would be in bed and the streets deserted as I walked to the station. I had taken the ground anyway that I would never borrow money from anybody for any purpose, for the scripture says, “Owe no man anything.” Of course, the thought came to me to take the money I had set apart for the Lord and repay it some other time when I had more money, but I saw clearly that that would not do, that I had no more right to take the Lord’s money for my own uses than I had to take any other person’s. I knelt down and said, “Heavenly Father, I cannot honestly take the money that belongs to Thee. Thou hast never failed me in the past when I have taken my stand absolutely on what is right, and I do not believe that Thou wilt fail me now. I will not touch the money that belongs to Thee. I cannot see where money will come from, but I must have it. Send me the money I need before five o’clock tomorrow morning.”

I arose from my knees confident that the money would come, but I could not see any possible way in which it would come. No one would call at my house, there would be no letters, I would not see anyone that I knew on my way over to the station.

In a few minutes, I went upstairs to my office. I pulled open a drawer of the table to look for an account book. I had not opened that drawer for some time, but no sooner was the drawer opened than I saw lying before me three silver dollars. It seemed to me as if three silver dollars never looked so large as those did. I do not know how the three dollars came in the drawer. Of course, I do not think that any miracle was performed. I presume that I myself had put those three silver dollars there weeks or months before when I had more silver dollars in my pocket than I cared to carry, but it was as plain an answer to prayer as if the three silver dollars had come tumbling down through the chimney. The three dollars would not only take me out to Lake Minnetonka, but meet at least part of the immediate necessities of the family. After reaching our home on the lake I rowed over to Excelsior to call on a friend who had asked me to come over to get vegetables out of his garden. In the course of our conversation I was led to tell him of the answer to prayer that had come to me the night before. God blessed the story to his own heart. He walked down to the boat with me, and when I stepped down into my rowboat, we shook hands as we separated. He left in my hand a five-dollar bill, which met all the needs of the family.

Two Lawyers Convinced

In the great triumph of Deism in England, two of the most brilliant men in the denial of the supernatural were the eminent legal authorities, Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton. The two men were put forward to crush the defenders of the supernatural in the Bible. They had a conference together and one of them said to the other that it would be difficult to maintain their position unless they disposed of two of the alleged bulwarks of Christianity, namely the alleged resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the alleged conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Lyttleton undertook to write a book to show that Saul of Tarsus was never converted, as is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, but that his alleged conversion was a myth, if Gilbert West would write another book to show that the alleged resurrection of Christ from the dead was a myth. West said to Lyttleton, “I shall have to depend upon you for my facts, for I am somewhat rusty on the Bible.” To which Lyttleton replied that he was counting upon West, for he too was somewhat rusty on the Bible. One of them said to the other, “If we are to be honest in the matter, we ought at least to study the evidence,” and this they undertook to do.

They had numerous conferences together while they were preparing their works. In one of these conferences West said to Lyttleton that there had been something on his mind for some time that he thought he ought to speak to him about, that as he had been studying the evidence, he was beginning to feel that there was something in it. Lyttleton replied that he was glad to hear him say so, for he himself had been somewhat shaken as he had studied the evidence of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Finally, when the books were finished, the two men met. West said to Lyttleton, “Have you written your book?” He replied that he had, but he said, “West, as I have been studying the evidence and weighing it according to the recognized laws of legal evidence, I have become satisfied that Saul of Tarsus was converted as is stated in the Acts of the Apostles, and that Christianity is true and I have written my book on that side.” The book can be found today in any first-class library. “Have you written your book?” said Lyttleton. “Yes, but as I have studied the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and have weighed it according to the acknowledged laws of evidence, I have become satisfied that Jesus really rose from the dead as recorded in the gospels, and have written my book on that side.” This book can also be found in our libraries today.

Let any man of legal mind, any man that is accustomed to and competent to weigh evidence—yes, any man with fair reasoning powers, and above all with perfect candor, sit down to the study of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and he will become satisfied that beyond a peradventure that Jesus really rose from the dead as is recorded in the four gospels.

An Untutored Savage Silences a Man of Science

Years ago a great Frenchman of science was crossing the Arabian desert under the leadership of an Arab guide. When the sun was setting in the west, the guide spread his praying rug down upon the ground and began to pray. When he had finished the man of science stood looking at him with scorn, and asked him what he was doing. He said, “I am praying.” “Praying! praying to whom?” “To Allah, to God.” The man of science said, “Did you ever see God?” “No.” “Did you ever hear God?” “No.” “Did you ever put out your hand and touch God or feel God?” “No.” “Then you are a great fool to believe in a God you never saw, a God you never heard, a God you never put out your hand and touched.” The Arab guide said nothing. They retired for the night, rose early the next morning, and a little before sunrise they went out from the tent. The man of science said to the Arab guide, “There was a camel round this tent last night.” With a peculiar look in his eye, the Arab said, “Did you see the camel?” “No.” “Did you hear the camel?” “No.” “Did you put out your hand and touch the camel?” “No.” “Well, you are a strange man of science to believe in a camel you never saw, a camel you never heard, a camel you never put out your hands and touched” “Oh, but,” said the other, “here are his footprints all around the tent.” Just then the sun was rising in all its oriental splendor, and with a graceful wave of his barbaric hand, the guide said, “Behold the footprints of the Creator, and know that there is a God.” I think the untutored savage had the best of the argument.

Waiting for an Opportunity

One year when I was conducting missions in different parts of England, my family resided at Southport, a pleasant seaside town. I would go there to spend my holidays. The first time I was there I met a man whom God laid upon my heart, and whom I determined to win for Christ. He had once been a prosperous farmer and had gone down and down through drink and his wife was now supporting the family by taking lodgers, and he was doing little things as he was able. He was a most unlikely case and my heart went out towards him, and I determined to win him for Christ. I began to cultivate his acquaintance, watching for an opportunity to win him for Christ. Every time I met him on the street, I would speak with him. When he became disposed to show me little acts of kindness I accepted them in order to win him. Time after time I met him but an opportunity to speak about the great question did not come. When we were in Manchester, I referred to him in an address and about my waiting for an opportunity, and a man in the audience was heard to whisper to another, “Well, he will die before he speaks to him,” but he was mistaken. I was watching and praying and God was listening, and the desired opportunity came.

Returning to Southport for a few days after a mission, I heard the man had caught cold and was quite ill. I met his daughter and asked if I could see him. “Yes,” she said, “Father heard you were coming to Southport, and wondered if you would not come to see him.” I went to the room where he was lying in bed and found him very ill indeed and very approachable. In fact, his wife was trying to read the Bible to him, though she did not know where to read. I took the Bible and read passages that pointed out our need of a Saviour and told of God’s love to sinners, and that made clear God’s way of salvation, and then explained the way of salvation as simply as I could and prayed with him.

The next evening I met his daughter again and asked if I could see her father again. “Yes,” she said, “he was hoping you would come again and wondered if you would not.” I heard that during the night in his delirium he had been talking about me and my son, whose acquaintance he had also made. This encouraged me to think that I was winning my way with him. I went to see him and found him perfectly clear in mind, but I felt he could not pull through the night. I was more definite than the night before, explained the Way of Life more fully and he professed to accept Christ, and I knelt by his bed and prayed, and afterward asked him to follow me in prayer word by word. He followed me in a confession of his sin, in an expression of his belief in the testimony of God’s Word about Jesus Christ, that Jesus had borne his sin in His own body on the cross (Isa. 53:6) and he asked God to forgive his sins because Jesus had borne them in His own body. Then he told his Heavenly Father that he trusted He had forgiven his sins because of the atoning death of Christ. Finally he told God that if it was His will, he wished to be raised from that bed of sickness, that he might serve Christ before men but if it was not His will to raise him up, he was willing to be taken from this world and to depart and be with Christ. When I arose he seemed to be resting clearly in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A few hours later, there was a rap on my door. A lady came in and told me he had passed away, a little while after I left, trusting in Christ.

We Shall Be Like Him

How well I remember one man—I spent more time and more money on the salvation of that man than on any man I ever tried to lead to Christ. It was very discouraging. He came to me one night away down in sin, about fifty years of age. He came of a good family. He had been well educated, but now he was a common day laborer when he was sober—a complete wreck. He came into a meeting. When almost everybody had gone he came up and said, “I want to ask you something alone.” I said, “Come this way.” He leaned over and whispered, “Mr. Torrey” (I had never met him before that night), “do you think Jesus Christ can save me?” I said, “Jesus Christ can save anybody.” He said, “Do you really think He can save a man as far down as I am?” I said, “Jesus Christ can save anybody.” “Well,” he said, “I will take Him.”

For a little while he went on well. One day I was to go to a dinner at a house where he was invited also. My wife and I had nearly reached the house when, at the bottom of the block of houses, we saw a young fellow running out of the house up the street. He came to me and said, “Mr. Torrey, C. is drunk.” My wife thought very much of him, and she turned to me and almost burst into tears and said, “Oh, Archie, whom can we trust?” I replied in one word, “God!” “You cannot trust C. You cannot trust any man, but you can trust God.”

We got to the house and found him raging. He wanted to get out, but they had locked him in a room. I went into the room and stood between him and the door. He was a great, big, burly fellow, and I said to him, “You cannot go out.” He cried, “Let me out.” I said, “You cannot go out. You are not going to get out until you are sober.” He said, “That is not fair. You know I would not strike you. You know I could throw you, and you know I won’t touch you.” I said, “You cannot go out.” At last he lost all control of himself, and he made a rush for me, and there were heads and arms flying around the room for about half a minute. Then there was a sudden crash, and I was sitting on top. He was a much stronger man than I, one of the most powerful men I ever knew. I have heard that man when he was angry, grind his teeth so that you could hear it across this hall. I have seen that man, when under the influence of liquor, strike an iron fence with his bare fist. It was God that gave me the victory. He was subdued for the time being. I held him there until he got calmed down. “Now,” I said, “I have to call and see a dying woman. I cannot leave you here. I cannot very well take you to see a dying woman, but you have got to go along.” I took him along as far as the door of the house where the woman was dying, and I said, “Sit down on that threshold, and wait there until I come.” When I came back he was fast asleep. I got him home all right.

This sort of thing went on for months and years. I moved to Chicago. I sent for him to come to Chicago, where I got a position for him. He did first-rate for a while, and then he got drunk, and he came to see me and he said: “That was not fair at all the time you threw me in Minneapolis. You know you cannot throw me.” I said, “I am not going to.” That sort of thing went on for months and years; but I made up my mind that, by the grace of God, no matter what it cost in money, and no matter what it cost in time and patience, I was going to see that man saved. For some time I lost sight of him. One night I was in my pulpit in Chicago, preaching. I had already begun the service when I saw C. coming into the building. I went down to where he was sitting, and said, “Good evening, C., I am glad to see you.” He stayed to the after meeting. The next day I was going to Minneapolis, and I took him along with me. He said, “Mr. Torrey, there is one thing that has cured me. I thought you would never want to see me again, but I hardly had got into the building, and had sat down away in the back, when you walked down from the platform and came to speak to a miserable tramp like me. That was too much!” Do you know, from that day C. got his feet on the Rock!

Years passed, I was in Minneapolis again. I was in a big restaurant, when I saw C. come in at the farther end, and I went up to him. He said, “I was looking for you. I heard you were in town. Don’t laugh at me.” I said, “I am not going to laugh at you. What’s up?” He said, “I want to ask you something. Don’t laugh at me.” I said, “I am not going to laugh at you. What do you want?” He said, “I want to be married. I am engaged to a right good Christian woman and I want you to marry us.” I said, “I am your man. I’ll do it.” I married him. You say it was pretty risky, but his feet had been on the Rock now for a good while. He married that Christian woman, and they built up a happy Christian home.

The other day my wife wrote to a friend of ours, who had gone to Minneapolis, to know how C. was getting on—I think he is her pet of all the drunkards who have come under our roof. This lady wrote back, “He is doing well. He is leading a Christian life.”

And, friends, the time is coming when poor, wrecked, ruined C. transformed by the power of the returning Christ will be like Him, “For when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”; and when this man that I wept over and worked for and spent money on all these years, when he meets his Christ, and his salvation is indeed complete, he will be so like his Master that we can hardly tell the two apart.

A Well-Known Entertainer Becomes a Soul Winner

One night in London two men went to the theater and presented passes for entrance. For some reason or other, the man at the door did not recognize them and the passes were refused. One of the men was a very prominent entertainer and thought he was well-known in the theatrical profession everywhere, and this refusal to accept the passes irritated him greatly, and he left the theater with his friend in a rage. They took the Kensington Avenue bus, and as they were passing the Royal Albert Hall, he noticed the signs of the mission. He remembered he had promised his sister that he would come and hear me, so he suggested to his friend that they get off the bus and come into the hall that night. His friend consented and in they came. He was not much interested in the singing, though he himself did a good deal of work in his profession along that line, but the sermon went right to his heart. He left the Royal Albert Hall to think the matter over. His sister, who was an earnest Christian woman, had left on his mantelpiece a little tract (a report of a sermon on “Hell” that I had delivered in London). He took it down and read it. It brought him under deepest conviction of sin, and he then and there fell on his knees and surrendered himself to God.

The next night he came to see me at the Royal Albert Hall, and told me of his decision to accept Christ. He made a public profession that night before the great crowd in the hall. He told me he could not go on and take the entertainments for which he was booked the next day at St. George’s Music Hall. He said, “I cannot go and entertain those people and make them laugh when I know they are going to hell.” He tried to get into communication with the stage manager, but could get no reply from him either by letter or telegraph. He went down to the Hall and asked to be let off from his engagement. The manager replied, “I will let you off on one condition, and one condition only, and that is that you will go out and tell the waiting crowd why you are not performing.” He said, “I will do that.” He went out on the stage and said, “Friends, I cannot give my entertainment this afternoon. I was converted last night at the Torrey-Alexander mission.” The crowd burst into applause, thinking it was a new joke that he was getting off. He stopped the applause and said, “It is no joke. I have been converted. I cannot stand here and make you people laugh when I know that many of you are on the road to hell.” The audience stopped their applause and became serious. Many of them were touched by his earnestness and his bravery. At least one woman was converted then and there in that audience.

When he went off the stage, the manager offered the hall for the use of Gospel meetings the next week. He accepted the offer. Meetings were held in that music hall all through the week, and there were many interesting conversions, including at least one person connected with the nobility. He was afterward invited all over England and Scotland and Ireland and Wales to hold evangelistic meetings. A great London magazine had an article upon his conversion and said, “Two or three such conversions as that would move all London.”

Which Are You Like?

Up in the mountains of North Carolina, lived a farmer who had a poor farm, with thin soil, where by hard work, he was barely able to make a living for himself, wife and son. The son, however, was a remarkably bright boy, and easily surpassed all the other boys in the district school. One day the father said to the mother, “Our son is a natural born scholar and if he is only a poor farmer’s son he shall have as good an education as a millionaire’s son.” The father and mother economized and raked and scraped and got enough together to send the boy off to college. The boy did well at college, and every little while sent a letter home telling how well he was doing in his classes. When these letters came the father and mother would read and reread them, and they filled their hearts with joy.

One day a letter came and after the father had read it, he said, “Mother, these letters are all right. They do cheer my old heart, but letters are not enough. My heart is lonely for the boy and I must see the boy himself. I cannot wait. I must see him.” But the mother was a canny woman and said, “You must wait, you cannot see him. He cannot afford to lose a day from his studies to come down here, and you cannot lose a day from the farm to go and see him. You must wait.”

The father said, “I must see him. I cannot stand it any longer. I must see my boy. I have a plan. I’ll load up the old farm wagon this afternoon and get up before sunrise tomorrow and drive to town and sell my load and make enough to pay expenses, and see my boy. I cannot stand it any longer, I must see him.” That afternoon the farmer loaded up the wagon, went to bed with the chickens, got up early in the morning before sunrise, hitched up the old team and started for the college town. It was a long tedious journey, but it did not seem long to the farmer for he was going to see his boy. As he drove along he would chuckle to himself, “I will soon see my boy. Won’t he be glad to see me? He thinks I am at home on the farm. Won’t he be surprised when I walk into his room? Won’t he be glad?”

Every hour of his dreary journey as he drew nearer the college town his heart grew lighter and happier, and at last as he drew near the town he said, “I am almost there. In a little while now I will see my boy. Won’t he be surprised? Won’t he be glad?” As he entered the town he tried to hurry the old team forward, but to no avail as the team was tired and could not go any faster. As he drove up the hill towards the college who should he see coming down the sidewalk but his boy with two gay young college companions. “There he comes! There he comes!” said the old man, “won’t he be surprised to see me? Won’t he be glad?” He whipped up the team, but it could not go any faster, they were tired out. He jumped off the wagon and ran up to his boy, who had not seen him. “My son,” he cried. His son was surprised, but was not glad. He was ashamed of his father in his plain old homespun clothes before his gay college companions. “There must be some mistake, sir,” he said. “I am not your son, you are not my father. I do not know you. There must be some mistake, sir.” He might as well have driven a dagger into his father’s heart. I am told that the father went home with a broken heart to die. Whether that part of the story is true I cannot say, but I can well believe it. If my son should treat me that way (thank God he never will) I think it would break my heart. What do you think of a son like that? I think he should be horsewhipped. The cowardly, ungrateful wretch. But stop before you condemn him. Some of you here tonight are more ungrateful than that son. Jesus Christ has done more for you than that father did for his son. Jesus Christ has done more for you than any father ever did for his son. Yet you are so cowardly and ungrateful that you won’t stand up and confess Him before the world, because you are afraid of what someone will say, and you are ashamed of Him. I have never told this story without its making my blood boil, although I suppose I have told it over one hundred times.

Let me tell you another story. Thank God it is entirely different.

Down in the mountains of Georgia lived a poor widow. She had a few acres of ground where she raised berries and one thing and another and made a little money keeping chickens and selling eggs. She also took in washing and did other humble work for a living, but God gave her a bright son. He too surpassed every one in the district school. The mother worked hard to get the money to send him to Emory College. The son worked hard to get himself through the college. He graduated with high honors and won a gold medal for special excellence in study.

When it came time for him to graduate he went up to the mountain home for his mother, and said, “Mother, you must come down and see me graduate.”

“No,” said his mother, “I have nothing fit to wear, and you would be ashamed of your poor old mother before all those grand people.”

“Ashamed of you,” he said, with eyes filled with filial love, “ashamed of you, Mother, never. I owe everything I am to you and you must come down. What is more I will not graduate unless you come.” Finally she yielded. He brought her to the town. When the graduating day came she went to the commencement exercises in her plain calico dress with her neat but faded shawl and simple mountain bonnet. He tried to take her down the middle aisle where the richest people of the town, friends of the graduating class, sat, but this she refused and insisted on sitting way off under the gallery. The son went up on the platform and delivered his graduating address. He was handed his diploma and received his gold medal. No sooner had he received the gold medal than he walked down from the platform and way to where his mother sat off under the gallery and pinned the gold medal on her faded shawl and said, “Mother, that belongs to you, you earned it.”

That is a son worth having. Which of those two sons are you like, the cowardly ungrateful wretch, ashamed of his poor old father or the noble boy who was proud of his poor mother to whom he owed all he was in the world? I have been told by a president of the college where this happened that when the boy pinned that gold medal on his mother’s shawl the whole audience burst into such prolonged applause that the exercises could not go on for five minutes.

You want to applaud too. Let me tell you a better way to applaud, imitate him. You owe all you are to Jesus Christ. Come, pin all your honors upon Him today. Come out and confess Him before the world.

Whom the Lord Loveth He Chasteneth

A gentleman met me on the street one day and said, “Would you like to take a drive?” We went out to a cemetery, and came to a place where there were three graves. One was long; it was the grave of an adult, and in it his wife was buried. In the two short graves were the bodies of his two daughters, all he had in the world except a baby boy. We knelt and prayed by the side of the graves. As we were driving back to town the gentleman said, “I pity the man that God has not chastened.” What did he mean? He meant that he had been a man of the world, an upright man, but not a Christian. One night when he came home his wife said, “Porter, one of the children is sick.” In a few days she was cold and dead; and, as she lay in the casket, he knelt down, and promised God to take Christ as his Lord and Master. But he lied to God, and forgot all about his resolution. Some time after he came home again, and his wife said, “Porter, the other child is sick.” In a few days she also lay cold and dead. Once more he knelt down and promised God that he would become a Christian, and kept his word. All the holiest, deepest, purest joys of life had come from his great sorrow.

Won by a Smile

As a Sunday-school worker hurried down the streets of Chicago one day on his way to Sunday school, he noticed a little baby being held at the window by someone in the family. He turned towards the baby and smiled. The baby smiled back. The next Sunday the baby was there again and again he smiled at the baby and waved his hand. The next Sunday there were several at the window with the baby watching for him to pass and again he recognized the baby and smiled and waved his hand. Someone in the house followed him. They saw him turn into the Sunday school and went back home and told where he had gone. The next Sunday some of the children appeared at the Sunday school and finally the whole family was won for Christ. Won by a smile. No one can ever tell where some little act of kindness will end.

Won by Love

I used to have a friend in Chicago—he is in heaven now—Colonel Clarke, a man who lived entirely for others, and especially for the poor and outcast—a rich man, who gave up all his money for the poor. He lived very plainly. He worked himself literally to death. He worked at his business six days every week, and he preached the Gospel seven nights every week. He worked at his business to make money to run his mission and feed the poor. And the poor loved him, and the outcast loved him, and everybody that had any sense and knew him loved him—one of the loveliest men that ever walked God’s earth. One night there came into the Pacific Garden Mission—his mission—a man who had for fourteen years been a hopeless slave to whiskey and alcohol in all its forms, and opium and morphine. The man had been crippled in early childhood. He had been in a railroad accident, was all smashed up, and lost the use of both legs. He dragged himself along as best he could on his crutches. He was not able to stand on his feet. He sort of balanced himself as he dragged himself along on his crutches.

This night, when he came into the mission, Colonel Clarke saw him. I suppose he was the most miserable-looking man in the mission and Colonel Clarke went up to him, and tried to persuade him to take Christ and to believe on the Lord Jesus. But he would not. The next day Colonel Clarke was going down La Salle Street, one of our busiest business streets, and right ahead of him he saw this poor opium fiend dragging himself along on his crutches. Colonel Clarke hurried up, put his hand on his shoulder, and took him into an alleyway, where he told him about Jesus. Then he said, “Let us kneel down.” And the strong man put his arm around that poor wretch of a cripple, helped him down on to his knees and prayed for him. This poor man in rags, a wretch, a cripple, an opium fiend, a whiskey fiend, an alcohol fiend, knelt there in the alleyway, put his confidence in Jesus Christ, and when Colonel Clarke helped him up on his crutches he was a child of God, and today he is a preacher of the gospel.

Worth More Than a Bank Account

Here is a working man who goes home on Saturday from the place where he works. His wife meets him at the door, expecting him to hand over the week’s wages—very happy at the end of another week’s work. As she opens the door she sees a very anxious look in his face. She says, “John, what is the matter?” “Mary, I am discharged. The place is shutting down. We are all discharged. There are thousands of men out of employment in London. I don’t know of anything I can find to do. I have no money in the bank, and I don’t know how I am going to take care of you and the children till work begins again.” And the man sits down and buries his face in his hands, and is filled with utter despair.

Another man goes home from the same mill. His wife meets him at the door, but there is no anxious look. There is a serious look. She says, “John, what is the matter?” and he tells her the same story up to a certain point. “The place is shut down; we are all out of work. I have no money put away for a rainy day, and I don’t know where to find employment. I don’t know how to keep you and the children from starvation, but, Mary, we believe in God and we believe in the Bible.” He hangs up his overcoat, takes out the family Bible, opens it at the twenty-third Psalm, and reads, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want”; turns to the sixth chapter of Matthew, the thirty-third verse, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you”; turns to Philippians, fourth chapter and the nineteenth verse, “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” “Mary,” he says, “these are promises of God. I don’t know how we shall be taken care of, but I know we shall, for these promises are sure.” I had rather have that in a world of change such as you and I live in, where a man is a millionaire today and a pauper tomorrow than to have the biggest bank account in England.

Take another illustration. The man goes home this time light-hearted, his week’s wages in his pocket, thinking how it will gladden his wife as he hands it over. As he reaches the door, his wife hurries to the door. The anxious look is on her face now. He says, “Mary, what has happened?” “Oh,” she says, “John, little Minnie is very ill. She has a high fever. You know they are having scarlet fever around the corner. I am afraid she has it.”

He hurries in, lays his hand upon the fevered brow, looks at those parched lips and that curious looking skin. He says, “Mary, you are right; she has the scarlet fever.” He sits down crushed. He has nowhere to turn, for a man who is godless cannot turn to God.

The other man—the Christian man—goes home. His wife meets him at the door. He sees an earnest look in her face. He asks the same question and gets the same answer up to a certain point—that she is afraid the little daughter has the scarlet fever. He goes in, lays his hand upon the fevered brow, looks at the symptoms, and sees beyond a doubt that his little child has the terrible plague. He says, “Mary, she has the scarlet fever, but we believe in a God that answers prayer, and I believe that if we pray He will raise up our child. But, if in His infinite wisdom, He sees fit to take her from us, we have brought her up to be a Christian, and for her to die will simply be to depart and be with Christ, where we shall meet her again.” He opens his Bible and reads Psalm 50:15: “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” He kneels down and prays; arises and opens his Bible again at John 14:1 and reads, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

That is something worth having in a world such as you and I live in, and I would rather have that than the biggest bank account on earth.

A Would-Be Suicide Saved by Prayer

A young man in England was left a very comfortable sum of money by his father, but he ran through it very rapidly in drink and gambling. He squandered part of it in England and part of it in India. As his money ran low, he came back to England in a state of despair. He had a stroke of good luck at the gaming table and won nearly $1,000, but he began to squander it all in a terrible debauch.

Just at this time, his brokenhearted Christian sister sent a request to our meeting in Birmingham that we would pray for him. The night we prayed for him, her brother was in desperation. He was not in Birmingham but about forty miles away. He sat by a table with a loaded revolver about to end his life, but God heard the prayer that went up in Birmingham, and as he sat there, memories of his mother came to him and instead of doing the rash act that he contemplated, he knelt down and surrendered his life to God. He became at once an out and out Christian and an active worker for Christ. He obtained a position as a nurse for an invalid but constantly did Christian work as he had opportunity. When we were holding our mission in Brighton, he came and spent his whole month’s vacation working in the after-meeting. God called him into a larger work and now he is holding meetings in different parts of the world with great success.

Anecdotes and Illustrations

Table of Contents

All Things Working Together for Good

An Angry Father Converted

Are You a Murderer?

A Bartender's Jest

Big Interest

The Champion Heavy Weight Pugilist Converted

A Child's Prayer Answered

Common Stones Turned Into Diamonds

Conquered by Compassion

Converted at Nine Years of Age

Converted by President Wolsey's Singing

A Converted Jewess

Could Not Get Over Her Father's Life

The Curse Coming Home

A Deacon Who Went Fishing on Sunday

A Deep Spiritual Concern for Your Soul

Despondency Changed Into Abounding Joy

Do You Believe That, Sir?

Earth Has No Sorrow That Jesus Cannot Heal

Fighting Whiskey

First Sober Christmas in Ten Years

Forgiven by Both Fathers

Give Me a Love for Souls

Give Me Back My Tears

God Does Give the Holy Spirit in Answer to Prayer

God Is Love

God Save My Papa

God Silences a Scoffer

God Use This Stammering Tongue

God Uses a Weak Instrument

God Won't Take Me Away Without Giving Me Another Chance

The Greatest Sin a Man Can Possibly Commit

Guilty of High Treason

The Holy Ghost Fell Upon Us

The Holy Spirit's Power to Convict of Sin

How D. L. Moody Became a Worldwide Evangelist

How Men Become Infidels

How the Devil Got Us an Audience

How the Sun Burst Through the Clouds

How to Love Jesus

How to Reach a Son in a Distant Land

Hunted to Death by Her Own Conscience

I Am a Scoundrel

I Am an Infidel

I Can Hardly Wait

I Cannot Believe the Bible Because I Am a Scientist

I Don't Know Him

I Have Committed a Sin for Which There Is No Forgiveness

I Have Heard the Biggest Joke

I Have Seen One of Those Before

I Lied to You, Sir

I Thought of My Mother

I Want to Wait a Little Longer

I Will Feel for a Man

I Wish I Were a Christian

If Any Man Be in Christ Jesus, He Is a New Creature

If I Could Only Have Saved Just One More

An Infidel Converted Beside a Coffin

An Infidel Professor Converted

Infidelity and Licentiousness

Insulting God

Is Not God's Word As Good As Mine?

Isaiah Fifty-Three Six

Jolly, but Wretched

Killed by Shame

Last Opportunity Thrown Away

A Letter From Stillwater Prison

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

Lost by Neglect

A Lost Diamond

Lost Through Delay

Love Conquered

The Meanest Thief in Minneapolis

A Music Hall Singer Converted

Never Be Discouraged

No Greater Joy

No Pilot Ready

Of Course There's a Hell