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.