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.