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.