THE KING’S BUSINESS
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poor, and dirty, and quarrelsome, that today are clean, and well supplied and loving through the influence of this book? How many men and women have been saved from lives of sin by this boqjc? With this, contrast infidelity. Where is the man who has been saved from drunkenness by the power of infidelity? Where is the home that was once poor, and dirty and quarrelsome that is today clean; and well supplied arid loving, which has been made so by the power of infidelity? Where is the sinning woman who has been saved from a life of sin by infidelity in any form? 3, The next need of man is comfort in sorrow. We live in a world that is full of sorrow and bereavement. Families are broken up, dear ones taken away. Man needs consolation as he stands by the dying bed of wife or child or mother; he needs consolation as he looks in the grave into which the dearest one of earth has been lowered. Where can he find consolation in such an hour ? In the Bible, and in the Bible alone. On October 19, 1894, five years after the Johnstown flood, I stood in Johnstown cemetery. I looked upon the graves of several thousand who were in one day, May 31, 1889, swept into eternity; 816 unknown ones lay in a single plot. I read the inscriptions on the tombstones. What stories of sorrow they told. There lay side by side a young mother and her baby child; in another place lay “father, 34 years; Anne, 10 years; Tommy, 6 years; Elmer, 2,” and the rest of the family were left to mourn. In another place lay seven of one family side by side. There was need of consolation in those days in Johnstown. Was there any place where it could be found? Yes, in the Bible, and in Jesus Christ of whom the Bible tells. On one tombstone I read, “Annie Llewellyn, died May 31, 1889, five years, three months, seventeen days, ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus.’ ” Was there any comfort in that for those parents as they thought of their little one caught by the swirling flood, tossed about mid trees and
For fourteen years conscience had tor mented her with the thought of the man into whose throat she had driven a dagger and killed him. Oftentimes in her agony she had gone down to Lake Michigan by night and thought of plunging into its dark waters to drown herself in order to be free from her accusing conscience, but she hesi tated .to do it for fear of the awakening that might lie beyond death. I pointed her to Isa. 53:6 and she found pardon and perfect peace through the One who had borne in her place the murder she had committed. The last three days of week before last and the first two days of last week I was in Chicago again. The first day I was there this woman came to me with a smiling face and told me how happy she was in Christ, and time and again she came to me at the close of some of the meetings, telling me how God was using even her in service for Him. This book has saved many a conscience tortured one from suicide and despair. 2. The next need of man is, deliver ance from sin’s power. Men are in the grip of sin, we all know that. They are unable to break away from the grip of sin. It is well enough to tell a man to assert his manhood, but it don’t work. The very lecturer who tells men that they do not need a Saviour, Jesus, to set them free from the power of sin, that all they need to do is to assert their manhood, has not asserted his own manhood and broken away from sin’s grip. This slavery of sin is awful; the soul cries out, where is deliverance to be found? The cry of Paul in his failure and defeat is the universal cry of the thoughtful heart, “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). The Bible answers the question in John 8:36, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” When we try it we find it is true. How many men there are whom we know who have been saved from lives of drunkenness and sin by this book? How many homes there are in Los Angeles and throughout the land that were once
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