THE K I NG ' S B U S I N E S S It is not possible to tabulate results of our Bible study classes, but the fol lowing incident will show how the Lord is working out the teaching in the lives of the members. At WORK OP a class where the BIBLE WOMEN teacher was a few minutes late, the suggestion went forth that if she did not come they would disband. A woman only lately converted answered the sug gestion. “No, we must have a class of some kind, for I know our teacher would be ashamed of us if after all these weeks of teaching we could not speak and pray together without her.” One member has given up novel read ing and is giving the time usually spent that way to Bible study. Another takes notes at ,the class and gives the lesson to a sick sister who cannot come her self. The class incentive to Bible study made another member save up her money for weeks in order to possess a Scofield Bible; and then asked the teacher for a private lesson on how to use it, so that she could get the most out of it. In visitation work it is quite unusual to find even Christians who know how to study their Bibles, and today the need of classes is more and more urgent. One woman had never been in a prayer-meeting in her life—she had never voiced a prayer directly from her own heart—only those written by others had ever passed her lips, when her neighbor invited her to attend the Bible class held in her own home. She came without a Bible because the only Bible she had in the hous,e was a big family Bible containing the family genealogy. But after a few weeks she began com ing over carrying the big Bible which she placed on the dining room table, and speedily was doing her share in reading the references used in the study of the lesson. Gradually the truth gripped her heart, and she began at tending the nearby church and Sunday school. A few weeks since when wel coming new comers into the church, the pastor asked if there was not some one who would like to join the church, our friend of the Bible class quietly arose and joined the group. The next week she was baptized. “I was never so happy in my life,” she said in speaking of the experience. “I just looked up and thought, ‘Oh, if the Lord would only come right now!’ ”
1015 The telephone bell rang, and as I answered it, I recognized the voice at the other end as that of one of the members of my Bible class. “Will you please tell me where in the Bible it says that cleanliness is next to godliness?” she asked. “I have hunted my Bible and my concordance through, and can’t find it.” Another question, “Did the immaculate conception occur before or after the fall in the Garden of Eden?” Do we need to study the Bible these days? These questions are surely an swers. “I long to lead people to Christ but I do not know my Bible,” said an intelli gent and earnest Christian woman to a Bible-class teacher. She then added that she had come to regard the weak ness and worldliness of her fellow church-members to be the result of ignorance of the word of God. The woman was a leader by nature and by official position, and set about at once to correct in some measure this unfortunate but not unusual situation. A central class for Bible study was planned for Sunday evenings, the les son to be taught by a trained and com petent teacher, while several neighbor hood classes were arranged for in vari ous parts of the city to be taught by women who received their preparation in the Central Class. The plan has been working for sev eral weeks, and promises good things in the way of spiritual growth and ac tivity in the lives of the women who are being reached by the classes. In dependent Bible study is being encour aged; ability to teach is being discov ered and developed, and the Word of God itself is becoming a better known and a better understood Book. A Bible woman called in a home where the son had just recently died. The mother and father were broken hearted for the son was not a Christian during his life. The parents were back sliders themselves and now their hearts were tender and they realized they needed the comfort of God. The son was attended by a Christian nurse in the hospital and the Bible woman visited the nurse in response to the request of the parents and learned this story. The first night of her stay at the hos pital, the nurse asked him if he was a Christian and he answered that he was not. “I gave myself to God a long time ago, but I have wandered far, far away.”
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