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THE KING’S BUSINESS
had begun in the market-square was now advancing with marvelous rapidity in the homes of the people. As I approached door after door, persons were watching for me and other ministers, to bring us to deal with some poor agonized stricken one; and when the morning dawned, and until the sun arose, I was wandering from street to street, and from house to house, on the most marvelous and solemn errand upon which I have ever been sent. THE ELDERS JOIN IN “Throughout the following day, the 8th of June, scenes similar to those which I have alluded to continued to occur in pri vate houses in almost every street. In the evening a dense multitude assembled again in the market-place; and again, simultan eously with the preaching of the gospel and prayer, many more than on the pre ceding evening sank upon the ground, and with bitter cries besought the Lord Jesus Christ to come in mercy to their souls. Profiting by the experience of the preceding night, elders of the churches and other Christian people sought now to find some building where the many ‘stricken ones,’ as they began now to be called, from the sur rounding country might receive shelter, and the attention of Christian ministers and others until the morning. Just at this pe riod the New Town Hall of Coleraine had been completed, though it had never yet been used for any purpose. Someone sug gested it as a fitting place of shelter. The suggestion was. at once acted upon, and in the town a solemn interest attaches to the beautiful building, from the fact that the first use for which it was ever employed was to shelter in its halls many, very many poor sinners, whilst they agonized with God for the pardon of sin. “I may here mention that our Town Hall has been the scene and witness, for seven months, of one of the most blessed fruits of God’s gracious work among us. Early in June a meeting for united prayer, by members of all evangelical denominations, began to assemble at half-past nine o’clock, to continue for half an hour. For months
over him, and found him to be a young man of some eighteen or twenty years, but personally unknown to me. He lay on the ground, his head supported on the knees of an elder of one of our churches. His eyes were closed; his hands were firmly clasped, and occasionally very forcibly press ed upon the chest. He was uttering in cessantly a peculiar deep moan, sometimes terminated in a prolonged wailing cry. I felt his pulse, and could discern nothing very peculiar about it. I said, softly and quietly in his ear, ‘Why do you cry so?’ He opened his eyes for an instant, and I could perceive that they had, stronger than I ever saw it before, that inward look, if I might so express it, which indicates that the mind is wholly occupied with its own images and impressions. ‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, high and loud in reply to my question, ‘My sins! My sins! Lord Jesus, have mercy upon my poor soul! O Jesus! come! O Lord Jesus, come!’ I endeavored to calm him for a moment, asking him to listen to me whilst I set before him some of the promises of God to perishing sinners. At first I thought that I was Carrying his attention with me in what I was saying, but I soon discovered that his whole soul wTas filled with one idea—his guilt and his danger —for, in the middle of my repetition of some promise, he would burst forth with the bitter cry, ‘O God, my sins! My sins!’ At length I said in his ear, ‘Will I pray?’ He replied in a loud voice, ‘Oh, yes!’ I en gaged in prayer, and yet I doubt whether his mind followed me. beyond the first sen tence or two. As I arose from prayer, six or eight persons, all at the same instant, pressed around me, crying, ‘Oh, come and see (naming such a one)—and—and,’ until I felt for a moment bewildered, and the prayer went out from my own heart, ‘God guide me!’ I passed from case to case for two or three hours, as did my brethren in the ministry, until, when the night was far spent, and the stricken ones began to be removed to the shelter of roofs, I turned my face homewards through one street, when I soon discovered that the work which
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