THE KING’S BUSINESS
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that he could not sleep, and spent the night in tears and prayers for pardon. Mark—there had been no time for any parental appeal, or even for a letter of remonstrance—while they were praying for him God moved him to pray for himself. OTHER EXAMPLES. A merchant of Bristol, England, by a disaster at sea was nearly ruined financially and the shock made his wife, insane. Her father, an eminent disciple liying at Birmingham, a man of great faith in prayer, asked a few others of like mind to his house to unite in prayer for her recovery. At that very hour she was restored to reason. An aged Christian man, a humble blacksmith, while one day at work in his shop, was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought of the spiritual state of the people about him, among whom there had been no revival of religion for years, so that the church was almost extinct and Satan’s kingdom all-prevailing. So great was his dis tress that he abandoned the anvil for the closeL A mighty revival followed, multitudes were brought to repentance and faith; and, most wonderful of all, these new converts all dated their concern for themselves back to that very day and hour when, in the secrecy of his locked shop, that hum ble blacksmith was pouring out his soul to God for the unsaved about him. A TRANSFORMATION. Upon this subject of answers to prayer I believe I ought to add a word of explicit personal testimony, even at the risk of being misunderstood. When I say to you that the plain story I have to tell you contains the seed of a revolution in my own Chris tian life so complete that I seem to have felt a transformation in all my religious ideas and sentiments, and
in every fiber of my being, you will understand how and why I feel that I cannot do my whole duty without adding my own witness. In January, 1876, I found myself pastor of a large, wealthy church, with one of the finest and most ele gant church buildings in the whole land;-;with everything to gratify a carnal ambition, and lust of human applause. I had been led by a most singular searching of heart to see that I had been making an idol of literary culture and worldly position; and a few months before, I had sol emnly renounced all these things that I might be a holier arid more useful man. For the first time in my life I had no conscious idol in my heart, but for the first time I had a con sciousness of real communion—^shall I say, contact ?—with God in prayer. I was especially led to ask that I might in some way be enabled to reach the unsaved souls who were around us but outside of the churches. The clear and positive conviction abso lutely possessed me that this prayer would be answered in a marked way that would show the hand of God. This: solemn persuasion I communi cated to my wife, but to her alone, and joyfully waited for God to fulfill my desire and prayer. On March 19, 1876, the Lord’s Day, unusual power was given me in preaching; and in the evening 1 felt so strongly that the time was very near when God would reveal His right hand, to give me new access to unsaved souls, that I felt con strained to communicate my feeings to a brother clergyman, who at my request remained after service to talk with me; and the next Friday evening at the church prayer meeting, as a pastor, I frankly opened my heart to my beloved people. I spoke to them as to the obvious lack of power in the church to reach these neglectors of worship, and I said that our elegant
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