HOW GOD CALLED ME
When I moved from Washington to Philadelphia, I found myself very lonely. I had been President of a Collegiate Institute at Atchison, Kan., from 1870 to 1885, when, because of failure of health, I came East, and took up literary work. At Washington, where I lived from 1885 to 1888, I soon came in contact with literary people, and belonged to both literary and scientific clubs, some of whose members are to this day strong personal friends. But in the twelve years in Philadelphia I never became much acquainted with university people, authors' clubs, Browning or Shakespeare clubs, although I knew they were all there. God had to break me loose from too great devotion to that side of life in order to use me for more spiritual work.
One evening, in the summer of 1888, I came along Arch Street where, in a basement room at Broad and Arch, some women were holding a prayer service. I entered and joined with them. Three poor, ragged, soiled men were converted. I saw the women were even more inexperienced with the phenomena of sudden conversions than I was. So I stepped forward and pledged the converts to a Christian life. Then I appealed to the good men present to see that the converts had a good meal that night, and asked for work for them. Good men at once promised both.
When the meeting was dismissed a gentleman came to me and said, “We need you at the Sunday Breakfast Association to speak next Sunday night. We shall have over 1000 men present, all needing to find God. You are one of the women who can speak without any of the Little Johnny death-bed scenes, and we need you.” I replied, “If you asked me to talk on Dickens, Shakespeare, or any literary character, I could easily do it, but to win souls to Christ, I am not at all sure I could do it.” He did not argue, he simply said, “I give you your opportunity.” That startled me, and I said, “I will try.”
So the next Sunday evening at the Breakfast Association I made my first talk before an audience largely of the submerged tenth. The galleries and the platform were filled with well-dressed people, and, instead of trying to save some soul, I tried to make a fine speech. My rhetoric was perfect, my periods nicely rounded, my illustrations pertinent, and I sat down pretty well satisfied with my fine self. Mr. Bean saw what I had done, so he shook a few grains out of all the chaff I had given them, made the application, and let me down as easily as he could.
But while I sat there God's Spirit dealt with me. “What if a mother of one of these lost men had had your opportunity,” said God's Spirit, “would she have talked platitudes to the galleries and the platform? Would she? Would she?” I saw my sin. As I fled from the house I nearly cried aloud in my shamefaced grief. When I got to my room I went to my knees and I cried to God my deep shame, “Dear Father, I have sinned. I know now that is not my work. My business is to instruct the intellect. I will leave the winning of souls to preachers and mothers. Help me to bear the testimony of a well-ordered Christian life, speaking for you in my own social set, but I am not equal to facing those who have looked long into the eyes of sin and suffering and sorrow, and are uncomforted with a knowledge of Thy grace.”
So I felt I had disposed of that, and determined to keep to literature forevermore. The next day the card of a woman whom I had met in the highest social circles of Washington was sent to my room. As I came down through the hall I saw in front of the house her carriage with footman and driver and team of Kentucky-bred horses. When I entered she broke out in a sort of wail, “I hear you spoke at the Breakfast Association last night.” “Yes, and made a great guy of myself. I do not expect to ever go there again, except as a spectator. I fear I am more literary than religious.”
I wish I could describe the next few minutes. Her face blazed. “You, you!” she said; “why you had a father a minister, your mother a praying woman, and you not to go there to speak to lost men, if you have the opportunity! You have had everything which training can give, and you refuse to reach a hand to lost men.”
“Well, what does that concern you?”
She sat down. The agony in her face became anguish. She turned white, then red, then back to white, till I feared for her heart. “What does it concern me! What! What! Well, I must tell you. I have a son who sits down in that awful crowd!”
It was my turn now to be moved. “You?” I said, “why, you live in a white marble palace, and can it be that your son is a homeless, friendless man?”
“Yes,” she said, “I live in a white marble palace and I hate it from turret to foundation stone, because my oldest son is not allowed under its roof. He is a drunkard, and will steal everything he can lay his hands on and sell it for drink, so that his father forbids me to see him or to give him money. The last time I saw him he was shoveling coal into a manhole; he looked the part.”
Here she tried to give me a large roll of money, as she said, “Take this, and please go to the Breakfast Association and find my darling boy.” “Madam, I am not authorized to take money for the Association. Dr. Henderson is the Treasurer, do see him!” “I will not. Will know who you are. I told him much of meeting you in Washington. I want you to take this money and find and clothe my sorrowful son; and oh, say what I would like to say if I could talk like you! Tell him when he sees a light at the top of the house that his mother is in the attic praying for him, and will you pray for me that I shall not die under this? Will you pray for my son?”
Then we two kneeled and poured into the heart of a loving Saviour that story of woe. How she wailed over her own frivolous life, and promised her God a life for Him. Nearly all the persons referred to have died, so, though the parties may be recognized in Philadelphia, it cannot now harm anyone.
I took the money offered. The next Sunday evening I went to the Association, and my face must have told the story, for when I said to Mr. Bean, “I have a message,” he let me speak. I selected the words, “Son, behold thy mother!” I told many incidents of heart-broken mothers because of the sins of their sons, and then I told of Mrs. W., nearly in the above language. Probably two hundred men requested prayer that night, and I saw God could use me for other than literary work.
Mr. Bean said, “That man will not show up till the others have gone,” so I sat down and waited.
When nearly everyone had left the room a poor, blear-eyed youth came to the platform. He said, “Mrs. Monroe, I am Will W. Do give me some money.” I said, “Will, do you intend to break your mother's heart? Do you intend to keep on drinking?” “Now, see here, Mrs. Monroe, I have honestly tried to quit.” Then, pushing up his sleeve, he showed me scars. “There I have signed the pledge with my own blood, and I cannot quit.” Howard McMasters, one of the Breakfast Association workers, pointed the way to Christ far better than I could. Then he gave him tickets where he could get lodging. I met him the next day at a Turkish bath house. At first they refused to take him, and only by paying a high price could I secure him a bath and proper barbering. I gave him a complete outfit of clothes, and he looked very respectable. Mr. McMasters put a good man on the case to talk with him, to read the New Testament with him, to explain salvation and to help him find God, and to keep at his side whenever possible.
My business took me out of town for several weeks; when I came back to the city, I went, of course, the first Sunday evening to the Breakfast Association. After the meeting was over Will W. came slouching up to the platform as vile as when I first saw him. He had sold every article I had given him for drink. This sorrowful experience was repeated about five times, but as good is stronger than evil, the prayers of God's people prevailed, and Mr. McMasters brought him forward to the altar and God met him.
His mother's prayers, the word of God as shown by Howard McMasters and that wonderful Divine Spirit made a clean work, and a soul was born to God. We kept him as well guarded as we could. The smells of the street troubled him, for that reason I went to his father's wholesale house on Market Street. I had met Mr. W. with his wife in Washington, and he met me cordially, till I said, “Mr. W., I have come to talk to you about your oldest son.” He blazed at me, “Don't you dare to speak to me of my oldest son. He has broken my heart, his mother's heart, and disgraced my name. I will not permit even my wife to speak of him, much less a friend.” “But he is converted, Mr. W. It will be different now.” “Oh! he has a new dodge, has he?” “Mr. W., you must talk to me fairly about this wrecked young life or refer me to someone who can act in your behalf.” “Well, see his brother,” and a clerk showed me to the brother's counting-room. He heard my story with sympathy. After stating the case, I said, “I want you to put him on a truck farm down near Media, and get him away from the smells of Philadelphia.” This was done, though it took several weeks to bring it about.
The next Sunday night Will sat on the platform, and testified to the power of God to save. When the meeting had closed, a handsome young woman, wearing a costly tailor-made gown and with the stamp of the patrician in every line of her dainty person, said to me, “Mrs. Monroe, I am going to marry Will W. this week.” “Oh, my dear girl, do not risk it till he has proved himself for two years! Do not risk it!” “You believe he is converted, do you not?” “Why, yes; but we should see the transforming power of the gospel before you risk your happiness.” “Will needs me now to help him keep straight. You have not as much faith as you ought to have yourself, or you would believe he will hold out.”
What more could I say? They were married. His mother was present at the ceremony, and they went to the farm to live. Will was held by the power of God, and, after much blundering, they made a fair success with a truck farm.
CHAPTER III
Incidents Showing the Power of God to Save
Among the many other impressive cases of the power of God to suddenly change a human life from evil to good occurred at the Breakfast Association in Philadelphia about the year 1898, and although fifteen years have passed, every incident, every word is indelibly written on my memory.
I was coming off the platform one evening when I met a large, fierce-looking, scowling man, who looked as if he wanted to strike me. I stopped at once. “Friend,” I said, “you are in trouble.” “What is that to you and such as you?” “It is much to me. You look like an employer of men, yet here you have been taking the bread and coffee of charity.” “Well, I have been an employer of men, but now I cannot even get employment. I have been behind bars; now what hope in life is there for me?” “Many men who have been behind bars have afterward made good citizens and even made fortunes. Let us go down to the Board room and talk this out.”
As he went along growling that there was no hope for him, I motioned to Mr. McMasters and another worker to come with us. When we were seated, he said, “Now, all I want of you people is to help me get work so that I do not wander like a stray dog through the streets of the city where I was born. My wife and family have deserted me and I am a desperate man.”
“Yes,” I said, “brother, no woman could live with you as you are now, one would as soon live with a wolf; your hand is against every man and every man's hand is against you. But God can again make you an employer of men. He can make you a good husband and father, but you must find God first. Where is your mother?” I saw him shrink, and I knew then I had the key. “My going to prison killed my mother. I had a mill in a suburb of Philadelphia, and sometimes, after the day's work was done, I would step into a saloon and take a glass of beer with my foreman. I was not what you would call a drinking man. One evening we got into a dispute about something concerning the mill, and I picked up a monkey wrench and struck my foreman just one blow, but I killed him. All our property went for lawyer fees, all to no purpose, for I was sent to prison for ten years. I have just been pardoned,” and he drew the governor's pardon from his pocket. “When I went to my home I found strangers in it, but at last I found my wife and my children now nearly grown, but they would not let me live with them.” I knew perfectly well from other experiences that he had gone in violence and had been met with violence.
Mr. McMasters now took the case. He said, “If your mother were now living, do you believe she would have received you?” “I am sure she would. The warden often told us that our mothers would stay by us, that children grew ashamed of a father in prison, wives persuaded themselves that it only kept up their grief, but a mother's love is like that of the God above, it remains. But mother died.”
“Well, you want to meet her again, do you not?” “Yes, but my mother was a Christian.” “That is it; let us kneel and talk to your mother's God.” Reluctantly, growling that God cared nothing for a poor devil like him, he kneeled, and with the three of us kneeling about him, we each one presented the case to God, calling on the “God whom this man's mother loved and served, asking mercy for a broken life, a broken home and a broken heart.” By the time the last one prayed his head was on the chair and he was sobbing. Then he prayed for himself, and God came down and the old alchemy of God turned the heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and George Gneiss was born into the kingdom of God. It was not difficult to get him a place as a skilled miller, and from that day to this he has made good.
The transforming power of the gospel was plainly seen within a week in his face, in his clothing, in his bearing at every meeting. After a few Sundays I was called out of town for six weeks. When I came home, I went to the Breakfast Association and there, from the gallery, Mr. Gneiss looked down on me. At his side was a Quaker woman in the plain dress of her Church, and with them was a manly boy of seventeen. After the services, they all came to me (I motioned to others to come), and they told us the story of their reunion. Tears stood in her eyes as she said, “We have family prayers now, and we pray for you every day. God is blessing us in every way. Pray for us.”
After that they came to see me, either at the Breakfast Association or at my home, as often as three or four times a year as long as I remained in Philadelphia.