MR. KLINE'S TESTIMONY
On the evening of September 16, 1913, Mr. Kline, our Superintendent of the Gospel Mission, gave, in substance, the following:
“It is ten years ago to-night since God, for Christ's sake, forgave my sins. It was a day like this has been, a perfect day in September. I had become a confirmed drunkard, so that every waking moment I kept myself under the influence of whisky. I was a good workman, but I was conscious that my strength had gone. Three days before I had been attacked with a trembling which seemed like palsy. As I looked in the glass I saw the face of a dying man. The barkeeper saw it. He said, 'Kline, take a drink; you will shake to pieces.' It took four or five drinks to make my hand steady enough to work. Then the barkeeper said, 'Now you need work to bring you to strength. You may paper and fix up this bar-room.' I went to a paper house, selected my paper, and had the man make a bill four times what it should have been. The bill was paid and I went back to the paper store and got my rake-off. You see, I had become dishonest as well as a drunkard. I had been brought up in a Lutheran household in Harrisburg by a Christian aunt, who was a member of old Zion Lutheran Church.
“My mother had died in my infancy. I never saw her to remember her appearance; I never saw a likeness of her, a lock of hair or a garment which she had worn; but when dying she left a message with my aunt, a message which never left me, even when I was farthest from God. It was these words, 'Bring up my boy to meet me in heaven.' It was those words which really brought me back to my mother's God.
“When I quit work in that saloon that 16th day of September, 1903, I was all in. I saw my face in the mirror over the bar, and when I am dead I shall not be more colorless. The barkeeper filled my bottle, and instead of going, as usual, to my home in the southwest, I made my way up Four-and-a-half Street. I was simply impelled by an unseen force. Behind every tree I took a nip from the bottle, till I came to Pennsylvania Avenue. Then I knew I dared not drink where a policeman would see me; so, hardly knowing where I was or what I was doing, I staggered to the old bank corner at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They tell me I disturbed the meeting, but when they adjourned to the Mission Hall I followed weeping and crying, 'I shall not go out of this hall till I am dead or saved.'
“I have been told by Brothers Gordon and Wheeler that no drunkard we have ever seen disgrace himself in this mission ever behaved worse than I did. God gave them that night the grace of patience.
BOY SCOUTS
CAMP FIRE GIRLS
“I cried to God, 'This poor man cried, and God heard him.' I rose to my feet, sobered and in my right mind. I gave the bottle to Brother Bratz, and when I got out on the street I threw away my cigarettes and tobacco, and from that day to this I have not touched or tasted either liquor or tobacco. The next morning my hand was as steady as it is this minute. While I was wondering what to do, a rap came to the door. It was the saloon man's messenger, telling me to come and finish my job. I was weak, but I was praying. In the meantime Satan was giving me the battle of my life. The devil is a hard loser. He said, 'Well, if God could keep Daniel in the lions' den, and the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, He could surely keep you in the saloon.'
“But God has done better than that for me. He has kept me out of the saloon. In my distress of mind as to whether I should finish that job or go for my tools, I picked up my wife's Bible and I opened at these words, 'Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.' It was a message straight from heaven to my soul. I so accepted it.
“I never finished the job. I never went after my tools, and from that day to this I have not entered a saloon. Satan has camped on my trail many times. I have had trials and temptations, but God has delivered me from the sins of the flesh, whisky, tobacco and their accompanying sins. No man who has been a drunkard can ever again safely use tobacco. An experience of ten years in mission work, where I have seen thousands of souls born into the kingdom, convinces me that the convert who retains tobacco will surely slip back. Christ's redeeming blood cleanses from all sin.
“I was a good workman and I soon had permanent work. I never failed to make the arrangement before I entered into a contract that I was not to be expected to enter a saloon or any other disreputable place.”
That was Mr. Kline's testimony, and I would like to say for him that God greatly uses him and his testimony to bring fallen men back to God. He is an acceptable preacher of righteousness in almost any pulpit in this city, and he has done acceptable evangelistic work in many large eastern cities. His presence in the Gospel Mission, we believe, is helpful to all the men who come under its roof. He is an honored member of the Luther Memorial Church.
I reaffirm, as long as one man dead in sin can be transformed into a living, active, aggressive Christian, the words of the Scripture are as true to-day as when the angel said, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” Nothing now known to science can accomplish what happened to Mr. H. W. Kline that night; that is, as Prof. James so pertinently says, “Conversion is the only means by which a radically bad person can be changed into a radically good person.”
Harold Begbie, as a psychologist, says: “Whatever we may think of the phenomenon itself, the fact stands clear and unassailable that by this thing called conversion, men consciously wrong, inferior and unhappy, become consciously right, superior and happy. It produces not a change but a revolution. It creates a new personality.” We would say a new creature in Christ Jesus.
The religion of Christ differs from all other religions. They take the rich, the happy, the successful, as their expositors, but Christ takes the broken, the sorrowful, the beaten in the race, and makes them the rich, the successful and the happy expositors of His religion.