“The Bible reading and the prayer did not have any effect upon me, but the testimonies of some who had been, as I could not help admitting to myself, just as I then was, did affect me. I felt that I was in the same boat as they had been in. The conviction of my state forced itself upon me, whether I wanted to think of it or not.”
“I came to this meeting three weeks ago. I was drunk when I came in here, but drunk as I was, those testimonies, such as you have heard to-night, reached me, and I went forward to those chairs. There I gave my heart to Christ after serving the devil forty-seven years.”
“When I first heard the testimonies here I thought those who spoke had great impudence to tell all about their past lives, but by and by I felt that they were describing my case. Then, as they told how Jesus saved them, I felt I needed to be saved.”
“As testimony after testimony was given I would say to myself: that’s me, that’s me.”
Another said that the prayer and Bible reading did not affect him, but the testimonies were “like shot after shot fired at him.”
These effects are driven home and clinched by direct personal efforts with penitents, by attentions that follow them to their homes or shops, or into evil haunts, by relief and creature comforts—in a word, by an interest vigilant, ceaseless, and tender as divine love, because inspired by it.
As the method is peculiar, the atmosphere of the meeting is. One familiar with ordinary devotional meetings, and, more, with revival efforts, can not fail to notice here the contrast. Speaking is uniformly in an ordinary tone, and in a conversational, matter-of-fact manner—an effect that is heightened by the use of phrases common in the resorts where some of the converts learned their vernacular. And prayer is specially subdued and low toned—the more impressive and reverential on account of it.
Then, one feels the momentum of the exercises and the tone of cheerfulness and joy that prevail. There is none of that exhortation to “improve the precious time;” none of that dismal bewailing of spiritual barrenness and besetting doubts, fears and temptations, which sometimes make devotional exercises mechanical and dreary, and furnish stumbling-blocks to young believers. These converts do not dwell much on their enjoyment of religion; albeit, they do one and all give thanks without ceasing for their deliverance. One notes, too, the absence of cant, of quotations and set phrases; everything is original. There is little exhortation of others. In short, like Bartimeas, they know “Whereas I was blind, now I see;” and unlike the blind man, they know who worked the miracle.
It was the founder and leader of the two missions who gave all this tone to their services. He was of a medium height and slender, with a heavy, wiry moustache, keen eyes, a nervous temperament, energetic, quick-witted, sympathetic; one readily caught good feeling and confraternity from his presence. He would flash out at a hymn, a text, or a testimony, with a bit of experience. Before two sentences had passed his lips he probably would leap down from his place on the platform, saying, humorously: “I can’t talk up on that stage,” and go down the aisle as if to hold pleasant converse with his audience. It was a strange melange of earnestness, experience, humility and wit, with not the least attempt at eloquence, and apparently no study of effects. He describes one case of conversion:
“This man had come into the meeting with his head about twice the usual size, and his eyes as red as a red-hot poker. You could have squeezed the rum out of him. He asked me to pray with him, but I hadn’t much faith in the man, but that’s just where God disappointed me. I was deceived. The man meant business.”