An evangelist, much used of God, has put on record that he commenced a series of meetings in a little church of about twenty members who were very cold and dead, and much divided. A little prayer-meeting was kept up by two or three women. “I preached, and closed at eight o’clock,” he says. “There was no one to speak or pray. The next evening one man spoke.
“The next morning I rode six miles to a [minister’s] study, and kneeled in prayer. I went back, and said to the little church:
“‘If you can make out enough to board me, I will stay until God opens the windows of heaven. God has promised to bless these means, and I believe He will.’
“Within ten days there were so many anxious souls that I met one hundred and fifty of them at a time in an inquiry meeting, while Christians were praying in another house of worship. Several hundred, I think, were converted. It is safe to believe God.”
A mother asked the late John B. Gough to visit her son to win him to Christ. Gough found the young man’s mind full of sceptical notions, and impervious to argument. Finally, the young man was asked to pray, just once, for light. He replied: “I do not know anything perfect to whom or to which I could pray.” “How about your mother’s love?” said the orator. “Isn’t that perfect? Hasn’t she always stood by you, and been ready to take you in, and care for you, when even your father had really kicked you out?” The young man chocked with emotion, and said, “Y-e-s, sir; that is so.” “Then pray to Love—it will help you. Will you promise?” He promised. That night the young man prayed in the privacy of his room. He kneeled down, closed his eyes, and struggling a moment uttered the words: “O Love.” Instantly as by a flash of lightning, the old Bible text came to him: “God is love,” and he said, brokenly, “O God!” Then another flash of Divine truth, and a voice said, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,”—and there, instantly, he exclaimed, “O Christ, Thou incarnation of Divinest love, show me light and truth.” It was all over. He was in the light of the most perfect peace. He ran downstairs, adds the narrator of this incident, and told his mother that he was saved. That young man is to-day an eloquent minister of Jesus Christ.
A water famine was threatened in Hakodate, Japan. Miss Dickerson, of the Methodist Episcopal Girls’ School, saw the water supply growing less daily, and in one of the fall months appealed to the Board in New York for help. There was no money on hand, and nothing was done. Miss Dickerson inquired the cost of putting down an artesian well, but found the expense too great to be undertaken. On the evening of December 31st, when the water was almost exhausted, the teachers and the older pupils met to pray for water, though they had no idea how their prayer was to be answered. A couple of days later a letter was received in the New York office which ran something like this: “Philadelphia, January 1st. It is six o’clock in the morning of New Year’s Day. All the other members of the family are asleep, but I was awakened with a strange impression that some one, somewhere, is in need of money which the Lord wants me to supply.” Enclosed was a cheque for an amount which just covered the cost of the artesian well and the piping of the water into the school buildings.
“I have seen God’s hand stretched out to heal among the heathen in as mighty wonder-working power as in apostolic times,” once said a well-known minister to the writer. “I was preaching to two thousand famine orphan girls, at Kedgaum, India, at Ramabai’s Mukti (salvation) Mission. A swarm of serpents as venomous and deadly as the reptile that smote Paul, suddenly raided the walled grounds, ‘sent of Satan,’ Ramabai said, and several of her most beautiful and faithful Christian girls were smitten by them, two of them bitten twice. I saw four of the very flower of her flock in convulsions at once, unconscious and apparently in the agonies of death.
“Ramabai believes the Bible with an implicit and obedient faith. There were three of us missionaries there. She said: ‘We will do just what the Bible says, I want you to minister for their healing according to James v. 14-18.’ She led the way into the dormitory where her girls were lying in spasms, and we laid our hands upon their heads and prayed, and anointed them with oil in the name of the Lord. Each of them was healed as soon as anointed and sat up and sang with faces shining. That miracle and marvel among the heathen mightily confirmed the word of the Lord, and was a profound and overpowering proclamation of God.”
Some years ago, the record of a wonderful work of grace in connection with one of the stations of the China Inland Mission attracted a good deal of attention. Both the number and spiritual character of the converts had been far greater than at other stations where the consecration of the missionaries had been just as great as at the more fruitful place.
This rich harvest of souls remained a mystery until Hudson Taylor on a visit to England discovered the secret. At the close of one of his addresses a gentleman came forward to make his acquaintance. In the conversation which followed, Mr. Taylor was surprised at the accurate knowledge the man possessed concerning this inland China station. “But how is it,” Mr. Taylor asked, “that you are so conversant with the conditions of that work?” “Oh!” he replied, “the missionary there and I are old college-mates; for years we have regularly corresponded; he has sent me names of enquirers and converts, and these I have daily taken to God in prayer.”