A new name

by Grace Livingston Hill

There were other voices praying now, just short sentence prayers, tender and pleading, and all with an assurance as if the Lord to whom they prayed were quite near. They prayed for the young leader, that the Holy Spirit might be outpoured upon him, and Murray sat with bowed head in great wonder and humility, and spoke within himself:

“Oh, God! Hear them! Hear them! Let me be Your child too!” Surely, then, before the Throne, mention was made of Murray Van Rensselaer’s name, and it was said of him, “For, behold he prayeth!”

Murray went through the rest of that Convention in a daze of joy and wonder. He was not aware that he was doing an amazing thing, really an outrageous thing when one came to think of it. He had not the slightest perception of the gigantic fraud he was perpetrating upon an adoring public. He was absorbed in the thing that had come to pass within his own soul.

Every prayer that ascended to heaven, every song that was sung, every speech that was made, he drank in like the milk of a new-born babe. It all seemed to be happening for him. He was learning great things about this Saviour that was his. He was finding out new facts about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For before he was like some of the early Christians, who said, “We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” He was but a babe in the truth.

For the rest he did as he was told. They asked him to preside at the meeting, and with gravity and humility he took his place, not realizing at all that it was presumption in him, and that he was a false deceiver. His entire mind was engrossed with the wonder that had been wrought in himself. He went through the entire two days as one goes through a fire or an earthquake, or any other sudden cataclysm which changes everything normal, and where one has to act for the moment. He had no consciousness for the time being of the past or its consequences, or that he was in the least responsible for them now. Back in his mind he knew they were to be reckoned with some time, but he seemed to sense as the babe senses its mother’s care, that he now had a Saviour to deal with those things for him. He was a new creature in Christ. Old things were passed away, and behold all things were become new!

They were wonderfully kind and helpful to him. They had all the matters of business carefully thought out and written up on little cards, with the hours neatly penned, and what he had to say about each item of business. They handed him a new card at the beginning of each session, and they thought him so modest that he kept in the background, and did not try to shine when everybody was ready to bow down to him. He asked intelligent questions now and then about matters of business, and he carried them through without a hitch when it came to voting and appointing committees.

Somehow, too, he got through the introductions which were a part of his duty, though none of the speakers were at all known to him. They would say, “Now, the next is Scarlett, from Green County. You know, the fellow that made his mark getting hold of the foreigners in his district and forming them into a society, and finally into the nucleus of a church. Great fellow, Scarlett! Give him the best send-off you can! He isn’t very prepossessing in appearance, but he’s a live wire!”

And Murray would get up and revamp these remarks into the finest kind of a “send-off,” in his own peculiarly happy phrasing, and then sit down and wonder as some plain little man, with clothes from a cheap department store, and an unspeakable necktie, would get up and tell in murderous English of the souls that had been saved and the workers that had developed in his little corner of the vineyard. Murray found his eyes all dewy and his voice husky when the Scarlett man was done, and he turned for his next cue to his mentor.

“Whipple of China. Yes, the Whipple! Stuck by his Mission when the mob was burning his school, and came through. He’s back, you know. Got it all built up again. Raised the money himself—but he’ll tell about that, of course.”

And Murray would get up and say: