I went around to the Mission that night, and went up to the front. I had a talk with some Christian people there about the matter, and talked with one of my converted friends. He said there was only one way to do—to give myself to God. I went to bed immediately after I left. I could not sleep. I continued to pray until somewhere along about three o'clock in the morning of the 2d of January; and the way was made clear for me. I don't know that there was any particular vision. I made up my mind that I would go and make my arrangements to join the church, and ask God's direction from that time on, and to lead another life—lead a Christian life as much as it is possible for a sinful mortal like me to do.
I came up to the Mission that night, and told Sister Clark and Brother Holcombe that I was as happy as I could be; I had found what I was seeking for, and I felt that I could trust God. The next Wednesday night I went down to the Fourth and Walnut-street Baptist church, and put myself under the care of the church. Since that time I have been leading a different life. I am in perfect peace and rest. Everything, of course, has not gone to suit me exactly; but I always have been able to say: "I know it is for the best." My faith grows stronger and my future brighter day by day. I think these people who have been moral and religious all of their lives can not enjoy religion like a hard customer, as I was—if they do, they do not show it.
Friends and relatives who had forsaken and avoided me came to me at once and upheld and encouraged me. Business came to me without seeking it. I was encouraged on every hand. People that I thought despised me, I found did not. I had every encouragement, so far as this life is concerned, and I am, to-day, in a better fix, a long ways, than I have been for years.
My appetite for whisky has troubled me three or four times since I came to Christ, but all I have to do is to get down on my knees, and ask for strength to resist it. And before I get through praying I forget about it. I have confidence that God will keep me to the end, and my confidence grows stronger every day. Things that were a great trial to me at first are no longer so.
A very remarkable thing in my case is, that the thing that I expected to give me the most trouble has given me the least. I was certainly one of the most profane men that ever lived, and I was always afraid that the sin that I would have to guard against most would be profanity. But, if I have ever sworn an oath, it has been unconsciously, and I do not have to think about it—I do not have to guard against it; it horrifies me to hear a man swear now. I thought I could fight whisky easier than I could that. Strange to say, it has not bothered me in the least, but whisky has, on three or four occasions. A craving came on me yesterday. It was a terrible, miserable, bleak, rainy day. I was sitting in my room, writing, and all at once I concluded that I must have a stimulant. I have not recovered, and will not for months, from the effects of whisky. I said: "It is a cold, damp, miserable day. Go up there to the drug-store and get some port wine as a medicine. Do not go into a bar-room. There will be no harm in going there to get a little port wine. Bring it into your room. It will be the best thing you can do." I got up and put on my overcoat and my overshoes, and it struck me that it would not be the best thing for me; and I got down on my knees and prayed to God, and before I got through praying I forgot all about it. The devil had tempted me previously, but he put it that day in the shape of the port wine.
Just about ten days after I joined the church, I was in the Phœnix hotel. A friend of mine, a man that I had gambled and drunk with all my life, or at least, for a number of years, said to me, "You are not drinking much from the way you look." I said, "No, I am not." He said he thought he would beckon me out, because he did not like to make that statement before the crowd, and had I been drinking as I did the last time he saw me, he would not have asked me. He wanted me to come in and take a drink with him. I said whisky had once got the upper hand of me, and he must excuse me. He said he knew I was a man, and could take a drink without getting drunk, and he wanted me to take it socially. I told him that might all be true. I might take the drink without getting drunk, and I might take it without its being a sin in his sight, or in the sight of other people; but that I had promised God that I would follow Him all my life, and walk in the way He wanted me to go; that I had joined the church, and our church rules forbade drinking. He then begged my pardon, with tears in his eyes, for having asked me, and bade me God speed.
J. C. WILSON.
JAMES C. WILSON.