The next Sunday night Will sat on the platform, and testified to the power of God to save. When the meeting had closed, a handsome young woman, wearing a costly tailor-made gown and with the stamp of the patrician in every line of her dainty person, said to me, “Mrs. Monroe, I am going to marry Will W. this week.” “Oh, my dear girl, do not risk it till he has proved himself for two years! Do not risk it!” “You believe he is converted, do you not?” “Why, yes; but we should see the transforming power of the gospel before you risk your happiness.” “Will needs me now to help him keep straight. You have not as much faith as you ought to have yourself, or you would believe he will hold out.”
What more could I say? They were married. His mother was present at the ceremony, and they went to the farm to live. Will was held by the power of God, and, after much blundering, they made a fair success with a truck farm.
CHAPTER III
Incidents Showing the Power of God to Save
Among the many other impressive cases of the power of God to suddenly change a human life from evil to good occurred at the Breakfast Association in Philadelphia about the year 1898, and although fifteen years have passed, every incident, every word is indelibly written on my memory.
I was coming off the platform one evening when I met a large, fierce-looking, scowling man, who looked as if he wanted to strike me. I stopped at once. “Friend,” I said, “you are in trouble.” “What is that to you and such as you?” “It is much to me. You look like an employer of men, yet here you have been taking the bread and coffee of charity.” “Well, I have been an employer of men, but now I cannot even get employment. I have been behind bars; now what hope in life is there for me?” “Many men who have been behind bars have afterward made good citizens and even made fortunes. Let us go down to the Board room and talk this out.”
As he went along growling that there was no hope for him, I motioned to Mr. McMasters and another worker to come with us. When we were seated, he said, “Now, all I want of you people is to help me get work so that I do not wander like a stray dog through the streets of the city where I was born. My wife and family have deserted me and I am a desperate man.”
“Yes,” I said, “brother, no woman could live with you as you are now, one would as soon live with a wolf; your hand is against every man and every man's hand is against you. But God can again make you an employer of men. He can make you a good husband and father, but you must find God first. Where is your mother?” I saw him shrink, and I knew then I had the key. “My going to prison killed my mother. I had a mill in a suburb of Philadelphia, and sometimes, after the day's work was done, I would step into a saloon and take a glass of beer with my foreman. I was not what you would call a drinking man. One evening we got into a dispute about something concerning the mill, and I picked up a monkey wrench and struck my foreman just one blow, but I killed him. All our property went for lawyer fees, all to no purpose, for I was sent to prison for ten years. I have just been pardoned,” and he drew the governor's pardon from his pocket. “When I went to my home I found strangers in it, but at last I found my wife and my children now nearly grown, but they would not let me live with them.” I knew perfectly well from other experiences that he had gone in violence and had been met with violence.
Mr. McMasters now took the case. He said, “If your mother were now living, do you believe she would have received you?” “I am sure she would. The warden often told us that our mothers would stay by us, that children grew ashamed of a father in prison, wives persuaded themselves that it only kept up their grief, but a mother's love is like that of the God above, it remains. But mother died.”
“Well, you want to meet her again, do you not?” “Yes, but my mother was a Christian.” “That is it; let us kneel and talk to your mother's God.” Reluctantly, growling that God cared nothing for a poor devil like him, he kneeled, and with the three of us kneeling about him, we each one presented the case to God, calling on the “God whom this man's mother loved and served, asking mercy for a broken life, a broken home and a broken heart.” By the time the last one prayed his head was on the chair and he was sobbing. Then he prayed for himself, and God came down and the old alchemy of God turned the heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and George Gneiss was born into the kingdom of God. It was not difficult to get him a place as a skilled miller, and from that day to this he has made good.
The transforming power of the gospel was plainly seen within a week in his face, in his clothing, in his bearing at every meeting. After a few Sundays I was called out of town for six weeks. When I came home, I went to the Breakfast Association and there, from the gallery, Mr. Gneiss looked down on me. At his side was a Quaker woman in the plain dress of her Church, and with them was a manly boy of seventeen. After the services, they all came to me (I motioned to others to come), and they told us the story of their reunion. Tears stood in her eyes as she said, “We have family prayers now, and we pray for you every day. God is blessing us in every way. Pray for us.”