WORK AMONG STUDENTS.
Memory Verse: "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."—(2 Cor. v, 20.)
Scripture for Meditation: 1 Cor. ii.
No more fruitful and important field for personal work can be found than in our educational institutions, and Christian students who make soul-winning a habit of life may win many rich trophies for the Master. Bishop H.W. Warren, when a Freshman in college, was led to an open confession of Christ through a Saturday morning walk with a Junior, who talked to him about his soul.
Dr. J.W. Bashford, in The Christian Student, tells about "a Senior in the Ohio Wesleyan University who was smitten with conviction because he had neglected personal work for the Master. He intended to be a minister, but had been indifferent to the spiritual welfare of his student friends. He offered himself to Christ in full consecration, and made a list of sixteen friends for whom he felt personal responsibility. He engaged in systematic personal work with these friends, and had the satisfaction before the year was completed of seeing every one of them begin the Christian life. Six of his sixteen friends entered the ministry, and some of them are even more talented and successful than the student friend who led them to Christ."
As a rule, young people during their college years are thoughtful and easily reached; but if not saved before they leave the college halls and begin the active work of life, they are almost certainly lost to the kingdom. How often, because of timidity or carelessness, Christian students and teachers allow this precious harvest time to go by, and lose the opportunity to win a soul for Christ!
A man, who is now an eminent and widely-known minister, says that he roomed with a young man at college for two years, and never said a word to him about his soul. When he was about to leave for home, his room-mate said, "Why have you not spoken to me about my soul?" Said the Christian student, "I thought you did not care for me to do so." The young man replied, "Why, that is the very reason I roomed with you, and there has never been a day for these two years that you could not have done so."
Let Christian students set out to win some trophies among their friends and room-mates for Christ. The results of faithful personal work may not be immediate or apparent, but the blessed Spirit of God will water the seed. For thirteen months a college student prayed for and urged a fellow-student to surrender to Christ, and died without seeing any result of his efforts. But the seed was faithfully sown, and the young man was afterwards converted, and became Bishop Hannington, the martyr bishop of Africa.