If Jesus Himself went seeking the lost, if Paul the Apostle was in agony because his kinsmen, according to the flesh, knew not Christ, why should we not consider it worth while to go out after the lost until they are found?
* * * * *
If I am to stand at the judgment seat of Christ to render an account for the deeds done in the body, what shall I say to Him if my children are missing, my friends not saved, or if my employer or employee should miss the way because I have been faithless?
* * * * *
If I wish to be approved at the last, then let me remember that no intellectual superiority, no eloquence in preaching, no absorption in business, no shrinking temperament, no spirit of timidity can take the place of or be an excuse for my not making an honest, sincere, prayerful effort to win others to Christ by means of the Personal Touch.
CHAPTER I
A Testimony
I have the very best of reasons for believing in the power of the personal touch in Christian work, especially as it may be used in the winning of others to Christ.
My boyhood's home was in the city of Richmond, in the State of Indiana, my mother was a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the first years of my life in company with my father and the other children of the household, I attended the church of my mother. When she was just a little more than thirty-five years of age she was called home. My father in his youth had been trained as a Presbyterian; many of his ancestors having belonged to that denomination; therefore it was quite natural that he should return to the Church of his fathers when my mother had gone home.
It was thus I became a member of the Presbyterian Church, and my Church training as a boy after fifteen years of age was in that denomination. Because of this special interest in both the Church of my father and my mother, I attended two Sunday Schools. In the morning I was in a class in the Presbyterian school and in the afternoon was a member of a class in the Grace Methodist Sunday School, my teacher in the afternoon school being Mrs C.C. Binckley, a godly woman, the wife of Senator Binckley of Indiana, through all her life from girlhood, a devout follower of Christ and a faithful teacher in the Sunday School. Not so very long ago I heard that she was still teaching in the same school, and I am sure, as in the olden days, winning boys to Christ.