One day we entered a room where a man was lying sick. We introduced the subject of religion to him. He ground his teeth with rage, and swore he did not want to hear any thing on that subject. I then began to inquire about his complaints, and to prescribe some simple remedies, and he soon became calm. After some time I remarked that afflictions did not come by chance, neither did trouble spring out of the ground, but they were all sent of God for some wise purpose. “Do you think so?” said he. “Yes,” said I, “and for our good.” He then listened attentively, and soon shed tears. Though he was very poor, he bought some books. I prayed with him, and left him, but not without many thanks and entreaties to come and see him as often as I could.
This closed the work of three days, in which time we had visited eighty-five families.
These three days were the most interesting days that I had ever spent. By the next morning I found my voice almost gone, and all my limbs trembling. The excitement of the work and intensity of feeling had prostrated me before I was aware of it.
After a day or two of rest I resumed my labors for three weeks, when I went home a few days.
I then returned to the same place, and spent a month in visiting new families and revisiting old ones; and I shall never forget the cordial shake of the hand that I got almost every day, when I would meet some one in the house or on the street whom I had before conversed with and supplied with a book or tract. Special services had been held in several churches, and quite a number had professed religion. One minister told me he had taken into his church forty, many of whom dated their first religious impressions to reading the books and tracts I had sold or given them, others referred to the visits as the means of their awakening.
There was one thing in the work which struck me with great force—the effect on Christian people. I tried as far as possible to get some good man to go with me in my visits. It was a great help to me and added to my success, and at the same time it stirred up many to work for Christ that had never done any thing before.
One instance I will name of a Miss L——, though she had been a worker. She was a lady of large wealth, and had a number of poor tenants living on her property. She heard of my work, and came to see me. At her request I went to visit her “parish,” as she called it. I went at the set time, and she was ready to go with me, basket in hand. During the day we visited thirty families, and talked and prayed in every house. When my strength failed she took it up, and such entreaties to sinners I have seldom heard, and such prayers are seldom offered. During that day I found eleven persons that attributed their conversion to her efforts with books and tracts. She said she was a colporteur before, but did not know it till that day. Reader, go and do likewise.
CHAPTER III.
I now add a number of facts and incidents that occurred during these two months of labor.
There was a Mr. G——, a coal-digger, of desperate character, that I had been warned not to visit. I was told that he was such an abandoned character that he was hopeless; that he spent the most of every night in a miserable doggery, drinking and fighting. I had passed his house every day for some time, but did not feel satisfied with myself for neglecting it.