Probably thousands of priests and preachers have felt a like exaltation. But the closing hymn which began with general participation by all the people was so broken before its close that the last verse was carried only by a few. The people wept for joy. The preacher knelt at his chair and prayed for aid to lead in the prayer and benediction. But the benediction was not heard, and the audience was slowly convinced that the benediction had been pronounced by the observation that the minister dropped his hands and walked away.
The Bible-school service in the afternoon was as solemn and impressive as the morning. Many of the hundreds baptized that day expressed themselves as having felt the dovelike Spirit of Peace descending on them, too. Nearly, if not all, the scholars and visitors turned sincerely and permanently to the Lord.
The evening services were given up wholly to praise. The rejoicing was deep and strong. The crowd standing in the aisles and on the steps did not move until after the benediction. The number of those in the sittings was three thousand one hundred and thirty-four, and of those standing who got inside the doors was seven hundred and eighty-three. Out of that number over three hundred decided openly to confess their belief in the Christ. These numbers are not especially great when compared with those of the great revivals, and are only mentioned here for the purpose of study. Over seven thousand converts have been taken into the membership of the Temple in thirty-nine years, but they have not been the direct results of seasons of special revival.
Great were the expectations of the church at that Easter as they prepared for a great immediate harvest. But it was not gathered then. The personal, individual gathering of converts continued as usual. The great Pentecostal visitation seemed to have had another purpose. Each candidate for baptism as usual required individual instruction and often continued prayer before he or she could be thoroughly convinced of the necessity of a public confession of our Lord.
But the members of the church had in the Pentecost received a new baptism of spiritual fire, and the interest in missions and in the Bible was greatly increased. Five missions were established which soon became strong churches. Young men arose by the score to study for the ministry, and large gifts were made to the Temple University. Many kinds of local enterprises for the poor, the drunken, the foreigners, and the aged were opened by them in the city and suburbs.
Chapter III
Axioms
THE prayerful soul must be sure that "God is," and that he heeds the call of his children. The religious soul must believe in a real Divine Being. One condition necessary to successful prayer is a fixed belief in the Maker of all things. The Christian should keep his brain supplied with "axioms." An axiom is a self-evident truth, an immovable, unchangeable fact. It is a fundamental principle of which all sane men are cognizant. It is a statement of truth which is below and above all argument—a truth which all men recognize as a part of their mental existence. An axiom is simply a reference to a necessary condition in the framework of the human constitution. Every living man acts on those conditions, whether he recognizes them or not. The man whose common sense recognizes those immovable principles builds his belief and action on them safely. Prayer, like all other religious things or conditions, needs to have a sure foundation. Therefore, axioms which are used as the basis of mathematical science are true everywhere, and the worshiper needs to recognize them as fully as the civil engineer. Here are presented some of the axioms on which the believer safely rests his faith. They cannot be proven, because they are vitally and essentially true. Their nonexistence is positively unthinkable. If these axioms are not essential to all mental action, then the world is a dreamy unreality.
"Two parallel lines will never run together or cross each other." All recognize the absolute truth of the statement, and yet no one ever went to the end of the lines to get local evidence of the fact. "Two halves are equal to the whole," states the college professor before his class. He would be an idiot if he tried to "prove it." He may illustrate the idea by cutting an apple into halves and putting them together again. But the essential truth of the proposition every mind had accepted before he mentioned it. "Two quantities or objects which are equal to a third quantity or object are equal to each other." A boy smiles at the waste of time in telling him such an axiomatic or self-evident fact. But the instructor is not attempting to inculcate a new principle, but rather to call attention emphatically to an immovable fact woven into the vital fabric of all human minds. The thinker who stands squarely on those fundamental facts can trust himself and can be trusted by all. A careful review of one thousand and twenty letters relating to established cases of successful prayer showed that the believer accepted as fundamentally true axiomatic facts of which the following is a partial list. We know only because the mental knowledge is an essential part of our intellectual existence. We therefore know: