“Oh, for the first time I know the peace of God! Nothing I have ever done has been right, because it didn’t lead to the way and the truth! Here I thought I was a good church-member, but all the time I hadn’t seen the real light. I’d never been willing to kneel down and confess myself a miserable sinner. But I’m kneeling now, and, oh, the blessedness of humility!”
He wasn’t, to be quite accurate, kneeling at all; he was standing up, very tall and broad, waving his hands; and though what he was experiencing may have been the blessedness of humility, it sounded like his announcements of an ability to lick anybody in any given saloon. But he was greeted with flaming hallelujahs, and he shouted on till he was rapturous and very sweaty:
“Come! Come to him now! Oh, it’s funny that I who’ve been so great a sinner could dare to give you his invitation, but he’s almighty and shall prevail, and he giveth his sweet tidings through the mouths of babes and sucklings and the most unworthy, and, lo, the strong shall be confounded and the weak exalted in his sight!”
It was all, the Mithraic phrasing, as familiar as “Good morning” or “How are you?” to the audience, yet he must have put new violence into it, for instead of smiling at the recency of his ardor they looked at him gravely, and suddenly a miracle was beheld.
Ten minutes after his own experience, Elmer made his first conversion.
A pimply youth, long known as a pool-room tout, leaped up, his greasy face working, shrieked, “O God, forgive me!” butted in frenzy through the crowd, ran to the mourners’ bench, lay with his mouth frothing in convulsion.
Then the hallelujahs rose till they drowned Elmer’s accelerated pleading, then Judson Roberts stood with his arm about Elmer’s shoulder, then Elmer’s mother knelt with a light of paradise on her face, and they closed the meeting in a maniac pealing of
Draw me nearer, blessed Lord,
To thy precious bleeding side.
Elmer felt himself victorious over life and king of righteousness.