A white-haired old Chinaman, over fifty years of age, an old opium-smoker, came to us, and having learned of Jesus Christ, was converted, went home and took down his idols. The elders of the village came to him for a subscription to their heathen temples. “I now worship the true God and can not henceforth pay any money for idol worship,” said the old man. When his reply was known, his village and a neighboring village took counsel and decided that they would kill him. One day, as the old man sat in his chair, a mob surrounded his home yelling and cursing. He sat quietly praying. One of the six men who stood at the door ready to kill him shouted, “Now, old man, you come out.”
“No,” he replied quietly, “if you want me out, you must come and pull me out.”
A dispute arose among the representatives of the villages as to which should have precedence in this act of religious zeal, and the contention waged so high that neither one dared to kill the gray-haired old man. They dispersed to their homes, and after living peacefully a while longer, the old Christian passed quietly to his heavenly home in 1895.
(576)
CONVERTED BY THE COMET
The first conversion to Christianity by Halley’s comet was recorded to-day. As far as the available records show, this is the comet’s first convert.
At 4:30 o’clock yesterday morning a number of people who had shortened their matutinal slumbers to watch the great sidereal visitor from the roof of a Fourth Avenue apartment house were startled by a loud cry from one of their party. The man, a professional skeptic, was standing with arms outstretched to the heavens, weeping profusely.
“This convinces me that there is a God,” he said to his friends. “Hereafter I shall always live as a Christian. These stars could not be unless there is a God.”
The profound impression created on the man by the spectacle had not worn off to-day, and he assured his friends he meant to attend church regularly hereafter and to conduct himself as a Godfearing man should.
“I had never seen the heavens as I did then,” he declared this morning. “I did not realize what a wonderful world it is.”