"Yesterday the little Prayer Advocate came and in it I noticed your request for prayer for The Midnight Mission and I was reminded of the beginning of this most blessed work. I think I could point to the spot where you said, after telling the need so earnestly, 'Miss Rudy, will you stand with me, for the Lord says where two agree He will do what they ask?' I said, 'I will,' and we did pray fervently, for, having come in contact with Beulah Home and other refuges, I had seen the great need of going out to seek the lost. I remember our first night, when we hardly knew who would go with us. I put the permit near so if an officer came we could show it. I do praise God for the way He has blessed you in this work. I have never ceased praying for this work and have always held it up to others for prayer, as I have gone from place to place in evangelistic service. I was so sorry to leave Chicago, but God's call lay in another direction. I know I never was missed, for so many rose to their privilege in Jesus. But I would have been missed had I not come to China for we are so few in number here."
Before she went to China, Miss Rudy was at one time holding a gospel meeting in Pennsylvania, when a man came up to her and said: "You do not know me, but I know you. I heard you speak at midnight in Custom House Place in Chicago, and I have been a Christian man since that midnight."
As I was a missionary in India and Miss Rudy is a missionary in China, and as we constantly minister at midnight in the streets of Chicago to Chinese, Japanese, an occasional Persian, Hindu or Arab, French, Polish, Russians, Germans, Italians, Jews, and almost every nationality under heaven, The Midnight Mission has some features of a foreign missionary society.
A THOUSAND WITNESSES FOR CHRIST.
From the very beginning of this unique work many earnest people came to help us. During the five years past nearly a thousand persons have taken part with us—pastors, professors, deaconesses, foreign missionaries on furlough, evangelists, judges, lawyers, physicians, "Gideons" and other business men, and many good women. All these, with breaking hearts, have shared our midnight toil and peril, snatching the lost from the fire in the very vestibule of hell. Among the well known ministers, professors and physicians who have come to help in the meetings are: Rev. Dr. Cain, moderator of the Presbytery of Chicago; Rev. Robert H. Beattie, the recent moderator; Rev. Dr. John Balcom Shaw, pastor of the Second Presbyterian church; Rev. Dr. A. C. Dixon, pastor of the Moody church; Professor Graham Taylor, Professor Solon C. Bronson, Professor Woelfkin, of Rochester, New York; Professor G. H. Trever, of Atlanta, Georgia; Drs. Linnell, Pollack and Van Dyke—the last a lecturer in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, which is the medical department of the University of Illinois.
Rev. A. H. Harnly, now an evangelist for the Baptist State Association of Illinois, has preached many times with exceptional power in our midnight meetings. Rev. C. A. Kelley, Rev. Ralph Waller Hobbs and Rev. W. E. Hopkins, formerly a missionary in India, have labored much in this cause. Scores of pastors of Baptist, Christian, Congregational, Episcopalian, Methodist and Presbyterian churches have preached from the little box which is our only pulpit, except when now and then a good friend brings his automobile and lets us use it for a pulpit.
Mr. Rufus S. Simmons, a lawyer, a personal friend of President Taft, is president of the mission since it was organized at the end of 1906; for more than two years there was no organization. Mr. Simmons very often attends the meetings and takes part. His partner, Mr. S. C. Irving, comes occasionally and speaks. Judge Scott of Paris, Texas, spent one night with us, and former Judge Devlin labors diligently.
Mr. C. E. Homan, president of the Chicago camp of "Gideons," an organization of Christian commercial traveling men, and many members of that order have steadily helped in this work.
Deaconess Lucy A. Hall, Miss Helma Sutherland, Miss Florence Mabel Dedrick, missionary of the Moody church, Miss Mary F. Turnbull and scores of good women have toiled with us in the night. No speaker is more interesting and alarming to young men than Miss Turnbull, who was formerly a nurse in an asylum for the insane in New York and knows why many of the patients are there.
One of the best addresses ever given in our meetings was by a young Jew, Mr. Nathan, a reporter, who asked leave to speak. For about forty minutes he spoke with the earnestness of a prophet, though he spoke more of temporal than eternal considerations. The sweat poured down his face as he reasoned of righteousness and temperance, with some reference to judgment to come.