"When I read that, for days I could not eat, for nights I could not sleep. I said, 'Oh, God, what if that had been my boy?'
"There are influences worse than an alligator and they are ripping and tearing to shreds your virtue, your morality. Young men are held by intemperance, others by vice, drunkards crying to the Church, 'Hurry, faster,' and the church members sit on the bank playing cards, sit there drinking beer and reading novels. 'Hurry.' They are splitting hairs over fool things, criticizing me or somebody else, instead of trying to keep sinners out of hell, and they are crying to the Church, 'Faster! Faster! Faster!' 'Lord, is it I?'
"How many will say, 'God, I want to be nearer to you than I have ever been before. I want to renew my vows. I want to get under the cross.' How many will say it?
"Who'll yield his heart to Christ? Who'll take his stand for the Lord? Who'll come out clean-cut for God?"
A Dream of Heaven
"Some years ago, after I had been romping and playing with the children, I grew tired and lay down, and half awake and half asleep, I had a dream.
"I dreamed I was in a far-off land; it was not Persia, but all the glitter and gaudy raiment were there; it was not India, although her coral strands were there; it was not Ceylon, although all the beauties of that island of paradise were there; it was not Italy, although the soft dreamy haze of the blue Italian skies shone above me. I looked for weeds and briars, thorns and thistles and brambles and found none. I saw the sun in all its regal splendor and I said to the people, 'When will the sun set and it grow dark?'
"They all laughed and said: 'It never grows dark in this land; there is no night here.'
"I looked at the people, their faces wreathed in a simple halo of glory, attired in holiday clothing. I said: 'When will the working men go by clad in overalls? and where are the brawny men who work and toil over the anvil?'
"They said, 'We toil not, neither do we spin; there remaineth a rest for the people of God.'