IN a Canadian city there was a company of so― called “free-thinkers,” who employed lecturers and agents to advance their teaching. In the same city there was an association of young men, who met every Saturday night for a prayer meeting.
At one of these gatherings, as the young men passed into their building, these agents stood at the entrance distributing invitations to a series of free-thought lectures to be delivered the following week by a young American, who was a disciple, and came dangerously near being a rival, of Ingersoll. During the prayer meeting, more than one reference was made to these invitations, and prayer was offered that young men might not be led astray by this false teaching.
At the close of the prayer meeting there was considerable feeling aroused, and one man undertook to write a letter to the lecturer, whose name was on the invitations. The writer commenced his letter with a quotation from the Word of God. Then he went on to say that prayer had been offered that the lecturer might be put to confusion, and be led to faith in God.
The letter was mailed to the principal hotel, and when the lecturer arrived on the Monday evening, it was handed to him with others. Retiring to his room, the lecturer opened up his mail, and, coming in due course to the letter referred to, the first thing he read was the quotation from Scripture. As soon as he read it, he said: “There is somebody in this city, who knew my father!”
Having read the letter, he proceeded to the hall to give his lecture. Imagine the surprise of that audience when, after twenty minutes’ struggle to say something, this eloquent orator asked to be excused, as he was not feeling equal to the task, but hoped to keep his engagements for every other evening of the week.
The next morning at about nine o’clock he was over at the Young Men’s Christian Association, asking to see the man who wrote the letter. He was shown into an office, and at once said to its occupant, producing the letter, “Did you write this?” He was answered in the affirmative. “Then,” said he, “you must have known my father, for the Scripture text at the top of this letter is the very one my father repeated to us as we gathered about his death-bed!” But the writer of the letter said, “I never knew your father.”
Again the young lecturer said: “You must have known my father, and this text so upset me last night that I could not deliver my lecture. I could not sleep. My father was what you call a Christian; and when he was dying, my brothers and I were called in to hear his last words, and they were the very words of this text that you have written at the top of this letter. If you never knew my father, how came you to quote his very last words to me and my brothers?”
In reply to this the writer of the letter said: “I will tell you what I believe. In the first place, the Holy Spirit caused those words to be written in the Bible. That same Holy Spirit caused your father, whom you called a Christian, to leave these words with you as his dying message; and further, I believe that same Holy Spirit of God, knowing this, moved me to write this word to you. And now, my young friend, what God wants you to do is to ask for the power and grace of that same Holy Spirit, that you may seek the pardon of your sin, and find peace in believing.”
And there in that room, because of that Word of God, which is “quick and powerful,” that young man passed from death unto life. His lecture engagements were canceled, and he himself became a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Communicated by H. A. M.