In St. Louis many years ago there lived an infidel lawyer. During a great religious revival there, which he ridiculed, he was on his way to a drug store one day to procure some medicine for his sick child. It was a bright Lord's Day afternoon, and a street preacher was earnestly proclaiming the gospel of God's grace to an immense crowd. His curiosity aroused, the infidel stopped on the edge of the vast throng to see what attracted them.
Not a word the preacher uttered could he hear; but on the outskirts of the crowd and quite near the infidel stood a man mounted on a wagon. He was pouring forth a volume of blasphemy and obscenity and hate, cursing the Bible and Christ and Christianity.
The infidel observed that quite a group of sympathizers had gathered around him, laughing at his course jests, and loudly applauding his sentiments. But he also noticed that this group was evidently from the very dregs of society. Derelicts, dope addicts, drunkards—men, women and half-grown lads upon whom the police kept a watchful eye—constituted the admiring audience of the wretched man who was flooding them with his tide of filth.
After a while the lawyer bowed his head in utter shame, as he realized he was thoroughly identified in thought and practice with these despisers of God. True he was an unbeliever on far higher grounds mentally and socially. His skepticism rested upon intellectual and scientific objections to the Bible! But he reflected that, as the arguments and witticisms of his class of thinkers dribbled down through the various strata of the community, they became more offensive at each successive descent, until they reappeared at the bottom in the disgusting shape that faced him from the wagon of the infidel orator.
He walked away mortified and condemned. Without attending any of the revival meetings, without hearing a single sermon, he renounced infidelity, became a Christian, and devoted the remainder of his days in defense of the cause he had sought to destroy.
"God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”