I never shall forget the first time God allowed me to preach the gospel in the open-air. I was on my way to spend a holiday in the Lake District, and in going there I spent a Sunday in Scarborough in the house of Mr. C. H. Macintosh. After dinner I asked him if he knew a spot where I could preach in the open-air in the evening.
He mentioned W― Streets as being a suitable locality.
I took a walk there about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and found the Sunday schools were being emptied and hundreds of happy children were on their way home. The thought struck me to make these little ones the advertisers of the proposed meeting; so calling a number of them together, I began to relate an anecdote. They were very attentive, and when I had done I had quite a large audience longing for more. I told them I could not stay any longer then, but I wanted them to do something for me. They all promised they would. I told them to go home and tell their parents and friends that at 8 o’clock that evening I should be in W― Street, and that then I should have some more anecdotes to tell them. After tea I prayed earnestly to God to help me to hear testimony for Him among the people.
Just before eight I arrived at W― Street, and, to my great amazement, I found it literally blocked with people. The dear children had done their work well indeed. There they were, and there, too, were the bronzed and bearded fishermen by scores, and I might say by hundreds, and women also. A chair was brought from a house close by, and in the fair summer evening I preached the gospel to as attentive an audience as ever I had in my life. I felt the power of God upon the meeting; the hearty singing and the earnest attention told me that good seed was being sown by the Spirit of God. I did not stay to speak to any, but went away with many invitations from young and old to come again soon. Sometime after I heard that in that street, in the top floor of a house, a young man lay dying while the gospel was being preached that summer’s evening. On account of the heat, his window had been opened, and he had heard the gospel as he lay. On his sick bed he received the message of God’s love to sinners and was converted. I have never seen him, and he has never seen me, but one day, doubtless, in the glory we shall meet and praise God together for His saving grace.
Ah! glorious opportunities given to each one of us by God. Dear fellow Christian, try the open-air work if you never have yet. Let the lounger at the street corner hear that “Christ receiveth sinful men,” and let the passing harlot be arrested by the words, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
The Palladium.
We closed our meetings in the Palladium on Sunday, May 24th thankful to God for all the blessing and encouragement He has given us. We hope to resume the meetings again in the autumn.