"My spirit shall not always strive.”
I was conducting services in—. On the first Sunday night of the mission, a tall, fine-looking, elderly man came up to me, and said: "Mr. L—, I would like to have a talk with you." I said to him, "Come in.”
We went in and he began the interview by saying, "I want, in the first place, to tell you who I am. I am an employer of labor in this city, and have hundreds of men and women on my payroll. I am well known, and have a measure of influence in this city. But it is not that I wanted to talk about; it is concerning my spiritual condition." And he went on to say something like this: "Three years ago I was deeply convinced of my need of Jesus Christ. One night I was in my room alone with God—an unsaved man. I was as conscious of the Divine Presence as I am of your presence now. I knew God was in the room, and I knew, as in my inner consciousness, that if I yielded to Him that night I would be saved. I was just on the threshold of the kingdom, but I began to count the cost, and deliberately and willfully got up from my knees and walked out of the room, as conscious that I had left the presence of God as if I were to leave your presence now. A few months after this, one of the ministers of the city came to me and said, `We are appointing elders in the church, and the people are very anxious to have you as one of them.'
"I refused at first. I felt I had no business, as an unsaved man, to be an elder of any church, but he pleaded with me, and others came and pleaded, and I finally consented. From that moment I became a self-conscious hypocrite, and despised myself.”
"About a year later God came to me again; the pleading of His Spirit was overwhelming; the conviction of sin was appalling, and I felt that God was giving me another chance. But the devil came and whispered, `Don't make a fool of yourself. You are an elder of the church; everybody believes you are a converted man. Don't begin to say now you are not. You will have all the people laughing at you.'
"I yielded to this subtle temptation of the devil, and once more resisted the Holy Ghost. In a moment, when I had chosen, I was conscious, as conscious as I am of your presence now, that I had resisted for the last time. I went out of God's presence, banished even as Cain was banished from the Divine presence.”
"Then," he added with a strange look in his eyes that almost froze my blood: "Mr. L—, listen. Standing before you tonight is a lost soul. I believe I am as much lost tonight as I will ever be in hell, only I am not there. I have walked the streets night after night. I have not slept a whole night for months. I would have plunged myself into the lake before this, were it not for what lies beyond." "Then," he continued: "I have not told you because I want you to help me. My dear sir, I am beyond all human help, and Divine help too, I want you to tell my story wherever you go, that men and women may be warned against the awful sin of resisting the Holy Ghost.
He went out from the building, and I never saw him again.