Fourteen months later he took up the sword, and entered the Fight
from the same platform from which his brother fell, and is to-day
one of our most successful and promising Field Officers.
Again, the call may come as a quiet suggestion, a gentle
conviction, as though a gossamer bridle were placed upon the
heart and conscience to guide the man into the work of the Lord.
The suggestion gradually becomes clearer, the conviction
strengthens until it masters the man, and if he seeks to escape
it, he finds the silken bridle to be one of stoutest thongs and
firmest steel.
It was so with me. When but a boy of eleven, I heard a man
preaching, and I said to myself, "Oh, how beautiful to preach!"
Two years later I was converted, and soon the conviction came
upon me that I should preach. Later, I decided to follow another
profession; but the conviction increased in strength, while I
struggled against it, and turned away my ears and went on with my
studies. Yet in every crisis, or hour of stillness, when my soul
faced God, the conviction that I must preach burned itself deeper
into my conscience. I rebelled against it. I felt I would almost
rather (but not quite) go to Hell than to submit. Then at last a
great "Woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel," took possession of
me, and I yielded, and God won. Hallelujah!
The first year He gave me three revivals, with many souls; and
now I would rather preach Jesus to poor sinners and feed His
lambs than to be an archangel before the Throne.
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