“Well, you want to meet her again, do you not?” “Yes, but my mother was
a Christian.” “That is it; let us kneel and talk to your mother's God.”
Reluctantly, growling that God cared nothing for a poor devil like him,
he kneeled, and with the three of us kneeling about him, we each one
presented the case to God, calling on the “God whom this man's mother
loved and served, asking mercy for a broken life, a broken home and a
broken heart.” By the time the last one prayed his head was on the chair
and he was sobbing. Then he prayed for himself, and God came down and
the old alchemy of God turned the heart of stone to a heart of flesh,
and George Gneiss was born into the kingdom of God. It was not difficult
to get him a place as a skilled miller, and from that day to this he has
made good.
The transforming power of the gospel was plainly seen within a week in
his face, in his clothing, in his bearing at every meeting. After a few
Sundays I was called out of town for six weeks. When I came home, I went
to the Breakfast Association and there, from the gallery, Mr. Gneiss
looked down on me. At his side was a Quaker woman in the plain dress of
her Church, and with them was a manly boy of seventeen. After the
services, they all came to me (I motioned to others to come), and they
told us the story of their reunion. Tears stood in her eyes as she said,
“We have family prayers now, and we pray for you every day. God is
blessing us in every way. Pray for us.”
After that they came to see me, either at the Breakfast Association or
at my home, as often as three or four times a year as long as I remained
in Philadelphia.
THE GOSPEL MISSION
After telling about those two incidents connected with my small share of
rescue work in Philadelphia, it is time now to resume the story of our
Gospel Mission. It is only because we see souls converted almost every
night that makes it possible for us to bear the sight and the foul smell
of unclean bodies, of dead whisky and tobacco, and the revolting
drunkenness, then the remonstrances of one's own kindred and church
people are trying, unless God gave great recompense, first in one's own
enlarged spiritual life, in order to fit us for the work, and almost
daily gave us the joy of seeing souls converted, it would be an
impossible work.
CONVERSIONS AND REGENERATION
Conversion seems to me to be largely man's share in the greater fact of
regeneration, which is entirely God's work in a human soul.
At a Rescue Mission the theologian could get a new and practical
knowledge of the gospel he preaches; the professor of psychology sees
how spiritual powers, unseen to mortal eye, can grip the entire
machinery of the mind, and by a supernatural application of God's Spirit
and the word of God make a man over again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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