The reason that hundreds of sermons fail to comfort a saint or convert a sinner is because they fall on prayerless pews. You remember how what is known as the Great New England Revival came about. Dr. Jonathan Edwards was accustomed to go to his church every Saturday afternoon to think and to pray for his people. On one occasion a beggar, known in the town as Old Betty, sat unseen in a back pew. The great preacher put his head down on the Bible and sobbed. As he came out Old Betty said, “What is it, Dr. Edwards, that so troubles you?” “Betty, I have not seen a soul converted in this church for a year. Why is it?” “It is because these pews are prayerless.” “Will you pray till you get the answer that God will come in power to this church?” “I will.” Betty hid when the janitor came to close the church, and the answer to her soul did not come till the dawning of the morning. The following day Dr. Edwards started as usual to read his sermon, but he soon put it away and began a straight evangelistic talk, professed Christians stood in their places and asked for prayers, elders and deacons prostrated themselves before God, the whole town became a prayer circle, and the New England Revival had begun. CHAPTER V BIG FEET One day a very large man, well over sixty years, and with three fingers off each hand, in a very modest way said to me, “I am so ashamed to tell a lady my needs,” and he turned up his foot and showed me where the sole was worn out, so that at every step he made he left a track in blood. “You poor fellow, you need not be ashamed to tell me of need like that. I shall arrange for you to stay at the Mission till I get shoes for you.” He was of the class who sell shoestrings and pencils, but in very cold weather people do not stop to buy from street merchants. That night, after the midweek service of my church, I rose in my place and asked for a pair of shoes number 9½ or 10. The men hooted, no one of them ever wore that size, declaring, of course, that I wanted them to wear myself. “Well,” I said, “whether you wear them or not, you get them for me,” and I told the story of the bleeding feet. I did the same at my boarding house. By the next day one of the elders of the church came with two pairs of shoes which looked nearly big enough for boats, also one of the men of the boarding house sent to Annapolis to his father, a very large man, for a pair of shoes, which came to me by express. I put the three pairs into a basket and rushed to the Mission, when lo! the poor man could barely get his toes into the shoes. With trembling lip, he said, “It is simply disgraceful to be old and poor and so awful big that even one's friends cannot help a fellow.” “Indeed, it is no disgrace to be old, poor and big, but it is a disgrace to be a bad man of any size or age. Don't you worry, I shall find the shoes.”