At the close of his prayer I turned to the old woman and told her I was astonished at the mercy of God that permitted such a family to live, and portrayed the awful consequences of her meeting her household in hell. I drew every alarming picture I could summon from the Bible or the resources of my own mind. After some time the old woman began to weep, and she promised to attend the mission chapel the next Sabbath. After supplying them with a copy of Baxter’s Call, and a number of suitable tracts, we left them.
The next Sabbath the old woman was at the chapel. A series of religious meetings began that day, and before its close, as my friend informed me, who was a worshipper there, the old woman and one of her sons professed religion.
One day we entered a room where a man was lying sick. We introduced the subject of religion to him. He ground his teeth with rage, and swore he did not want to hear any thing on that subject. I then began to inquire about his complaints, and to prescribe some simple remedies, and he soon became calm. After some time I remarked that afflictions did not come by chance, neither did trouble spring out of the ground, but they were all sent of God for some wise purpose. “Do you think so?” said he. “Yes,” said I, “and for our good.” He then listened attentively, and soon shed tears. Though he was very poor, he bought some books. I prayed with him, and left him, but not without many thanks and entreaties to come and see him as often as I could.
This closed the work of three days, in which time we had visited eighty-five families.
These three days were the most interesting days that I had ever spent. By the next morning I found my voice almost gone, and all my limbs trembling. The excitement of the work and intensity of feeling had prostrated me before I was aware of it.
After a day or two of rest I resumed my labors for three weeks, when I went home a few days.
I then returned to the same place, and spent a month in visiting new families and revisiting old ones; and I shall never forget the cordial shake of the hand that I got almost every day, when I would meet some one in the house or on the street whom I had before conversed with and supplied with a book or tract. Special services had been held in several churches, and quite a number had professed religion. One minister told me he had taken into his church forty, many of whom dated their first religious impressions to reading the books and tracts I had sold or given them, others referred to the visits as the means of their awakening.
