When the fashionable young Mrs. Cobb relinquished her status as a votary of the world and became a lowly servant of Jesus Christ, she startled the inhabitants of Cazenovia, New York. But her decision was only the outward symbol of a profound and deep work of divine grace which marked the beginning of sixty long years of sacrificial and Spirit-inspired living. What chain of circumstances could so permanently have altered the entire course of one who possessed every advantage required of the world, for its acceptance?

Eunice Parson was born into a comfortable home in February, 1793, in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the United States. Although her parents were not Christians, the eight children were given careful moral training. The mother was a Universalist; the father, apparently, had little to do with any church.

Mr. Parson was well established in the business of tailoring and, in the shop, his daughter became adept at dressmaking. He passed away when Eunice was fourteen, and the mother moved the family to Cazenovia.

The young teenager was attractive, small, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and wavy golden hair, which she took care to arrange in a way that called attention to her charm. Because of her beauty, she became excessively vain. She loved to hear the swish of her silken dress as she tripped down the aisle of the church, and her clothes were fashioned in the latest style. As she walked along the street in her finery, she was exceedingly conscious of her appearance and careful that every detail of her apparel was as it ought to be. She loved to dance and took pains at all times to maintain a poise and dignity that commanded attention. Her love of fun, together with personal attractiveness, made her the center of a merry coterie of friends.

However, despite her fondness of the world and its gaieties, she recalled later that, “when but a little child, I felt I ought to love the Savior and get ready to live with Him in Heaven. I do not remember that I ever neglected to say my little prayer. This text had a great effect upon my feelings: ‘Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’”

When Eunice was twenty-four years of age, she became conscious of the emptiness of the life she was living. Though at that time, her knowledge of spiritual truth was meager, she resolved to turn from the pleasures of the world. She frequented the dance no more; she laid aside superfluous adornment and became a member of the Presbyterian Church. A year later, she married Whiteman Cobb, a young man with excellent business prospects. He was not a Christian, but never neglected taking his young wife to church.

During her early married life, the Methodists, “the sect…everywhere spoken against”, began holding services. Their preaching dealt especially with sin and separation from the world, with a strong emphasis upon holiness of heart as essential to a stable Christian life and entrance into Heaven as well. When Mrs. Cobb was invited to attend one evening, she accepted, not as some of her friends, to scoff, but to obtain help for her soul.

“It was a blessed time,” she said. “I witnessed such simplicity, such ardent zeal, such humility, that I said, ‘This is the true people of God,’ and my heart ran right with them.”

In these services, she felt that her spiritual life was so strengthened that, the next year, she told the Presbyterian minister it was her intention to join the Methodists. He argued that whatever spark of heavenly fire she possessed ought to be used to start a flame among the Presbyterians. Her answer was that she herself needed the warmth of a great blaze.

Soon after this, a passage from the book of Hebrews, “Go on unto perfection”, rang in her ears. As she waited upon God, He revealed the state of her natural heart, with its workings of pride and love of the world. Although the young woman had adopted a plain style of dress God showed her that, as far as she personally was concerned, the superfluities of life must be dispensed with. As she prayed, the conviction deepened that the utmost simplicity must henceforth mark her whole deportment. In later life, she expressed it thus:

“Perfect love dwells only in the bosom of simplicity for, according to the example of Christ and the apostles, true religion is severe in simplicity.”

Probably because the love of display had been so prominent in her life, to separate herself completely from all worldly ostentation, Mrs. Cobb resolved to follow the example of Jesus, Who “though he was rich,” yet for us “became poor.” She decided, to a great extent, to forego the use of her husband’s expensive carriage. Instead she took to walking to her destination, thus identifying herself with the humble poor. She would cut off her beautiful curls and wear a cap. Her dresses were to be made of blue calico.

Though the decision to adopt such a role of poverty was extremely crucifying to her pride, so intense were her longings for cleansing that she resolved to pay the price, whatever the cost. Her yearning heart was satisfied when she went alone to a nearby grove to pray.

“What a struggle I had with the powers of darkness! I was a long time agonizing in prayer. Then I said, ‘I have done everything that is in my power to do, and I will never rise from this spot till God does the work.’ Now I was willing to become anything, or nothing for Christ’s sake.

“In that moment, my prayer was answered; my struggle ceased, my unutterable longing was gratified. Instantly, a power from above touched me. Jesus took entire possession. I melted as wax before the fire; praise took the place of prayer, and my full soul was dissolved in love. In a moment, I saw that this was sanctification. Oh, what a calm, what a settling down of sweet peace – perfect peace! No ecstasy, only that of astonishment at what I had just realized. It is not in the power of language to describe it. My peace flowed like a river.”

Although her path through life was humble and more or less obscure, Mrs. Cobb is outstanding in her exemplification of holiness. Her life breathed out the spirit of prayer. Early in the morning, her family would find her on her knees, with the open Bible before her, seeking divine guidance.

“I arose at four this morning. How clear the mind! How great the happiness in keeping the commandments! ‘Those that seek me early shall find me.’ I think this has reference to early in the morning, as well as early in life. It is ‘the willing and obedient’ that eat the ‘good of the land.’

“Have some conviction on account of indulgence in bed later than usual this morning. I wonder how I could doze when, if I arise early, I have time for all things. I never saw myself so little, yet I am kept by His almighty power.”

Mrs. Cobb persuaded some of her friends to join her every Friday in fasting and prayer for the people of Cazenovia. Once a year, she visited personally every family in the town, praying with them and pointing them to Christ. She stretched out her hand to the needy and, when she herself had no more to give, solicited aid from those who were able to do so.

The course she followed most naturally aroused the opposition of her husband, mother, brothers and sisters. One, who had been an intimate friend, passed her by on the other side of the street, not even acknowledging her presence. This hurt her deeply, and for a time the enemy of her soul cruelly taunted her.

One evening, Mrs. Cobb went to her closet to pray, and her disgruntled husband turned the key, locking her in for the night. When he released her the next morning, her reaction to his unkindness was, “Good morning, I have had such a good time praying for you.”

Her husband, for a time, made a profession and joined her in worship with the Methodists. For some years, he served as a class leader, and then he grew cold and drifted away. In 1835, he decided to make a home for his family farther west and settled successively near the present cities of Laporte, Indiana and Marengo, Illinois. By this move, he hoped to separate his wife from those spiritual influences in Cazenovia which he blamed for her very decided religious convictions.

Life was primitive in those areas, but Mother Cobb, as she came to be known, motivated by her love for souls, went from cabin to cabin, starting prayer services and speaking about the things of God to all who crossed her path. Walking sometimes for miles, this indefatigable soul-winner prayed with the bereaved, visited the sick and warned the careless. If a fight ensued in the local public house, it quieted the men merely to suggest that Mother Cobb be called to the scene.

Her diary entries reveal how far-reaching were her exertions for the Lord.

“January, 1838. Spent an hour in Chicago, conversing with a number on the importance of being prepared for death. Had a great burden for some young ladies in public houses. Warned them faithfully and prayed for them.

“Friday. Was very much blest in visiting the criminals in jail. God gave me an unusual spirit of prayer for my sons and the precious youth of our land.

“May 25. I want that holy zeal that when I talk with the unconverted my tears will witness my sincerity. I cannot be idle and grow in grace. I must be exact in redeeming time. I want to breathe the whole spirit of a missionary.”

After thirty years of this most faithful sowing, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit attended the ministry of Dr. John Redfield throughout this area. And it was apparent to those who knew of the fervent pleadings and tireless efforts of Mother Cobb that these had prepared the way before it to a degree which only eternity will reveal.

Dr. RedfieldÂ’s ministry doubtless fulfilled her heart-breathed desire for Spirit-inspired preaching. Mother CobbÂ’s diary discloses her longing.

“I am anxious to witness the pulpit on fire; yes, the pulpit on fire! If anything in the world should be on fire, it is the pulpit. It should glow with intense heat, burning its way to the hearts of the people. The fire should wrap the Book on the sacred desk, leap along the breastwork and make the floor hot beneath the feet of all occupants.

“As the ambassador of Heaven stands there to deliver the Gospel message, his eyes should be eyes of flame, his tongue a fiery tongue, and his whole frame wrapped in fire – fire from the third Heaven – fire from the throne of God. Go, servant of the Lord! Compel the dwellers by the hedges of sin and in the highways that lead down to Hell.”

“December 11. Oh, for more laborers in this harvest! And we shall have them when we get this baptism of fire. Oh, the buried talents in all our churches – gifted, educated women, who would be a power for God and their generation while living; and dying, their words would follow them – who are now a mere cipher in the Church for the want of entire living for God. Oh, for more holy women!”

We might well ask what was the secret of Mother CobbÂ’s sixty years of such spiritual victory and blessing. It was entire dependence upon God.

“I am deeply conscious,” she said, “that the root of all sin is having lost God and found self in His place. I do continually see holiness to consist in being sunk into my own nothingness, that God may be exalted in my soul.”

In another diary entry, she asks the question,

“How am I going to be kept from sin? By the constant application of the blood of Christ, moment by moment. The heart, while it lies in the cleansing fountain, is kept clean. If in doubt, fly to the present cleansing blood. Claim this prize all anew, moment by moment. I claim all the purchase of Thy blood, because Thou hast promised and art faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

“Christ doth not say he that hath come shall never hunger, but he that cometh, indicating a continued and constant coming, a perpetual feeding upon the heavenly bread. Even the hidden manna must ever be eaten, to be ever satisfying; the soul, as well as the body must take its daily bread, or it will hunger and pine. So, too, ‘whosoever drinketh of this water’ is he that shall never thirst. Not he that has once tasted and has now forsaken the fountain of living waters is he that never thirsts. The secret of our dissatisfaction is in resting on past experience. Forgetting the things that are behind, let us come every day to Christ and receive anew His life.”

Her diary entries reveal deep longings for the repeated baptism of the Holy Ghost.

“I do feel a strong desire for a greater baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. May it descend upon the Church that we may have the gift of power! What can we do without the living presence, the holy influence? If it be not upon our altars, then we offer vain oblations; and our ceremonies, though instructive, will be lifeless.”

“December 4. I am before the throne, awaiting the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the power and the fire. Then I shall have strength to labor. Prayers, mighty, importunate, repeated, united prayers; the fathers, the children, the pastor and the people, the rich and the poor, the gifted and the simple, all uniting to cry to God that He may affect us as in the days of the right hand of the Most High and imbue us with the Spirit of Christ and warm and kindle and make us a flame of fire. Such united and repeated supplications will accomplish their end, and the power of God, descending, will make us a band of giants refreshed with new wine.”

Mother Cobb had noticed earlier in her life that fasting and prayer obtained results.

“For over ten years past, I have been observing the progress of religion among the Methodists, and I find that those who fast and pray most are the most spiritual. Fasting results in quickening the power of faith. In one day – nay in one hour, the whole work may be accomplished. Lord help us!

“Oh, what sweet communion I have with the blessed Spirit, not only by day but by night. I do see God in everything. I find it a great blessing to my soul to arise in the night, to pray at twelve. Prayer is just the breath of faith. To pray and not believe is to beat the air. Oh, these crosses taken up in shame and disgrace are borne at last in triumph, even in this life.

“Perhaps we do not think enough of prayer – intercessory prayer – direct appeals by names of others, laying their needs – all we desire for them, out before God. We do not believe as we should. How it would help those we cannot speak to; comforting where our words have no power to soothe; following the steps of our beloved through the toils and perplexities of the day, lifting off their burdens with an unseen hand. At night, no ministry is so like an angel’s as this – silent, invisible one, known but to God. Through us, descends the blessing and, to Him alone, ascends the thanksgiving. Surely not any employment brings us so near to God as earnest, sincere prayer. There is a depth of wisdom in the words, ‘If only we spoke more to God for man, than even to man for God.’”

The little old woman in calico went on, braving all weathers, loving all souls, praying and fasting and enjoying a communion with the Father that brought wealth beyond words. But the separated life had had its moments of pain when even her class leader, failing to understand the motive that controlled this saintly woman, said to her, “Sister Cobb, you are a disgrace to us. Your clothes are not fit to wear in public. If you would dress a little more like other people, you would have a better influence. We bear with you because of your age.”

When during her last illness, several friends called upon her, they asked, “Mother Cobb, has the sting of death been extracted?”

“Yes, Glory!”

“Are you about to change your blue calico for a white robe?”

“Yes. Glory! Glory! Glory!”

“You have been particular in your dress. Don’t you think more so than necessary?”

”Oh, no. Glory! Hallelujah! It pays!” Within a few hours, the lips that had moved for blessing on earth were silenced forever.

Quotations by Mother Cobb

The world in the heart has ruined millions of immortal souls. How the Christian should watch and pray, lest Satan and the world should find some unguarded inlet to his heart. We must watch that the affections be not drawn away from God.

The Scriptures are found so much transcending anything else that we say, as their richness and beauty open before us, with the queen of Sheba on beholding, ‘The half that was not told me.’ They are more than vases filled with Gilead’s balm. They open before us a whole paradise of delight.

Here, in the clefts of the rocks, are droppings of that which is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. Here the soul finds the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. We sit down under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit is sweet to our taste. We pluck eternal peace with God, and escape from the overspreading deluge of earthly evils, and are led by the hand of Jesus into the ark of eternal refuge. Mother Cobb

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Eva fumed, and her pent-up rebellion found an escape as she climbed the roof of the neighbouring house and shook her fist at the retreating figure of the cleric, muttering, “You shall not rob me of my liberty.” Then, feeling most superior in her newly declared freedom, she jumped over the chimney stacks. She had just finished her second lesson preparatory to Confirmation, and she would be bound by no creeds.

Only two years before, the thirteen-year-old girl, usually obstinate, but somewhat subdued and saddened by the loss of her mother, whom she passionately loved, had uttered similar words. As she strode through the woods with her St. Bernard dog, she fancied that she saw the majestic and commanding figure of the Lord rising before her, and it seemed He wanted to “claim” her. “No! No! He shall not conquer me,” she declared. “I will be free and nobody shall take my freedom from me.” Perhaps this young heiress of noble birth even then sensed the call of God to the service that was destined to bring blessing to thousands.

Eva von Winkler, next to the youngest of a family of nine boys and girls, was born in southeast Germany near the border of Poland, October 31, 1866. Their home was an ancestral castle, with all the charm and romance associated with such a place, near the village of Miechowitz.

Her gentle, loving mother was, according to Eva’s portrayal, “a radiant form of light.” The memory to her children, not only of her unusual mental powers, but also of her ardent spiritual aspirations, proved to be an “imperishable inheritance” that enriched them as long as they lived. The father’s contribution to his family was of a more earthy nature. A wealthy man, he wanted the inheritance, eventually theirs, to be handled by them with the utmost discretion. Consequently, he was a parent with strict ideas of discipline which he was not slow to enforce.

The motherÂ’s love for God was in evidence throughout the home. Nine chairs, each with a Bible verse carved on the back and arranged around a huge oak table, impressed upon formative minds the importance of GodÂ’s Word. The inscription, “Quiet Approach to God”, was written on the first page of the large family Bible. The famous book, “Imitation of Christ”, by Thomas a’ Kempis, was given a prominent place on the table.

Eva’s first recollection of any spiritual desire was when two of her sisters sang a hymn, “Praise God Together, Ye Christians All.” She remembered only once of hearing about the death of Jesus, and nothing was ever said to her about sin. The fact that her mother was a Roman Catholic probably contributed to this silence. As a result, it was long before the girl realized any need of a Saviour.

When Eva was almost seventeen, the family went to Berlin, where they had a city home. Here she began to reach out after God.

“God Himself took me into His school. All that I had imagined I possessed lay crushed right to the ground. I had absolutely nothing – no ground under my feet, no future, no Heaven, no eternity, no God. Oh, how I searched night and day after the truth – and could not find it.

“What is life? What is death? What is time? What is eternity? These questions tormented my brain, but no answer came. Only now and again, a few words, which I must have read some time, came to me like a star in the night, although I scarcely knew Who had spoken them. ‘These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall be tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’ It was full of promise to me, and wonderful that Someone could say, ‘I have overcome the world.’ Who was this Person? I did not know Him.”

While engaged in Bible study, she read the tenth chapter of John, with its beautiful description of the Good Shepherd. Her heart, now stripped of much of its rebellion, cried out,

“ ‘Lord, if it be true that Thou art the Good Shepherd, then will I also belong to Thy flock.’ Now my heart was at rest; I had received the answer. Everything was different in me and around me and, even though only the first rays of light penetrated into my dark heart, I still knew that the Lord had revealed Himself and that I belonged to Him.”

Overtaken by an illness that confined her to bed, Eva began to while away the hours by a close application to the reading of the New Testament. As her newly awakened soul began to realize something of the cost of Calvary to the Son of God, His claims came home to her.

“No longer did I need to spend my days uselessly and aimlessly; there was work for me to do in the world. Jesus Christ had sought me, found me and called me into His service to follow Him, and now it only remained to wait for His instructions.

“Then God gave me a friend in my loneliness. It was the old monk, Tauler from Strasburg whose sermons and additional writings I found when putting my mother’s study in order. Many an hour did this old friend of God talk there with the ignorant young child, of the union with God, through the death of our old self and the denial of the world and self-love.”

A steadily increasing desire was born in her to help all for whom Christ died. Assurance of God’s plan was given, when several passages from the book of Isaiah were impressed upon her. “Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him?” Then followed words from the same prophet, “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”

The once obstinate, determined Eva was now “vowing to give herself to His service exclusively and begging God to preserve her from all earthly love and keep her from all that might hinder her in her purpose.” Outwardly she maintained the same leisurely style of life, with much time on her hands. To prepare for the task ahead she learned to knit, sew, took lessons in Polish and read biographies. To discipline herself, she dispensed with her personal maid.

The path of usefulness which opened to her seemed quite insignificant. It was the custom at the castle to permit some of the neediest of the village poor to come at noon for a dish of soup made from bones, meat and vegetables left over from the meals of the family. Eva began to serve it to them in the bowls they brought. When a small, half-starved boy came one day, she washed him, combed his hair and decided later to make a pair of trousers for him from an old dress of hers. Soon after this, she met the mayor of the village and asked his help in aiding the child. Without EvaÂ’s knowledge, he presented the need to her father who became very angry. At the breakfast table the next morning, he scolded her roundly, forbidding her to go into the kitchen or even to speak to the villagers. Though broken-hearted at such restrictions, Eva began to rely more wholly upon God.

On her nineteenth birthday, she asked her father for permission to take a brief course in nursing. He consented on condition that a friend accompany her. And since the young Countess Lisa Zedlitz had the same desire, together they went to the town of Bielefeld, where there was a school in nursing and domestic arts. Pastor von Bodelschwing, whom Eva later called the “Apostle of Love”, was in charge of the institution and she felt it “an unparalleled privilege” to be under his influence. His example of love to all, regardless of station in life, was ever before her in after years.

On her return to her own home, she was permitted to invite eight small village girls to the castle to instruct them in needlework. One day, as she was fashioning a garment for the poor in her father’s presence, he called her to his desk. At the same time, he turned to her oldest brother, who also was in the room, saying, “If I should not live to be able to do it, build Eva a house for her poor people.” The girl could only kiss his hand, and then she retired to her room to fall on her knees in a prayer of thanksgiving to God. At Christmas, great was her surprise to find that the gift from her father was the plan for such a house.

Again Eva went to the institution at Bielefeld, to learn how to conduct a household and, along with culinary and domestic training, she took charge of a small building for sick children. Soon after her course was completed, epidemics of scarlet fever, typhoid and diphtheria ravaged the village, taking a fearful toll of young lives. So great was the strain imposed upon her from nursing the sick and burying the dead that, from sheer exhaustion, she was forced into temporary retirement.

During this time of recuperation, her house was in the process of building. On the dedication day, Eva, at twenty-four years of age, was consecrated as its “Mother”. So Friedenshort was established. Sick and crippled children were cared for; tiny babies occupied the wooden cradles; elderly persons, unwanted by their families, came for comfort and shelter. When the village school was ended for the day, fully a hundred youngsters came for help with their studies, training in woodcarving or sewing and for a period of fun and play.

Because of a limited income, Mother Eva made bread, did repair work and raised cabbages, ever remembering and putting into practice the hymn sung at the dedication service, “And also in the hardest days, never complain about the burden.” At the year’s end, she had forty beds, instead of the five in the Home at its beginning.

In 1892, her friend, Pastor von Bodelschwing, visited Friedenshort and suggested that she start a Deaconess House, or Sisterhood, and train young women for various forms of Christian activity. The thought had occurred to her at various times, but her father’s consent had to be obtained. “Little daughter, I have been watching you for a long time now and have seen that God’s blessing rests on all you do,” was his favorable reaction. Then he laid his hands on her head in fatherly benediction. So several new buildings were erected at Friedenshort, one for the incurably ill, and another for children. When these were dedicated, three young women were admitted as Deaconess trainees.

While Friedenshort was growing, the spiritual life of its mother also was being shaped and moulded.

“As time went on” she wrote, “there was much to discourage me. I remember in the early days what a grief it was to find that my own village people mistook my wish to help them. Things were said which wounded me deeply, and then I would sit alone over my Bible and realise what it was to be hated by those one loves. As I turned the leaves, my eye fell on the words, ‘If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.’ That was enough. Deep joy filled my heart, as I understood that His followers must not expect reward or thanks in this world which had rejected the One Who went about doing good.”

Her assurance of the fact that she was a child of God never had been shaken. But, within herself, there were longings, vague and undefined, for a deeper spiritual life. For a long time, she was unawakened to the fact that holiness of heart was to be obtained by faith. She relied rather upon her good works to deliver her from the unrest of soul which at intervals proved so distressing. She even contemplated seeking an answer within the Roman Catholic Church. A letter written at this period reveals Mother EvaÂ’s heart struggle.

“Last summer I came for a short rest to ‘Salem,’ tired, worn out, discouraged, weak in body and soul. My whole work looked like a mountain of difficulties before me – a burden that I could not bear. In myself I saw nothing but sin, incapability and weakness. I was almost too tired to speak or to eat. I took my Bible and went out…and all at once a faint understanding dawned upon me of the meaning in the words, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ That was the secret which had been lacking in my life. I always wanted to be something. I wanted to be holy, perfect and glorious. I wanted to force it. Now a light struck me – and I was to be just nothing: so that Jesus and He alone should be all in all. I look upon this as a new chapter in my life.”

Three saintly men were used of God in the further instructing and fashioning of His servant. One was Pastor von Bodelschwing, who had done much to train her for leadership during the years she spent under his guidance. His confidence in her strengthened and matured her. But the strenuous work in the institution, aggravated by the deep inner conflict of her soul, brought physical problems. While in Bielefeld, she saw the danger of absorption in Christian work to the exclusion of the deeper spiritual life. The sermons of Dr. Tauler had created a thirst for union with God and holiness of heart. But Pastor von Bodelschwing, failing to understand her quest, assured her that the answer to her need was not to be found in the Evangelical Church.

The second was a small man, Fritz Oetzbach, deformed in body, but strong in the grace of God, whom Mother Eva met at a Faith Conference in May, 1900. She saw in him the indwelling Christ. His prayers opened Heaven. After seventeen years in a hopelessly crippled condition, he read in the Bible the words of the apostle, James 5:14-16, and asked Christian friends to pray for him, anointing him with oil. His obedience to the divine command was rewarded, and he was healed. When Mother Eva was privileged to engage him in conversation, he asked, “Have you ever thought that the word, ‘Their remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God’, is even now for you?”

“I looked at him in amazement,” she wrote. “No, I had never thought of that. Life seemed to me a continuous struggle against my own nature, against the powers of sin and Satan – how was it possible to think of rest? Then the little ‘great man’ spoke so simply, so clearly, so convincingly how this rest was meant to be for us here, as soon as we cease from our own works and enter into the rest of faith, which Christ won for us on the Cross, and into which we can enter, through the fellowship of His death.

“Oh, how often I had longed for rest, had thought to find it only in the seclusion of a convent and inexorable asceticism or, if even not there, then only in the grave. And now this little man spoke not only of the possibility of rest even here, but he himself seemed to possess this rest – and indeed something of this divine rest actually proceeded from his personality.”

His words made a lasting impression upon her, and she always referred to Fritz Oetzbach as the “Apostle of Faith.”

In the same year, her life touched that of James Hudson Taylor, whom she nominated the “Apostle of Sanctification”. From Mrs. Taylor she received a small book entitled “A Holy Life and How to Live It.” In a simple way, it answered many of her questions in regard to holiness.

The work at Friedenshort was extremely arduous. Her pastoral friend, von Bodelschwing, following her activities with keenest interest, confided to the Sister that she could live probably only another five years without a change of environment. The Homes were placed in other hands, and she became the Lady Superintendent of the Bielefeld Institution. Here, to be sure, her spiritual influence found wider scope in training others, but here also, willing to become an integral part of something entirely apart from the work she loved so much, she buried her ambition for Friedenshort in the tomb of her heart. But, within six years, a complete physical breakdown necessitated a removal to Switzerland.

Returning eventually to the beloved establishment she had founded, she chose to live in a cottage on the grounds, delegating the superintendence of the Community to an older Deaconess. She devoted herself to the poor, and in her little home found a place for small waifs whose brief years had known nothing but cruelty and neglect. But her soul remained unsatisfied.

“The goal had been shown to me, but I had not yet reached it. The great gift of God, a holy life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, which others were enjoying, I had not yet realized. Struggling, striving, fighting, I was always painfully conscious that I was not rising to God’s ideals in my life. Neither outward poverty nor the daily opportunity for loving service could silence the tumult in my soul, and often a deep sigh arose from my heart, ‘Is this all? Has God nothing more to give me?’”

However, the time was fast approaching when the yet unfathomed depths of her being were to be reached by the immensity of the love of God. In the early part of the twentieth century, a marvelous work of the Holy Spirit took place in Wales. Eva, with friends, journeyed first to England and then to Wales. While in London, she visited Bethshan, Mrs. Elizabeth BaxterÂ’s home for spiritual healing. Of this time she wrote:

“I had been allowed a glimpse into Mrs. Baxter’s life of priestly intercession. My own life was so full of work, of unrest and strife, and there was so little time for prayer and worship. About this, too, she was tremendously in earnest and said, ‘How can your spiritual life prosper when you spend no time before God?’

“During those days in London, another thing also happened which was full of meaning for me. Mrs. Penn-Lewis was then at the beginning of her spiritual ministry and, through her writings and her special witness of the meaning of the Cross, was exercising a great influence over a wide circle of Christians. A short conversation with her gave me light on the deepest need of my life. The old ‘I,’ which thrust its way into everything – even into the service of God and which, through no strength of my own, could be uprooted and overcome – I saw for the first time had been judged already in the Cross of Christ when He died for me. I saw this, but could not yet grasp it.

“Then we passed on to Wales where the revival had just broken out. The impression that we received of the unconquerable power of the Holy Ghost over a whole neighbourhood was tremendous.”

As she traveled back to London by train three young girls were in the compartment with her. Their worldly dress suggested to Mother Eva that attendance at the revival services would benefit them. When they told her they were singing and witnessing in association with Evan Roberts, the young man so mightily used of God in the revival, she was astonished.

“Was it possible,” Sister Eva asked herself,” that these girls should be used of God to help in revival meetings – used to save souls when perhaps they themselves were only just converted from a life of worldliness and vanity – and now instruments in God’s hand? And I? For years I had been working the Lord’s service in simple clothes, denying myself everything in the way of comfort and outward attractions, and yet I was inwardly so poor, so weak and so barren.”

As she pondered and drew out her Bible, her eyes fell on those verses: “For ye see our calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.”

“The longer I thought about it, the more clearly I saw that God could more easily use a shoeblack from the London streets than He could use me. What I had formerly looked upon as an advantage appeared to me now as a hindrance.”

These same young women were scheduled to hold a service in a Welsh chapel near London and Mother Eva, as a humble learner, decided to attend. She could understand very little of the language, but the Holy Spirit was present as Teacher.

“It is something unspeakably wonderful,” she wrote “when God Himself comes down into a gathering and touches each, speaks to each personally. Then everything high and lifted up must bend before Him. All hardness breaks down, all coldness melts. To meet with God, the Unseen, to realize His presence in deed and in truth, is the greatest, highest, most wonderful experience that men can ever know. He can then in one moment give and accomplish that which we, in long years of our own striving, have never been able to reach. In that hour, there came to me a gentle, heart-searching question from my crucified Lord. ‘Are you ready to be a fool for My sake?’

“In that hour also the old life sank into the grave – something new, until then unknown, was given. My soul’s longing was satisfied. It seemed to me that all my soul travail was left behind and that now He Himself was living in me – Christ in me, a new I, a new life. Only one wish remained, one longing, never to be disobedient to Him, Who had afresh taken possession of my life. In that same hour, the purpose came to me to travel back to the homeland and witness to Christ in the house of near relatives. That was no easy road.”

Upon her return to Friedenshort, Mother Eva gathered the Sisters together, asking pardon for “all that had been my own, self-born and self-planned, in my previous service amongst them. From henceforth, all must be different; no more I, but He.” The Holy Spirit broke down all self-righteousness, and divine forgiveness, assurance and newness of spiritual life, for the first time, came to some of the Sisters.

Between the years, 1905 and 1908, fifty Deaconesses were housed in the rapidly growing establishment, and the problem of finances became acute. The interest on Mother EvaÂ’s inheritance, the legacy of her mother, no longer was sufficient to meet the expenses, nor could the endowment fund legally be resorted to. She saw then that the work must be conducted on the principle of faith which had been adopted by George Muller, Hudson Taylor and others less widely known. This produced some degree of misunderstanding with her Committee. She was then free to choose only those in sympathy with her complete trust in God.

However, her faith was sorely tried. Poor health again had forced her into retirement. During her absence of eighteen months, the expenses of the Homes exceeded the income. But, in answer to united prayer, within six weeks, the last vestige of indebtedness was removed and a substantial amount left over. Never again, on scriptural grounds, were debts incurred at Friedenshort.

In the latter part of 1910, the need of a shelter for homeless children in Breslau, Germany was laid upon her heart. The initial gift for the purpose was the small sum of five marks. She laid it on a chair and, kneeling, asked God that it be multiplied as had been the loaves and fishes for the feeding of the five thousand. Within a few weeks, a lovely home on a beautiful estate near Breslau came into her hands. During the next fourteen years, four shelters were opened in various parts of Germany and Poland. It was no small joy to Mother Eva that, after the opposition of her family in early years, a brother and sister each established a “Home for the Homeless” and gave themselves to God and His service.

Divine blessing rested upon the labours of His devoted servant, and the sphere of usefulness, opened to the Deaconesses, widened. In 1912, several Sisters were assigned to an area in China with the C.I.M., where no European woman ever had ventured. Upon the heart of a Norwegian Deaconess was laid the spiritual destitution of the fisher folk of Lapland. Before Mother EvaÂ’s death, Sisters were working in Guatemala, Syria, Africa and India.

Another avenue of service was that of prison visitation. Eventually a home was opened where discharged prisoners were permitted to live until adjustments could be made to normal life.

The shadows of evening at length fell over Mother Eva’s beautiful life. In an effort to prolong her days, those who loved her recommended the bracing mountain air of Switzerland. But it proved to be of no avail and she was removed to the little cottage at Friedenshort, to await the Master’s call to higher service. In June 1932, the “earthly house” was dissolved, and she entered into one “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

The books, still in circulation, that flowed from her pen, unerringly point out the path to holiness and Heaven.

Quotes By Eva von Winkler

“Whenever God has found any who, in singleness of heart, have humbly yielded themselves to Him to obey, and to follow simply wherever the light of truth may lead, He has made them lightbearers, and witnesses, each according to the measure of his gifts and the sphere of his influence, and has used them to be a blessing to others. They may have differed radically from one another in their doctrinal views and conviction, they may have been influenced by their surroundings, the leadership they followed and the particular tendency of their time; yet each has given expression to some ray of revealed truth through his words and works, and their life and witness has been a means of blessing not only to their own generation, but to those who have followed.”

“When the Holy Spirit has entered into possession of a life, every moment that follows must be a renewed receiving.”

“Many a restless, defeated life would be transformed if it became a life of prayer. Prayer costs something. It costs much! He who would pray must deny himself. He must give his whole time and strength to the service of God. That does not mean he must change his outward calling and become “spiritual” by entering so-called Christian work. No, to serve God is to live for God and glorify Him to be at His disposal and forget oneself in seeking His glory and the salvation and good of mankind.”

"The world holds the right opinion that there can be no such thing as a worldly Christian. Every man is either a child of the world governed by the spirit of the age, fighting the battle of existence in the kingdom of this world, thinking, acting, living according to its principles; or he is a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, gripped by an inflexible determination to see His words and commandments realized in action and in life, even if they should mean to him what they meant to his Lord – rejection and death!”

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“How is it that two hundred years after his death Protestants of France unite to celebrate the work of an evangelist with neither degree nor diploma and whose ministry in France lasted less than four years? How is it that one of the most isolated valleys in the High Alps became the scene of a mighty work of God, one of the high places of French Protestantism and the center of an annual gathering of many thousands of people, at Freyssinieres?” So questioned Mr. G. Williams, after a recent trip to those parts.

Felix Neff had much in common with David Brainerd who labored among the American Indians under similar primitive conditions. Both were young. Both came to their field of labor under a cloud of misrepresentation. Both were most self-sacrificing. Both remained unmarried. Both died at an early age from over-exertion under conditions of extreme hardship. Both experienced a work of reviving grace. Both were men of prayer.

Felix Neff, of Swiss extraction, was born at Geneva, October 8, 1798. In early infancy, he was deprived of his father. His mother, although a professed deist, never interfered with her sonÂ’s early love for the church. Although her means were limited because of widowhood, she gave him everything possible for his mental development. Tokens of motherly affection were withheld from him save in his sleep, as she wanted to inculcate manly qualities in him.

“I followed the world,” said Mrs. Neff, “and my union with a man of brilliant parts and skeptical opinions soon ended in making me, like himself, a deist and an habitual and deliberate neglector of public worship. Not so was it with my child. At a very early age, he delighted to attend the sacred assemblies, and not only did he never fail doing so, but was remarkable for the seriousness of his deportment. Happily, he never asked me why I did not go.”

Felix was self-taught in botany, history and geography. From his pastor, he gained some knowledge in Latin. He was gifted with a most retentive memory, truthful to a fault, but was strong-willed and haughty. Because the local village schoolmaster lacked a proper education, the mother became tutor to her son.

Before the lad was thirteen, they removed to Cartigny. Felix had by this time, exhausted the library of which their home could boast, as well as any books his mother could acquire for him. An effort to locate him in a good school failed in its endeavor. As employment was most difficult to procure, the teenage lad occupied his leisure hours studying insect life and trees and wrote a treatise on the care of the latter. He also continued his mathematical and Latin studies. He had read Plutarch and Rousseau from the age of eight until he was sixteen, but their infidel arguments did not seem to affect him.

But God was preparing His instrument. His mother writes, “I had always left him to follow his own inclinations. Alas, I saw not the Hand which controlled us both, leading me to send him to the good Pastor Montinie, who soon appreciated his character and anxiously wished to be of service to him. He advised my son to enter the army, seeing we were nearly destitute of pecuniary resources.”

Here, by his seriousness and application to work, Felix was rapidly advanced to the rank of sergeant, much to the chagrin of those who had been training much longer. His Captain once said to him, “You leave nothing for the soldiers to do – you have no idea of commanding.” “It is the best and surest way of command,” replied the youth.
From an early age, he had fixed ideas of the evils of the world. “Do you think there is no amusement at a theatre?” queried a friend. “On the contrary, I think there is too much,” was the reply.

A conviction that the spring of all his actions was selfish, caused him in deep distress to pray, “Oh, my God, whatsoever Thou art, make me to know Thy truth; vouchsafe to manifest Thyself to me.” He began a diligent study of the Bible, as it seemed to him that no other book could unlock the mysteries regarding the unregenerate state of the human heart. To him as yet, however, God was a stern Judge, not a merciful Father."
Spiritual understanding came to him about this through a book, “Honey flowing from the Rock,” loaned to him by his Pastor. It was written by an Englishman, Thomas Willcock. This passage brought balm to the young man: “If you knew Jesus Christ, you would not for all the world wish to do a single good work without Him. If you already know Him, you know that He is the Rock of salvation, infinitely above any righteousness of our own. This Rock will follow you everywhere. From this Rock flows the honey of grace, which alone can satisfy you. Would you go to Jesus? Renounce all ideas of your own goodness, taking with you nothing but your misery and sin."

“Would you know all the horrors of sin? Do not be content to examine its extent in yourself. Go to Jesus on the cross; behold in His sufferings the malignity of sin and tremble. Let the Spirit of God guide you in the study of the Bible. It is a mine wherein the most precious treasure is hid, even the knowledge of Christ.”

Written on the margin of the book were the words, “Felix Neff has found peace here on these two pages.” And of the experience he wrote, “When after a thousand useless vows and a thousand ineffective efforts, I learned at last that in me dwells no good thing, I was happy indeed to run across a book which depicted with exact truth the miserable state of my heart and showed me at the same time the only efficacious remedy. I received with joy the good news, that we should go to Christ with all our stains, all our unbelief, and all our impenitence.”

Although e energetic convert was far from satisfied with the spiritual condition of the national Church of Switzerland, he was not a separatist and sought by holding reunions – Bible studies and prayer meetings – within the established church to deepen its spiritual life.

Speaking of his labors in Switzerland, he writes, “Helped in the vinages in the day, and in the evening peasants assembled to receive instruction. I spoke of evangelical simplicity in opposition to barren theology. The whole of this Canton seems preparing for a great revival; at least, if one may judge by the agitation of Satan. I have held thirteen prayer meetings in seven different villages, and they have been attended by half the population of the place. I visit all the pious Christians in their own houses and those who are as yet but inquiring.”
He saw clearly that the world would tolerate its followers professing a belief in the Bible, but would severely punish those who sought to govern their lives by its precepts. Therefore, everywhere he spoke of the necessity of separation from the world.

These unpopular tenets, which the young exhorter held and taught, first surprised and then enraged the ministers who would not allow any religious teaching not under their direct supervision. “I remarked,” Neff wrote, “that I could not see how prayer meetings, carried on without any regular system, without a liturgy, or without the celebration of sacraments, could be in any way detrimental to the interest or tranquility of the established ministry. Either the established minister receives his authority from men or from God. If he receives it from men, we have no occasion to respect it as divine. If he receives it from God, let him prove that he does so, by respecting all that God does to promote the advancement of His heavenly kingdom, and not arrogate himself the right of prescribing to God the means He is to use for the accomplishment of this purpose.”

Ill health forced Felix Neff to leave the Jura without delay. In Neuchatel, opposition to his reunions caused him to record in his diary, "Jan.10, 1821. Permission to remain till 5th of April; many are hungry, but Government tolerates me, and the Lord has opened many hearts.”

A providence brought him to the notice of M. Blanc, pastor of Mens, in France. An interview was arranged, and Neff observed,“I informed him that I never pursued any regular course of study and that I should certainly never be ordained at Geneva. He did not seem to think the worse of me for this and invited me to visit him at Mens. He even would like me to pass some months there, in the absence of his colleague.”

At twenty-four years of age, Neff left his native Switzerland for France, where the few Protestants were poorly provided with clergy. He labored for six months as an assistant to a pastor in Genoble, using the same methods of reunions. Of these Neff writes,
“I am more and more convinced that these reunions are a very efficacious means of promoting practical piety. They encourage mutual confidence, humility, simplicity and brotherly love. I know by experience that the dead and lifeless state of which we all complain is occasioned by our own fault. We either do not pray, or we are not persevering and assiduous in prayer. Our heart being naturally at a distance from God, it is not a single step that will bring us next to Him, neither will a few minutes of cold prayer suffice to support our souls.”

In 1822, the young evangelist removed to Mens and assisted M. Blanc in instructing the catechumens, who numbered seventy. Once a week the young assistant visited them, only one-fifth of whom resided at Mens, the remainder being scattered in twenty different villages in almost impassable country. He was very disappointed to discover “not one single ripe ear of corn” in so large a harvest field and bemoaned the worldly spirit which predominated.
“There is little spiritual life in this place,” he wrote, “and even B. himself, I cannot help thinking, seems too well satisfied that he is a Protestant and to be content with that. I perceive he is afraid I should establish prayer meetings, for he often talks to me of the danger of innovations, and of going too far. I am, however, thankful that he approves of the true and wholesome doctrines of the Gospel, and I trust that the Lord will yet further open his eyes. Invited into society, I hear nothing but worldly conversation, for B. never introduces religious subjects, except for the purpose of controversy.”

NeffÂ’s courageous and faithful teaching began to reap results. Some striking cases of deep conviction, culminating in salvation, encouraged the evangelist. Something akin to a revival took place affecting a large area.

There were disheartening set-backs. A long letter from a minister in Geneva to M. Blanc, delineating NeffÂ’s faults and short-comings, warned the Pastor to take care of wolves in sheepÂ’s clothing. Then the absent minister, for whom Neff had acted as substitute, returned and sought reinstatement. Some reluctance among the people to do this resulted in party spirit, the minister openly misrepresenting Felix Neff and deriding his rigid sentiments. This influenced some who had given bright promise. About one hundred families, fearing that their faithful catechist would leave them, offered to raise a stipend for him. These considered him a saint, but their praise wounded Neff quite as much as had the misrepresentations.

M. Blanc was very tolerant of this young assistant to whom he would at times unburden his heart. Even the reproofs Neff administered from time to time were received in a gracious manner, for M. Blanc had come to know the sterling worth of the young man, who was undeterred by inclement weather and who never thought of himself.

Summing up Neff’s ministry in Mens, Blanc wrote, “during his residence among us of nearly two years, he was instrumental in effecting the greatest good. Zeal for religion increased; many people were brought seriously to think of their immortal souls; the Bible was more deeply searched and carefully read; the catechumens were better informed in their Christian duties and showed improvement by their conduct; family worship was established in many houses; the love of luxury and vanity greatly diminished; schools were established; a visible improvement had taken place in the manners and industrious habits of our Protestants."

“Gifted with great natural abilities, especially with an unusual degree of eloquence and, having his heart warmed with love of his Savior, he preached several times in the course of a day, but never repeated the same discourse.”

In order to be more acceptable to the church in France, Neff sought ordination. But he could not receive it there, because of his irregular studies. So he applied to a body of pastors of the Independent congregations in England who acceded to his request. Upon his return from England, Neff was to learn that suspicions regarding his being ordained abroad had spread. He was misrepresented as a hidden enemy with foreign religious connections who was disseminating new doctrines. The local magistrate had had the reunions misrepresented to him and requested that these be discontinued, so Neff looked elsewhere for a field of labor. He preached his farewell sermon on, “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom.”

Turning his thoughts to the High Alps, Neff wrote,“Among the Alps I should be the sole pastor. In the south, I should be surrounded by pastors, many of them on good terms with the world and should be constantly annoyed.”

After much difficulty as to naturalization and a permit to labor, the ardent evangelist finally, at the age of twenty-six began the work for which he is most remembered. For a few years, in order to feed the scattered flock of God, he constantly traveled back and forth over the dangerous passes of the highest and coldest parish in all France.

One of his journeys, described in his journal, will give us some conception of the travel difficulties. The day was stormy, and the villagers entreated the young minister not to cross the Col in such weather. But Neff, feeling he must preach at Dormilleuse at the appointed time, procured a guide and, armed with a large stick, approached the mountain.

“It requires the pen of a poet to describe the awful and magnificent scenery,” he writes. “We were knee deep in snow. A storm of hail, driven by a sharp wind, accompanied the repeated claps of thunder, and the rolling of the avalanches falling from the highest rocks. The lightning flashed above and below us, and the drifts of snow threatened to overwhelm us."

“Happily, all this storm was at our backs, and there was a precipice near us. We, therefore, were in no real danger. At last we reached the Col, where we found snow three feet deep and the wind insupportable. We arrived at the descent, and I then dismissed my guide and continued to descend, still up to my knees in snow. A fog arose, and I could just see the points of the rocks gilded with the rays of the sun. I then sang a few verses of the ‘Te Deum’ and, quickening my pace, I discovered the tracks of some sheep driven into the valley by the snow. I arrived by daylight at Dormilleuse, where they were not a little surprised to see me.”

In a letter to a friend, he describes the historical and moral setting of the people among whom he worked.“This village (Dormilleuse), the highest in the valley of Freyssinieres, is celebrated for the stout resistance which its inhabitants, for more than sixty years, have made against the encroachments of the Church of Rome. They are the lineal, unadulterated descendants of the Vaudois and never bowed their knees to Baal."

“The remains of forts and walls, which they had built to prevent the enemy from surprising them are still to be seen. And the almost inaccessible nature of their country was also a great means of their preservation. The population of this village is entirely Protestant, as well as that of the other villages of the valley. The aspect of this country, at once dreadful and sublime, which afforded a shelter to truth while the rest of the world lay in darkness; the recollection of those ancient and faithful martyrs, whose blood even now stains the rocks; the deep caverns whither they retired to read the Scriptures and to worship the Father of light in spirit and in truth – all tend to elevate the soul and excite feelings and emotions impossible to describe."

“But these thoughts soon give place to grief, when the mind’s eye rests on the present condition of the descendants of those ancient witnesses of the crucified Jesus. They are degenerated in every sense of the word. And their state reminds the Christian that sin and death are all that the sons of Adam can really bequeath to their descendants. And, alas, that inheritance is inalienable."

“A great respect for the Scripture is, nevertheless, kept up amongst them, and we must hope that they are still ‘beloved for their fathers’ sakes,’ and that the Lord will again cause His face to shine upon that place, which He chose for His sanctuary."

“The work of an evangelist in High Alps greatly resembles that of a missionary among the savages; the almost equal degree of uncivilization that prevails among them both, being a great obstacle to missionary labors. Among the valleys, under my charge, that of Freyssinieres is the most backward. Architecture, agriculture, education of every sort is in its very earliest infancy."

“Many houses are without chimneys, and many without windows. All the family, during the seven winter months, stow themselves into the stable, which is only cleaned once a year. Their dress and food are equally coarse and unwholesome. Their bread, which is made once a year, consists of the coarsest rye. If any of them are ill, they have no doctor, and no one to administer either medicine or sick food. The invalid may think himself happy if he can obtain a draught of water."

“The women are harshly treated, as among people still in a barbarous state. They seldom sit down, but generally kneel or crouch down. They never sit at table or eat with the men, who give them a piece of bread over their shoulder without looking around – a miserable pittance, which they receive with a low reverence, kissing the hand of the giver."

“The inhabitants of these melancholy villages were so wild, when I first came among them that, at the sight of a stranger, even a peasant, they would run away into their huts. The people participated in the general corruption, as far as poverty would permit. Gambling, dancing, swearing, quarrelling are to be met with here as elsewhere."

“There is scarcely a house that is proof against the snow drifts and pieces of falling rock. I conceived a peculiar affection for this valley and felt an ardent desire to become, as it were, an Oberlin to the poor people. Unfortunately, I was not able to spend more than a week with them in the course of a month.”

Felix Neff, in his short period of service, helped to build schools and temples for worship. He also taught improved methods of potato culture and introduced irrigation, assisting in its construction. He founded schools and secured teachers, but it was for the spiritual reviving of this people that he travailed.
A genuine movement of the Spirit was noticed when he visited Freyssinieres. It seemed as though the whole valley had assembled, and a solemnity and awe rested upon the entire congregation. Passing on to other villages, he witnessed still further proofs of a moving of the Spirit.

“All the people seemed to give themselves up to reading, meditation and prayer; the young people especially seemed animated by a holy spirit; a heavenly flame appeared to have communicated itself from one to another. I had scarcely thirty hours’ rest during the week."

“I am struck with astonishment at the apparent suddenness of this awakening. I could scarcely believe my senses. Even the rocks, the cascades and the ice seemed inspired with life and offered up to my eye a less dismal and gloomy prospect than formerly. This wild country has become dear and delightful to me, now that it has become the habitation of Christian brethren.”

The exertions of this lowly ambassador of Christ had taken a heavy toll. Writing in his journal, he remarks,

“My constant Alpine journeys were both painful and dangerous, on account of the severity of the winter. Constant internal pains and indigestion obliged me to observe an abstinence but ill-suited to the fatigue and cold to which I was exposed. My stomach sensibly weakened by the coarse food and irregularity of my meals, and perhaps in some degree, too, by the uncleanliness of the cookery utensils used in this country. I soon perceived that it was absolutely necessary to seek medical assistance – assistance which, with all their good will, these poor mountaineers could not procure me.”

In 1827, at only twenty-nine years of age, the sick man left his beloved people for Geneva. For the first few months of rest, he rallied so much that people did not believe him to be ill. But a relapse set in toward spring. It altered him so much that old friends scarcely knew him, and strangers took his mother for his wife, although she was sixty-seven.
As the untiring worker now reviewed his years of labor, he could see how he had overstrained his body by incessant labors.

“This interruption of my activity is a trial I well deserve. I often feared, in the midst of my greatest vigor, that I placed too much confidence in my strength and pleased myself too much in a power of action which nothing seemed capable of interrupting or wearying. Thus I ran the risk of one day being deprived of it, for the sake of my spiritual good.”

How often in those days of enforced rest he longed to be back in the High Alps.
“In spirit,” he wrote, “I often revisit your valleys and long to be able to endure cold and fatigue, to sleep in a stable on a bed of straw, in order to proclaim the Word of God. My words have often wearied you, and my plainness of speech has often offended you, and many of you saw me depart with joy. But were I still amongst you, I should not change my language. Truth is unchangeable. I should still entreat you, in the name of Jesus to be reconciled to God.”

No murmur was heard to pass his lips during those long, long months of illness. During the last weeks of his life, he endured agony and could not bear reading or receiving visitors. He was heard to whisper, “Victory, victory, victory in Jesus Christ,” as the end approached. Felix Neff then passed from the scene of his short labors to receive the Master’s “Well done.”

What was the secret of this young man’s endurance under such hardship, toil and misunderstanding? Early in his Christian life, he had understood that going “without the camp” is the lot of every dedicated Christian. He had armed his mind with the thought that we must fill up the sufferings of Christ.

Writing in all frankness to his close friend, M. Blanc, he reveals his inner attitude toward this subject.

“I have often told you why you find it so difficult to endure the hatred, contempt and perfidy of the world. It is because you cannot bring yourself to believe that thus it must be, and that this continual struggle is inseparable from the Gospel. It is because, on entering the ministry, you did not take this into consideration, but rather reckoned on the esteem of men, on worldly ease and comfort. My case is different."

“When my eyes first opened to the bright light of the Gospel, it was a critical moment, and I saw nothing but the rage and fury of the wolf against the sheep of the Good Shepherd. I now think nothing of the little contradiction I meet with. Nevertheless, I wish not to boast, for if, by the grace of God, I have some strength, I have but little in comparison with other laborers a thousand times more faithful than I am. And besides, I have so many causes for humiliation that I must be worse than a fool to esteem myself on any account."

“He Who came to open the kingdom of heaven to us was far from having His earthly path strewed with roses and met with but little honor and respect."

“Do not, I entreat you, talk of ‘an end of all this,’ of ‘Satan being conquered,’ etc. Either lay down your arms and submit at once to the enemy, or make up your mind to a life of warfare. If outward peace were to be granted you, I should fear that spiritual life would soon expire. Perfect peace in this world is death to the new man. For our flesh – no peace, no repose, no honor, no esteem.”

Quotations By Felix Neff

“Abide in me. It is not given to any creature to have life in itself. It is only in proportion as Christ dwells in us, and we in Him, that we have any real life in us."

“To those whose spiritual life has gradually become feeble and languishing, I say without hesitation that this evil arises from their neglect of prayer and meditation. They are content to know these things without practicing them. They speak of the grace of God, but they seek it not. They know Jesus Christ, but they do not cultivate a close communion with Him. They are not sufficiently Christians in private. They do not seek Christ in their closets."

“The source of life is not in ourselves. It is in God and in proportion as we neglect to apply to this source, by prayer, reading and medication, we shall become dry and unfruitful; just as a meadow in a sandy soil, and exposed to the sun would languish and fade for want of water.”

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The name Baedeker brings before one’s inner vision the red covered handbooks that are the indispensable accompaniment of the tourist in Europe. But there was another Baedeker who himself was a guide to heavenly lands as well as an indefatigable traveler on earth. This was Dr. Frederick W. Baedeker, pioneer evangelist and colporteur throughout the Russian Empire and the Near East.

His father was a scientist without Christian interests. Baedeker entered the Prussian army but his health prevented a military career. Then he studied in universities, taking his doctor’s degree at Bonn. There followed travel, teaching in Australia and England, and finally conversion in one of Lord Radstock’s meetings. "I came in a proud German infidel. I went out a humble, believing disciple of the Lord. God be praised!"

With his conversion came a wonderful healing. He who for years had been in delicate health, who hardly dared to go on a walk with his wife because of heart weakness, who was thought of by all his relatives as a candidate for death, threw away his medicine, forgot his pains, and drew new strength out of service for Christ, a service uninterrupted for forty years by any serious sickness. He trusted the Lord for bodily as well as for spiritual strength. On his deathbed he was far more concerned with the spiritual state of his attendant than with his own bodily condition. He died at the age of eighty-three, but even in his last years he visited the Continent on Gospel errands. If ever there was an internationalist, it was Dr. Baedeker. He could be found preaching in the great hall of an Austrian castle; in Smyrna among crowds of Greeks, Jews, and Turks; speaking to Socialists in Munich or Zurich.

In 1877, he left England for three years of preaching and Bible distribution in Russia. By a fortunate happening he was able to secure special privileges and for eighteen years was the only person who had the right to visit the prisons of Russia – all of them – from Warsaw to Saghalien. This pass was renewed every two years, usually with some extension of privileges. When the government learned that he paid his own expenses on these journeys it made reductions on his railroad fares and Bible freights, which reductions were later given to the agents of the Bible societies. For it was Dr. Baedeker who really broke the way for the Bible colporteurs in Russia. Yet it may be added, as illustrative of the contradictions of Russian life, that he was constantly under the observation of spies in streets, hotels, and in his meetings.

Dr. Baedeker was at first associated with Col. Pashkoff, a rich nobleman and officer of the Imperial Guard, who was ultimately banished from Russia for preaching the Gospel. On one occasion Baedeker was asked to preach to a convention of Stundists that Col. Pashkoff had organized in St. Petersburg, hiring himself a large hotel to house them for a week. The traveling equipment of these saints was a comb and a spoon, both of which they put in their boots. Four hundred appeared, and there were wonderful meetings. After some days, Pashkoff went to the meeting place (it was in the Princess Lieven’s palace) but after long waiting no one turned up. The hotel, too, was found to be empty. The next day, however, one of the company appeared. He explained that the entire four hundred had been arrested and taken to the Peter-Paul Fortress and examined. They were accused of revolutionary opinions but explained that the only revolution they were engaged in was in human hearts. So the authorities put them on trains with tickets, each to his own home. One, however, had the presence of mind to take his ticket to a station near by and thus was able to return with an explanation.

Baedeker was one of the greatest distributors of the Word of all time. The extensive journeys of John Wesley were, in distance, provincial beside the vast Gospel wanderings of Dr. Baedeker. "A sower went forth to sow." One finds in his journals constant entries such as, "I have sent seventeen Bible chests by land and four by sea." The numerous and crowded prisons of Russia made an especial appeal to him. "Few have any idea of what a large proportion of the people in many lands are kept behind iron bars like wild animals and in chains." He always traveled unarmed even in sparsely settled eastern Siberia where travelers were subjected to many perils and hardships. He was ever in great danger from sickness. Yet he went uninjured in and about the crowded hospitals in which the stench of the most dangerous diseases fouled the air. He stood in the sign of the Ninety-first Psalm. He speaks of the odors, the vermin, the prison brutality which made that of Tobolsk, for example, indescribable. The head physician had had typhus sixteen times in thirteen years. Consumption and smallpox were common. "I make many a good catch in the dark stream of the prisons," he once wrote. But it was souls he caught, not sickness.

The most desperate prisoners were those of the great eastern Asiatic island of Saghalien, branded on the forehead and cheek, with head half-shaven, and loaded with chains. These criminals he evangelized, preaching to twenty in one room while the chains clanked incessantly. In Kicheneff, he visited the underground dungeons, damp, cold and verminous. In the Kabarowka prison he discovered a Christian brother who had been there for two and a half years and whose only offense had been that of speaking against ikons. Dr. Baedeker sought such out in the dark holes and corners, easing their chains and pouring in oil and wine. He wrote of two Christians who, when they were arrested, had their own clothes taken from them. The prison warden pointed out to them a pile of old prison garments, foul with seat and lice and stench which they were ordered to put on. One old Christian grandmother whom Baedeker met had been sent through eleven prisons! Some were sentenced for life for not having accepted absolution from the priests. Others, having served out a five-year term, expressed their joy that it was now up. They were ordered to remain another five years "because they appeared not to have been changed by their first five years of internment."

Baedeker went hundreds of miles through Siberian forests without meeting a single face. On these journeys, tea and bread were his diet for weeks, with now and then an egg or a little milk. Of one remote place in Siberia, he said: "Hard treatment and isolation have turned the unlucky exiles into veritable demons. They shoot without notice any whose clothing or few pence they may wish. They say, ‘It pays better to shoot a man than a guard. Kill the guard and you get a few coppers; kill a man and you get his clothes.’" The guard told Dr. Baedeker that they had twice raised their guns to shoot him. His only answer was "These people need the Gospel terribly, and I am going to them." And go he did and had successful meetings.

On another occasion he was lost with his Armenian guide in the forests of the Caucasus and barely escaped. He had other Pauline experiences. Once he was chased by a ferocious dog and fell. The dog sniffed him from head to foot, finally leaving him unbitten. This dog was of a specially fierce breed and was used to keep off strangers from a piece of land. Even in the cultivated cities, his life was endangered. In Zurich, the Freethinkers threatened to throw him into the Lake of Zurich; in Dresden-Alstadt he nearly lost his life when preaching. In Basel he was stoned when speaking on the streets; in Gernsbach he was mobbed.

At times there were large ingatherings of souls following meetings. In the Caucasus people came to Christ by the hundreds. At times he would be awakened from his sleep, or even called from a sick bed, to speak. In a village near Schemacha, when those who wanted Christ were asked to stand, the whole meeting arose and the people looked at each other in astonishment. On one journey from the Urals to the Pacific, he distributed twelve thousand copies of the Word of God and preached the Gospel to more than forty thousand prisoners. When he had finished this tour he sailed down the Amur, which divides China from Russia. "Four days I had China on my right and Russia on my left and sent up many prayers for China and Russia.

"Yesterday we had ‘hard labor’ in the great prison," he wrote on one occasion. "We worked as long as we could, went through all the cells, talked with everybody, and gave a book to every prisoner who could read."

For fifteen years he toiled incessantly in this prison visitation. The mere labor of walking through these long corridors, the drain on his sympathies, the many conversations, would have worn down any who had not meat to eat which most men know nothing of. "To visit prisons and serve the poor souls who are in the terrible night of sin and darkness is truly better for me than angels’ food."

Count Tolstoi knew of Dr. Baedeker’s ministry in the prisons and caricatured it in his novel, Resurrection. Tolstoi was in the first part of his life, as he tells us, a worldling, gambler, and indefatigable debauchee. Then came a change which at least made him decent. But it was a change that did not reach the heart of the Gospel. Naturally then the great writer had little sympathy for the great evangelist offering a great salvation. When the two met, Tolstoi asked Dr. Baedeker his purpose in coming to Russia.

"To preach the Gospel in the prisons," replied Baedeker.

"There should be no prisons," retorted Tolstoi.

"So long as there is sin in the world there will be also prisons," was the evangelist’s quiet answer.

"There should be no sin in the world," returned Tolstoi.

"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Baedeker.

"I mean that if people were rightly taught there would be no sin," replied the Count.

Dr. Baedeker quoted Luke 11:21-22: "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted."

"What is that taken from?" inquired Tolstoi with curiosity.

"From the Scripture," came the reply. "There is one stronger than we – the evil one – against whom we are helpless. My message to the prisoners of Russia and to sinners everywhere is that there is a Stronger One still Who is able to free the prisoners and slaves of Satan and to change them into holy and beloved children of God."

From The Book, Protestant Saints, By: Ernest B. Gordon

Of an English family with great traditions was Commander Booth-Tucker. His Devon forbears sailed with Sir Francis Drake and a long line of Tuckers distinguished themselves in army and navy. His grandfather was chairman of the Court of East India Company, an office of almost regal character. Tuckers were judges and administrators and soldiers in the British Raj, and when the mutiny burst on Hindustan they proved their English courage in many a desperate situation. Frederick Tucker entered the English service as naturally as an eaglet takes to the air, and before him stretched a rosy vista of rank and honors and income.

Then came Mr. Moody, holding meetings in Islington, and Tucker made his surrender.

He was not content with a passive and silent Christianity. As soon as he was back in India his bungalow became a center for prayer-meetings. He spoke at crossroads, he preached to British troops in their cantonments. He made evangelistic tours through the villages. The authorities were ill at ease at the news. They objected to an English official in the Civil Service playing the role of missionary in spare hours. It would irritate both Hindu and Moslem and bring the ruling race into disrepute. While the correspondence was passing between the government in Simla and its preaching official, news came in the press of the rise of a strange, new religious organization. It was called the Salvation Army. Tucker heard of it and made a mental note. “Here are the people I have been seeking,” he said to himself, and straightway took the P. and O. steamer to London to inquire more fully about them. The upshot was that he resigned his post in the Civil Service, together with all prospect of emolument, and ranged himself with these humblest of the humble. His father, in anger, threatened to cut him off from his inheritance.

His life became one of great self-abnegation, and when at last he died he left less than two hundred pounds. He signed the exacting Salvation Army articles, pledging himself to give his whole time to the Army and to have no other gainful occupation unless one in which all profit should go to the Army. Under these same articles he had agreed to devote not less than nine hours a day to active Army service, to obey orders, to have no permanent home, but to accept any place assigned to him.

He was almost foreordained to pioneer Army work in India. The headquarters staff on Queen Victoria Street, London, could give him a mere beggarly one hundred pounds for this advance movement.

He adopted native dress, lived on native food, took a native name, traveled as deck passenger and in crowded third-class compartments. When he first went out, his little group went into the forecastle. At Bombay they were met by the police on the dock. For an Englishman, member of a famous Anglo-Indian family, to travel thus and to begin his operations by handing out little books in the street like a beggar, outraged the feelings of the Bombay authorities. The party was arrested and fined; their goods were seized to pay the fine; but the kindly superintendent of police bought in the poor possessions for a hundred rupees and then presented them back to “the Army.”

Certainly the word “Army” was never applied to a more helpless and inoffensive band.

The eighteenth-century Moravians constituted perhaps the most remarkable and most self-denying missionary group of modern times. They went to remote lands and to trying climates but they lived in substantial homes and followed a hygienic fashion of life.

The Salvation Army officers in India were more ascetic in their ideal. God fulfills Himself in many ways. Yet commander Booth-Tucker felt that the manner of life he and his followers adopted was not so unwholesome as might first seem. “We find we can work just as hard as on English food. We have got officers who have lived on it for years and are enjoying even better health than many who have eaten English food all the time. Common mud huts are much more suitable for our purposes than the bungalows in which the English live. The mendicant is admired and even worshiped in India. Hence they do not object to the Salvationists begging their food.”

Tucker endured all the privations of this strange life. He wandered from village to village, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion, preaching Christ. For bedding he had sacking, for clothing the turban and the dhoty of the native, for provision the bowl with which he asked for food. The pair were invited in by householders of all classes. For they were now no longer sahibs but men of the country. Sometimes, though rarely, the villagers like those of Samaria, turned against him and even refused him drinking water. Near one such inhospitable hamlet he laid himself down to sleep under a tree. The natives crept out to examine his feet, knowing that when an Englishman’s feet were footsore from the hot sands no punishment was worse. They were touched by his condition, gave him food and invited him to speak to them. A great spiritual awakening started from this village and now there are twenty-five thousand Salvationists in Gujarat. “So I preached my best sermon in my sleep,” said the Commissioner quaintly.

On another occasion he started for Ceylon with money enough to pay his fare and no more. A fellow Salvationist had a few biscuits. He was a deck passenger. The Moslem firemen invited him to eat with them, begging him to talk with them for they recognized in him a man of God.

As time went on, the Army grew in strength. In 1886, forty officers volunteered for India. They traveled in the Clan Ogilvey (the entire passenger accommodation having been reserved for them) spending their time in prayer and Bible and language study. The late Charles T. Studd, another of MoodyÂ’s converts, then working as a missionary in China, sent his check for five thousand pounds, a gift that enabled the Army to purchase its Bombay headquarters. The Salvationists did not scatter their men but went in bands of forty or fifty preaching Christ. They refused to argue and gave purely positive testimony to the Cross. The Commissioner and his wife went about India conducting melas, or congresses, at which any number up to fifteen thousand might gather, the outcasts sitting in the middle.

Tucker was what the Hindus call a Mabap (“father and mother”) to thousands of Hindus. His heart went out to them in their poverty and daily struggles. As a prophylactic against recurring famine, he introduced the cassava from which tapioca comes. It grows where grain will not grow and at half the cost. He did much to stimulate silk culture. He established village banks to fight usury. He organized various colonies and agitated for an arbor day in which treeplanting might be general. He labored for the establishment of hospitals and dispensaries, for an improved sanitation, for the sinking of wells. He took up the cause of the poor whites of India, of stranded seamen and soldiers, opening homes for them and reforming many.

His special interest in these lines was the reformation of the “crim.” India is overrun with roving criminal tribes whose guerilla-pillaging baffles the efforts of the one hundred fifty thousand police and the seven hundred thousand village watchmen. These people meet power with cunning. They utilize the railway in their rapid raids, the post office for transmitting their loot. Locating themselves on the boundaries of the different states and provinces, they pass rapidly from one to another, disconcerting the authorities. They have chains of connecting posts from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. Their secret wayside marks give them an almost free-masonic aid in their operations. Among these tribes are thugs and dacoits who specialize in bloodshed; also such quaint groups as the Yricilas who are adept in slitting the ears of sleeping women in order to steal their heavy gold, jewel studded earrings. They use blades so fine and sharp that they can slit the ears without waking the women.

The government of India asked the Salvation Army to undertake the reformation of certain of these tribes. They began with the Doms of Gorukhpur – violent, licentious people and inveterate gamblers. At the head of the Dom settlement were placed a devoted European Salvationist officer and wife, with an assisting corps of carefully picked native officers. The Doms were housed, fed, and put to work at weaving, farming, forestry. Each evening they had to answer their names at the roll call and if not present were searched after until found. Then came a Salvationist meeting with much music. The people had to keep themselves clean. The reports of this wonderful place spread among the Doms, and more applications for admission were made than could be complied with. “If you cannot take us in, at least let us live under the shadow of your power,” pleaded those shut out. High officials, commissioners, inspectors, and superintendents of police visited the place and marveled at the transformation.

From Gorukphur the work spread. By 1916 there were twelve purely agricultural settlements in operation with tracts of land amounting to six thousand eight hundred acres. There were sixteen other settlements where agriculture and industry were combined; there were also homes for released prisoners, for criminal boys, and for the children of the criminal tribes.

It would be hard to find a man better furnished to give advice regarding the general situation in India than was Booth-Tucker. He knew the British government in India and considered it “the best government in the world.” He knew the Indian people and loved them. He could say of them, “A more beautiful set of people I have not met in the world.” And one of the most delightful pictures of him is that of his opening the car window, when his train stopped at stations, to chat in the proper vernacular to any Indians who happened to gather near him.

He foresaw the present upheaval in India and warned the government to take measures in time to pacify and satisfy the masses. In 1919, he was asked to give testimony before a governmental commission. His suggestions were poles away from the revolutionary proceedings of Gandhi and the Babus. He pleaded for the cause of the villages and of the depressed classes, “the sheet anchor,” as he said, “of the British government.” He urged better and more wells in the villages, afforestation with quick growing trees to supply fuel and thus prevent the burning of cow dung, so needed for fertilizer. He urged that the villages be supplied with simple medicines, that a village newspaper like Arthur Mee’s Children’s Newspaper be started to give the masses honest information, free from disintegrating and disloyal propaganda. He recognized the evil that destruction of village industries had brought and urged that India be made the great silk-producing country of the world. He also insisted that the British officials ought to learn to speak in public in order to exert a quieting influence on the people. He would have them meet in friendly conference for the discussion of grievances and remedies. His were the wise suggestions of the experienced proconsul that he was by family inheritance, touched with the friendliness and practicality that long years of association with the masses added thereto.

Joseph R. Chambers

No little stir was occasioned in Mulheim when the young merchant Gerhard Tersteegen, retired from his business and took up lodgings in an isolated cottage, in order to search after God. For some years his relatives and friends left the youthful twenty-two year old to his odd quest. Another young man, many hundreds of years before him, had retired from his active life in the city of Jerusalem to the Arabian desert, where he too was to be initiated into the deep things of God. And Gerhard Tersteegen, like St. Paul, was to share the secrets that he learned in his "Arabia", with the sin-burdened and the sorrowing, the hungry and dissatisfied souls. These yearned for soul-food instead of the intellectual rationalizing of formal ministry.

Gerhard would have given as his reason for this escape from social and business contacts, the conviction that his barque was too frail to successfully outride the currents of the world about him. His seven brothers and sisters, save one who had entered the ministry, were intent upon making money. When this youngest member of their family turned his back upon good business opportunities, to live simply and frugally they were chagrined that his name was not mentioned among them. When his mother died, he was not invited to the gathering where the family divided the assets.

The young man’s father, Heinrich Tersteegen, died when the child was very small. He was a pious merchant and a member of the Reformed Church. Letters found after his death, revealed that he had been in touch with the spiritual movement, gathering momentum at that time. Gerhard was born in Mohr in the valley of the Rhine in 1697, just six years prior to the advent of John Wesley into Epworth Rectory in England.

Germany at the time of Tersteegen’s birth, was still suffering from the devastation which resulted from the thirty years struggle between the Protestants and Catholics. Twelve million of her population had perished during this period of bloodshed. Whole villages had been pillaged and burned; fields and orchards lay waste. In Leipsig, in 1686, not a single Bible or New Testament could be found in any bookseller’s shop. The Reformed Church had come to be designated the "Deformed Church" and the Lutheran Church had succumbed to dead rites and ceremonies until those who sought to revive the spiritual life were accounted heretics.

God had His witnesses, however, — torches alight with divine fire, who were to illumine this darkness. Labardie, Spener, Hockmann and others sought to rouse the apathetic populace to a sense of need. They strove to transfer religion from the icy region of the head to the warmer clime of the heart, and went everywhere seeking to form a Church within the Church by instituting prayer meetings and Bible studies.

Thee messengers proclaimed four distinguishing doctrines:

1. Self-renunciation – the complete giving up of self-will to the will of God.
2. The continuous activity of the Spirit of God in all believers, and the intimate union possible between God and man.
3. The worthlessness of all religion based upon fear or hope of reward.
4. The essential equality of laity and clergy, though for the sake of order and discipline the organization of the church was necessary.

Mulheim (home of the mill) had been one of the centers from which this spiritual blessing had radiated. Labardie had taken up his residence here, and had laboured for its welfare. William Hoffman, a deeply spiritual young theological student, who was to influence Gerhard, also resided there. He favoured the cause of the Pietists and so was suspected by the churchmen who feared he would draw away members from the church.

In the providence of God, Mulheim was to be the home of Gerhard for most of his life. But we must go back to the young man’s early career in order to trace his footsteps thither. Having finished grammar school, where he had distinguished himself by studious habits and a natural aptitude for languages, he was forced to give up thoughts of furthering his education. The straitened circumstances of his widowed mother made such a course impossible, and so it was that he became apprenticed to his brother-in-law who was a merchant in this mill town.

These were hard years for the young lad. His employer was rigid in his discipline and had little sympathy for the boy’s meditative and studious disposition. The few hours he craved for study were denied him, and he was asked to roll empty casks backwards and forwards across the courtyard when no duties were required to be done. But Gerhard had little taste for keeping accounts, writing business letters and selling goods. He was, however, very grateful in after years for the disciplinary value of this training.

It was during this interval of apprenticeship that Gerhard came to know the pardoning grace of God. Numbers of forces had been at work in his young life. A godly weaver residing in Mulheim did much to influence him. The conventicles held in the district were attended by him, and it was perhaps here that he was awakened, under the preaching of William Hoffman, to a sense of deep dissatisfaction. Conscience-stricken, Gerhard would go about his toil, waiting for the time when he could snatch a few minutes for prayer. Whole nights he engaged in his search, and his groans and tears were heard in the courts of Heaven. Although Hoffman pointed the youth to the Rest-giver, it was not until passing through the woods of Duisburg on a long journey, when the young apprentice, gripped with pain and fever and fearing he would die unprepared, met God. His pain and fever vanished, and he rose with a heart overflowing with gratitude toward God Whom he wished to serve devotedly. Of this time he wrote: "I heartily rejoice, whenever I see a prodigal son coming to himself, and arising to go to his Father. I also was a swineherd once, and when, after a thousand threatenings and invitations, I came at length, as I was, to become what I was not, I needed only to beg and wait a little while. I was infinitely more graciously received, than I could have hoped or expected."

For several years after serving his apprenticeship, the young man ventured forth in business on his own. But he had little relish for the avaricious, competitive world of commerce. A godly merchant offered to teach him linen-weaving, but the work proved too heavy, occasioning severe headaches. Instead he took up ribbon-weaving in his rented lodgings where he could work with his Bible open before him, enjoying the uninterrupted hours of quiet. He laboured long at his weaving, eating but one meal a day and seeing no one save the small girl who came to wind his silk. Under cover of darkness, he would visit the sick and poor, giving liberally what he could ill afford of his scanty means. In a letter years later, he reminisces on some of his experiences as illness struck his weakened frame. "I have known the time when I knew not where I should find food for the next day, and was without a friend who was acquainted with my situation. I was at work from five in the morning til nine in the evening, and occasionally I lay ten or twelve weeks in bed on the loft, without those with whom I lodged giving themselves the trouble to send one of their none-too-busy servants to give me a drink of water. But I always thought there was a necessity for this."

For five long years, the young recluse experienced great darkness as the sense of God’s approval was withdrawn. He seemed assailed by doubts as to whether God even existed, as he observed the fanaticism into which many professed followers were drawn. The divisions which rent the church distressed him, as well as the apostasy of some who had once experienced divine favour. Although he read some of the deepest spiritual books, he was only confused by the varied opinions and the deep mazes of thought. He abandoned Behman’s books for, said he, "Read them till I was filled with strange fears and bewilderment. At last I took the books back to their owner, and it was like a weight lifted off my heart."

Some of Tersteegen’s biographers hint that the five years of darkness may have been occasioned by his secluding himself instead of sharing his newly-found faith. The mature man of God, looking back on those years, felt such an experience was invaluable.

"Our Lord Jesus was silent and kept Himself concealed for thirty years, in order that by His example, He might inspire us with a fondness for a truly retired life, and scarcely did He spend four years in a public manner. I often think, if we that are awakened, would endure only four years of probation, in silent mortification and prayer, before we shewed ourselves publicly, our subsequent activity would be a little purer, and less injurious to the kingdom of God. This is a secret, but common temptation of the enemy, and a subtle device of the flesh, by which the tempter seeks to allure us from the one thing needful, and to weaken our strength by the multiplicity of the objects in which we are engaged. But the flesh and its progeny, which finds a life of mortification too strait for it, and too disagreeable, may breathe very easily, and even maintain itself, in every outward spiritual and apparently profitable exercise, whilst in the meantime the mystery of iniquity at the bottom, remains unperceived and unmortified."

It was just the day before Good Friday, that the twenty-seven year old seeker entered into an enlarged place, the cries and entreaties of the past years being abundantly answered. He came to realize that the life of crucifixion with Christ was not to be one he could learn by instruction save by that of the Holy Spirit.

"It is a small thing with Him to cause us to find in our souls in one moment without trouble, that which we may have sought externally for years with much labour."

The long night of darkness and uncertainty was past. While journeying to another city, the Savior, as the all-sufficient One, appeared to the young man and rose upon his horizon like the day-star from on high.

"It was as if a sick child were alone, and far away in the dark night, when suddenly the door was opened, and father and mother and all the loved ones came in, and the long, lonely hours were over, and all was love."

There by the roadside, Tersteegen dedicated himself to the Lord. He was lifted on to a new plane where God was henceforth the One and only Good. He had learned that "Jesus alone is sufficient, but yet insufficient, when He is not wholly and solely embraced." Returning from his journey, he sat down in the quiet of his own room and wrote out a covenant of love with blood drawn from his own veins.

"My Jesus, I own myself to be Thine, my only Savior and Bridegroom. Christ Jesus, I am Thine wholly and eternally. From this evening onward, I renounce from my heart all right and authority that Satan unrighteously gave me over myself. From this evening – the evening on which Thou, my Bridegroom, through Thy precious blood, didst purchase me for Thyself, agonising even unto death, praying till Thy sweat was as it were blood falling to the ground, that I might be Thy treasure and Thy bride—Thou hast burst the gates of hell and opened to me the loving heart of the Father! From this evening onward my heart and all my love are offered up to Thee in eternal thankfulness."

"From this evening, to all eternity, Thy will, not mine, be done! Command and rule and reign in me. I yield myself up without reserve, and I promise, with Thy help and power, rather to give up the last drop of this my blood than knowingly and willingly, in my heart or in my life, be untrue or disobedient to Thee. Behold, Thou hast me wholly and completely, sweet Friend of my soul. Thou hast the love of my heart for Thyself and for none other. They Spirit be my keeper; Thy death the rock of my assurance. Yea, Amen! May Thy Spirit seal that which is written in the simplicity of my heart.

Thine unworthy possession,
Gerhard Tersteegen. Anno Domini 1724, Green Thursday.

Through the kindly advice of Hoffman, a young man by the name of Henry Sommer was taken into the solitary lodgings of Tersteegen. He was of the same spirit, and one whom Gerhard had known for some time. He wished to learn the art of ribbon weaving so the two worked long hours together, while at intervals during the day they prayed unitedly. The atmosphere became less rigid, and this routine continued for thee years.

During this time Tersteegen translated some godly books by the saintly Bernieres de Lauvigny. He also wrote "The Pious Lottery" and prepared some materials for "The Spiritual Flower Garden."

Knowing the depth of spiritual truth that Tersteegen had attained during this period of retirement, Hoffman prevailed upon him to become a lay preacher and minister at some regular meetings held each Thursday. As he spoke, many were awakened and a permanent work of grace was performed in hearts. He sounded forth four great verities: The atonement of Jesus, the words of Jesus, the spirit of Jesus and the example of Jesus.
In 1727, when Tersteegen was thirty years of age, a reviving took place in Mulheim, doubtless the result of past faithful sowing and many intercessory prayers. The days of his solitude were over. As persons visited his dwelling to receive spiritual guidance, his time was occupied from morning until evening in personal counselling and correspondence. It was necessary to give up his weaving, and at last accept the proffered gifts and legacies which kind friends had before offered, but which he had refused.

Larger accommodations were required to meet the needs of the numbers who now thronged the dwelling of Tersteegen. A house was provided where the lower rooms could be opened one into another, while Sommer and Tersteegen occupied the upstairs.

The volume, "The Spiritual Flower Garden", was published in 1731. The hymns included in this book were dearly prized by the people of Mulheim who sang them at weddings and social gatherings. People would be heard singing them while walking down the streets. Others would greet one another with a few lines from one of his compositions. Travellers took them on journeys, for Tersteegen could utter in beauty of language, what they themselves were unable to so feelingly express. John Wesley translated some of them into English and they were included in the Methodist Hymnal.

"Sans Souci" was written about this time to refute the erroneous views held by King Frederick the Great. That monarch, upon reading it, exclaimed, "What can the quiet of the land do!" He invited Tersteegen to come and see him, but as it was not a command, the invitation was politely declined.

Many changes came into the life of Tersteegen in 1746. His good friend, William Hoffman, fell ill and Gerhard visited him frequently, praying with him and ministering tenderly to his needs.

After Hoffman’s death he took over that godly man’s home in order to have larger premises to accommodate the growing dispensary work and the preparation of medicines. Thousands of visitors came from far and near to benefit by his spiritual counsel, some waiting for hours in order to enjoy fifteen minutes of spiritual direction. Sommer assiduously guarded his friend from visitors who might unduly exhaust the servant of God. The younger man also attended to many of the external affairs.

"My ardent love of retirement and and repose appears to have been given to me to make the reverse more burdensome, and perhaps also to serve as a counterpoise to keep me from entering too deeply into and living too much in outward exercises. I everywhere find a hunger amongst the people and there is no one to break unto them – the customary food no longer suffices them! I am obliged to devote myself almost from morning til evening, to converse with persons, either individually or collectively."

The secret of retaining the desert atmosphere of aloneness in the midst of such comings and goings, had at last been learned:

"There God and I – none other; so far from men to be!
Nay, midst the crowd and tumult, still, Lord alone with Thee.
Still folded close upon Thy breast, in field, and mart, and street,
Untroubled in that perfect rest, that isolation sweet."

In 1747, journeys further afield began to be undertaken. Those who had been inspired and blessed as a result of his writings, implored him to visit them in the Duchy of Berg. Although Tersteegen traveled incognito, it soon became known that he was actually in the district, and anxious persons met him on the roadside, pleading with him to turn aside to some neighbouring barn or building in order to speak to a number who had gathered to hear him. For eleven days, he ministered to such until, weakened by cold and fever, his voice affected. This he took as a providence directing him to return to his home.

His travels were extended to Holland. This invitation had come about through a gentleman of some social standing, who as a result of reading his books, had given up a high position and affluence in order to live a quiet and godly life. When Tersteegen was a guest of this man, his privacy was invaded by the hungry who sought for the "true bread". So faithful were these visits that they became an annual event.

A second reviving came to Mulheim in 1750 through the preaching of a student by the name of Chevalier. Through his sermons on repentance, many were awakened. The young man could not remain behind to continue ministering, do it devolved upon Tersteegen to meet the demands of those who clamoured for further words of this life. Many would gather in the lower rooms of his home which could accommodate six hundred souls. But there were times when the house being filled, ladders were placed up against open windows by those hoping to catch a few words from the prophet’s lips.

Tersteegen had been enabled to meet obloquy and scorn with lowliness of heart, but would he be empowered to take the admiration and esteem now showered upon him? In those days of meditation and stillness, he had learned that the Most High dwells only with the lowly in heart – that God is with the poor in spirit who tremble at His word. In his sermons, poems and letters this truth is repeated over and over again.

"Expect nothing from yourself, but everything from the goodness of God, which is inwardly so near you. Be afraid, when thou are know and praised, but on the contrary, rejoice when thou art forgotten and despised; for by this, the road to much danger and distraction is blocked up, and thou gainest so much more time and opportunity to abide in thyself and to walk alone with God."

"We must depart from ourselves in order to enter into Him. This exit and entrace is the basis and most essential act of godliness; because by it, we restore to God what is His – I mean ourselves, thoroughly, wholly, and irrevocably. If this departure and this entrance should be neglected, our godliness is little worth, and is only a shadow without substance."
This saint had likewise learned that it takes time to be holy and to keep holy. The wise disposal of one’s hours requires a self-denial of that which is secondary.

"If others follow their sensual appetites, and spend and misspend their valuable time in the variety, adorning and beauty of their dress, their houses, and their furniture; and apply so much valuable attention to the ease and enjoyment of their vile bodies – it is for us to show that we are not sensual nor animal, but spiritual men. We do not seek to lie here upon roses and at ease, when our Head and Forerunner was born in a wretched stable and manger, and died upon the cross, wearing a crown of thorns."

"If we see others turning outwards into the senses, and by trifling and unnecessary hearing, seeing, speaking and thinking, open their hearts as it were to the creature – let our hearts be as an inclosed garden, and a sealed fountain to all created objects, and solely open to the Beloved of our souls. We must wait day and night at the posts of His doors, as a spiritual priesthood; and therefore we are under obligation, because we believe the Lord to be present in the temple of our hearts."

"How little do we remain at home, to converse with God and ourselves and forsaking everything else, make this our sole, our constant and chief enjoyment."

In his correspondence to enquirers, he sought to impress upon them the importance of maintaining a life of communication with God. In the days of his disillusionment with men and organizations, he had discovered that God alone was perfect, and converse with Him would clear away every bit of perplexity, whereas discussions with even professed Christians who knew little of that deep life of devotedness, could only confuse and bewilder.
"Avoid all unnecessary intercourse with the men of this world, lest time be stolen from you and lest you yourselves be polluted and carried away. The most dangerous kind are those who make great pretensions to reason; particularly those who are Christians only in name and appearance, and who do not act directly and sincerely according to their previous calling. Such have, as it were, truly studied every specious pretence by which they may render void the strict, simple and inward life in Christ, and seduce unstable minds."

"You are called – think what grace – to social converse with God: you must therefore avoid, by all means, all unnecessary converse with men. This is particularly needful, whilst we are still so weak. We must escape from the enemy and not come too near the view of the world and the creature, in order that we may not lose sight of the nearness of the Creator."
"Love prayer! Let prayer be your constant companion from morning till night. Let your heart and desires continually hold converse with God, in heart-felt simplicity; for His delights are with the children of men."

"Let us love, and esteem, and use the Holy Scriptures or the Bible, according to the state and circumstances of our souls. It is undeniably the best and most divine Book in the world, and a revelation or expression of the will of God to us. It manifests an extremely reprehensible ingratitude and arrogance to neglect and despise it. We must now, however, forget that the power and illumination of the Spirit of God are indispensably necessary to understand it aright, and to walk according to it."

How fatherly his counsel was to the beginner who often failed in his first endeavors!
"If through weakness or unfaithfulness you forsake this exercise, which is so incredibly useful and beautiful, all you have to do is meekly and heartily begin again. Do not be weary of it, although in the beginning you may not find any great advantage from it, or make any rapid progress in it."

In order to renew his strength in God, this spiritual counselor would retire to the nearby woods for whole days, taking but little refreshment with him. These were delightful times for the man whose personal life was invaded throughout his waking hours.

"Oh, my dearest friends, what are all our virtues and all our piety, unless fellowship with Jesus lie at the bottom of it? Let us apply ourselves more diligently to this delightful exercise of prayer for we cannot exist a single moment of ourselves. All our faults and falls proceed from our not abiding with Christ within."

Everything of a sensational nature, this lover of God discouraged. He lived in a time when others were stressing visions, voices and supernatural manifestations. As in our own day, there was a great need for men, gifted with discernment of spirits, who would be sensitive to true spiritual movements of revival impetus, but would at the same time be aware of the many substitutes that our wily enemy foists upon the unwary.

This true servant of God had been prepared for just such emergencies by his own early experience. He had had contact with certain persons who had thrown themselves open to supernatural influences that were not of God. So affected was he by their proximity that at times when engaged in prayer, he would be seized by a shaking and trembling in every limb. But his deepening knowledge of the character of God caused him to detect the farce and resist such attacks quietly. After a few such experiences, the shaking ceased.
Later he was called upon to counsel a young lady in poor health, who felt she heard a voice commanding her to rise on winter nights and pray in a cold room. Tersteegen advised that when she again had this impression, it would be wise to engage in her devotions in bed. As this was observed, the voice ceased to distress her.

A friend of his had come under the influence of a woman who had seemed to become greatly transformed spiritually. She showed great increase in devotion to God and had given utterance to many edifying statements. However, these were mixed with an questionable assortment of voices and manifestations, including prophecies of things which were to come pass after her decease. Gerhard gave the friend the following sound advice:
"Pay no attention to all those extraordinary things, which are only dangerous and tend to hinder growth in grace. I cordially admire the substantial change which divine grace has wrought in her, but you and I will live long enough to see that nothing will follow of all these things, however desirable they may be."

Later, after the death of the woman, this friend came gain and expressed his regret for not having followed the advice given. Tersteegen remarked that doubtless God had permitted this to warn him of similar perils in the future.

As is usually the case with all self-crucified, disciplined souls, Tersteegen had a loving and balanced attitude toward denominational membership and church attendance. Confused persons sought his advice about remaining with the Church when it was so filled with inconsistencies. To one such he wrote:

"I cannot deny the corruptions of the external church; but I think my dear friend has now more necessary things to attend to than to occupy himself with these. Within! Within! With God alone! Neither do I recommend you to separate yourself from church and sacrament. There is no material benefit to be derived by such a separation, and it has often been injurious to many. You must not, however, act contrary to your conscience. If you find your conscience oppressed by partaking of the sacrament, you will do better to stay away, and wait awhile, to see whether the Lord will give you more light on the subject. I should not like to attend the discourse of a blasphemer, or one who is evidently still carnal. If circumstances call for it, one may refrain a while without resolving upon anything for the future, much less judging others, who act otherwise."

"One may have patience with honest preachers, who would gladly see a better state of things, but know not how to attain it; but they, on their part, ought to exercise equal patience with honest souls whose consciences will not allow them to break bread with those whom they cannot own as members of the ‘one Body’, and who therefore stand aloof from the fear of displeasing God."

This German saint’s entire life had been one continual and painful illness, but he witnessed to his friends that he had experienced more of God’s comfort and divine favour at these times than in health. Even at birth he had been weakly, and yet he survived the more robust members of his family. In his voluminous correspondence, he mentioned repeated bouts of fever, rheumatism, stomach complaints, asthma and colds which at times severely curtailed his public ministry.

The last thirty years of his life were specially trying in this respect, and he looked upon himself always as "a candidate for death", living only moment by moment. The seventy-year-old man was now so frail that he could only minister to a few in a small room, and all his longer journeys had to be abandoned. There was, however, no spiritual decline. His hand still wielded his pen in revising and supplementing his former literary efforts. His assistant, Henry Sommer, told of entire nights spent in tears and entreaties for the well-being of the members of Christ’s body.

But added to these afflictions were even the more trying misunderstandings and cruel insinuations at the hands of not only scornful men, but of professed followers of Christ. Some thought he did too little; others that he did too much. Some envied him and his gifts; some were jealous of the esteem he received thousands and thousands from all over Europe. When they came to find fault with him, his patience with these opponents often turned them into real friends. He was not at liberty to compromise the truth to curry their favour, but he could manifest real heart concern for those with whom he differed.

In March, 1769, dropsy developed, bringing with it much pain. He had formerly wished to die like a hero; now he was content to go as a child. To those who visited him, he had choice treasures, new and old, to bring out of the treasury of his heart.

"Malachi has preached to me today, ‘He will sit’. It is not all done at once. He still finds something to refine in me."

"I am not able to speak of great things and experiences, but God gives me grace to forget myself. I suffer much."
"I am the care of angels … Yes, cared for by the love of God. All the suffering and weakness are a part of the way and we pass on leaving behind now a rough bit of road. The sweet eternity is our home, and Jesus – Who makes all things sweet – our Companion on the road. What love and grace!"

Gerhard Tersteegen had set out fifty years before on a quest for God. Had he found Him? Was his search successful? Let the old battle-scarred warrior answer in prose and song.

"I am glad I have lived so long – that I have come to know God with the heart, and with firm conviction."

"Stilled by that wondrous Presence, that tenderest embrace,
The years of longing over, do we behold thy Face;
We seek no more than Thou hast given, we ask no vision fair,
Thy precious Blood has opened Heaven, and we have found Thee there."

As the end approached, he slept deeply, but at midnight on April 2, his friends could no longer awaken him. He had passed from "the forecourt of eternity" into the presence of the King. "Those standing around thought there were many angels about them who took his soul away with joy."

From the Book: They Knew Their God, Book Two – Harvey/Hey

“Poor Ann, she can never learn anything! ”exclaimed the schoolteacher in a despairing way. The small girl had been in the class just one week, but found the ABC’s so difficult to master that the conclusion was reached that effort on such a dull child was utterly wasted. So she was summarily dismissed, to return to her humble Irish cottage, with its thatched roof, in Ballamacally, County Armagh, Ireland. And yet, in mature years, Ann came to be known for wide knowledge of the Bible and a record of answers to her simple prayers of faith that silenced the most faithless and unbelieving caviliers.

Religion was unheeded in the home into which she was born in the year 1810. The six children who came to James Preston and his wife were forced to seek employment as soon as possible and, since Ann could not imbibe even the simplest principles of education, she was hired out for infant caring or cattle herding, for the most part, in families of the God-forgetting. Finally, she was taken into a Christian home, where the mistress was concerned about the spiritual welfare of all who came under her roof. At her invitation, the servant girl attended a Methodist class meeting, where some of the members were weeping because of their sins, while others were praising God for saving grace.

To Ann’s mind, so completely ignorant of anything spiritual, the service was repellent. However, she consented to go to a Methodist service in a private home the following Sunday. The text of the minister was that command of our Savior, “Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” That evening, hardly knowing why, she resorted to a small attic room and, kneeling by the only chair there, broke out into loud crying. Her mistress, suspecting the trouble, ascended the stairs with the question, “What is the matter, Ann?”

“I don’t know,” was the response. However, it was quickly followed by the confession, “Yes, I do. I see the sins I did from the time I was five years old, all written on the chair in front of me, every one. Worse than all, I see Hell open ready to swallow me.”

In the great agitation of her soul, now awakened to its true state before God, she retired to her own room where, until midnight, she continued to cry out to Him for mercy. Then, as the question, “No mercy, Lord, for me?” passed her lips, divine assurance was given her that through the blood of Jesus, her sins were washed away.

She picked up a New Testament lying on the table and, placing her finger on a verse, prayed, “Father, You Who has taken away from me this awful burden, couldn’t You help me read one of these little things?” And a miracle was wrought! Ann was able to read at least part of the verse, “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.”

And eventually she, who had been condemned by her childhood teacher to life-long ignorance, was given the ability to read the Word of God. However for reasons known only to our Heavenly Father, He never opened the door of her mind to secular reading matter. One family, for whom Ann worked, refused to believe that such an unusual situation could exist. To test her veracity, they placed a newspaper in front of her, asked her to read a certain paragraph. She made no progress, until the word “lord” arrested her attention. Then she exclaimed, “It seems to me this word is ‘lord’, but it can’t be my Lord, for my heart does not burn while I read it.” Lord Roberts, who figured prominently in the South African War, was the gentlemen written about.

In the course of time, Ann was employed in the home of a Dr. Reid, whose wife was a Christian. When the family decided to move to Canada, she was invited to accompany them. Much to the grief of her parents, she consented. After a journey of two months, the Reids, with Ann, settled in Thornhill, Ontario, not far from the city of Toronto.

With all the changes, the religious life of the Irish servant girl seemed almost to have come to a standstill, although she still professed to be a Christian. Mrs. Phoebe Palmer, outstanding for her advocacy of the doctrine of holiness, was for a time leader of the class meeting in the Methodist Church at Thornhill. Ann reluctantly yielded to Mrs. ReidÂ’s persuasions to accompany her to the service.

She had been with the Reid family for about ten years, when the wife and mother suddenly passed away. The family of young children was left to AnnÂ’s care, and she was faithful to her trust until they reached maturity and left the home nest.

Neither Dr. Reid nor Ann had attained to any great degree of stability in the Christian life. She, to her sorrow, frequently gave way to violent outbursts of temper when the children tried her patience. Dr. ReidÂ’s inconsistency with the profession of religion he maintained annoyed Ann greatly at times. On occasion, in family prayers, to avoid hearing his voice, she placed her fingers in her ears. Sinning and repenting seemed to be the best she could hope for, until light from God showed her a life completely victorious over sin.

A young Christian visiting Dr. Reid was asked to conduct the regular family evening worship. As he read the 34th Psalm, the sixteenth verse spoke very strongly to Ann. “The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” The young man, at her request, turned down the corner of the page upon which the verse was found. Ann went at once to her room, opened the Bible and began to pray that God would show her what it meant. The great enemy of souls whispered, “But you can’t read it.”

In simple faith she replied, “The Lord will give it to me.” Again a miracle took place. Ann could read the verse! Continuing in prayer, she asked, “What is evil?” Then followed such a revelation of the sin of her heart that Ann spent the rest of the night in earnest supplication for deliverance. The power of prevailing prayer was opened up to her and, like Jacob of old at daybreak, in agony of soul and clinging to God, she exclaimed, “I’ll die, but I’ll have it.” Rising from her knees, she went downstairs where she encountered the young guest who asked the reason for her distress.

“I want to be sanctified throughout – body, soul and spirit,” was her reply. He explained that faith in the promises of God would bring the holiness of heart for which she yearned and quoted the verse, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

Again, Ann went to her knees, pleading, “Lord, I have been knocking all night. Open unto me! Open unto me!” And Heaven responded to her persevering prayer. At once her mourning was turned into joy and, for two hours, the little house was one of praise. Indeed, it was never again anything else, as Ann walked with God and was led deeper and deeper into the secrets revealed to those who fear Him.

It was at this time that she became known as “Holy Ann”, perhaps first in derision by some of the boys of the neighbourhood. As she realized the true meaning of the name, her prayer was, “Father, they are calling me Holy Ann. Please make me holy, so the children will not be telling lies.” Her simple petition found an answer in the fragrance of her humble and faithful Christian witness, permeating the lives of all she met. “Holy Ann” she became to the generation that knew her, and to succeeding ones as well.

Her answers to prayer were numerous. One of greatest interest is that concerning Dr. Reid’s well which always was dry for several months during the summer. His young sons were carrying water from a distance to supply not only family needs, but those of the stock as well. One day, as Ann was talking to her charges about a prayer-answering God and telling some of her own experiences, Henry Reid said in a bantering manner, “Ann, why don’t you ask your Father to send water in that well, and not have us boys work so hard?”

The question proved to be a direct challenge to her faith. Alone in her own room, she prayed, “Father, You heard what Henry said tonight. If I get up in class-meeting and say, ‘My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus’, the boys won’t believe I am what I profess to be, if You don’t send the water in the well.” Continuing to pray for some time, she received an assurance that her petition had been heard. With the words upon her lips, “Father, if I am what I profess to be, there will be water in the well tomorrow morning,” she went to bed and to sound sleep.

The next morning, Henry was preparing for his long walk to draw water for the needs of the day when, to his astonishment, Ann picked up two empty pails and walked to the well that he had remarked was “as dry as the kitchen floor.” In a few minutes, she returned to the house and the watching, incredulous lad, with the same two filled to the brim with clear water.

“What do you say now?” was Ann’s triumphant query to the surprised boy who, in turn, could only ask, “Why didn’t you do that long ago and save us all that work?” Years afterward a friend of Ann’s who knew the truth of the incident, said that from that time the well never was dry again, even in the hottest summer. Who can say that the day of miracles is past?

Ann’s long life of ninety-six years was filled with prayer and praise to God for what He had done for her and was able to do for others. Her declining years were spent in the homes of friends who regarded it an honor to minister to her. The Mayor of Toronto assisted at her funeral. The Sunday after her death he remarked, “I have had two honours this week. It has been my privilege to have an interview with the President of the United States. This is a great honour. Then I have been pallbearer to ‘Holy Ann’” (Ann Preston). And with no discredit whatever to President Theodore Roosevelt, he added, “Of the two honours, I prize the latter most.”

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A lonely woman intercessor, a devoted and consecrated missionary and a proud and brilliant Confucian scholar – only a mighty God could have brought these three so miraculously together to fulfil His far-reaching purposes. Our Heavenly Father will move Heaven and earth on behalf of a longing soul.

In this instance, it was the heart-cry of Hsi Segno, a Chinaman, that touched His great heart. And so when the Methodist Missionary Society decided to loan David Hill, their missionary, to the China Inland Mission it was no mere coincidence that they had chosen a man with a great burden for the students of China, sending him to Shansi only twelve miles from HsiÂ’s village.

But more wonderful still, He not only gave this missionary wisdom as to how to reach this hitherto untouchable class, but He moved upon a lone woman in England, distinguished for her power in prayer, to spend her waning energies in battling through on HillÂ’s behalf. The unfinished letter found on her desk after her death was sent on to David Hill for whom she had been led specially to plead for an extraordinary blessing to be given to him in his work at that time. This intercessor distinctly felt that she had been heard, though she knew not what form the blessing would take. The date of this letter was found to so closely correspond with the conversion of Pastor Hsi that David Hill never doubted but what he had shared in the spoils of her victory.

Hsi Shengmo, a thoughtful child, had been born into a Chinese home of wealth and culture in Western Chang village in the province of Shansi, in the year 1837. As he grew, no one, not even his closest relatives, knew that, underneath his smart gown and bright jacket, lay, buried deep within his childish breast, thoughts of immortality. Only the God he did not know – the Father Whom he had never been taught to love – saw the little silent figure, who, on many a summer’s night, would wander alone beneath the starry heavens, searching their depths for an answer to the problem of existence. “What,” he would question, “is the use of living in this world? Men find no good. And in the end…?”

The years passed by in quick succession. Young Hsi continued to study diligently for that distant degree which would one day place him among the ranks of the learned Confucian scholars. Among his friends, he was a high-spirited lad, very forceful in character and a born leader. But, when alone, there were these same questions, always perplexing and disturbing him; and oh, how he longed for an answer!

When his father, old teacher Hsi, passed away, his estate was divided. Young Hsi purchased a farm on the outskirts of the town. His education now completed, he soon won the esteem of the humble villagers and was asked to mediate in quarrels, law suits and other emergencies. As a result, his reputation for wisdom spread far and wide.

But with Hsi, as with all devotees of the world, happiness and rest of soul were not purchased by such paltry trifles. His first wife passed way, leaving no children, and Confucianism did nothing to still the tumult of his soul. For the idol worship of Buddhism he had no use whatever. His study of Chinese classics, while stimulating the intellectual side of his nature, did not bring peace.

At the age of thirty, he was married the second time to a young girl in her late teens, who became a loving and understanding wife.

But the continued conflict in HsiÂ’s soul was affecting his health. When friends suggested that an occasional use of the opium pipe could do no harm and might bring relief, he decided to test its merits. Alas, the temporary exhilaration was followed by a deeper depression of spirit than he had suffered before. The drug had begun its dreadful work and Hsi, soon an addict, resorted to its use again and again, until he was only a shadow of his former self. Committed to death by his wife and friends, he was dressed in his best clothing and laid on his bed, awaiting the summons of the Grim Reaper.

To his great relief, his world-weary spirit seemed to be leaving the body. Suddenly it was arrested by the authoritative command, “Go back! Go back!” Sadly the order was obeyed and the sick man found himself again facing the realities of life. After his conversion, Hsi never conceded that what had happened was the fantasy of a distorted mind, but felt rather that it was the voice of God Himself, Whose mercy is “from everlasting to everlasting.”
In the year 1877, a famine of fearful proportions stalked into the province of Shansi. For several years, the heavens had seemed as brass, with no rain and, consequently, no crops. Hunger-crazed people, losing almost all semblance of humanity, even consumed the bodies of their fellows. Three-fourths of the population of that once fertile province perished from hunger, fever or suicide.

In the midst of the unprecedented distress, strange rumors were afloat of two foreigners who had come to a nearby town. They wore Chinese dress, but brought with them a religion of which the people of Shansi never had heard. Hsi shared in the general hostility toward these strangers but, in spite of himself, was conscious of at least a flicker of interest in the new religion.

Then it was learned that the foreigners, Teach Li (David Hill) and Mr. Teh (Turner) were distributing food and money to the starving people. And the next year, with the famine relieved because of copious showers and gifts of seed on the part of the missionaries, brighter days dawned for Shansi.

Then one day there was great excitement in the village of Western Chang. One of Hsi’s elder brothers came rushing into his house, full of enthusiasm. “Old-Four, Old-Four,” he cried, “where are you? Just come and look at this. You are the man for essays. No one better! Here’s your chance; if you are not afraid.”

“What is all this about?” demanded the scholar, reluctantly leaving his pipe to hear the news.

“Only listen,” replied his brother. “Some scholars have returned from examinations at the capital with these papers – some announcement by the foreign teacher.” Wonderingly, the neighbors crowded in to hear the news. Slowly Hsi read the following aloud:

NOTICE: “Wishing to make plain the knowledge of the Heavenly Way, I have determined to profound six theses, and respectfully invite scholars of Shansi to express their sentiments concerning them, and, treating each one separately, to write essays upon them.”
The followed details explaining what the theses were to be about, covering such subjects as prayer, opium, images of the gods, and how to rectify the heart and life. Accompanying this announcement was a packet of Christian books and tracts which the scholar was to study in order to write the essays.

Hsi was in a dilemma. Afraid to become involved in foreign affairs and yet interested in spite of himself, he debated the matter. The prizes promised were of some value and, urged on by his family to prove his prowess once more, he gave in. Under four different names he wrote four essays, often working into the night. His wife even said she had noticed a strange light over the doorway of his room as he wrote. “This shows that the gods approve,” she would say. “Better fortune is ahead for you.”

The essays were at last completed and submitted for examination. In due course the results were announced. Hsi had won three out of the four prizes offered. All that remained was for him to go and collect the money at the missionaryÂ’s house; but therein lay the difficulty. It was ten miles across the plain to the city, but it was not the distance that presented the problem. It was his old fear and suspicion of the foreigners that caused the scholar to hesitate. Finally his brother-in-law consented to accompany him. Later Hsi described the meeting.

“As daylight banished darkness, so did Mr. Hill’s presence dissipate all the idle rumors I had heard. All sense of fear was gone; my mind was at rest. I beheld his kindly eye and remembered the words of Mencius: ‘If a man’s heart is not right, his eye will certainly bespeak it.’ That face told me I was in the presence of a true, good man.”

Hsi went back to his village, and David Hill went to his knees. Within a few days, a messenger appeared at HsiÂ’s home, saying that Teacher Li wished to see the Chinese scholar on important business. When he learned that Mr. Hill desired his help in the study of the Chinese classics, he happily consented.

Though Hsi knew it not, he was approaching the Cross of Calvary, where rest could be found for the sin-sick soul. In the small room assigned to him was a copy of the New Testament. Though at first he picked it up somewhat casually, before he knew it, the little Book began to exert a strange influence upon him. For hours at a time he read and pondered, all the while smoking his opium pipe, such a necessary evil. Strangely enough, the same Book somehow gave him hope of deliverance from the dreadful habit.

One day, as he was reading the story of the crucifixion, the power that for centuries has drawn the “heavy laden,” began to exert its magnetism upon Hsi’s proud heart. He fell on his knees, with the Book before him, weeping as he read. And the dying, yet living Saviour, enfolded his weary soul in His great love. His search was ended; peace like a river became his portion. The slave of sin was now and forever the bond-servant of the Son of God. What had been accomplished was divine, and Hsi knew it.

It was not long, however, before the great enemy of mankind, summoning all the power of his diabolical strength, swept in upon him, creating an almost overpowering desire for opium. For a week, Hsi neither ate nor slept. In the fierce combat between good and evil, for such it was, he experienced almost every agony known to the human body. Weakness, faintness, dizziness, exhaustion, fever, chills, depression – all attacked his enfeebled frame. Mr. Hill gave him the usual medicines, but to no avail.

Prayer “without ceasing” was offered in his behalf. When the struggle was most critical, the addict cried out, “Though I die, I never will touch opium again.” In a fairly quiet interval, he picked up the New Testament, opening it to several verses about the Comforter. Suddenly it was revealed to him that the Holy Spirit could enable him to conquer in the conflict.
Then and there he cast himself upon God, and instantly the calm of Heaven came down upon his pain-wracked body and into his struggling soul. Hsi said later of that blessed Spirit,

“He did what man and medicine could not do. From that moment, my body was perfectly at rest. Then I knew that to break off opium without faith in Jesus would indeed be impossible.”

As the new convert continued to read the Scriptures with enlightened spiritual vision, he saw that they taught that the Holy Spirit was promised as an abiding Indweller. He learned that there was a baptism of the Holy Spirit needed by every believer. His recent experience of deliverance from the opium bondage, ascribed as it had been to the work of the Comforter, only increased his longing for all of the divine fullness that could be his.

Alone in his room one night, as he prayed that he might receive the Holy Ghost, divine light, love and power flooded his soul. “Three times in the night,” was his testimony to the glorious event, “the Holy Spirit descended, filling and overflowing my heart.”

Along with the abundant grace given him, came an intense longing to spread the possibility of such a blessing to men near and far. He became distinctly conscious of the fact that he was commissioned by God to do that very thing. Converted, sanctified and called by the Holy Ghost to preach the Word, Hsi returned to his village, a new man. His wife, brothers and friends sensed the change but, concluding that he had been bewitched by the foreigners, were exceedingly angry. Firmly but kindly, he went about removing and burning the idols set up in his home.

Then he went back to David Hill at Pingyang, where he spent two months of delightful fellowship with his spiritual father. During that period, he wrote two tracts. “How to Obtain Deliverance from Calamity” and “The Ten Commandments of God” were printed and extensively circulated. In later years, he composed some sixty inspired hymns which were widely used by the Chinese Christian churches.

When Teacher Li received a new appointment, leaving the mission station at Pingyang in other hands, Hsi went back to his home to exemplify and proclaim what he had experienced of the miracle-working power of God. He invited his elderly stepmother to live with him. Differences and quarrels with his brothers were publicly righted. To his wife he was most thoughtful and kind and, though for a time, she failed to grasp the truths of the religion her husband had embraced, when the heavenly vision dawned upon her, she was not disobedient.

Then came one of the greatest crisis in his Christian life. Mrs. Hsi, contrary to her natural disposition, gave way to moods of deep depression. She refused to attend to household duties and at times could neither eat nor sleep. At family devotions she became angry, using the vilest of language. It was evident the real trouble was demon possession.
Hsi was disturbed, for the villagers had almost been persuaded to turn from idols to God. Now it seemed that all was to be lost as they taunted and scorned this so-called Demon Conqueror, for that was the name he had selected for himself. Hsi fasted and prayed for three days. Then, weak in body but strong in faith, he laid his hands on his suffering wife and, in the name of Jesus, commanded the devils to leave. At the mention of that Holy Name, they obeyed, and Mrs. Hsi never again was afflicted in that way. She lived and labored, a model helpmeet for her husband who became known far and wide as the Demon Conqueror. This experience strengthened his faith, and, in the ensuing years, many were the occasions when authority in the name of Jesus accomplished like miracles.
He had discontinued the use of opium, but for a short period after he became a Christian, as a financial asset, he raised a field of poppies, from which the drug is made. Then, guided by the Scriptures, “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth,” and “Not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved,” he gave over the doubtful practice.

David Hill had been impressed that one of the little band he left behind would be raised up to shepherd the flock. The mantle fell on Hsi. This Chinese servant of God early learned that prayer alone could see victory over Satan. His description of the price paid for a life of prayer is a challenge to all.

“On account of many onslaughts of Satan, my wife and I for the space of three years seldom put off our clothing to go to sleep, in order that we might be the more ready to watch and pray. Sometimes in a solitary place, I spent whole nights in prayer: and the Holy Spirit descended. Frequently my mother noticed a light in our bedroom toward midnight, by which she knew that we were still waiting before our Heavenly Father.

We had always endeavoured in our thoughts, words, and actions to be well pleasing to the Lord, but now we realized more than ever our own weakness; that we were indeed nothing; and that only in seeking to do God’s will, whether in working or resting, whether in peace or peril, in abundance or want, everywhere and at all times relying on the Holy Spirit, we might accomplish the work the Lord has appointed us to do. If we had good success we gave all the glory to our Heavenly Father; if bad success, we took all the blame ourselves. This was the attitude of our hearts continually.”

The opium-drugged victims of Shansi now occupied the attention of this servant of God. The wide-spread use of the opiate required earnest and intense effort if the enslaved were to be rescued. His first attempt to do so was in a small town five miles from his home. Since he was short of funds, Mrs. Hsi sold some of her bridal garments and jewelry, always exceedingly precious to a Chinese wife. They rented a shop and stocked it with medicines, of which he had some knowledge. The room behind the store was attractively furnished as a guest hall, with Christian texts on the walls.

For twenty years, the system adopted in this place became a pattern for between forty and fifty others that were opened as Refuges for the unhappy users of opium. In each station, hundreds of persons were treated with pills that eventually Hsi made himself by a secret formula revealed to him by God. Loving care, presentation of Gospel truth and much prayer – all were so mightily blessed of God that thousands of addicts were liberated and in turn carried the news of their freedom to others. Every new patient was expected to attend daily prayer sessions. Indeed only those willing to make prayer a major factor in their treatment were admitted. The pills, which took the place of expensive, imported ones, the supply of which had often failed at a crucial time, were the fruit of a season of fasting and prayer, plus Hsi’s knowledge of native drugs. And he would fast for an entire day when preparing a fresh quantity.

Those who knew Pastor Hsi remarked that his Christian life was a very real and constant warfare with the powers of Satan. It was because Hsi was invading strongly held enemy territory that he excited the animosity of hell. His battle to develop that most effective evangelistic spearhead, the Opium Refuge project, met with opposition and criticism. And there was one time when the accumulation of difficulties seemed insurmountable. Fellow-countrymen found fault, and even whispered that Hsi carried on these homes for personal gain. On his part, furs and silks had been sacrificed for the most economical cotton garments. The lovely satin footwear had been exchanged for cotton ones and personal possessions were sold to finance the projects of the Refuges. No wonder Satan attacked the Pastor as he was often accused of having mercenary motives in his enterprise.
The most trying factor was the opposition of missionaries. We take one glimpse into his brief autobiography:

“Some honoured missionaries exhorted me very earnestly to close the Refuges, saying it was an undertaking fraught with perils. ‘If it were a question of my own wishes,’ I replied, ‘I would not continue a single day. But seeing the Lord has led me into this work, I dare not withdraw. But I will pray over the matter.’

“Thereafter I kept these words spoken by the missionaries in my mind, not venturing to disregard such advice. From that time my strength of heart for work in the Refuges seemed considerably weakened, and the battle was harder to fight.”

So strongly was Hsi urged to give over the work, that in humility and deference to a “senior” brother, he almost yielded. This impression was increased by the problems of a women’s refuge now in the hand of young lady missionaries. He surprised the mission leader, Mr. Hoste, by an unannounced visit at which he declared that he could no longer carry on the Refuge work at Hoh-chau where there had been so many difficulties. Mr. Hoste was surprised, felt there was a mistake being made, but instead of saying so went to prayer.
Hsi himself went before the Lord with a great burden on his heart. He was strangely troubled and broke into an agony of weeping. After midnight, he cried, “Lord, have I grieved Thee? Show me the reason for this distress.” The answer came. He was to help these ladies, who at a great sacrifice, were doing this work. He was to ignore criticism and resist Satan with spiritual weapons.

Mr. Hoste was indeed grateful when the devoted Chinaman said to him, “I have been wrong. The Lord showed me. Instead of giving up the Refuges, I must go over at once and get things on a better footing.”

This man of God literally went in the strength of Another, rather than his own. At times he became conscious of great fatigue and weakness, and these occasions became the call to much prayer and fasting for it was in this way that Hsi could know that some immediate, perplexing problem was to be prayed through. Always when the will of God was ascertained, or the problem resolved, the unusual energy from above was regained and the work resumed. Hsi seems to have been especially endowed with a spiritual sensitivity. His whole soul and body seemed to have become a sounding board or antenna, very open to the slightest impulses of the divine will. Like others who were entirely the LordÂ’s over a period of years, he developed what might be termed a receiving set for heavenly messages.
Here was a truly apostolic life in the primitive sense of the word. Many a healing was witnessed in answer to prayer and more than one demon-possessed victim was delivered at the command of this self-crucified servant of God.

But there was a price to be paid for divine power. In one instance, Kong, a possessed man, exploded into a state of frenzy during a conference. He quieted as Pastor Hsi entered the room. The latter laid his hands on the young manÂ’s head and prayed, and it seemed certain that permanent deliverance had come.

A new missionary was so impressed that he insisted on giving Hsi fifty dollars to help carry on the great work. Seeing the size of the sum, Hsi became uneasy and went apart to commune, searching his heart as to whether he was allowing a cupidity for money to enter. A call came immediately that the sufferer was worse than ever. As Hsi entered the room, Kong cried out, “You may come, but I fear you no longer! At first you seemed high as Heaven, but now you are low, low down and small. You have no power to control me any more.”

The Pastor felt it to be only too true. Sadly he turned and went out for the silver, followed by the taunting cries of the demoniac. Returning the gift, he confessed that the sudden possession of so large a sum had come between him and God. Hsi then went back, once more in touch with his divine Master. Quietly in the name of Jesus he ordered the tormenting spirit to go. A fearful convulsive cry and Kong was quiet though weak. This was a lasting lesson to Hsi as well as to all the witnesses of the conflict.

Many a soldier of the Cross would have felt entitled to a less strenuous course of action in his latter years. Not so this warrior! For the last five years of the PastorÂ’s life, he and his wife were given an extra heavy cross which they lovingly and uncomplainingly shouldered for the sake of their divine Master and because of an increased desire to see many more souls delivered from SatanÂ’s kingdom. Together they faced the great sacrifice of laboring apart. It was the supreme test. Pastor Hsi introduces the subject thus:

“For long we desired to open Refuges for women, but had no one to undertake the work. Therefore I have consecrated my wife to the Lord for this service. She first opened a Women’s Refuge at Hungtung, before any lady missionary came to live there. Concerning this matter both my wife and I have endured great suffering and temptation. Often it seems like a sword pressing against my heart, and I have found it almost unbearable. But praise the Lord, the devil has been defeated, and the work goes on.”

Mrs. Hsi, facing the sacrifice, passed into a larger blessing so that the cross was light in comparison. This consecrated little woman traveled usually in one direction and he in another. God blessed the efforts. City after city was reached and a chain of womenÂ’s Refuges was established. It is indeed touching to read of a short interval of marital fellowship in a service where he was scheduled to speak, or on the road as their two carts met. These were foretastes of Heaven. But this man and wife were pilgrims and too soon their ways would separate again as the needs of the work made their demands. Pastor Hsi writes most feelingly about it:

“Do I not love my wife? Often she is in the north, and I am in the south; and for several months at a time we are unable to see each other’s faces; and can only mutually weep and pray, seeing those things which are above and the reward promised to every man according as his work shall be. The Bible says: ‘The time is short; and it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none.’ My wife and I, remembering these words of Scripture, are comforted, and our hearts are kept in peace.”

Hsi planned a conference in his own home with the purpose of enlarging the Refuge work. Two hundred persons were present, and the last sermon that he preached was unusually solemn. At the close of the conference, he decided to visit Mr. Hoste, who later was to succeed Hudson Taylor as General Director of the China Inland Mission.

In the midst of genial conversation with his friend, Hsi fell to the ground unconscious. He rallied and, suffering more from weakness than from pain, it seemed, was removed to his own home. When, within weeks, signs of a serious heart problem developed, his own verdict of his condition was, “The Lord is taking away my strength. It must be because my work is done.” For six months God permitted him to remain with those who loved him. Then the Demon Conqueror was victor over the enemy – death – and entered into everlasting rest. His warfare had ceased.

The landlady at Wellington Inn, Doncaster, listened as the twenty-seven year old Isaac regaled the inmates of the bar with the news that he had done with the old life. She could remember times when this wild, dissolute, infidel ringleader had overturned tables, broken wine glasses and held the room spellbound with his caricaturing of the latest political speaker or the humble preacher at the Wesleyan Chapel. But he was a good customer, as well as a lodger at the Inn, for his father, a manufacturer of cloth, had rented two rooms. One was used for displaying his bolts of material to customers; the other as a bedroom where either he or his son could stay the night when returning from neighboring fairs or markets.

When Isaac, however, knelt down on the sanded floor, and with terrible earnestness, implored God to save the souls of the young men he had been guilty of leading into vice, her amazement turned to cynicism and laughter. Isaac would soon be back to his old ways!

From childhood, however, there had been good influences thrown around IsaacÂ’s life. His had been the good fortune to be born of a pious mother and an industrious father, on June 3, 1807, in Skelmansthorpe, Yorkshire. When his older brother died, Isaac assumed the role of the eldest son of a family of ten. Isaac as a small child was very withdrawn and quiet. He was contented to play within the walls of his own home, with such familiar objects as the bobbins, known to almost every home in South Yorkshire, where looms were heard to be continually clicking as they turned out woolen cloth.

The Wesleyans and Primitives were most active in Southern Yorkshire, but there was as yet no meeting place in the town where the Marsdens lived. Ann Marsden, his mother, often lamented the fact that she could rarely attend services at the neighboring districts because of the demands of her growing family. She therefore started informal gatherings in her own kitchen which resulted in regular class meetings.

A revival came to Skelmansthorpe! Isaac, though young, was moved, and had he confided his inner feelings at this time to an adult, he could have been saved years of wasted and wild living.

The mother received blessings at this time and became a power for good. The father, though outwardly respectable, was irreligious and did not approve of the familyÂ’s attendance at services.

William Marsden, the father, was a man of strong discipline and possessed a shrewd head for business. He cared little how wild IsaacÂ’s pranks or how mischievous his deeds, if he would only be diligent in school or work. At considerable self-denial the boy was kept at school until he was twelve or thirteen, but although the lad learned to write and do some sums, he did not take kindly to student practice. Reading was his delight, and he devoured any book or newspaper available. The companionships formed at school, however, were not helpful to industry or upright conduct, and so Mr. Marsden removed his son and sent him to learn weaving at the loom.

The boy had no notion for work so confined and concentrated; he often ruined the cloth, so the father put him to “cropping”, which job he did until he was sixteen or seventeen. Then the expanding business required Isaac as his father’s assistant to deliver cloth and collect bills. He proved to be very assiduous in making up the parcels, visiting the fairs and markets, and acting as general salesman. This occupation suited the young man very well. With an unusually strong physique, he could work hard all day long, and then revel a good share of the night without feeling an inconvenience the next morning.

Ann Marsden scarcely saw her son now, for he rarely spent an evening at home. Instead he frequented the inns of the neighborhood where he had been attending the fairs or markets. As a result of his wide range of reading he possessed a larger store of knowledge than many of his companions who spent the evenings with him in revelry. And so he would keep them amused by impersonating political and religious speakers. His ability to lead the strong and coerce the weak gave him unlimited influence for evil among the youth.

As the mother watched her wayward boy, her almost hourly prayer became: “O God, save my Isaac. He is beyond the reach of every arm but Thine.” Relatives and friends abandoned all hope for him; others predicted the gallows eventually for both him and his companions. The mother continued to cling to God for her boy. One night, the flame of ardent desire within her heart moved her to pray on through the night and into the small hours of the morning. At four o’clock, she was assured, by an inward witness, that her boy would be converted.

Meanwhile, Isaac grew more reckless week by week. His books, written by Paine and Voltaire, were supplemented by everything which he could lay his hands upon of the same infidel nature. But God works by varied means. When the Rev. Robert Aitkin was to preach at Doncaster, the dissolute youth went to hear the notable minister, hoping to discovery some peculiarity of the speaker with which to entertain his circle of friends. The afternoon service pulled hard for the man of God. Someone describing that service said, “The word seemed to rebound back into his own bosom. He shook himself, roared like a lion and said: ‘I have long heard that Doncaster was the capital of the devils’ kingdom, but now I believe it.’”

Returning home after the sermon, Mr. Aitkin gathered the praying folks together to intercede for the evening service. But meantime, Isaac Marsden was smarting under the probing of the Spirit of God. He had never heard a man thunder out the terrors of the law like this one. The speaker seemed to look into his very face as he denounced his identical sins. His refuge of lies, and the protective walls of his well-laid arguments, crumbled under the anointed words. Numbed, he was impelled to remain behind and enter the enquiry room. When questioned by some Christians why he had taken this step, he could give no answer – a paralysis had seized him for he “thought nothing and felt nothing.”

The influence of that sermon was abiding, but although convicted, Isaac did not yet seek earnestly for mercy. In fact, the following week found him on the very back seat at the Love Feast at Skelmansthorpe with paper and pencil in hand, intending to list the names of the speakers and outline the substance of their talks, parodying it at the Inn. The people were having a joyful time, and he was having work to fill in the notes. His own mother arose and related how she had been praying for her wayward son.

Suddenly the Spirit of the Lord again smote the young man with feelings of remorse: “Isaac,” He seemed to say, “you have known these people all your life. In sickness and in health, in prosperity and adversity, they have been true to their principles. Some of them have endured persecution for Christ’s sake and yet they have honorably maintained their profession. You never knew any of them do a mean, shabby, dishonest deed. They have never told you a lie or tried to deceive you. Are they lying now? Or are they speaking the truth? If they are speaking the truth, you are on the wrong side of the hedge.”

Like a flash, his infidel arguments appeared hollow and worthless. He could not resist such outstanding evidence. He folded away his notebook and, springing to his feet, told them that their happiness had convicted him. He stated how he was most unhappy, and how he had resolved that if there was a Heaven, he would gain it; and if there was a Hell, he would shun it. Then with great emphasis, he brought down those unusually long arms of his like a sledge-hammer upon the pew door, saying, “And if ever I do get converted, the devil may look out.”

The communicants did not know how to receive this information. Was it another practical joke? But the stricken young man knew within his own heart that his life was going to be very different. At the Doncaster Love Feast the next week, he made a similar statement of his intentions. In after years, Mr. Marsden spoke of these public utterances as important milestones in his life.

Now at Doncaster, there were four holy men of God of varying ages: young Butler, a tailor, who had been meeting in class-meeting; Rev. William Naylor, a mild and gentle spirit; Friend Unsworth, a pious shoemaker; and Friend Waring, an elderly man noted for piety and wisdom. These four made Isaac their special care, taking him to every meeting, both in the church and in their homes.

The great crisis of the new birth was reached on Sunday morning, October 11, 1834. Isaac had attended the early six oÂ’clock prayer meeting, and there he had requested his friends to pray for him every hour of the day, for he meant to do business with God. He had seen himself the vilest of sinners, not only wasting ten precious years of his own life, but being the ringleader for the devil among young men. God forgave him out of His boundless mercy, and it was alone in his own room that the Spirit witnessed to his acceptance with God.

The first act of his prodigal was to return home and report to his mother all that had happened. Ann Marsden turned pale and almost fainted, but she was a bit skeptical. However, the change in her sonÂ’s conduct soon caused her to rejoice, for she observed that he now spent evenings at home when he would retire to his own room alone. With an open Bible on the chair before him he would study the Book with delight, meditating and praying. At times he would go to one of his friends for further instruction, but immediately afterwards he would retire for quiet and further study. He had always been a reader, but now it was one Book that enthralled him.

The story of his conversion spread abroad like wild fire. At fairs and markets it became the latest bit of gossip. Peals of laughter would be occasioned, as some who had known him before, looked forward to his next impersonating performance. His four friends knew, however, that the young man was in earnest, and that the devil would use every known device to lure him back. So they impressed upon the new convert that his safety lay in being out and out for God. He must carry war into the very camp of the devil where before he had aided and abetted evil.

Isaac, taking their advice, after selling his bolts of material, would mount the wagon and use it as a preaching stance. When Feast Day came to his town, he would take up position between two drinking houses, witnessing to the merry-makers. At the Doncaster Race Course, he placarded trees and fences with signs. In the Inns, where he must needs meet his customers and receive payments, the former reveler would ask for a glass of pure water, paying the price that a glass of beer would cost. He would then hold his temperance lecture, and with it intermingle the Gospel.

Meanwhile, Isaac observed that his four godly friends, possessing the blessing of entire sanctification, preached it, lived it and enforced it. They now impressed upon Isaac “that he could never have the power of learning, or culture, or wealth, or social position; but he might have the power of goodness.” They enjoined him to meet with them at every means of grace possible. They pointed out Scripture commands such as “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” They gathered early in the morning before he left for his week’s rounds, and would be present to pray with him upon his return on Saturday. An agreement had been reached between them to pray for one another seven times daily.

Isaac, though endeavoring to subdue his strong passions and tempers by praying without ceasing, still had not attained to this blessing of “Perfect Love” which his four good friends still urged upon him whenever they met.

Sixteen months after his conversion, the seeker found his heartÂ’s cry answered.

“I first dared to give God my whole heart,” he wrote, “and believed that the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed me from all sin. This happened at a place called Langworth, at the Inn where I put up. Before I lay down to rest, I made a practice of reading a portion of Scripture on my knees, and I did the same in the morning. In this way I had read twice and a half through the Bible, and as I got to prayer this passage came into mind: ‘My son, give Me thine heart.’ And I said to God: ‘Here, Lord, Thou shalt have it,’ believing that a God so pure and holy would not keep sin in His hand. And, blessed be God! I still feel that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth me from all sin. O my God, may this ever be my experience!”

Towards the latter end of 1836, Mr. Marsden was called to preach and placed on the Methodist plan. He had already been faithfully witnessing and seeing friends and customers brought to God. But it was with some difficulty that he could adjust to the orthodox behavior demanded in the pulpit. He, in fact, never did fully conform, but often scattered to the winds everything that would restrict his freedom. Sedate Christians had reason to complain of these innovations, but he felt men were perishing from lack of the Gospel, and the sentiments of his heart are expressed in his journal:

“O may the Lord ever be with me and make me in earnest! God is in earnest – Heaven is in earnest – devils are in earnest – Hell is in earnest. And in order to save my soul and them that hear me, I must be in earnest, or be in danger of being damned in the pulpit. Souls are on the verge of Hell. We must be in earnest to pluck them as brands from eternal burnings.”

“May God help me to live this year,” he wrote in 1838, “to His honor and glory as I never did. I feel determined by God’s help to spend and be spent in His service. I feel daily His blood cleanses me from all sin. My evidence is brighter than ever. What thousands there are in the Church that live without his blessing! O my God, arouse the Church to seek after all its privileges. Mr. Harris says: ‘So long have we accustomed ourselves to be content with little things that we have gone far in disqualifying ourselves for the reception of great things.’ O my God open mine eyes to behold all my privileges. Give my soul an impulse and raise me nearer to Thy Throne. I want a spiritual earthquake to take place in my soul every day.

“We are languid in our prayers when we ought to be inspired. What we have expected is only our feebleness. There is too much sameness and oneness amongst us. We go to preach, we go to hear, we go to class-meeting, we go to prayer-meeting, and we expect no good. We go to work like an old man eighty years of age to break stones on a cold winter’s day. Sink me to the lowest depths and raise me up to the highest privileges of religious experience. O for an earnest of the Spirit of power and glory! Revive me every moment. Enable me to live like some immortal being let down from Thy Throne. Make me a stranger to the fear of man, and help me to carry with me an atmosphere of salvation. Lord, Lord, lead Thy ignorant, unworthy creature, every breath, thought, word, feeling, action, day, night, hour, moment; and Thou shalt have the praise.”

As a preacher, Mr. Marsden was mighty. He could not tolerate the stillness of death and formality in his audience. In the middle of some discourse, he would stop and make some pronouncement which would startle his hearers into thoughtfulness. He wanted to make them think. It was little wonder that the more wealthy and respectable should resent his unvarnished plainness. They accused him of being mad, and a lie was circulated to the effect that he had committed suicide. It was believed by many until he turned up to prove it to be a lie.

During seventeen years he preached 3,370 sermons in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire where God signally owned his labors with hundreds of souls being brought into the Kingdom. At Wigan he was particularly assisted and revival ensured. Whenever an enlivened church wished to make attack upon some evil den of iniquity, some public house, some notorious part of town, they called Isaac Marsden to help.

He was exceptionally gifted in personal work, and would often dismount to speak with a stone-breaker, ditch-digger or passerby, often kneeling down and praying for their salvation. When entering upon a series of services in a new district, he would first appeal to leaders and members to fully consecrate themselves to God. Like a soldier, he would reconnoiter before attack. He would stroll through the town, noting its salient points and its weaknesses. Each stranger he met would be accosted, invited to the services and given a tract. On Sunday evening after the service, the public houses and shops that were open would be visited by this ardent fisher of men who would often kneel down to pray, and invite the customers to the services.

“Can you tell me which house the Lord Jesus lives in?” he would ask of a stranger in order to strike up a conversation, and he would leave the people thinking.

If the church in which he spoke had only professed Christians attending, he would proceed very decorously with his sermon, and then suddenly he would close his Bible, and kneel down to pray: “the devil is in the chapel. I can’t preach. Let us pray.” He would then pour out his heart with a torrent of words that revealed his burden for the man that was not there – or was he? The Sabbath-breaker, the profligate, the drunkard, the thief, were interceded for until the congregation would tremble. At the evening service, the place of worship would be well filled with people unaccustomed to regular church-going. The respectable members would not understand his strategem, but his unusual methods attracted sinners into the house of God.

Isaac Marsden possessed, as did many of the early itinerant preachers, a prophetic insight. They exercised gifts of the Spirit for their ministry, when scarcely aware of such possession! This man of God lived so near Heaven in prayer that he often caught the slightest whispers of the Spirit. His warnings to rebellious sinners, frequently uttered before the congregation, were often fulfilled to the letter. In public prayer he would supplicate for the needs of individuals in such a way as to astound the listener who knew that such details could scarcely be known by a stranger save that “the secret of the Lord” was with him and that the Lord revealeth His secrets unto His servants.

The small children were never neglected in his ministrations. He often instituted orange, apple or bun feasts and invited them along to his meetings to sing hallelujah. Many of these grew up to be honored ministers and useful workers who owed their first impressions of the Gospel to his fatherly and loving manner with the little ones. William Booth was only fourteen when he heard this passionate pleader and Isaac Marsden claimed him as one of his lambs. Thereafter the work of the Salvation Army was followed with profound heart interest.

The claims of the churches became oppressive as he became more recognized as a powerful preacher. As a result his business began to suffer. He was faced with the question, “Shall I attend to business and make a fortune, or let business decline and give myself to evangelism?” In a journal entry, May 11, 1846, he notes:

“If the Lord ever puts me in such a position that I can give up business, I promise this day by His help that I will lay down the world, and take up His Gospel, and preach it till death. Lord help me. Thou knowest the weakness of man, and covenants are of no avail without divine aid. Make me faithful to Thy cause in every calling in life.”

All through these years, Isaac Marsden was a devoted son towards his mother, who had delicate health and suffered acutely. Before leaving on a journey, he always entered her sick room and prayed earnestly that she would be sustained during his absence. Upon returning, he would rush into her bedroom and kneeling down, thank God that she was still alive. Here at her side, he would plead with God for hours. Her life ended in peace and triumph in 1847. He insisted upon preaching her funeral sermon as he felt no one else could do justice to her saintly life.

On one of his preaching journeys, he had met the daughter of a respectable farmer and a mutual affection sprang up between them. Because Mr. Marsden still held responsibility as head of his family, and she must consider her fatherÂ’s welfare, it was not for another seven years that they could consider marriage. Isaac Marsden was now forty-seven years of age.

Mary Barker was in every way suited to be a helpmeet for her husband. Though opposite in so many ways, they supplied to each other the very qualities they needed. She was a class leader and successful worker in the church. Rarely did this devoted couple spend Sundays together from one yearÂ’s end to another. And most evenings as well were occupied in taking preaching appointments, but the wife had willingly agreed that their union should in no wise hinder him fulfilling GodÂ’s call. His schedule was never altered for loved companionship with the woman of his choice.

Shortly after his marriage, his financial circumstances were such that he could now, by transferring to other members of the family, sever his connection with his fatherÂ’s business.

As this man of God neared the end of his labors, how did he view the experience he had received in his late twenties?

“I feel a settled conviction of the necessity of a full salvation always, especially for pulpit work and the permanent revival of the churches. The church has for a long time been going down to the world, until the distinction has been nearly lost. The birthday of the church was the day of Pentecost – the festival of the Holy Ghost. It is not the external form and custom, but the Holy Ghost that makes the church really Christian. He is the soul that fills and animates her, and combines all her individual members into the unity of one body. What is to be done to raise Methodism? My answer is: only one thing for the pulpit and the pew, not a splendid ritual, nor splendid chapels, nor splendid sermons, nor splendid concerns, nor splendid lectures, nor bazaars. The Pentecost is that one thing for pulpit and pew. All other things without this are splendid sins, and splendid professions, and splendid shams.”

The long and frequent journeys, occasioning exposure to inclement weather, weakened the robust frame. He began to feel a languor that took his appetite and rest. His wife tenderly nursed him during those long nights of sickness, as he lay like a lamb now, feeling that his tempestuous mission was almost finished. He said one day,

“I don’t feel anything or think anything of Isaac Marsden, it is all Christ…I have been looking back and reviewing seventy years, but I see nothing but the Atonement! The Atonement at every turn!”

On January 17, 1882, at seventy-five years of age, the militant spirit of Isaac Marsden joined the church triumphant. The warrior preacher had utilized every ransomed power for the extension of GodÂ’s kingdom.

How did Mr. Marsden maintain the experience through those long years, and keep unabated that zeal and vision for the lost? The secret was to be found in his prayer closet. Seven times a day this man sought the face of the Lord, although his intimates never knew of this practice. “He literally prayed without ceasing,” says his biographer. He hated anything like frivolity or foolish conversation, gossip or slander.

“I have no liking for dinner parties. I can do with a chat at tea, and then be free and easy, but as soon as breakfast is over I long to be off into my room to my books and papers. Life is short, and I feel I have not five minutes to spare.”

As a new convert, Isaac Marsden had set up the chair within the bedroom for Bible study and prayer, and now the aged warrior had not ceased to keep this quiet tryst with Christ although the demands of the church had lain heavily upon him.

Quotations By Isaac Marsden

Shall we then be counted among the dead men? O no; we must be counted among the living – among the higher-life men. A man of real life will look alive and speak a living language. His prayers will have fire enshrined in them, and will have wings of fire, which will rise to Heaven and return with answers before he rises from his knees. But the wings of a dead man’s prayers are of ice, which will freeze him fast under the wings of death. For this the world will call us “mad”. There is not only a “mad zeal” in serving Christ and in carrying men out of themselves, but there is a worse kind of madness – lukewarmness, supineness, and disbelief. Many read that Christ was born in a stable and laid in a manger, but they never go to see Him. If they could read that He was born in a palace, there would be cheap trips to the place, and the rich would go and offer their gifts. But Christianity remains unaltered. It never adapts itself to foolish notions or false theories.

Unbelief is the blue mould that grows on idle and lazy souls. Keep with duty, always working with Christ; and then Jesus will take care that His bride walks with Him “in white”. Never belong to those who say, “I cannot”, “I am unworthy”, “I had rather not”; but up and at it. Let it be always a settled thing in your own mind that you are unworthy, but don’t talk about it. Talking much about it is either canting pride or canting hypocrisy. Be a noble soul. You are unworthy, but your Jesus is worthy – and worthy of you. You are weak, but He is strong. Let Him be your Alpha and Omega – your all in all.

The congregation waited expectantly for the speaker who had for two nights previously given messages rich in content. But John Hyde, though fully prepared, remained silent. “For two days,” said one present at that conference, “he came before the convention, stating that he was not allowed to give further addresses until the challenge of the first address was accepted and the Holy Spirit given rightful place. He called all to prayer and then remained silent. He at first sustained violent criticism, but his critics were broken under the power of the Spirit, and Hyde’s obedience meant for the Punjab Church many a Spirit-filled worker."

A backward look at the life and discipline of this man of prayer enables us to understand how he became a vessel that God could use.
John Hyde was the son of a minister. From the year of his birth, 1865, until 1882, the family lived in Carrolton, Illinois, U.S.A. The home of Dr. Smith Hyde was one of culture and refinement, to which, in its reality, was added the influence of religion. The fervency of his parents at the family altar greatly contributed to JohnÂ’s ultimate power in intercessory prayer.

When his father accepted the pastorate of a Presbyterian Church in Carthage, Illinois, John enrolled as a student in that town. His scholastic ability was so outstanding that after graduation he was asked to become a teacher in his alma mater. That profession had no attraction for the young man and, in obedience to what he felt was the call of God, he decided to attend a seminary in the city of Chicago.

At a missionary meeting where the need of workers for foreign service was powerfully presented, John’s soul was stirred. Later he sought out a fellow-student, who had assisted in the programme, demanding, “Give me all the arguments you have for the foreign field.”
“You do not need arguments,” retorted his friend. “what you want to do is to get down on your knees and stay there until the matter is settled one way or another.”

And Hyde did just that. As he waited upon God, he was convinced that the divine plan for him could be fulfilled only somewhere beyond the sea. From that time, foreign service was his chief topic of conversation. His prayers were to the end that his classmates, too, should see the fields white to harvest in lands where Christ was not known. His fervent petitions were abundantly answered for, from his class of forty-six graduates, twenty-six offered themselves for foreign missionary effort.

John set sail for India after graduation in October, 1892, with mixed ambitions. To be sure, he wished to rescue the perishing among India’s millions, but he also hoped to make a name for himself, to so master the languages necessary that eventually he would become a missionary of fame. When he went to his cabin, he found a letter addressed to him in a familiar handwriting. It was that of a ministerial friend of his father, one whom the young man greatly admired for the depth of his spiritual life. As he read, he was startled. “I shall not cease praying for you, dear John, until you are filled with the Holy Spirit.” Clearly the implication was that he was not so filled.

“My pride was touched,” he confessed later, “and I felt exceedingly angry, crushed the letter, threw it into a corner of the cabin and went up on deck. I loved the writer, I knew the holy life he lived. And down in my heart was the conviction that he was right and I was not fitted to be a missionary.”

Back to the cabin John went. “In despair, I asked the Lord to fill me with the Holy Spirit,” he said, “and the moment I did this the whole atmosphere was cleared up. I began to see myself and what a selfish ambition I had. It was a struggle almost to the end of the voyage, but I was determined long before the port was reached that, whatever the cost, I would be really filled with the Spirit.”

When he arrived in India, he attended a meeting where, in no uncertain way, the fact was emphasized that Jesus Christ is able to save from all sin. When one of the listeners, at the close of the service, approached the speaker with the pointed question, “Is that your personal experience?” John was extremely thankful that he had not been thus questioned. He acknowledged to himself that, although he had been preaching such a Gospel, experimentally he was a stranger to its power.

Plainly there was no side-stepping the spiritual issue now confronting him. Without the baptism of the Holy Spirit experienced by the 120 at Pentecost in the upper room in Jerusalem, he was a complete failure. He retired to his room, saying to God,

“Either Thou must give me victory over all my sin, or I shall return to America to seek there for some other work. I am unable to preach the Gospel until I can testify to its power in my own life.”

John was now where God wanted him. In simple faith, he looked to Christ for the deliverance from sin for which his heart was craving. He said later,

“He did deliver me, and I have not had a doubt of this since. I can now stand up without hesitation to testify that He has given me victory.”

He found the language somewhat difficult for several reasons. One was a slight physical handicap of deafness. Another was the fact that he believed a thorough knowledge of God’s Word to be more important to his success as a missionary than anything else. When the examining committee showed dissatisfaction at John’s lack of progress in the vernacular of the people among whom he had come to labour, his answer was, “I must put first things first.” In time, however, he did acquire such a command of several languages of India that he spoke with almost native fluency.

God wisely trains the instrument which He intends greatly to use by bringing most unexpected and often most undesirable providences into his life. In 1898, John was laid aside for seven months. He took typhoid fever, which was followed by two abscesses in his back. This produced nervous depression which necessitated absolute rest.

Hyde, writing of this period says, “For a long time after my illness of the 1st of May, nervous weakness kept me in the hills, though I wished much to go back to work. All along the year, the prayer of Jabez (I Chron.4:10) was running in my mind. I prayed, ‘Enlarge my coast,Â’ with perhaps some temporal things much in mind and hope. The answer was an illness, straitening and limiting strength and efforts – taking me, keeping me from working for months, pressing home lessons of waiting, impressing the great lesson, ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done.Â’ But with the waiting and straitening came spiritual enlarging. How often God withholds the temporal, or delays it, that we may long for and seek the spiritual.”
For twenty years, with one furlough because of ill health, Hyde laboured in the villages of India. With a tent and a few native workers, he traveled from place to place, proclaiming the good news of salvation. He prayed constantly for a work of the Holy Spirit among India’s darkened populace. He believed his petitions would be answered for, said he, “If the heart be right, blessing cannot be withheld; it can only be delayed.”

At the beginning of 1899, out of the depths of disappointment over few conversions among the heathen, he was led into a depth of prayer life not hitherto realized. With the world excluded, he often wrestled with God until midnight. Or, before the rising sun of a new day, he was on his knees. Pleading for an outpouring of divine grace upon the villages of India.
After ten years of service in the mission field, for physical reasons, John returned to America. There he emphasized again and again the necessity of the SpiritÂ’s infilling in hearts everywhere, if the cause of missions was to advance. Citing Pentecost as proof, he declared that united prayer on the part of Christians would produce a tremendous enlargement of the Church at home and abroad.

On his return to India, revival came to the school for girls at Sialkot, in the Punjab, the headquarters of the United Presbyterian Mission, under which John laboured. It was marked by open and public confession of sin and clear-cut conversions.

The Spirit of God also moved upon the near-by seminary. Some of the theological students, aflame with divine love, visited the school for boys where, strange to tell, they were not permitted to witness to what God had done for them. The young men returned to the seminary, where they and others united in prayer for a visitation of the Holy Spirit upon that branch of the work. “Oh, Lord,” they pleaded, “please grant that the place we were forbidden to speak tonight may become the center from which great blessings shall flow to all parts of India.”

The management of the boysÂ’ school soon was placed in other hands, and a convention at Sialkot was announced in April, 1904. The purpose was to unite in prayer for a movement of the Spirit of God throughout India. Only a few truly praying Christians responded to the invitation among them, John Hyde. Another prayer session was decided upon in August. As a prelude, John and a friend spent thirty days and nights in earnest supplication for a revival.

Canon Haslam was present at that gathering and, twenty-eight years later, in a lecture on Hyde, gave his personal impression of the services and of the remarkable change which took place in him. “Shortly after the commencement of convention proper, Mr. Hyde passed through an experience that made him what he became – a man who had power with God and a truly great missionary. I have always thought of this change as vicarious repentance and confession in behalf of the whole Church.

“During the growth of the Church, many from the outcast population had been baptized and, doubtless, were Christians, but the life of the Church as a whole, was at low ebb spiritually. Something drastic was needed. To Hyde it was revealed that the Church had no power because of sin which had not been cleansed from her life; and that sin is washed away only when there is true repentance and confession.

“He was a part of that Church. Burdened with this thought, after an all-night vigil and a day of fasting and prayer, he came into the presence of a large group of Indian Christian men and spoke openly, though reservedly and in much anguish of spirit, of his personal conflict with secret sin that was ofttimes repeated, and of how God had led him through to victory. The effect of this open confession was electric. That experience marked the beginning of a life of great spiritual power in the case of John Hyde and the beginning of a deep revival in the Punjab Church.”

John himself caught a fresh vision of the doctrine of holiness. From this time, his Bible readings were marked, not only by a deeper personal understanding of divine truths, but also by the ability to convey them to others.

The Sialkot Convention of 1905 was preceded by much prayer. The glorious result was that, at the close of the first service, the entire congregation went to their knees, continuing in prayer and confession of spiritual deflection until the dawn of day. From that time, the United Presbyterian Mission at Sialkot lived on a higher spiritual plane than it had ever reached. “Good” missionaries became known as “powerful” ones. The effect was felt throughout all India, and the breath of Heaven sweeping over the land could be traced to the kneeling figure of “praying” Hyde.

Only seven years of labour remained for GodÂ’s servant. During that time, John entered deeply into the spirit of intercession. Prayer literally became his meat and drink, so much so that the physical side of his nature seemed to be lifted above its normal needs.

Some time during 1908, he began to pray for the conversion of one soul a day. In village treks or in tent services, he lost no opportunity to press the claim of God upon many or few. At the end of the year, to his knowledge, there had been four hundred conversions and baptisms. To God he gave the glory, but the goal set for the next twelve months was two conversions daily. Again HydeÂ’s faith and intercessory prayers were rewarded and, at the yearÂ’s end, through his contacts, eight hundred persons were known to have come to the Saviour.

The last convention he attended was in 1910, for his health was failing. Pleading with God for the conversion of four souls each day, divine assurance was given him that such would be the case. Often more than that number lifted Hyde’s heart to God in songs of praise and thanksgiving. “There was nothing superficial about the life of those converts. They nearly all became active Christians,” was the comment by one who was on the field and able to appraise the results.

“Praying” Hyde had learned a most valuable secret of maintaining the spiritual life. Two of his closest fellow-labourers, each in a short sketch of his life, reveal, for our benefit, the reason for his deep piety.

Pengwern Jones remembered a convention sermon which left its impression upon his life. He said, “I think that the Spirit used him to give us all an entirely new vision of the Cross. That was one of the most inspiring messages I ever heard. He began the address by saying that from whatever side or direction we look at Christ on the cross, we see wounds, we see signs of suffering. From above, we see the marks of the crown of thorns; from behind the cross, we see the furrows caused by the scourging, etc. He dwelt on the Cross with such illumination that we forgot Hyde and everyone else. The ‘dying, yet living Christ’ was before us. Then step by step, we were led to see the crucified Christ a sufficiency for every need of ours and, as he dwelt on the fitness of Christ for every emergency, I felt that I had sufficient for time and eternity.

“But the climax of all to me was the way he emphasized the truth that Christ on the cross cried out triumphantly, ‘It is finished’, when all around thought that His life had ended. It seemed to His disciples that He had failed to carry out His purposes; it appeared to His enemies that at last their dangerous ‘enemy’ had been overcome. To all appearances, the struggle was over, and His life had come to a tragic end. Then the triumphant cry of victory was sounded out, ‘It is finished.’ A cry of triumph in the darkest hour!

“Then Hyde showed us that, if united to Christ, we can also shout triumphantly, even when everything points to despair. Though our work may appear to have failed and the enemy to have gained the ascendancy; and we are blamed by all our friends and pitied by all our fellow-workers, even then we can take our stand with Christ on the cross and shout out,

‘Victory, victory, victory!’

“From that day, I have never been in despair about my work. Whenever I feel despondent, I think I hear Hyde’s voice shouting, ‘Victory!’ And that immediately takes my thoughts to Calvary, and I hear my Saviour in His dying hour crying out with joy, ‘It is finished.’ As Hyde said, ‘This is real victory, to shout triumphantly though all around is darkness.’”

“This dependence upon Christ and His Spirit was the secret of John Hyde’s success in everything,” added R. McCheyne Paterson. “This is the open secret of every saint of God! ‘My strength blossoms out to perfection in weakness,’ is His Word. So ‘when I am weak, I am strong’ – strong with divine strength. The more we grow in grace, the more dependent we become! Never let us forget this glorious fact, and then we shall be able to thank God for our bad memories, for our weak bodies, for everything; and in that sacrifice of praise shall be His delight and also our own. So this fruit shall fill the whole earth!”

The sands of time were running out for this man of God, and a serious heart condition developed, one that required an undetermined period of rest. Early in 1911, John sailed for America, where it was learned he was suffering also from a brain tumor. An operation brought only temporary relief and, in less than a year after leaving his beloved India, “praying” Hyde said farewell to this world, with the words in Hindi upon his lips, “Shout the victory of Jesus Christ.” Certain it is that high on the honour roll of God, both in earth and in Heaven, is inscribed ineffaceably the name of “praying” Hyde, intercessor for the lost.

A Little Farther

A little farther, let me go with Thee
To share the travail of Gethsemane,
O let me watch with Thee for this last hour,
And for the conflict prove Thy SpiritÂ’s power.
A little farther still, I go with Thee,
Right up the hill to lonely Calvary,
To death of all that robs my life of Thee,
That Thou mayÂ’st pour afresh Thy life through me.
A little farther yet until I see
Thy straying sheep who wander far from Thee,
Then love divine shall cause my heart to glow,
And all ablaze for God I forth shall go.
A little farther, seeing just ahead
The very footprints of my MasterÂ’s tread,
A little farther still, and I shall be
Safe in the Gloryland at home with Thee.