CHAPTER XI. ANSWERED PRAYERS (2)

The following personal testimony was publicly given at one of our meetings lately held in London, and may serve to help and encourage readers of these pages.

A PRAYER-MEETING TESTIMONY.

“I want you to understand, my friends, that what I state is not what I did, but what God did. God only could have done it! I had given it up as a bad job, long before. But it is of God’s great mercy that I am standing here to-night, to tell you that Christ is able to save to the uttermost all that come to God through Him.

“The reading of those ‘requests’ [for the salvation of inebriates] touched me very deeply indeed. They seemed to be an echo of many a request for prayer which has been made for me. And, from my knowledge of society generally, and of human nature, I know that in a very great number of families there is need of some such request.

“Therefore if what I may tell you will cheer any Christian heart, encourage any Godly father and mother to go on praying for their sons, or assist any man or woman who has felt himself or herself beyond the reach of hope, I shall thank God for it.

“I had very good opportunities. My parents loved the Lord Jesus, and did their best to train me up in the right path; and for some time I thought myself that I should be a Christian. But I got away from Christ, and turned further and further away from God and all good influences.

“It was at a public school where I first learned to drink. Many a time at seventeen I drank to excess, but I had an amount of self-respect that kept me from going thoroughly to the bad till I was about twenty-three; but from then till I was twenty-six, I went steadily down hill. At Cambridge I went on further and further in drinking, until I lost all self-respect, and voluntarily chose the worst of companions.

“I strayed further and further from God, until my friends, those who were Christians and those who were not, considered, and told me that there was very little hope for me. I had been pleaded with by all sorts of people, but I ‘hated reproof.’ I hated everything that savored of religion, and I sneered at every bit of good advice, or any kind word offered me in that way.

“My father and mother both died without seeing me brought to the Lord. They prayed for me all the time they lived, and at the very last my mother asked me if I would not follow her to be with her in heaven. To quiet and soothe her, I said I would. But I did not mean it; and I thought, when she had passed away, that she knew now my real feelings. After her death I went from bad to worse, and plunged deeper and deeper into vice. Drink got a stronger hold of me, and I went lower and lower down. I was never ‘in the gutter,’ in the acceptation in which that term is generally understood; but I was as low in my soul as any man who lives in one of the common lodging-houses.

“I went from Cambridge first to a town in the north, where I was articled to a solicitor; and then to London. While I was in the north, Messrs. Moody and Sankey came to the town I lived in; and an aunt of mine, who was still praying for me after my mother’s death, came and said to me, ‘I have a favor to ask of you.’ She had been very kind to me, and I knew what she wanted. She said, ‘It is to go and hear Messrs. Moody and Sankey.’ ‘Very good,’ I said; ‘it is a bargain. I will go and hear the men; but you are never to ask me again. You will promise that?’ ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do.’ I went, and kept, as I thought, most religiously my share of the bargain.

“I waited until the sermon was over, and I saw Mr. Moody coming down from the pulpit. Earnest prayer had been offered for me, and there had been an understanding between my aunt and him that the sermon should apply to me, and that he would come and speak to me immediately afterward. We met Mr. Moody in the aisle, and I thought that I had done a very clever thing when I walked round my aunt, before Mr. Moody could address me, and out of the building.

“I wandered further from God after that; and I do not think that I bent my knees in prayer for between two and three years. I went to London, and things grew worse and worse. At times I tried to pull up. I made any number of resolutions. I promised myself and my friends not to touch the drink. I kept my resolutions for some days, and, on one occasion, for six months; but the temptation came with stronger force than ever, and swept me further and further from the pathway of virtue. When in London I neglected my business and everything I ought to have done, and sank deeper into sin.

“One of my boon companions said to me, ‘If you don’t pull up, you will kill yourself.’ ‘How is that?’ I asked. ‘You are killing yourself, for you can’t drink so much as you used to.’ ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I can’t help it, then.’ I got to such a state that I did not think there was any possible help for me.

“The recital of these things pains me; and as I relate them, God forbid that I should feel anything but shame. I am telling you these things because we have a Savior; and if the Lord Jesus Christ saved even me, He is able also to save you.

“Affairs went on in this manner until, at last, I lost all control over myself.

“I had been drinking and playing billiards one day, and in the evening I returned to my lodgings. I thought that I would sit there awhile, and then go out again, as usual. Before going out, I began to think, and the thought struck me, ‘How will all this end?’ ‘Oh,’ I thought to myself, ‘what is the use of that? I know how it will end—in my eternal destruction, body and soul!’ I felt I was killing myself—my body; and I knew too well what would be the result to my soul. I thought it impossible for me to be saved. But the thought came to me very strongly, ‘Is there any way of escape?’ ‘No,’ I said; ‘I have made any number of resolutions. I have done all I could to keep clear of drink, but I can’t. It is impossible.’

“Just at that moment the words came into my mind, from God’s own Word—words that I had not remembered since I was a boy: ‘With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.’ And then I saw, in a flash, that what I had just admitted, as I had done hundreds of times before, to be an impossibility, was the one thing that God had pledged Himself to do, if I would go to Him. All the difficulties came up in my way—my companions, my surroundings of all sorts, and my temptations; but I just looked up and thought, ‘It is possible with God.’

“I went down on my knees there and then, in my room, and began to ask God to do the impossible. As soon as I prayed to Him, with very stammering utterance—I had not prayed for nearly three years—I thought, ‘Now, then, God will help me.’ I took hold of His truth, I don’t know how. It was nine days before I knew how, and before I had any assurance, or peace and rest, to my soul. I got up, there and then, with the hope that God would save me. I took it to be the truth, and I ultimately proved it; for which I praise God.

“I thought the best thing I could do would be to go and get somebody to talk to me about my soul, and tell me how to be saved; for I was a perfect heathen, though I had been brought up so well. I went out and hunted about London; and it shows how little I knew of religious people and places of worship, that I could not find a Wesleyan chapel. My mother and father were Wesleyans, and I thought I would find a place belonging to their denomination; but I could not. I searched an hour and a half; and that night I was in the most utter, abject misery of body and soul any man can think of or conceive.

“I came home to my lodgings and went upstairs, and thought to myself, ‘I will not go to bed till I am saved.’ But I was so ill from drinking—I had not had my usual amount of food in the evening; and the reaction was so tremendous, that I felt I must go to bed (although I dared not), or I should be in a very serious condition in the morning.

“I knew how I should be in the morning, thinking, ‘what a fool I was last night!’ when I would wake up moderately fresh, and go off to drink again, as I had often done. But again I thought, ‘God can do the impossible. He will do that which I cannot do myself.’ And I prayed to the Lord to let me wake up in much the same condition as that in which I went to bed, feeling the weight of my sins and my misery. Then I went to sleep. The first thing in the morning, as soon as I remembered where I was, I thought, ‘Has the conviction left me?’ No; I was more miserable than before, and—it seemed strange, though it was natural—I got up, and thanked the Lord because He had kept me anxious about my soul.

“Have you ever felt like that? Perhaps after some meeting or conversation with some Christian, or reading the Word of God, you have gone to your room miserable and ‘almost persuaded.’

“I went on for eight or nine days seeking the Lord. On the Saturday morning I had to go and tell the clerks. That was hard. I did it with the tears running down my cheeks. A man does not like to cry before other men. Anyway, I told them I wanted to become, and meant to become, a Christian. The Lord helped me with that promise, ‘With God all things are possible.’

“A sceptic dropped his head, and said nothing. Another fellow, with whom I played billiards, said, ‘I wish I had the pluck to say so myself!’ My words were received in a different way from what I thought they would be. But the very man who had told me that I was killing myself with drink, spent an hour and a half trying to get me to drink, saying, that I ‘had the blues, and was out of sorts; and that a glass of brandy or whisky would do me good.’ He tried to get me to drink; and I turned upon him at last, and said, ‘You remember what you said to me; I am trying to get away from drink, and not to touch it again.’ When I think of that I am reminded of the words of God Himself: ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’

“And now the Lord drew me on until the little thread became a cable, by which my soul could swing. He drew me nearer; until I found that He was my Savior. Truly He is ‘able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him.’

“I must not forget to tell you that I went down before God in my misery, my helplessness, and my sin, and owned to Him that it was impossible that I should be saved; that it was impossible for me to keep clear of drink; but from that night to this moment, I have never had the slightest desire for drink.

“It was a hard struggle indeed to give up smoking. But God in His great wisdom, knew that I must have come to grief if I had to fight single-handed against the overwhelming desire I had for drink; and He took that desire, too, clean away. From that day to this the Lord has kept me away from drink, and made me hate it most bitterly. I simply said that I had not any strength; nor have I now; but it is the Lord Jesus who ‘is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.’

“If there is any one hearing me who has given up all hope, come to the Savior! That is His name, for ‘He shall save His people from their sins.’ Wherever I have gone, since then, I have found Him to be my Savior. God forbid that I should glory! It would be glorying in my shame. It is to my shame that I speak thus of myself; but oh, the Savior is able to save, and He will save!