are not preached on celebrated platforms; they are preached with an
audience of two or three, and in private home life. A consistent,
consecrated Christian service is an unanswerable demonstration of
God's truth.
A group of rough men were assembled at a tavern one night. It came on
toward morning--one or two o'clock. One man boasted that it did not
make any difference what time he went home, his wife cheerfully opened
the door, and provided an entertainment if he was hungry when he got
home. So they laid a wager. They said: "Now, we'll go along with you.
So much shall be wagered. We'll bet so much that when you go home and
make such a demand she will resist it." So they went along at two or
three o'clock in the morning and knocked at the door. The door opened,
and the man said to his wife, "Get us a supper." She said, "What shall
I get?" He selected the articles of food. Very cheerfully were they
provided, and about three or four o'clock in the morning they sat down
at the table--the most cheerful one in all that presence the Christian
wife--when the man, the ruffian, the villain who had demanded all
this, broke into tears, and said: "I can't stand this. Oh, what a
wretch I am!" He disbanded that group. He knelt down with his
Christian wife and asked her to pray for the salvation of his
immortal soul, and before the morning dawned they were united in the
faith and hope of the Gospel.
A patient, loving, Christian demeanor in the presence of
transgression, in the presence of hardness, in the presence of
obduracy and crime, is an argument from the throne of the Lord
Almighty, and blessed is that woman who can wield such an argument. A
sailor came slipping down the ratline one night, as though something
had happened, and the sailors cried, "What's the matter?" He said,
"MY MOTHER'S PRAYERS
haunt me like a ghost." Home influences, consecrated Christian home
influences, are the mightiest of all influences upon the soul. There
are men here to-day who have maintained their integrity, not because
they were any better naturally than some other people, but because
there were home influences praying for them all the time. They got a
good start. They were launched on the world with the benedictions of a
Christian mother. They may track Siberian snows, they may plunge into
African jungles, they may fly to the earth's end, they cannot go so
far and so fast but the prayers will keep up with them.
I stand before women this morning who have the eternal salvation of
their husbands in their right hand. On the marriage-day you took an
oath before men and angels that you would be faithful and kind until
death did you part, and I believe you are going to keep that oath; but
after that parting at the door of the grave, will it be an eternal
separation? Is there any such thing as