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ROSE PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1886. rRINTED BT HONTIR, ROBI & 00. itiamuammmmmm STACK RELIGIOUS BOOKS. TO THE WORK. Ly D. L. Moody. HEAVEN. Bv D. L. Moody. THE WAY TO COD. By D. L. Moody. ANECDOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. By D. L. Moody. SERMONS. By RhV. Sam Jonrs. MARRIAGE RING SERMO ^. By Rev. Dr. Talmaqk. Published uniform with this volume, in Rose's Pocket Library. Cluth, 50 ceuts ; Paper Covers, 26 cents. ROSE PUBLISHING CO., ^ TORONTO. nov 3 mo ] BEV. SAMUEL JONES, -»♦-•- )T. cket AM JONES," &.J he is commonly called, was bom in Chambers County, Ala., United States, on the 16th of October, 1847. His father and mother were .dligious people, and four of his uncles were ministers of the Gospel. "Sam" was brought up to the profession of Law, and started life with a brilliant prospect of success before him. Shortly after opening his office, he became very dissipated, and had it not been for his father's death-bed exhortations, a useful life would have been lost to the world. Sara, after his reformation, married Miss Laura McElwain, of Eminence, Kentucky, and this estimable lady still cheers him in the arduous labours in behalf of suffering humanity. In October, 1872, Mr. Jones became a travelling preacher of the Methodist Church South, and was very successful in his work. Shortly after this he became a travelling evangelist, and met with extraordinary encouragement in several of the Southern States. He then attracted the attention of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, who for some time employed him in a grand revival at the Brooklyn Tabernacle, Brooklyn, New York. Mr. Jones again returned to the South, and attracted wide-spread attention in several cities. In St. Louis he ,•* , i- VI REV. SAMUEL JONES. attacked Satan with such vehemence and success, that his name became at once a household word, and his sub- sequent visits to Cincinnati and Chicago, and the good he has accomplished in those places, testify that he is a man of great power and influence. And now his work has branched out to such an extent that his time is fully oc- cupied in addressing mass meetings. Mr. Jones often uses slang and other uncouth language to attract attention, which is to be regretted, but the fault is more than counterbalanced by his earnestness. He is without doubt the most sensational preacher in the world, and his meetings produce intense interest and a great harvest of converts, and he is endorsed by the leading orthodox ministers wherever he goes. success, that and his sub- fche good he It he is a man '^s work has '® is fully oc. ^h language but the fault less. He is n the world, and a great the leading CONTENTS. SAM JONES IN TORONTO. SERMON I. Paof. HB Consecration of the Home 9 • SERMON T[. Committing to the Lokd , . 27 SERMON III. Palm Trek and Bay Treb ... . • 41 SERMON IV. To Mothers 56 SERMON V. To Girls . . • .78 SERMON VI. A Memorable Night • 102 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. SERMON VII. Account of his Conversion and Experience. . . 127 SERMON VIII. A Great Sermon on Hell. . . • • . . 146 SERMON IX. What must I do to be Saved • • « « t • ^^^ ^. eople of Tennessee tendered me an elegant home. I talked with my wife. She said, " Is that best for our children ?" I said, " I am afraid it is not best for the children. It may prove their ruin. I don't know. We are all living in our little humble cottage, and all our children that are old enough are members of the Church, and fear God and keep his i Vik ■'• lyBpV'' (■ CONSECRATION OF THE HOME. 23 '/ commandmPiits." My wife said, " I would rather live in this humble cottage until God calls us from it. Let us do what is best for our children." So I said to my friends, " I cannot accept your kindness — God bless you." Then they said, " Your cottage shall be enlarged to a pleasant home." When the work was finished, my wife said, " Husband, God gave us this house, through his people; let us give it back to God." So we decided that at Christmas the pastor of the Home Church was to dedicate our home. And wlien the neighbours and kins- men came the pastor stood up and said, " I dedicate this house to God." He 1)edicatp:d my house to ood \/ ■)U just like the church yonder. I turned to my children and said, " This is God's house ; let us do nothing in it that we could not do at church." Thank God, after that nobody will ever ask me to let hiui play caids or dance in my house. When I gave my house to God I hunted the devil out. I wish every home in Toronto was dedicated to God. Christian people, hear me to-day. Give your houses to God. He is mighty good to us. " Precious Father, precious Saviour, Holy Spirit, be a father and a brother to every one of us, and to each one of our chil- dren." I said at a meeting in my own town, " I want you to help me raise my children for Heaven. How can you help me ? Have your cliildren trained right, and there will be no bad children to lead mine off (applause). Let us go into an eternal partnership and help ourselves, each other, and our children for Heaven." I wish we would. I tell you, brethren, the days are evil. There is not a lather in this house that can go home and lay his hand on little sleeping Willie s head and say, " This boy will never be a drunkard." You cannot say, as you look at little Mary, " r^he will never be the wife of a drunkard who will drag her down to death." You will have whis- 24 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. key, and you will have it because you want it. This is a free country, and you can have things just as you want them. You don't want any trade on Sunday and you don't have any. V IF YOU WANT PROHIBITION, glory be to God, you can get that. (Applause). I said to the liquor dealers of my town two years ago : — " If my boy comes to your grocery and asks for liquor, take him into your back yard and lay his head on a block and chop it off. But don't give him drink. If you kill him, his precious soul goes home; but if you drug him with that stuff he is killed, soul and body, for time and eternity. (Applause). People say prohibition does not prohibit. Well, there are murderers, not- withstanding the law against murder ; but we have the fun of hanging a murderer every now and then. (Laughter). And so where there is a prohibitory law we can put the law-breakers in the penitentiary, and that fun is the next best thing to religion. (Laughter). There are three classes of men whom God has never been able to do much with — the fool, the stingy man, and the lazy man. I have seen the Lord do His best with them and fail . utterly. (Laughter). I speak that reverently, too. " It is more blessed to give than to receive." Listen. It is more blessed to be where you can give and give than to be where you have to receive and receive. Which would you rather be, an American or Canadian Christian, and give a thousand dollars to home missions — to be in a posi- tion WHERE TOU CAN GIVE AND GIVE be the poor h :a,then Chinee, who is in the position to receive and receive ? As illustrating his meaning further the preacher gav^ a beautiful parable of the living stream bearing its cupful of water generously on oo the tfi' CONSECRATION OF THE HOME. 25 river, giving life as it passed and receiving back the water from the sea through the kindly agency of the clouds, as contrasted with the pond which, Heekin<^ to hold to all it had, spread pestilence among the people until the sun dried it up. He proceeded : — Here is a demonstration that God will see to it that he who gives all he has ohall HAVE ALL HE WANTS. God help us to be noble, to be pious, to be gentle and loving and true. The text says that Cornelius prayed to God always. He got upon praying ground. Many a man thinks he is on praying ground and on pleading terms, and never was within a thousand miles of it. When he began to pray, then it was God turned to him and said, " Your prayers and alms have come up as a memorial." What do you want ? To learn the way of life. God found Peter asleep, and let down the four-cornered sheet with all manner of living creatures saying, " Arise, Peter, kill and eat." A first, a second, and a third time, the command coming at last, when Peter still objected, ''That which the Lord has cleansed that cal! not thou com- mon." Even then the men from Cornelius were waiting. And Cornelius was baptised and received the Holy Ghost, and the water of life has been flowing upon a Gentile world from that day to this. APHORISMS. No man can be religious in anything unless he is reli- gious in everything. This term holy holiness — if you put a " w" before it, you will get the best idea of holiness you ever had. Show me a church that does not believe in revivals and I will show you a church that looks like an abandoned cemetery. B 26 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. Stagnation is the last station this side of damnation. It is an abnormal state of things that makes revivals necessary. Religion is loyalty to God, and the right holiness is a hundred cents in the dollar. It is doing the square thing every time you do anything. Fun is the next best thing to religion. Character is builded by living in perfect harmony with God. Religion is hartiony. Religion is the setting of the ten commandments to music in your soul. It is mighty hard to talk sense for a whole hour and not bore some greenhorn. It takes less sense to criticize than it does to do any- thing else in the world. I am sorry for a fellow when he is nothing else but a preacher. i "SiS- El SERMON II. " COMMITTING TO THE LOUD." The Work of the Evangelists — Some Remarks about Steam Whistles — The Subject of Character- building. '^ INVITE your prayerful attention to these words which vou will find in 5^h verse, 37th Psalm, " Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass." We have a very broad promise in the verse which I have read. 1 think it would be very profitable if at the afternoon service we should contemplate some precious promise of the book, and then at night realize that God is not slack concerning His promises, that He is faithful to fulfil them all. I suppose every person here, every earnest, true Christian, certainly has SOME SUPREME WISH, some supreme desire. I suppose that some good Chris - tian mother here would say : — " My supreme desire is to see my children safe in the arms of Jesus." Well, now, sister, listen, " He will bring it to pass." That is, all your loved ones shall be brought into the fold of Christ. Another says, " My supreme desire is to get more religion myself; the Lord knows I never had enough. Oh, God, make my life more like the best of Thy servants, and 28 SAM JONES IN TORONTO more like Christ." Havn't you said it. God says if this is your supreme desire He will bring it to pass. Another says, my desire is to see my church — the pastor says this — made better. And, brethren, I believe it is laudable and scriptural for a pastor to be careful about his own churcli. I love to see a pastor stand by his people. It is right to want a good revival in your own church. It is right for you to want your own people to be the best in town. But I'll tell you what I dislike. I dislike to see a preacher happy when he has a big meeting, and miserable when the brother round the corner is having a good time. You don't see that in Toronto, but if you were over in the States I'd show it to vou occasionally. It takes more religion right on that point than at almost any other point in the pastor's life, I believe it takes more religion to sit still and see another fellow do a thing you wanted to do and couldn't, than to do anything else under the sun. I believe that. It is laudable and right for you to desire to see Methodism built up in the best sense of the word, and no man on earth need be ashamed he is a Methodist. I have known Evangelists — and .' , , ' I AM NOT AN EVANGELIST; I am a Methodist preacher, taking my appointment like a bishop, like any other Methodist preacher — but I have known Evangelists that were ashamed to tell which church they belonged to ; at least they never would tell it. If anybody asks you what I am, tell them I'm a METHODIST from head to foot, all over. I'm not ashamed of it, and I can't say I'm proud of it. I'm a Methodist just like I'm a Jones. I was born both and am no more responsible for one than I am for the other. And I have no ecclesiastical bigotry about me either. The fact that I'm a Methodist demonstrates the fact that I must be religious. Now, the Catholic Church has its COMMITTING TO THE LOKD. 29 '■ 4 ' Pope ; the Presbyterian Church has its starch, its dignity, 1 and its education ; the Baptist Church has its water. But ! if we poor Methodists haven't got reUgion, we haven't got \ a thing in the world to run on. Have you ever noticed j that ? And | THE WORST BANKRUPTED PEOPLE the world ever saw is Methodism that hasn't got religion. There is no reason why any Presbyterian brother in this town and myself need quan-el about what we are, or any Baptist preacher and myself. I said to a good Baptist preacher once — he was wondering why I didn't come his VfQi,y and become a Baptist preacher, and I said to him, " Well, brother, if my mother and yours had swapped babies when we were twelve months old, you would have been a Methodist preacher and I would have been a Baptish preacher, and that'^ all about it." Thank God we are growing more and more in sympathy with each otlier and more willing to help each other. I like to see the cross fences in the church pastures taken down. I like to see the Presbyterian come over in the Methodist pasture a while, and the Methodist go uver and feed on the final perseverance grass a while. Somehow or another, when they come back they stick better. I got the best wife I ever had out of the Baptist Church, and somehow or another, though I was born a Methodist, I feel very close akin to the man who loves Jesus Christ and keeps the Ten Commandments. A man who has got no religion at all, • HE IS NOT SECTARIAN. If he's got a great deal he's not sectarian ; but if he's just got enough religion to make him sectarian, he's the most despicable I ever saw on earth. I despise a man that's clever (used in the American sense of liberal, generous), in everything but religion, and he's as mean as a dog in that. l'^ 30 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. It's meet and right for pastors to want their churches to do well. If I was colonel in a regiment in the array, I would want my soldiers to do as much as any regiment in the army for my country. So, as a pastor, the captain ot one of God's regiments, I want my church to get in the front of the battle. I want them to die with their faces to the enemy. But there is a sense in which WE CAN UNITE — we ma}' lose our idr-vtity. There were such thick, hard- fought battles durmg the last war between the United States, that companies got scattered from their regiments, and regiments from their divisions, and the battle was getting liotter and stronger ; and when the victory was won, every man was inquiring where his regiment was. Good Lord, make us so earnest in fighting the devil and sin that we will forget which our church is. (Anen.) And when the battle is over, we will all be inquiring for our churches. If we "vant to see our churches built up that is laudable, and God says He will bring it to pass. I have noticed that the preacher and the church that lost them- selves most in their unselfishness in joining in meetings were the preacher and the church that gained more con- verts out of the meeting than any other. SELFISHNESS IS THE POOREST THING I a man ever invested in a Christian movement. I want to put myself straight on all these questions. Now I rely upon the pastors of the churches on all occasions, and I am powerless to do without your co-operation. I would not go to China to hold revivals ; there is no seed sown there ; and what is the use of going round with a reaper when no seed is sown. What is an evangelist ? Nothing but a reaper. And wherever I go I want pastors and churches to have preceded me with the seed, and with 4 L COMMITTING TO THE LORD. 31 ■\ cultivation, and with keeping up fences. I would not hold a revival in China because there have been no pastors to precede me, and I should not expect to make a single convert in twelve months. But here, in Toronto, with the pastors and people to help me, why not have a thou- sand or ten thousand souls converted to God in one month ? I believe God works through the churches and by the churches, and I shall never go outside of the regular organized Churches of Jesus Christ to do anything for sinners. It is God's ordained way of dealing with this world, and let me tell you, this reaping is a thousand times more easy than sowing the seed and watering it with tears of anxiety and earnestness ; and there is scarcely a pastor in this harvest that would not deserve a thousand times more credit than I would if there were ten thousand souls converted at this meeting. Some say, I don't believe in evangelists. Well, brother,'don't you be- lieve in God's order of things. He gave some apostles and some evangelists, and so on. What is an evangelist ? Why the need of an evangelist ? I will tell you where the need comes in. A preacher takes charge of a church for three months, and the devil will show him enough obstacles in these first three months to weaken his faith to where he don't believe he ever can do the work. But THE EVANGELIST COME!^, ALONG; he don't know anything about these things ; he don't see these obstacles, and his faith just surmounts them. He laughs at impossibilities, he cried it shall be done, and under God it is done. I see no mors difficulties in To- ronto than in Chicago or any other place. Brother, if I be close to God I walk by faith and not by sight. Later in his discourse the preacher, illustrating the words, "Com- mit thy way to the Lord," said : — T walk down to a livery stable this afternoon t nd I say I want a horse and buggy. The horse is hitched and driven to the front door, and the i 32 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. livery man places the lines in my hands. The moment he does so, he commits the horse to me. The horse don't want to go anywhere in particular, but he will go where I want him to go. I sit in the buggy. When I chick to him he starts. If I pull on the right line he turns to the right ; if I pull on the left line he turns to the left ; if I check him up straight he goes ahead ; when I clap him with the lines he strikes a trot, and when I say " whoa," he stops. Now, that horse does what I want him to do. He is committed to my hand. Commit yourself to God ; give the lines of your life into his hands ; when he pulls on the right line, turn to the right, when he pulls on the left, turn to the left. If the Lord wants you to go faster and slaps you with the lines of his Providence, r STRIKE A TROT ^■^ '.-A |.. if Ke says " whoa," stop. That is exactly what " com- mit " means. One old woman got mad because I com- pared folks to horses. I thought the horses might get mad, but never thought the folks would. I didn't, as true as you live. Yon know once they brought a horse to Mr. Beecher to go out on dress parade. Mr. Beecher asked if he was steady. The man said : — " He's afraid of nothing, ani he'll do just whatever you want him to." Mr. Beecher said, " I wish I had one such member in my church who was afraid of nothing, and would do what- ever work I gave him." How would you like to have a church full of that kind ? You have got few of that kind of horses, perhaps, and that reminds me of another kind of horse. Have you seen a horse that would not work except to one of these light skeleton buggies ? They go with that like the wind — a mile a minute, as we some- times say. He moves grandly, with his head up, a mag- nificent animal, muscular, and well formed. Hitch him to a waggon or a plough and he won't pull at all, just prances around. Now, haven't some of these \ COMMITTING TO THE LORD. 83 >» SUNDAY MORNING, ELEVEN O CLOCK CHRISTIANS put you in mind of this skeleton buggy horse, as they come into service all dressed up so grand, got up for dress par- ade and having a magnificent time. But if you want to hitch them up to prayer meeting or family prayer, they wouldn't pull at it a bit, not to save j^our life. And some of you remind me of the typical Georgia mule, that the di key brings into town. I have often seen the darkey come into town with his buggy without a dashboard, the seat all torn to pieces, and he sitting up there in magni- ficent style. He starts out of town driving his mule, and when he gets to the forks of the road, he wants to go and tells his kinspeople good-bye, and the mule wants to go the other way, and the old darkey begins to pull him round and round. I have seen the old darkey pulling with the bit all even on one side, and the bridle all under the mule's ear, with the mule's head turned the way his master wants him to go, but his body the other way. I tell people some- times that if I see a dog going along the street, following two meri riding on horseback I can't tell whose dog it is to save my life. But I go up here to the forks of the road, where one man takes one course and another takes another. I can tell whose dog he is, because he will follow his master. Stand on some of these corners, where one way leads to the theatre and one to the prayer meet- ing. You can't tell where that man is going, but if you stand at the forks of the street you can tell. If you are going along and you take the road to the theatre, you are '/ THE DEVIL S DOG, and you needn't say anything more about it. That is my candid judgment. A fellow said to me, " Samuel, I should like you better if you would not use so much slang. You say dog and hog." I said, " Do you think that is slang ? " What is a slang phrase, anyhow ? It is nothing but our 34 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. best thoughts, boiled down rather strong. And I tell you it's get now, if you want to move a fellow, you have got to get the strongest thing you can find, and get at him with it. I have seen many a woman turn up her nose at me at church because 1 used slang, and I have said to myself " you had better turn up that nose at that drunken boy, or that licentious husband of yours." I have seen many a woman turn up her nose at my slang, and I have said " the devil's got a mortgage on that nose, and some day he's going to foreclose it and the whole gal with it." (Laughter.) " Commit your way to God." " Lord, hear ; I am Thine forever. Direct my steps. Order my path. Speak, Lord ; Thy servant heareth." That's Christianity — that's complying with the condition. I was once with a friend partridge hunting, and he had the finest bird dog I ever saw. The master would wave his hand in that direction, and the dog would go in that direction imme- diately ; he would bring his hand towards himself and the dog would come right up to him ; he would put his hand down and the dug would lie at his feet. I thought to my- self : " Lord Jesus Christ, hast Thou a servant in this world that will obey Thee like that dog does his master ? " and I felt ashamed of myself in presence of that dog. You know what trust is. I believe after all that trust is but the maintenance of a committal. We have got a heap of a kind of faith in this world ; but the most contemptible faith is that sort that runs about with its mouth open and says, " Lord, give me something." " What do you want ? " '* Don't know — want something." It is that spirit that catches everything that falls and holds on. I want a growing faith. A great many of us will go down on our knees and say, " Lord, give us faitli." I had just AS SOON PRAY FOR SWEET POTATOES. I do pray for them ; but I find them at the end of a hoe handle wet with sweat. When the disciples prayed, ♦ t ti mtmrn 1 ^ !l ^ i 4 > OOMMITTINQ TO THE LORD. 35 "Lord, increase cur faith," Christ said, " If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to the moun- tain, ' Be thou removed.' " All you have got to do is to exercise the faith you have. L have no faith in this effe- minate religion that says, " Jesus did it all," and keeps singing, " Oh, to be nothing, nothing, nothing," until you are nothing in the universe. (Laughter.) Well, if you want to be nothing, you are lower down than ever 1 was when I was a sinner. I wanted then to be a first-class sinner, and there never was a day since I have been converted that I didn't want to be somebody. If you think you are pleasing God by whining round Him, you never made a greater mistake in your life. Some people have no sense, but think the more they are nothing, the more tliey please God. God is my father. I am His son. God wants to see me be somebody and do some work. In Atlanta, Georgia, we have one little man ; he is small in stature and young in years, but he is 1 THE BIGGEST MA.N I EVER SAW. There is one trouble about him and that is his stingi- ness. He is worth $20,000, and we can't get but $1,500 a year out of him for the cause of religion. That will give you some idea. Last year, when they held the meeting for foreign missions, little George got up and said, " Mr. Preacher, last winter I gave the best sister a boy ever had to the cause of foreign missions, and this year I give $500." I would like to bring him to Toronto, only that he might set a bad example to you in stinginess. How many men have you in any church in Toronto who are worth $20,000 and will plank down $1,500 a year for the cause of Christ and religion, eh ? The crowd that was to save the city was ten, and if you haven't got that many you need more religion here, that is all there is about it, and the more religion a man has got the looser his purse strings get. Did you ever notice that ? When /T 36 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. God wants to reach a man he puts his auger right into his head, runs down right through his heart, and so on down into his pocket book, and it springs up like an artesian well. God doesn't commence at the heart and bore up to the head. What would He do with the dirt? You have iiiistaken ideas about this whole business. I have no patience with this everlasting talk about heart religion. I want religion all over me. If I am to have it only in one place, I want it in my right hand, so that I can go on and do something for God and Christianity. I was going on to tell you about this grand man in Atlanta. We had a talking meeting, where all the members get up and talk one with another about their experience. Do you have such meetings here ? Rev. Dr. Potts — Plent;)' of them. Rev. Mr. Jones — I am glad you do. When a man hasn't got enough religion to talk about his religion, he is in a bad fix. I suppose all j^our women talk about their re- ligion. Rev. Dr. Potts — Some of them do. Rev. Mr. Jones — Any woman who can vote ought to be able to talk about her relioion. I don't think one is more unladylike than the other. I don't. There is one passage of Scripture that i f 1 GUESS EVERY WOMAN KNOWS — maybe it is the only one she knows — and that is, " It is a shame for women to speak in public." Did you ever know a woman that didn't know that verse ? Paul said also, that it is a shame for a woman to cut off her hair, and some of you don't pay much attention to that, so you are Pauline when you want to be — and " no Pauline," as the fellow said, when you want to be. We had a talk- ing meeting and we were talking about the locomotive. I said a locomotive was an organized pile of iron, and a Church was an organized lot of Christians, and we got COMMTTTINfj. TO THE LORD. 37 ( ' ■^^ 1 f i talkino^ about the Church being like a locomotive, and one thought he would like to bo this part and another thought he would like to be that. One would like to be the driving wheels, another the cow-catcher, and another the head-light. Another said he would \ , LIKE TO BE THE WHISTLE and sound the praises of God all over this country. We have got more whistles now than anything else, and some of you are like the whistle on a little steamboat on a river down in Georgia. It is a little steamer and has got the smallest boiler and engine you ever saw, and a big old-fashioned whistle, and when it blows the whistle the boat stops. It can't go and whistle at the same time. When she runs she can't blow, and when she blows she can't run. I have seen many a Christian take it out in blowing. They can't both blow and run in the good work. George, my brother, got up and said, " I will tell you — I am perfectly willing to be the old black coal they put into the furnace to burn up and make steam and carry the engine along." That was the grandest Christian sen- timent I ever heard escape from human lips. That is what we mean by " commit," brethren and sisters. Oh, Lord, let us be the old black coal to be burned up in Thy service, and if there is anything left, take it and use it. That is the kind of Christians we want. I was preach- ing at High Bridge, Kentucky, for three or four days, and the pastor of one of the churches said : — Brethren, I have been thinking and repenting. Twenty years ago I ENLISTED IN THE REBEL ARMY, and left my home and never set eyes on my friends for four years, and all for love of the Southern Confederacy ; from a mere sentiment of patriotism I went to the front, slept out in the cold and in the snow. I have gone 24 38 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. hours mmy a time without a bite to eat. I have marched with blood spurtini^ from my feet at every step. I have bared my bosom to a tliousand bullets. But shame upon me, I have been a Soldier of the Cross for thirteen years, r.Tid have never missed a meal for God, never slept out in the cold a night for God, never denied myself a single pleasure foi* God, and never bared my bosom to a single bullet for the sake of Christ, and I am ashamed of my- self to-day in the sight of God. Mr. Jones here gave an incident which he said he wanted his audience to carry away with them, think over it, and bring it V)ack in the evening. It was of a battle which took place near the close of the American civil war. The general in com- mand on one side noticed that from a certain fort in a locust grove a deadly fire was pouring in upon his troops. He sent his adjutant to one of his generals with thi^ message, " Give General Cheltham my compliments, and tell him that 1 ask at his hands that fort in the locust grove." General Cheltham had been missing for two hours and was thought to be dead ; so had a second gen- eral, to whom the same message was sent. Then a mes- sage was sent to a third general : " Give him my love (no compliments this time), and tell him I ask at his hands the fort in the locust grove." The general who got the message straightened up in his saddle and said, " First Missouri Brigade, forward," and he dropped his finger on the fort; and they y ..' CHARGED THROUGH SHELL AND DEATH, and, with the loss of many a man, they captured the fort and the guns and the men that manned them ; and the officer sent back to his commander this message, " Give him my love, and tell him I also present him the fort in the locust grove." I tell you, brethren, continued Mr. Jones, 1 say it this afternoon as an humble adjutant of Jesus Christ — I come over to Toronto and present you t *r,i' r i 'J COMMITTING TO THE LORD. \ 89 the love of Jesus Christ, and tell you he asks at your hands — at your hands — this city to bo redeemed by His precious blood (a chorus of " Amen "), and I trust V)efore one month from to-day I may be looking up to heaven and sayin<]f, " We send our love back to the Lord J» us Christ, and also present Him Toronto delivered from m Be true soldiers, do your part, and God will bless you I. APHORISMS. ^ t ¥■ s I believe a blessing is one of two things. It is either given by God to a man because that man has done his duty and God has paid him, or because God knows he has determined to do his duty and has paid him on credit. Religion, when you boil it down to a concrete essence, is nothing more than something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. If you tell me what you love and what you hate I will tell you your character. If you quit sinning you will quit doubting. If a man believes he is right, the next thing he wants is courage that will dare to do right. A man is not a sinner because he is an infidel ; he is an infidel because he is a sinner. The greatest blessing that ever crowned an American or a Canadian church is a " game " preacher that is not afraid of man or devil. If the devil ever puts his foot upon a woman once she never gets up any more. I believe it takes more religion to sit still and see an- other fellow do a thing you wanted to do and couldn't, than to do anything else under the sun. I'm a Methodist just like I'm a Jones. I was born both, and am no more responsible for one than I am for the other. 40 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. The fact that I'm a Methodist demonstrates the fact that I must be religious. Now, the Catholic Church has its Pope ; the Presbyterian Church has its starch, its dig- nity, and its education ; the Baptist Church has its water ; but if we poor }'lothodists haven't got religion we haven't got a thing in the world to run on. What is a slang phrase, anyhow ? It is nothing but our best thoughts boiled down rather strong. I like to see the cross fences in the church pastures taken down. I like to see the Presbyterian como over in the Methodist pasture a while, and the Methodist go over and feed on the final perseverance grass a while. Somehow or another, when they come back, they stick better. The most contemptible kind of faith is that sort that runs about with its mouth open and says, " Lord, give me something." I want a growing faith. Selfishness is the poorest thing a man ever invested in a Christian movement. Good Lord, make us so earnest fighting the Devil and sin that we will forget which our Church is. / ¥ 4 r> t >>< . 1 i c I m 1 SERMON III. PALM TREE AND BAY TREE. The Three Hundred and Seventy-six Uses of the Palm Tree — As Many Uses for the Christian — A Tree That is Good Tor Nothing but Casting Shades Where the Sun is Needed. DISSERTATION on mustard is not good to a man in pain. He will say, " For goodness sake stop talking, and spread a little of that mustard on a plaster." A dissertation on truth won't save you ; it's the application of the truth ; I furnish the truth — God give you the grace to apply it. The righteous are like the palm tree — that's one expression. The wicked are like tho bay tree. Now, with these two highly figurative expressions we may get our bearings this morning. When a ship steers across the Atlantic Ocean, it must not only know where it's coming from — New York and wants to get to Liverpool — but it must ke^p its bearings every moment. It must know where it is. Where am I from ? Where am I going ? Where am I ? When a ship loses its bearings, no matter where it comes from, or v/here it wants to go, it don't help it. If you have lost your bearings you will get left, in my candid C ^*< 42 SAM JONES TN TORONTO. judgment, We may get helped to find our bearings this morning. God save me and save you from the fatal mis- take of thinking that I can do anything. The most severe tests and trials of an evangelist result from the fact that people will depend on him. Quit looking to me. Look to God. Now, if we get our bearings this morning we're going to do something to-day that will make itself known to-night. The good work of God is preceding any effort of yours. The mail this morning brings me very encour- aging news — sinners who are pricked to the heart. They call upon the people to pray for them. One says : — " I have never seen the truth in this way ; it has never been brought to me, and to my conscience in this way before. I drank my last drop. God being my helper I will never drink any more." You see, brethren, GOD IS WORKING AHEAD OF US. Let us follow close after God and work in earnest. (Amen.) I am not one of those who run on numbers spe- cially. I never keep account of converts, and I never run any guarantee on converts. They say, " Do Moody's con- verts stick ? Do Jones' converts stick ? " I say, No, not one of them, but God Almighty's converts will stick ninety- nine times out of a hundred. (Applause.) I never run any guarantee on any convert in my meetings. If I was to come back here two years from now, I might find the whole of them in the penitentiary. But I'll tell you this ; you new converts will average up the dead square level of the old ones. You say Harrison had a meeting here a year ago, and some of his converts quit goin' to church. Well, ain't some of the old oxtbs quit too ? You say some of them are getting drunk ; ain't some of the old members getting drunk too ? You say some of 'em won't pay a cent to the church ; ain't some of the old ones stingy and mean too ? It isn't who preached when this one got religion, but what sort of a crowd did they mix with after they >- - > » PALM TREE AND BAY TREE. 43 >^ ' ^ -> got converted. Evil communications corrupt good man- ners, and good company is a blessing to anybody. I said to a pastor in Chicago, " If I were to ask you this ques- tion, how would you answer it ? If you knew my coming to Chicago would double your church — give you another five hundred just like the five hundred you have got ? " He said no, "I don't want another five hundred just like I've got," (Laughter.) " I'd like to have a hundred more like a hundred I've got — but if I had to take another four hundred sorry ones to get those good ones, I'd rather you didn't come to this town." That's a sad commentarv. And there ain't a preacher in this town that could ask God to double his church just like it is. We don't want so much new members as we want good members. Ain't that so ? The Metropolitan church and Elm-street church here, do they need more members ? If so, what do they need 'em for ? Do they need any more to help round prayer meet- ing ? Why, suppose all the members of those churches were to come around prayer meetings, there would be such big prayer meetings they couldn't manage them. Every preacher will say, I've got enough of the kind ; but, good Lord, improve the kind and give me more of the improve- ment. Now let's think of these things as we go along with the subject. " The righteous are like the palm tree." The Eastern people used to boast that the palm tree was good for THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX DIFFERENT THINGS. And the righteous are like the palm tree — ^good for 376 different things. How many are you good for ? I expect if you would take everything you was good for, you might run quite a number. Here's a sister who says, " I am good to lose patience with my children, and I'm good to quarrel back at my husband, and I'm good to shop, and I'm good in the selection of certain kinds of goods. I'm good at progressive euchre." But, sister, write down the good things and the bad things you are good for,. 44 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. Brother, if the ritrhteous are like the palm tree, and the palm tree is good for 376 things, then when a man gets to be good for 376 different things, then you say he is like the palm tree — he is like God wants him. Why, they boasted of the palm tree. The sap they used to make wine for medicinal purposes ; the bark they used for various manufactures ; so with the wood ; and they boast- ed that there was not a particle of the palm tree, from its topmost sprig to its deep 3st » roots, but was good for something. It was good from bottom to top, and good for 376 different things. When a Christian gets on this plane he's got to be ;- ■ r GOOD FROM HEAD TO FOOT, through and through, and all over. His hands are good to work for God, and his feet are good to walk for God, his tongue is good to talk for God, his mind is good to think for God, his pocket is good to give for God, and his eyes to see, and his ears to hear for God. And I can see very readily how a man can be good for 376 things if he wants to be. I hear fellows saying, " I am doing my part." A.re you doing 376 things ? If you ain't, don't you never stop until you're satisfied you're good for 376 things. And if they try to put off 377 on you, tell them, " I just fill up the quota and you can't put one more on me." (Laughter.) The best man I ever saw in the church was superintendent of a Sunday School, he was class leader, he was chairman of the Board of Trustees, he was the best steward I ever saw, he was good anywhere, and good everywhere you put him. He was the busiest physician in the country, and yet he always had time to do any- thing God wanted done. The busy men in this country are the only men that have time to do anything. When your wife is sick you always make for the busiest doctor in town, and he's the only doctor that's got time to see you. These -► ' i 7) PALM- TREE AND BAY TREE. 45 >- r i LITTLE SWELLS OF AGNOSTICS that's got to be doctors and thir^ they can't make a round pill until they show there's no God, if you were to send for them it would take them eight hours to get to you — stopping on the way to reason — and before they get there maybe your child would die. These fellows that never do anything, never have time to do anything. Did you ever notice it ? Suppose you want a lawyer. Do you get one of these idle fellows, playing billiards, and fooling away time with the girls, or the man who is busy from morning till night, going all the time. He is the man you go for. The busy men are the men that are worth most to God. The lazy man is not worth anything in the kingdom of heaven. In all these meetings, the morning meeting especially, I have noticed the leading bankers, leading lawyers — leading bankers, men that it looked like it wasn't possible for them to get an hour away. And whenever you strike a third-rate lawyer, or tenth-rate banker, or sixteenth-rate merchant, you find a man that couldn't get out. Those men that have loads on them that an elephant couldn't carry are the ones that say, " Put more on me." These little fellows, when you want a contribution some day, they say, " I've given, and given, and given until I don't know how much I have given." When you see a fellow who don't know how much he has given, he hasn't given much. The folks that give a great deal always know how much they give. And we do just like we give. Brother Richardson told me that he went to Charleston seeking money to build a church in one of the Florida inland towns. He approached a big wholesale merchant, and said, " Colonel, I'm here beg- ging money for a poor community to build a church." And the Colonel said, " Well, sir, it's money, money, money, from Monday morning till Saturday night. I'm bled to death." " Well, Colonel, ain't you going to give me anything ? " "I can't, I'm bled to death." " Colonel, 46 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. will you let me show my arm ? " " What for, what do I want to see your arm for ? " So, Brother Richard- son hare-^ his arm, an/i said, "Colonel, do you see that sea? ri . ^here, and that one, and that one ? The doctor put th . . -ruot in there three times and iM -s:r got a deop of blood. { ; They have been sticking the lancet into you and jjjetting no blood." The Colonel ran his hand into his pocket and gave a ten-dollar bill. Brother Richardson said : — " Well, Colonel, thank God I got a little blood that time." And that's the way we're doing our duty, exactly. We think because we ought to do a thing we have done it ; because we ought to give, and applications have been made to us, that we are giving. Oh, how men take the shadow for the substance, and take the ought-to-do-it for the having- done-it. Candidly, I reach this point — whatever will help any man to heaven by the grace of God, I'll offer that plank in my religious platform. I need all the help I can get. If grieving, or praying, or going to prayer meeting, whatever will help a man to be religious, I candidly, with delight, adopt that plank in my religious platform. I can afford anything better'n I can afford to miss heaven, and I waiit to take every chance for the good world. Good for 376 different things. Brethren, if that's the test, we're all left, ain't we ? Well, now, I'll say this — You say, " I don't feel called to pray in public." Do you feel equal to send your children to school ? Have you got any special call to send your children to school ? If I were you I'd never send another child to school. Do you have any special call to buy your wife a dress ? Is there any call for that ? Why don't you tell your wife, " I haven't got any special call to buy you a new dress, and you never shall have another." Let us be as sensible in one thing as in another, and if we're fools in one thing let's be fools in everything. Wouldn't that be a good idea ? You think PALM TREE AND BA^ TREE. 47 it's because you're timid. It's because you're mean. A good fellow, who is living right before the public, he'll pray in public. A fellow who ain't living right in the eyes of men ain't going to pray in public. An old fellow was praying once in meeting, and he said, " O Lord, give us soul-saving religion, give us heart-cleansing religion," and one of his creditors who was there said, " And debt-pay- ing" reliiion, and the old brother said "Amen" right at that point and closed his prayer. A man who won't pray in public, if he'll hunt round, he'll find it's something wrong in himself, and not in God, or his surroundings. An- other says : " I can't pray in my family, BECAUSE I'm TTMID." A big, whiskered man timid ! Brethren, if I didn't have courage enough to pray night and morning with my pre- cious children and my wife, I'd go down South and hire some good old coloured man, one I had confidence in as a religious man, and I'd hire him by the month to pray with my wife and children. I mean an old coloured man that had more religion than sense. You have more sense than religion, and you and he would about equalize matters. When a fellow has got more sense than religion, nine times out of ten he's a rascal, and when a fellow has more religion than sense, frequently he's a fool, but I say to you, my brethren, I don't mean Christianity when I say religion at that point. 1 like a level-headed Chris- tianity, brimful of common sense, that meets the problems of life and acts well its own part. That's the kind of re- ligion I believe in. Suppose I were to say : As God has worked in me to will and to do, glory to his name, I'm going to be good in the prayer meeting, good in the mis- sionary meeting, good at the Sabbath sf».hool, good at prayer night and morning in my family, good in reading my Bible, good in praying secretly, good to my wife as a husband, good to my children as a father ; good every- 48 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. where ; and wherever a man is real first-class for any one thing, he is tolerably good for anything. I've found that out. Well, there is another feature of the palm tree. It will grow anywhere in its latitude — up on the mountain side, in the desert, or in the marshy bottoms. The righte- ous shall be like a palm tree — grow anywhere. People will say I can't be religious and merchandize — my cus- tomers worry me to death. A woman says : I can't be religious and keep house ; my servants worry the life out of me. Another says : I can't be religious and practice law. Another says : I can't be religious and practice medicine, I haven't time for going to church. Let me say this to you — glory to God — there isn't an* honourable calling in this world where a man can't enjoy religion every day in that employment. One of the best men I ever saw in my life was a lawyer in full practice. One of the best men I ever met was a doctor in full prac- tice. One of the best women I ever saw had half-a-dozen servants iri her house. One of the best persons 1 ever saw was a merchant, and God has put t -\- 1 HONEST, GOOD, TRUE MEN in every vocation of life to teach us how we can be good if we want to and run that line. But you can't be a Christian and treat your servant inhumane or unkind. You can't. I am sorry for the home where there's more religion in the kitchen than there is in the other part of the house. A woman unkind to her servant ! And that servant turns out every morning and prepsTes your break- fast and has it ready for you to eat before you are out of bed, may be, and when the breakfast is ; ut on the table you are remouthing and complaining at your servant for the way breakfast is prepared, and it was nice and eat- able when it was prepared, but your own laziness has rendered it hardly eatable at all. Mark the expression — you will be glad, mighty glad, to get a job in heaven f t PALM TKEE AND BAY TREE. 49 -\ 1 [ '' «, cooking for that servant of yours. Won't that be a slam at a first-class up-town woman, to desire above all things a job cooking for her servant, when she will say: Any place but this place in torment, where I cun't get even a drop of water to cool my tongue. I've seen many ser- vants who will take front seats in heaven. If you are a Christian, you're going to send your servant out to these meetings sometimes. You will that. A real Christian woman with a servant unsaved will get one meal a day for three weeks so her servant can come out and get con- verted to God. (Applause.) But there are women in this world that would rather her servant should labour at the stove*and prepare her meals and be lost than for herself to go out into the kitchen and cook one meal to SAVE HER servant's SOUL from death and hell. That is a strong assertion. You wouldn't say that, but haven't you acted it ? I am mak- ing no accusations against you. 1 make the statements and tell you to apply them. If the cap fits put it on — no, I won't say that, I'll Lay, like the old coloured preacher in the South : " If this cap fits you, throw it away and get you a better one." That's the best advice I can give to anyone. Another characteristic of the palm tree is, that when jou plant one in the desert, it begins to grow off", and other little palms begin to grow up, and they form an oasis in the desert, where not only the weary traveller can stop, but he can find water to slake his raging thirst. The righteous are like the palm tree. Wherever you find one others will grow up around him. One good man started the work of God in Toronto, and look how his ex- ample spread its influence until a church was formed— that's an oasis in the desert — then another, and here in Toronto now are 200 oases in the desert of life where every weary traveller can slake his thirst and rest under the shade of the rock in a dreary land, S" 60 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. And not only that, but you can take a palm tree, they tell us, and cut it right down to the earth and put heavy loads upon it, and still it will shoot its top right up towards hea- ven, through all these obstacles. The righteous man is like a palm tree — like Job, who, loaded down with troubles and with the pressure of all earthly cares weighing upon him, his lifted heart right back towards heaven with the utter- ance, " Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." The righteous shall be — nay, are — like a palm tree — of great good in the world, and shall multiply even as they grow. The righteous will bear all the difficulties, all the burdens of life, and ever look up to Him with hearts full of gratitude and thanksgiving. Then let us look on thet)ther side a moment. The wicked shall be /- -i .'f. li ) LTKE A BAY TREE. Did you ever see a bay tree ? It is a beautiful tree. It blooms gloriously every spring. But it has one great characteristic — never has any fruit on it. This world has been a considerable time trying to find out what the bay tree is good for, and I believe our wisest men have never been able to make anything out of the investigation. Why, if I wanted a load of firewood, I would drive five miles beyond a bay tree rather than attempt to cut it down ; for it is not only the very hardest kind of wood, but it burns "poley" even after you have got it down. (Laughter.) It won't grow anywhere in the world except down in a marshy bottom, and that is another characteristic of a bay tree. Brethren, so far as we have been able to learn, the only use of the bay tree is to shade, and the bay tree shades right down in the marshy bottom, right where the sun ought to shine. The wicked are like the bay tree — good for nothing in this world but to shade the light of heaven out of the hearts of others, and to cast their shade right where the sun ought to shine. Look at that wicked father ! Fit for nothing in the world except to shade the lidit of heaven out of the hearts of his innocent children ' PALM TREE AND BAY TREE. 61 — right where the sun ought to shine. Look at that pre- cious mother. Good for nothing in the world but to shade the glorious light of heaven out of the hearts of her precious sons and daughteis right where the sun ought to shine. Too many of us this morning, my brethren, are casting such a shade as this. Let us hear some of you say before you leave here to-day : ** God forgive me ; I have been a fearful bay tree. I have shut the God of Heaven and the glories of God out of the hearts of my children, Lord God, forgive me ; I have been a bay tree in the sight of heaven and of all mankind." Oh, brethren ! let us to- day, God helping us, begin to approximate day by day the lightnes!^ of a palm tree, and let's get out from among the bay trees. Now, when you have ; AN OLD SINNER, some seventy years of age, will you tell me one thing in this world that he is good for ? The world has been try- ing for several thousand years to find out what he is good for, and has found out nothing. But I want to say that when you are in eternity you are going to see what he was good for, and that his sole use was to shade and shade when the sun ought to shine. The Lord bless us with a true interpretation of this question this morning and of a personal application of it that will send us away from here to be a blessing to our families. Now I want every man and woman here this morning to determine no longer to play the part of shade trees. 1 want to hear that sis- ter say, " When I get home I will write a note to a young man I know. He is not a Christian. I am going to tell him I am praying for him. And I will ask him to come here and give his heart to God, and I will sign my name in full to that note." I don't like YOUR LITTLE ANONYMOUS LETTERS and nom de plume articles. If you haven't earnestness enough to sign your name to such a note, don't write at 52 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. all. If you don't sign your name, it is mere boHh and humbug. Put your name to it and tell him you are pray- ing for him. How many I have known were brought to Christ by such jiu effort as that. Another lady says : — I am not going to write a note, but I know what time my neighl)our comes home to dinner. 1 am going to rush in upon him and take his hand in mine, and tell him that I am praying for him and wish him to come here to 'ight. Sister, such an effort will be a star in your crowi re- joicing by-and-bye. I don't go much on dreams bui> chat young lady dreamed that slie died and went immediately to luaven, and as she stood with the elect around the throne of God, she saw on every head a crown, and gems in every crown. She spoke to a sister spirit, and said, " What are those gems in the crowns ? Why are they there ? What do they mean ? " The sister spirit answer- ed, "They represent the souls we have been instrumental in winning to Christ." The young lady dreamed that she pulled off her crown and looked anxiously at it, and it was perfectly blank. Then she began to be miserable in heaven. " But, all at once," she says, " I woke up and saw it was all a dream. Glory to God ! I have yet a lew more days and I am going to spend them in getting stars for my crown of REJOICING EY-AND BY." Sister, we have not much more time. Let's get to work. The Lord give you brethren, courage to come by-and-bye to work. Walk boldly up to a man and say to him, " Brother, I am interested for you. I have not lived right myself. I am one of the poorest of God's children, but I want to do better and I want to help others to do bet- ter." Down in Colombus, in Georgia, the devil got at an old brother there and kept him backsliding a whole week. The brothers fought him hard. " You are the biggest old backslider in the town," he said to himself at last, and he beat the devil off. Some of you are pretty big back- PALM TREE AND BAY TREE. 5S ■V sliders, too, and ho wouldn't have been far out if he had spoken to you that way. But some of you are not back- sliders ; you've got to get up a tree before you can fall out of it. Now, brethren, I know a sense of unworthiness sometimes dislodges us from everything. I feel that way and I get down on my knees before I go to work and say, "Oh, Lord God! let not my unworthiness keep back Thy blessing from me," and I have been bowed down by that sense of unworthiness until I have felt just like giving up the fight. But, brethren, this sense of un- worthiness is a MIGHTY GOOD SIGN. J ■i . I have found that out. When we have that sense of un- worthiness, we ought to be like a coloured man down in Hancock county, Georgia, who, before the war, used to belong to one of the Stephens' families. He was a sort of no-account darkey, but he was powerful big in his ways. " Josh, what makes you put on airs in the way you do ? " somebody asked him one day. " Well, I just tell you, boss," Josh replied ; " I don't count for much my- self, but I belong to the biggest family 'round here." And, brethren, when we get that sense of unworthiness heavily upon us, let's remember that though we mayn't amount to much ourselves, we belong to a powerful big family. Just a few years ago, one morning, in our family room, I was sitting reading just after breakfast. There was a little nurse girl there, about sixteen years of age, and I heard ray wife say to her, " Sally, you may go this morning, and tell your mother I don't want you any lonorer." I read alonof a minute or two and then I looked. The girl was standing with the big tears running down her cheeks. She looked at my wife, and said, " Mrs. Jones," and the lip began to quiver, " Mrs. Jones, please, ma'am, don't turn me off. I know I'm the poorest ser- vant you ever had, but let me stay with you, and I'll try and do better." I got in to beg for the poor girl just aa :l 54 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. hard as I could, and I thought to myself if the Lord should come down here and say : " You may go ; I don't want you any longer." I would do just like that poor girl — I would fall down at His feet and say, " Please, Lord don't turn me off; I know I'm the poorest servant you ever had ; but please, Lord, I'll try to do better." Let me live and die in God's service. But God won't turn you off. Go to work ; let's do what we can for the glory of God and for the good of your fellow-men. APHORISMS. Half of us never get up with an old sinner until he is dying, or dead drunk, or too sick to move. Nine out of ten of these eighteenth century sinners can run a mile while we are fastening our shoes. Christianity is Life, or it is nothing. I tell you, brothers and sisters, the more religion you have the better husband you are going to be, the better father you are going to be, the better mother j^^ou are going to be, the better children you are going to be. Heaven itself would be the home of an orphan if God is gone forever. Heaven itself has nothing better than God. When a man can get his eye on the things unseen he is a millionaire. The Church and the world are too thick. Creed is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuff- ed with sawdust and sand. Now I can run Mormonism with Smith in his grave ; I can run Confucianism with Confucius in his grave ; but I cannot run Christianity without a living Christ to abide with you in your work. When a man does not repent, he can't believe to save his life — and when he does repent he can't help believing. ./ te PALM TREE AND BAY TREE. 55 The best way to be happy is to get very miserable about our meanness. Let's get the idea out of our heads that a sad face means a clear heart, that a solemn look means purity of life, that dignity and usefulness are synonymous terms. When a man is full of sin he needs a good dea\ in the universe. Mother ; she is the sweetest woman in the world. Mother ; she is the best woman in the world. Mother ; I would rather be like thee than be like an an- gel ; and, oh, if I am not what I should be, and my child- ren become assimilated unto my character ! Oh, then, what a fatal mistake for me ! I say that right relations towards God will save you from many mistakes and many perplexing cares, and many failures, and many things that you would succeed in ; and to every mother present I say, if you have not done it before this, in the name of the worth of your soul and children, rush up into the pre- sence of God, and say, " Lord, God, here I am ; take me, just as I am, and then make me just as Thou would'st have me be." Really, when I see these things as they are, I know God can do for every mother what she needs to have done. Is that not a blessed fact ? Some mothers say : Well, I am not fit to be a mother. That is the truth of it. I have the worst disposition. I have more weaknesses than anybody. Well, sister, the God that made you knows how to strengthen up every weak point, and knows how to make you symmetrical in the most blessed sense of that word. I remember reading a few months ago about Mr. Edison, the great inventor of the electric light. He is the most wonderful man now in our country, in many regards. He agreed to furnish some publishing company a printing machine by a cer- tain day, and just 67 hours before the time for the de- livery of the machine, it was finished. He put it to work, and it would not do its work, and Mr. Edison took it to pieces, and worked on it, and put it together again and V t •HUmmmmmmtmm TO MOTHERS. IT WOULD NOT WORK. 61 V He took it down again, and put it together and adjusted it again ; but it would not work, and these sixty-seven hours, right straight, without eating, and without a wink of sleep, he worked at that machine, and just at the hour for delivery the machine worked perfectly, and he turned it over to the printers. Then, as soon as the work was accomplished, he went home, ate a meal of victuals, and laid down on his bed and slept twenty-seven hours with- out waking up. This is a fact given in his history. Now, sister, if Mr. Edison would spend sixty-seven hours in regulating that machine, in order to make it work per- fectly, in order that he might deliver it in time, don't you think that if God made you, and you are out of order, if you go to Him, God will not only work sixty-seven hours, but He will lay aside all other machinery, and He will spend eternity to get you straight. God made me, and He knows how to put me in good working order, too. And that is what is the matter with some of you. You won't run. You won't keep time. Oh ! my sister, put yourself in the hands of God, and I believe He can take the most unlovable woman in this kingdom, the most unlovable woman in this town, and can make her the MOST LOVELY AND LOVABLE CREATURE the world ever looked upon. He will make you not only so that you are beautiful in your character, but every- thing will look beautiful to you. I believe that. And really, if I am right in relation to God, and I love God with all my heart, love will reign in my home. True, I have a good deal of sympathy for every mother who has trouble about her children, fussing with each other, and quarrelling, and yet the children get the cue of such life from her and her husband. Now, look innocent ; but at the same time that does not help the matter a particle. iHi 62 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. Suppose I make the proposition that everj'^ woman, who never was cross with her husband, stand up. I won't make it, because that would embarrass you. I never like to embarrass a crowd of ladies. The husband and wife quarrelled at the table, and the wife picked up a cherry- tart and threw it at her husband's head, and missed his head, striking a motto over the door — " God bless our home." The children said, " Mamma missed papa's head, but didn't she hit the motto!" (Laughter.) And just such things as that. Yet in going into a house, and see- ing these bright mottoes about, the first thing is to see if you have wings ; angels must live here. And just look at these mottoes. A NICE MOTTO is a nice thing in the home. But living by, and being reguhited by, such mottoes is the thing that wiil charm the angel's eye. Right relations with God will give yu right relations at home. Right adjustment towards God will give you right adjustment towards your family ; and if a woman, 1 don't care who she is, should look to God for guidance in her home, it will be given her. Mother, you may think you get along well, but mark what I tell you, that the clouds and storms will come. Show me the lite that has not been storm-swept ; show me the life that has not been miserable in every-day life. But, listen. Whatever the past has been, mark what I tell you, you will need God in the future. I'he way to get God is to get in right adjustment towards Him. The way to get into right adjustment is to go to the Lord and say, "Lord, I give myself to Thee ; it is all 1 can do. Here I am, I will be Thine from this time." I received a letter from one wife, that said : — " My husband don't want me to be a Christian. He is afraid that in joining the church I will gossip just like the other members of the church." Why, the Bible contains more i ' i' \ TO MOTHERS. ANATHEMAS AGAINST GOSSIP 63 ^m than any other book in the universe, and this man was afraid for his wife to join the church, fearing that she will gossip, afraid for his wife to go into the foul atmosphere for fear that she will have malaria. Is that not wonderful ? 1 remember that, when in Texas two years age, I was struck down with malarial fever, and tor three weeks I did not get out of bed, and I said : — "I am sorry I came into this malarial district at this time of the year." They said: "There is no malaria here. This is the healthiest place in the world. When a man comes here with malaria in his system it develops it." That is the only way I can see the church harm any person. The church brings out very many things. These things come out, and you re- pent of it and get straight. There may be something in that. Right relations with God. I will say this, sister, a man that does not want you to love God and obey God is a man who is unworthy of the relation of husband to any good woman. That is the truth about it. Mr. Finney says on one occasion a wife and mother came to him and said, " My husband told me last night if I came to this service he would kill me. What must I do ? " Mr. Finney says : " Your first duty is to obey God. My sister, God don't demand that you neglect anything at home in order to serve Him, and He makes it your duty to be a worthy and good mother ; but if you have done all your duty at home, and if you can come to church, come on." The next night she came to church, and when she got home her husband stood inside the door WITH A CHOP AXE, and just as his wife opened the door he flew upon her with the chop axe. She ran up the steps and jumped on a shed, and jumped to the ground, and ran over to % neighbour's house, where she spent the night. She thot^hl, " he will be so sorry this morning about the way he tr^^tod 64 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. me last night ; I will go home and hear his apology this morning." She went back, and as she entered the door he stood there with the same chop axe. In the darkness of night she had eluded him, but in daylight she ran up stairs and he followed her. Just as she entered the room she fell on her knees and he raised the chop axe. She said, " God be merciful to him." As she said this he dropped the axe and fell on his knees, and she went to church that night and the husband was beside his wife. (Anion.) Sometimes it takes desperate means to bring some husbands to do their duty. That is the truth about it, " I beseech you, therefore, mothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living, whole accept- able sacrifice unto God, for this is your reasonable service." Really it is the only sensible thing any woman can do to get into right relations with God, and get His help in every emergency. God can help you, mother, in the MANAGEMENT OF YOUR CHILDREN. I remember this little incident at my own home. I walk- ed in through the hall, and just as I walked into the house, wife and little Mary and Annie came out of the parlour. I saw the three of them all were crying like as if their hearts would break. I said, " What in the world is the matter with you all," and neither one could speak, By-and-bye the little girls got up and walked out of the room, and I turned to my wife and said, "Wife, what's the matter ?" Then she said, " You know sometimes Mary and Annie disagree with each other and it is very painful to me," and she said, " I have switched them for it and I have admonished them, and this morning when they had a little disagreement, I got them both by the arm and went into the parlour and went down on our knees and told God all about it. God came down and broke their hearts into ten thousand pieces, and that did these girls more good than all the switches in Georgia." There is 1 1 \ { ' TO MOTHERS. 65 nothing like having such friendship with God. Go to the Lord and tell him all about it, and tell him to lift you out of all your troubles. Haven't you felt, " I will have to give it up/. There is no use in talking. I cannot man- age my children. I cannot." Haven't you felt that ? That is THE SADDEST HOUR. that ever came to a home in this country, when father and mother say to each other, " We give it up. We can- not manage them." Some of you may be one year, some of you may be two years, and some of you three years past that time when you can control your children. Ain't that so ? Do you know that in some of the best driving horses I ever drove in my life I was warned of this fact — you may let them go at certain speed, and control them safely ; if you let them go at full speed and then check them they'll fall to kicking the buggy all to pieces. And sister, there's the point. Up to a certain point you can keep your children under control ; but let them go beyond that point, and then try to put the check on, and they'll just kick creation all to pieces. I said something along that line one day to a congregation, and an old mother said : " There, that's just my case. I said to my daugh- ter, * Daughter, you shall not go to that ball,' and she just kicked the chair clean across the room, and looked like she'd kick me.'" I wish these girls would kick some of these dudes out of the parlour, but don't let your poor old mother have any of the kicking. I don't mind having a trifling young man saying a girl has kicked him out, but I do hate to hear a mother say she has been kicked by her daughters. But I'll get to the girls Saturday and have a talk with them. God pity the mother that has raised up A LOT OF KICKING ANIMALS; animals that bite and kick too. Sister, let you and I maintain a Christian firmness in our homes. " Right's 66 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. right ; I do it ! children, I want you to do it. Wrong's wrong ; I won't do it ! children, I don't want you to do it ! " A mother had a brother-in-law — I believe it was — who wanted to send her daughter to a dancing-scliool. He said, " There's a dancing school beginning at the house ot Prof. Arori." He was a hook-nosed Frenchman — I don't know how long he'd been out of the peniten- tiary. Can't say anything about that, but he had started a dancing-school, and when this brother-in-law wanted to send the young lady there the mother, who was a Christian woman, said, " I am a widow, and not in a con- dition to pay for the dresses that my daughter would re- quire if she learned dancing." The brother-in-law pro- mised to buy the dresses. " But," said the mother, " 1 can't afford to pay for the tuition." And the brother-in- law promised to pay for that too. Then the mother said, " Well, you send daughter to me, and if she wants to go I'll let her do so." The daughter came in, all gleeful and said : " Now, mamma, you said, if we understood ea<^h other, you'd let me go." And the mother sn d: "My daughter, 1 promised your Christian fa'' lii his last moments, to train you for heaven. No daughter, io you think that dancing-school will help trauj yo'' to meet your Christian father* in heaven? If you thiinv so you can go to the dancing school, but not otherwise. What do you say, daughter ? " And the daughter threw her arms around her mother's neck and said : " Mother, if you made such a promise, I will never go to a place that dis- sipates my life and brings me out of harmony with God." Don't you see ? Sister, THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE CHILDREN involves a pledge on your part that you will train your children for heaven ; for God never gave a woman a child to debauch it by sending it to a dancing- school kept by an old hook-nosed Frenchman — I don't know, as I said, i L^- J k ^ TO MOTHERS. 67 how long he'd been out of the chain-gang — who came in- to the settlement with a fiddle on his back, and i)ro[)Osed to start an establishment to teach your children manners. God pity a mother that has to send her children to a dancing-school to leatn grace and manners. If I'd a mother in my church that sent her daughters to a dan- cing-school, I'd turn her out. Not the daughter — I'd not turn h■ I (* f : ' 70 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. te be talking about parties yet." " Oh, that's the way with you — you're always cross and mean when I want the children to enjoy themselves." Then the husband says, " the best thing I can do is to surrender, she'll give me no rest for the next month if that don't happen." So she gets up a little party. What follows a little party ? Nothing in the world but a big party with short clothes. (Laughter.) They run a little party, and first thing you know there is a big party. And they go from the big parties to progressive euchre, and from progressive euchre to the ball-room, and from the ball-room to the German — I mean the game that is called the German. I don't mean any race of people. I'm glad it ain't called American, but it's called German — I don't know why, I didn't name it. And on they go ; on the}'' go. And now your daughter says, " Law, me ! J can't see any harm in this thing ; my mother's as good a woman as ever walked on top of the earth, and she doesn't object to it." And so your children are coming up in A STREAM OF WORLDLINESS that bears them right out of the reach of the Spirit of God before they are eighteen years old. I will tell you the truth of it, I will die in a pool of blood at my front door, before this tide of worldliness shall over sweep over my home. It wont come into my house with parties, dances, and cards, and all such as that. It it does you may know I have been dead and buried. Why, you say, — Don't you want your chilJren to have any amusement ? Yes, sister, there are six of tb a in niv house ; little Julia Baxter i^ now twenty months old, and I think she has a good deal of fun, and the balance of them have more solid fun than any children you know in America, and we don't think to have balls, and cards, and parties to HAVE FUN IN OUR HOUSE. I put the young bucks on notice in our town. I said '*' Boys, listen; you can come to ray house as often as you I II TO MOTHERS. 71 please, but I will send Paul and Bob into the parlour. You are welcome to make what you can out of them, but I want you to know that my precious daughters are studying their books for a better, and nobler, and purer life than fooling away their time with the young men of this town when in their small teens, and should be study- ing their books. Come in when you get ready and you will find little Paul and Bob in the room to talk with you. You arc welcome to all you can make out of Paul and Bob. An 1 they are welcome too. Mother thinks: " If I don't push my daughter into society when she is fifteen years old, she will die an old maid." (Laughter.) Sister, you would have better died an old maid than to have been a mother of such a crowd as you have, may be. (Laughter.) There are many things WORSE THAN OLD MAIDS. I tell you right now — (renewed laughter) — I would rather be a happy old maid than a thousand miserable mothers. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye trans- formed and be acceptable to the will of God. When our home is consecrated to God, and we talk to our children in the lines of the true teachings of Scripture, I don't be- lieve our children will want any such things as balls or parlies. Now I have talked this sort of talk in my own home for years. I can see what is ruining families. I haven't been living'thirty-eight years for nothing. I have learned a few things. I tell you I see just as plain as I see my hand before my face, what is the matter in all this land. Parents don't control their children, and you know they don't. Children are controlling parents three times in five all over this land, and whatever your children say you do, and what you tell your children not to do, they will do it if they want to. Ain't that a fact ? When you let your children get from under your grip you have done fearful damage to your child, to say nothing about adding misery to yourself. If ygi^ l^ad done duty to your childreu N mmmimmtmMUM 72 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. that daughter would hav^e been the brightest star in your view, and that boy would have been the pride of your house. So long as your children are satisfied with a dress and a hat and a party it is all right, and they are under your control, but as soon as they begin to long for some- thing else, something more than that, they passed from under your control. I believe us'Christian, people ought to be like one of our Governor's wives, a country lady, but a sensible woman, but who did not know much about town ways, and when she moved to the capital she started her little children to school IN RED FLANNELS. Well, they came home just mortified to death and said : " Mother, if you don't take oflT these red flannels we won't go to school. Red flannels are not the fashion at the school, and everybody laughed at us." "My dears," said the Governor's wife, " I never came to Milledgeville, to follow the fashion ; I came here to set the fashions." Let us Christian mothers do as she did, not follow the fashion, but set the fashion of righteousness, and make the bal- ance of the world follow us. Let's make it fashionable to love God and keep His commandments. Let's make it fashionable to do right, to stay away from the ball-rooms and from worldly places. Let's make it fashionable to go to]prayer meetings, and to have family prayers, and to read the Bible, and to serve God and do right ; won't that be a good thing ? Oh, if it could be made fashionable to love God, and keep His commandments ! Let's make it fashi- onable to do that, and make the rest of the world follow us in the fashion. Now I have talked about an hour. I'll just give you these TWO ILLUSTRATIONS, y and you can take them home with you. I got one from your house, and one from yours. You will recognize the i i TO MOTHERS. 73 picture as soon as you see it, but you need not say any- thing about it. Now, here is a mother sitting in a room by the side of a sewing machine, quietly sewing, and little Annie, just five years old, comes into the room and says, " Mamma, please give me some scraps to make a doll's dress." And the mother says, ** Why don't you go away and play. If you bother me any more I'll wear you out. Go away." And little Annie goes away ; and next day she comes back again and says, " Mamma, give me some thread for my needle, please," and the mother says again, " Go away ; you waste more thread than you are worth. You've JDothered me quite enough ; now, go away and bother Mrs. Brown." And little Annie says as she goes away, " T wish I was dead ; that is all the harm I wish. The Lord knows mamma never says a kind word to me. I wish I was dead." Next day Annie comes back to her mother, and says, •* Mamma, won't you please loan me your thimble." And the mother says, " I shan't do it; the last time I loaned you mj'^ thimble it took mo two ho urs to find it. I'll wear you out if you ever bother me any more." And then Annie goes away again, and this day she says, " I wish mamma were dead, now, that's all. She just talks to me that way all the time." Well, time goes on, and now the girl is eighteen years of age. and SHE IS A TYPHOON. (Laughter.) You go and talk nth. the old mother, and she'll put her chin down about 40 degrees below zero, and say, " I can't tell what's the matter with Annie. She's the meanest thing I ever saw in my life, and I'm sure I've done my best." And the old thing is right. She has done her best on her. (Laughter.) I don't see but one thing wrong in poor little Annie, or poor lari;e Annie. She's just like her old mother. And if the old lady was a widow, and I were a widower, I don't know which one I would take, the old woman or her daughter. 74 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. (Laughter.) I would be like the Irishman : there would be one fellow who would regret my death, and that will be the fellow that marries her after I die. (Laughter.) I tell you, it's an awful thing to have a mother raise such daughters and put them off on men. I am so glad I never got one of them. (Laughter.) What's the matter with Annie ? Nothing, only she's so like her old mother — she's A CHIP OFF THE OLD BLOCK. Oh, mother, you may be like one whose little girl went away from the mothers' meeting, and said, " If my name had been Annie I'd have thought that Mr, Jones was talking about you, wouldn't you ? " (Laughter.) Nay, my sister, go home and tear up that picture, and don't you bring it out any more. I'm sorry you've got it. Here's the other picture. Little Mary walks in, just five years old. Mother sits by work table, Mary says : " Please give me some scraps for dolly's dress." " In a minute mother will give you some. But mother wants her little girl to be good about everything in the world." Directly she got out some nice scraps, and showed her how to put them together. Little Mary says, " I just know I got the nicest mamma that ever livec" in the world, she's just as good as she can be." The r 'xt day little Mary comes back and says, " Please thread my needle, won't you ? " Mother took her needle and threaded it, and tied knots on the ends of the thread. There's a good deal in that. An ordinary mother will thread the needle, but it takes a first-class one to tie the knot. (Laughter.) Do you get the idea ? SHE TIED THE KNOT on the end and handed it to Mary, and said, " Mary, I have just opened the Bible, and these verses are maybe for you : * Remember, also, thy Creator in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come, and the years draw ^ ) mm TO MOTHERS. 75 nigh when I shall say I have no pleasure in them.' Oh, Mary, do you know what that means ? Well, rt means that you ought to give your heart to Jesus now. It means that you ought to be a good girl." Little Mary walked out, thanked her mother for the thread, but never said a word about the lesson. The next day she said, " Mamma, lend me your thimble." " Well, Mary, I will get you a little thimble, mine is too large for you, but use it the best you can. Do you remember the verses I read to you ?" " No, mamma, I don't remember no verse, I remember what you said it meant. You said it de- manded for me to go now to God and give my heart to Jesus," and she says, " Mamma, when I went out of the house I got down on my knees and prayed the best I could to make me just like.my dear mamma." Mother says, " Darling, I am going to say my prayers to-day, will you ENTER THE CLOSET and kneel down and let us pray together ?" Mother took little Mary by the hand and led her, and just as she shut the closet door a thousand disappointed angels were shut on the outside. They wanted to get in there and see what God was going to do with little Mary. Mamma walked out and little Mary at her finger. Just as little Mary stepped out of the closet a tear that would not have stained an angel's cheek dropped down her face, and an angel took the crystalized tear to heaven, and said it was the tear of a sweet little girl who was training for that bright world above. The next day little Mary came in and said, " Mamma, lend me your scisssors." " Yes, darling, sit down here and cut your cloth, I don't want you to hurt yourself." Little Mary came in and obeyed. By-and- bye Mary is now eighteen years old. She is a blessing to the Sabbath school. She is the joy of the community, and everybody says, " What a precious child she is ! How came her so good ?" I will tell you — she is just like her 76 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. precious mother. (Amen.) Now, mother, go home to-day and love God, and make your children the best children mother ever had. A mother said in a letter to me, which she wrote after going; home, " Mr. Jones, I am a widow. My husband is gone to heaven. After you got through preach- ing last night I went home from church and when I got home I found my tw3 precious little children in their little bed asleep. I fell '.own, and as I looked at their little sleeping forms I fell down on my knees. I could not feel any worse if my children were both dead. I AM THE POOREST MOTHER God ever gave children. Oh, God, help me to live so that I may go with my children and meet their father in glory." God keep you mothers to be good. If you do not live correct and right your children will not live right. How many wives and how many daughters will stand up in this audience and say, '' God help me to do good the balance of my life." The entire audience of women stood up with one or two exceptions. . APHORISMS. I believe in a topless heaven and a bottomless hell. Hope is but the mile-post on the way to heaven. There are dozens of roads that lead to hell. Heaven has a prepared place for the prepared. Heaven is just the other side of where a fellow does his best. But, brethren, the grand work of the Church of Jesus Christ in the world is to pitch in, roll up its sleeves, and bring the world to God. God never goes outside of the Church to do anything. If at 12 o'clock to-day every sinner in this town were \ \ TO MOTHERS. 77 t I / -w convicted, there wouldn't be enough Christians here to show them the way to Christ. I believe Christianity is nothing more nor less than do- ing the best you can under the circumstances. I say the best preparation for a revival is not prayer, but clean out God's Church so that he can come down and walk and talk in your midst. I've heard it said we don't catch our chances, we make them. Well, brother, if I can't have religion only one day in the week, I am going to have it about Wednesday or Tuesday. I think of all times in the world we get less credit for being pious on a Sunday, because we can't do much else then. There is not an old sinner in Toronto that some church member has not acted dog with, and made him say, " If this is religion, I don't want religion." They will put you in gaol for stealing a man's money, but you can be an average church member and steal a man's character. God does not judge by numbers ; God goes by weight. Many a good, fat 200 lbs. averdupoids Methodist won't count half an ounce in God's scales. Gossip is always about persons, and decent talk is about things, and unless your neighbour is a thing, you frequently indulge in gossip. God pity the wife that has got an old bear for a hus- band. SERMON V. TO GIRLS. Sound advice to the girls of Toronto— Responsibility for Thoughts — Truthful Girls — Unreliable Girls — Honest, open-hearted Girls — Make home attractive. OW, brethren, I purport this afternoon to talk only a short while — when I say " brethren," I mean the gentlemen here — now, brethren, rlon't go down this aisle for anything in the round earth, unless it is to pick up a dead person. Don't go down this aisle to seat anybody. Don't go down this aisle for any purpose, ex- cept to bury the dead,and I have no idea you will have any- thing of that sort on hand. And, brother, if you see si:iy- body going down thi^t aisle, gather him by the collar and SNATCH HIM BACK 1 j clear under that arbour. Now, mind that I will not be disturbed; I will not be. If you had to pull at such congregations two or three times a day, you would have some sympathy for this poor fellow who does his best, and here comes down a brother to see if there is a chair anywhere. God pity you, brethren, and teach you some sense, if you have no manners. (Laughter.) Now, brethren, you that sit on that platform, everybody in the house watches you. If you sit there and talk, the people in the congregation are attracted by your talking, and if you cannot pray for a fellow do the next best thing. Make TO GIRLS. 79 out you are dead for the time being. (Laughter.) I say this just as kindly as I ever said anything in my life, and I don't want to stop an argument or an illustration in this way, and I say it first. Now, you little girls and boys in that gallery, don't you come down stairs while I am speaking. You might as well jump over the railing of the gallery as jump down stairs. You would create as much sensation as if you came down stairs. (Laughter.) This service this afternoon was appointed especially in the interests of daughters and young ladies. THE GIRLS OF TO-DAY s are the women of to-morrow. These daughters growing up in the homes of Toronto, are the future mothers and wives and women of this country. I am very much in- terested in our young people. I want to see our young girls grow up to be better women than our mothers and our wives are. I want to see our young men grow up to be better men than their fathers were. I want to see not only a great deal, but a glorious improvement in the generations which follow us. I want to see all our young girls grow up to be pleasing to a community, and an honour to the world, but a stranger to society, so-called. I want to talk to you just as I would like some minister of the gospel, when he comes to my town, to talk to my daughters ; one who has the best interests of my daugh- ters at heart ; one who will give them such advice as will be good for them any time, and good for them in eternity ; and I tell you, good, honest, plain truths will do you girls as much good as anybody. I might say I don't think all girls are earthly angels. I don't want that impression to get out, that I think girls are all angels. Some of the stubbornest, crossest, meanest creatures 1 ever seen in my life were girls — (laughter) — and I wish some of that class were here this afternoon, we would give it them ; but as we have nothing but 80 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. NICE, GOOD GIRLS HEBE this afternoon, you tell those cross, stubborn girls wliat I said the first time you meet them. (Laughter.) Now I don't think you are angels. I don't think you are the personification of perfection — if you will allow me just one big word while I am here. I don't think you are pe'*fect in any sense of the word. But I believe that our girls are much better than our boys. I believe our girls are a great deal more comfort to mother, and a great deal more pleasure to father, than the boys are. Our boys are not the worst boys in the world ; there may be some worse. I am so glad that nearly every father and mother has got some comfort in some precious daughter for the waywardness of a godless son. I think the sad- dest calamity that can befall a family is where the boys keep father saying, " Where is my wandering boy to- night ? " and then niother can sing the next verse, " Where is my wandering girl to-night ? " There is a great deal in turning that song. All the wandering creatures in the world are not boys. All that have strayed away from home influences are not boys. And I want to talk to you plainly on that. I want to build a wall around you as high as the stars, and keep you near the purity of your home, and the blessed influences of the teaching of Jesus Christ. Some of you may think : " Well, I don't think Mr. Jones ought to talk to girls that way." Well, I am about the only fellow in the country that will do it, and you should put up with one fellow that talks on right along. You know 1 HOW YOU HAVE BEEN FLATTER KD I and praised, and how frequently you have been referred to as the blossoming roses of the country, and beautiful pinks, and the elegant sunflower — (laughter) — and all that sort of thing. You have been touched off on that ft> e t e t r t r >) TO GIRLS. 81 W I A line. Now let us get on the other side a little. And here's something that will help us ; and I have but one object in view, I speak the sentiments of ray heart. There is not a girl here this afternoon that I wouldn't make you better, nobler, purer. There is not a girl that walks this earth who has lost her character that I don't look upon her with the pity and sympathy of a brother. God help us to look at these questiona in a right light. We have selected perhaps one of the most comprehensive verses in this book. I need a good deal of territory to talk to so many girls, and I find all I need in this text : — "Finally, brethren," — suppose I make it read, finally young ladies — " whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." I suppose we may notice the last clause of the text first — " Think on these thingrs." As a man thinks so he is. Tell me what you are thinking about to-day, and I'll tell what you'll be doing to-morrow. Our actions of to day are OUR THOUGHTS OF YESTERDAY. It is not lio much what your name is, and how old you are ; but there is a great deal in " what do you think about ?*' What is thought ? I am not much of a metaphysician, but I can see through a hole, through a broken window.if there is any light on the other side. Wq will say, for the sake of argument, that a thought is the result of an impres- sion upon one of the five senses. Of course I don't go into intuitional thought. I know God can reach my thought and mind without coming through any one of the five senses — but we will say this afternoon that thought is the result of an impression upon one of our five senses. I see something; it puts me to thinking; I hear some- thing, it puts me to thinking ; I touch something, it puts me to thinking ; I taste something, it puts me to think- r ■llttiUJW<«J>li » « M IIMi m i «w li » ll»lll»liMII« h »ir U lM»t ^ \ I 82 SAM JONES IN TOKONTO. mof. Well, I reckon I had better be careful what I see, if thought is the result of an impression on my eye. I had better be careful what I touch if thought is the re- sult of an impression on one of the five senses. Then I guess I'd better be careful what I do, because I'm RESPONSIBLE FOR MY THOUGHTS. Now, an idea is different from a thought, in this — it is a developed thought ; a thought run out to a point where it is ready for the hand, and the foot, . nd the tongue. The difference between the thought an^ the idea is this. Thought is the process by which I develope and systematize things, so that I can take hold of the con- ception with my hand, or foot, or tongue. Now, I may not be so much to blame for a thought, but it is very criminal to work it out into an idea that is wicked, and have it ready for the hand, or the foot, or the tongue. " Think on these things." It makes all the difference in the world where we live in our thought. Really, I partake of the nature of the thing I am looking at. If you bring a coffin in here, with a corpse in it,, and open it before me, and I look down upon it with my mind and my eye, the first thing I know is my whole nature is saturated witli the gloom of the corpse. I partake of the nature of the thing that I am looking at. Bring me a bouquet of beautiful flowers, and put them in my mind, and let me gaze upon them, and the fiist thing I know my whole nature is saturated with the aroma and the beauty of the flowers. I partake of the nature of the thing I am look- ing at. God says, " ! will keep his mind in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Me." It's not so much who you are, or what 3^ou wish, but what you are thinking about. If you live in impure thoughts, you will be impure in your lives. If you have wicked thoughts, you'll be wicked in your lives. Your life will partake largely of your thoughts. Hence the Apostle - iys, " Think on these ^ i y niWRrann TO GIRLS. 83 things." What things ? First, whatsoever things are true. If I put my mind, and eye, and heart on the truth, and get it there, W ' AND SATURATE MY WHOLE NATURE WITH TRUTH, when I speak I tell the truth as naturally as I live. If I put my mind and heart on falsehood, and get it there, and saturate my nature with falsehood, I begin to tell lies as naturally as I breathe. A truthful man is a grand thing, but a truthful woman is the grandest adornment of a home in this land. Let me tell you the honost truth, as I am talking this afternoon. If I ever had caught my wife in a downright falsehood — and I thank God I never did — or if I ever should catch her in a downright falsehood, I should never again while I live have the re- spect for her that I have now. Well, now, all of you that are not going to die old maids are going to be somebody's wives. So you hear that ? And I tell you another thing — if you tell stories before you're married, you'll tell stories after you're married. A girl that is not truthful and re- liable when she is sixteen, won't be truthful and reliable it eighteen, and if she is not so at eighteen, when she gets old enough to marry, she won't be a truthful girl 1 l^.very ^irl in this hall that never tells stories, please stand up, I want to see how many. Here the evangelist paused. There was a good deal of giggling and laughing for the space of half a minute, and the girls hardly appeared to take Sam Jones' request seri- ously. He remained waiting, however, and at last, in re- sponse to a vigorous " get up ! get up ! " ejaculated from between his teeth, two elderly ladies arose. " Well, all you men that never told any, stand up ! " said Sam Jones ; and then all the men who had been laughing at the girls suddenly became very quiet, but none of tnem rose ; meantime the girls laughed at them. Truthful ! Truthful ! IS ow listen i he continued. What 84 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. excuse can there be in the universe for a want of truth except we have been thinking on the false and '^i^* ^ on the false side of the question until our mind if SATURATED WITH FALSEHOOD, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh' The heart is. full of falsehood, and so the mouth speaketh it* " Whatsoever things are true." A truthful child ! Mc iaoi; T heard a father one day when his live children were one playing together and a disturbance occurred among them, and they all came to him and, except the youngest, who remained sil(mt,gave a different report of the affair; I heard the lather say, "I took the little four-year-old boy and put him on my knee, and said, * Tell me how that thing was.' The little fellow couldn't talk plain, but he prattled away and did his best splitting hairs all along, and when he got through telling about it I said, ' Now, children, you are all wrong. This little fellow never told me a lie in his life, and I believe every word he says.' " How proud a father should be to be able to put out his hand on the head of one of his children and say, " Thank God. that child never told a lie in his life." Now, I am noi- going to accuse you all of doing a thing of that sort, as you accused yourselves. I said, " All you girls who never tell lies stand up," and two old mothers in Israel stood up. (Laughter.) They're pretty old girls. I don't know how old girls can be up here in Canada The truth ! St. Paul said, " Whatsoever things are true !'' Tell the truth, no matter what the rest is to you. Be reliable. Let your word be as true as the word of an angel. Die be- fore you will make a false statement, and the only way you can ever get there is to reach the point where truth lives in our hearts and in our minds. Then we will tell the truth as actually as we breathe. Some time ago I said in the presence of a lady, speaking of a girl whom we saw, ^<^ / ipi y^ TO GIRLS. 85 futh ja leth' it- KJUt. "^ i ^ " THAT IS A BEAUTIFUL GIRL ; she has a sweet face. She is a nice girl, is she not?" " Yes," said the lady, " with one exception. She can't tell the truth to save her life. She is the most unreliable creature I ever met." Do you hear that ? My ! my ! a pretty nice, respectable girl, with a beautiful, sweet face, but a miserable liar. •' You can't depend on a word she says." I am glad that was not a Toronto girl. I have a better opinion cf you all. Now, girls, I talked plain to your fathers, i rxd to your brothers, and to your mothers, and let you and I talk plain to each other this afternoon. Do you know a girl that has told one story is on the way to tell as many more as the devil wants her to tell ? Be true to your word. Let it be known at the school, let it be known at your home, let it be known on the street, let it be known everywhere, that your word is as sacred as your heart. That's it. " Whatsoever things are true." It is a thing of joy to have anybody say of you : — " There is the most truthful person I ever saw in my life." We have a little fellow down in Georofia — he hasn't ffot much sense, just a passable amount — but he's the most interest- ing talker I ever listened to, and everything he says is the truth, If he tells what anybody said or did, he tells exactly what they said or did, and doesn't add anything to it or take anything away from it, and I repeat he's the most interesting talker I ever listened to. That is one of tfie grandest traits in human character — a desire to re- present things right and to let falsehood be eliminated from life and tongue for ever. Truth ! truth ! I tell vou this : If there's a mother here this afternoon will show me a truthful daughter, I'll show you a daughter that's obedient. I tell you, girls, when you get up where God and man can bank on EVERY WORD YOU HAT. you ai, loyal to your mother, you are good to yonr mo- ther. No truthful girl will be false or cross or mean to 86 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. her mother. No truthful girl will lay ^ip in bed in the morning until mother gets up and gets breakfast. " That's true ; that's true," murmured an old lady who sat near the reporters' table. ^ The evangelist continued. If a girl is false to her mother, she is false to everything that is noble. In one town in Georgia I knew a family of girls. Listen ! Their mother was a perfect slave for them. She cooked and ironed for those girls, and did all the work about the house, and those girls just sat up and took care of their complexions, and read trashy novels ; and that mother just protected the complexions of those girls, and would not let them go out anywhere. Why, if they came down into the kitchen mother thought their complexions would be spoiled, and sent them out again. Well, the mother got them the most beautiful complexions, and one of the girls married a barkeeper ; no, two of them married a barkeeper — at least, two barkeepers, and one of them married a one-armed barkeeper — and all the others are old maids to this day. Didn't she come out wonderful with her girls ? Awful thought ! Girls, be truthful ; be true to father, be true to mother, be true to the right, be true to every thing that God tells you. That is the truth. The Apostle said, put your mind and heart on truth and keep it there, and only study the true side of life, of character, and of all things, and live on that side ; and then he said, " whatsoever things are honest ! " Oh. VBV AN HONEST, OPEN-HEARTED GIRL that never had a secret from mother, from brother, from father; one of those honest-hearted girls that you can see through, from her face to her heart ; I like that. Secrets have ruined many a girl. " I know something and I ain't going to tell anybody.'* (This was said in a high fa' jtto voice that made the audience laugh heartily.) *• I have a secret. (Laughter.) I would not let ma know TO GIRLS. 87 In the who her one ITheir and t the their ther ould iown ^ould )ther the' ied a them vl^ it for anything in the world. She would oppose it right straight. Mother has more old fogy opinions than any- body I ever saw in my life. I just know before I tell mother she won't like it at all." Mother won't like it. Especially if a girl has picked out one of those little perfumed, parts-his-hair-in-the-middle, tooth-pick dudes in town. (Laughter.) And you are satisfied mother won't like it. I will tell you another thing, girls. Listen. Here are two young men come to town, both from the country, out about forty miles from here. One comes to town. He has his old grey suit, an old grey wool suit, and a wool hat on, and he goes to clerk down here in a store. He is somewhat of an office boy at first, and he gets twelve dollars and a half a month. He boards with his aunt, who lets him stay with her for ten dollars a month, and that boy has to cloths himself on two dollars and a half a month ; on two dollars and a half a month. He goes to prayer meeting every Wednesday night, Sun- day school every Sunday morning. Two young ladies afterwards meet at a young lady's house, and they say : — " Well, there goes that fellow. . ~ HE IS A PLUM DOUGH, and why, I would never like such a thing as that to ca»ll on me." Miss So-and-So says : — " He met me one day, and he was just talking about prayer and Sunday schools all the time. He is the biggest fool I ever saw in my life. My, 1 just pass a young man wh() cannot talk any- thing but prayer meeting." (Sam Jones' imitation of the girl's cackle makes the audience laugh heartily.) " Well, that boy goes on. At the end of the first year he is here in town, they raise his wages from twelve dollars and a half a month to forty dollars a nonth, but he is sticking to his plain clothes and his plain wraj He still goes to prayer meeting and Sabba-h scuviol, and writes home to mother about two or three ; -laes a week, and on he sroes. i;i -TssrsB^rsss jou ! ■ I < jLB mmsmamm ,1 88 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. By-and-bye, when that boy has been here five years, I notice his name as a man in the firm's name. He is a partner hi the business. It goes on, and in two more years he is still prospering. He is building him a nice little cottage out here in the suburbs, and the girls in town wonder who is going to have that simpleton. Who is fool enough to marry him ? Well, bless your soul, girls, he has se ise enough to go back where he came from to marry, too, if you will watch him. (Laughter.) Sure enough he goes back to the settlement, with the old coun- try church, right where he is raised, and v> HE MARRIES MARY BROWN, I 111 It! : the sweetest-spirited, nicest girl ; and her character for right is as strong as her physical womanhood. He mar- ries her and brings her into that beautiful little cottage, and she makes him a wife that is a wife indeed. She has joined the committee that has charge of the Orphan's Home over here, and then she is a consecrated woman trying to rescue the perishing, and save the fallen, and she went to prayer meeting with him every Wednesday night, to Sunday school every Sunday morning. The next thing I see that man now is a senior partner of that firm, and one of the leading business men of Toronto — a magnificent man. He is a member of the church, and the church looks upon him as one of its strongest props, and that man is an honour to Toronto, and his wife is a bless- ing to the poor and destitute of the town. He started IN THE OLD GREY CLOTHES, '1^ ' that every girl in town laughed at him and said they did not want any such fellow as him, the Lord knows. Well, here comes another boy from the country. He comes slicked up, and dressed up the first day he gets into town. From the start he is to get $25 per month. He starts TO OIRLS. 89 \ ^K right in. He was invited to every parlour dance from the first week he got here. He is the very ideal of good, and girls said that he was just too irresistible for any- thing. (Laughter.) He is as sweet as apple pie, and they begin to take up with him, and every girl is getting jealous of every other girl. Which one will catch him ? One got him, and she married him. About two years afterwards I was at her mother's house, and when we sat at the table for dinner there came down a pale, sad and desolate looking girl about twenty-one years old. She gave me a cold, stiff bow, and sat there and ate like a corpse would eat — if I can imagine a corpse eating — only the jaws and hands moving. She got up and walked out of the room, and the poor old mother said to me, " Mr. Jones, that is our unfortunate daughter who fell - IN LOVE WITH A YOUNG DUDE here a few years ago and married him, and now he has run off and left her, poor child, and broke her heart." And now , girls, let me tell you, when you want to marry don't run off with one of those little spider-legged dudes. I know where you get your dudes. The parlour dance is one of the best traps T ever >e^n to catch one in. They are always out to them. Listen, girls ; here's a young man that's clerking down town for forty dollars a month, He's spending fifteen dollars a month on theatres, forty dollars a month on wine suppe^-s, and so forth. I tell you, girls, you liad better look out. If a man like that were to come around my home, I would just look my daughter in tlie face and say, " If you want to marry him you'd better make haste, he'll break into the penitentiary before long, for he's spending ten dollars where he's get- ting one." I heard a merchant that backed one of his clerks into a back room and said, " Look here, sir, you're spending $150 a month, and you're getting only ^40 salary j where do you get the rest ? " " Well, my ? fT 90 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. stepmother sends it to me." Did you ever hear of a step- mother sending a boy money ? I had as good a one as anybody, but my stepmother never sent me any money. There's many a fancy young man, if his stepmother ain't sending him money, girls, look out, for you may marry a dishonest man. THAT ain't all, GIRLS. You be what you ought to be at home ; be an honour to your mother and a blessing to your father. Know how to knit and how to make any garment, and get so you can play as well on the stove as you can play on the piai^o. And work along that way awhile, and first thing you know some first-class young man will find out where you live. He will hunt you up. I reckon some of you think he's mighty slow about it. (Laughter.) But hold your ground, girls ; live right and do right, and be an honour to your home, and some of these days you will prove the words of the preacher. Be true to yourselves, true to God, and true to your mother ; be an honest, trans- parent girl that everybody can see through — pure gold from head to foot. Then he said : — " Whatsoever things are just." "Well, now, justice is a great principle at home. Be just to your brother, be just to your sister, be just to your father, be just to your mother, be just to the young ladies with whom you associate. To be just in the best sense is one of the grandest principles in human nature aided by the divine grace. Be just towards everybody. Sometimes you young ladies are very UNJUST TO THE SERVANTS at your father's house. I can put up with every other sort of a girl but a young lady that is cross and mean to another young lady that has to work for her living. You know that if you are that sort of a girl, that servant girl TO GIRLS. 91 i is better than you are. If you are cross and mean to her in your father's house, I say that servant girl is in the eyes of God better than you are. Nothing suits you. I put up at houses sometimes and I watch 'em. I can tell a girl by how she speaks to a servant at the table or in the sitting-room. I can just watch how she treats her mother and how she talks to her brothers, and I can tell a girl before T have been in a house forty-eight hours, whether she is coming up on the line I am talking about. I went to a house once where justice was a great principle. 1 just watched them there awhile. I had my wife with me. We were staying there two or three days, and I never saw anything like it in ray life. Sisters were just as kind and considerate with one another as could be, and you could see IT wasn't any fixed- up-pudding for show. It was that way all the time. You can tell the difference between the natural colour and the paint on the cheek. I could see there was a perfect stream of kind- ness and justice flowing between their hearts and lives all the time. I said to the lady of the house, her husband being present : — " How many quarrels have you and your husband had since you were married ? " She said, " We never had a quarrel." " How many unkind words ? " " We have never had an unkind word at our house since we were married." Then I said to the husband, " Do you tell me that that's true ?" He said, " Yes, sir; my wife has never spoken an unkind word. I am afraid I have." " What did you say ? " He said, " I cannot remember." Then his wife said, " Husband, you know you never spoke an unkind word to me in my life." I went back to that house in about three months. They asked me, " Why didn't you bring Mrs. Jones ? " " Didn't want to ; she's being throwing all you up to me ever since she was here before. I am sorry she ever came here at all. I can't cut up a bit without her reminding me about you." Ladies, seek to make your if 92 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. HOME ATTRACTIVE TO YOUR BROTHERS SO that they won't want to leave it. Make lioine such an attractive place that mother will never have to sing, "Where is my wandering boy to-night?" Maybe he is running away from his cross sister right then. ** Whatso- ever things are just." If you do unkindly to your sister, go and apologize. If you treat brother unkindly, go and apologize. If you ha,ve spoken crossly to your mother, go and tell mother you are sorry, ask her to forgive you, and tell her you won't do it again. Then he said, " Whatso- ever things are pure." I will give you this little incident to show you that to the pure all things are pure. A gen- tleman met me on the street and said, "Jones, a man told me that he would never go and hear you any more ; that you were the most vulgar man he ever listened to." " Who was he ? " " He's a bar-keeper in town." A bar-keeper that lived in an atmosphere of vulgarity and wickedness, thought I was the most vulgar man he ever heard. " To the pure all things are pure." I was preaching at Springs. I talked about the fashionable dancing girls — shook 'em round. They went away the maddest crowd you ever saw. Did you ever see a mad girl ? I reckon you've heard of 'em. Well, sir, they just went away raving. I heard about what they said, and I said, " Girls, you left last night mad. I tried to talk to you in an honest, brotherly way about those ball-rooms over at that hotel. I talked candidly and plainly. I talked to you, girls, with a father's love and a brother's tenderness, and you. WENT AWAY MAD. That pure, innocent girl that never went to a ball-room thought those remarks were so gracious ; it was so kind to talk that way to girls ; but you, girls, that have been waltzing round with these drunken young men, you think I am the most vulgar man you ever listened to." -^ TO GIRLS. 93 ^ You see it ain't " Who's talking ?" but it is " What does he say ? " and what sort of a girl is it out there listening at him ? Do you get the idea ? " Oh, Mr. Jones, tell us what harm there is in dancing ? " Oh, dear ! There is not anybody since I have been here to ask me to please tell them what harm there is in family prayers. Nobody has asked me what harm I thought there was in paying your debts. Nobody has asked me to give my opinion of the harm there was in reading the Bible and doing the will of God. Nobody ask me that sort of a question, I will tell you another thing. Whenever you hear folks asking what harm there is in so and so, they already know there is harm but think they may be able to argue around so as to make it appear that there is none in it. Girls, listen ; the Bishop of the Catholic Church of New York said that nineteen out of every twenty fallen girls, at the confessional, told him they got their downfall first at the dancing room. Now, girls, are any of you idiots enough to ask the question again — " What harm is there in dancing ? " Can you hear a Catholic priest say nine- teen out of every twenty fallen girls at the confessional state that they got their fall in a dancing room ; that nineteen out of twenty fell in that way, and have you no more sense than to ask the question, " What harm is there in dancing ? " Then I will say another thing. I will talk plain to you. I will never get a talk to you again this side of the judgment, and I am talking straight from my text. " Whatsoever things are pure." Are pure. Girls, listen ; listen to me. You MIND WHOM YOU ASSOCIATE WITH. You cannot associate wi i the wicked without becoming contaminated. To save your life you cannot do it. A girl that will sit ^^own in her parlour with a young man who drinks and teeped in sin, she cannot sit down and ta,lk with him ^ .onout being contaminated to save her 'V^^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ /. V 7a 1.0 I.I fj^ IIIIIM ii li£ IIIIIIO 1.8 - 6' L25 il.4 mil 1.6 % ;w ■ njj" P," ^ 96 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. like your person, be as sacred as the heart of God. That's it. Girls are not particular enough about who they go with. Don't go with a young man that drinks or doesn't live right. Oh, girls, I tell you we need some fathers in this country worse than we need anything else. Oh, that any man can lay around and drink Saturday night and maybe spend the night in a shameless house and then be found Sunday afternoon dressed up and perfumed and sitting in a parlour with one of the nicest young ladies in town. He is worth about $10,000 a year, and is able to keep a buggy and has a nice little property, and so he can come into almost any home in town. I tell you what we need. ^ WE NEED SOME OLD DADDIES, fathers, I believe you call 'em up here, who will wait for the young man, and when he puts foot inside the porch will turn him round and kick him right out into the middle of the road, and say, " You can't come into my house, you disrespectable wretch, no matter if you are worth all the money in the universe ; you can't come in here." And girls, when you strike a boy whose charac- ter is as sound as gold, you look at him and say : " Oh, you ain't good-looking and can't come in." If you don't say it, you've slung it at him many a time. Oh, girls, if I didn't have these men here, I'd talk to you a little plainer on some things. Above all things, God deliver me from a girl that is not pure in her tongue. I might Eut up with a lot of smutty-mouthed and impure boys ; ut my ! my ! how low down a girl will be when she be- comes impure in her talk and conversation. Of course, there's none of those girls here this afternoon, but if you find them, oh, do tell them what I said this afternoon — won't you, girls ? Impure ! I find I have gone on be- yond forty minutes, and beyond sixty minutes in my talk, but hear me a word on my last proposition — " What- soever things are of good report. Hear me, sisters 1 \ l'>' 08 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. ) exception ; she's the sweetest child in the school ; you ought to be proud of her." And the father says, " I'm not proud of her ; I'm thankful to God for her." That's a good report about Mary, aint't it ? La me ! " What- soever things are of good report." Girls ! Any- thing you hear about somebody else that's good and that you'd like to hear about yourself, just go and do like they did, and they'll talk about you the same way. Just look at these folks who have good reports going around of them. " Whatsoever things are of good report. Think on these things." Girls, put your minds and hearts on things of good report. Live in these atmospheres, and may God crown you with blessing and everlasting life. Above all things, girls, be obedient to mother. Who loves you better than anyone in this world ? Girls, you can answer that. Why, mother, mother, mother. That is so. Well, look at her. Who is it that wants you to be happiest and do best ? Girls, don't quarrel with mother. Stand up for her. Do comfort and be a blessing to ^ our mother. And, girls, I will wind up with this expression. I have one child, a girl now in her fifteenth year. She will come and sit down and reason with me about anything she hears me say in the pulpit, and she will talk with me and get me to explain perfectly what I mean, and now she said this to me last December. I just throw it out to you, girls. When her little associates there, of the same age as herself, next door gave , i^ A CHRISTMAS TEA PARTY to a little fellow of the same age who had been ofi to school, Mary was invited, and she brought the invitation to me. She says : — " Now, father, I submit the question to you, and here it is. I am invited to supper, and now, shall I go?" I read the note of invitation. I said: — " Daughter, do you want to go ? " She said just as honest and candid, " Father, if you wi^nt me to go, I want to go, ' ir/A mk TO a!*(L8. 99 a If you don't want me to go, I don't want to go." And she said, " That is the secret of it. Your will is my pleas- ure about the whole matter." I pulled the child up to my heart, and I said, " Daughter, just speak your will; " and she said, " Father, I have no will at all in the mat- ter. I will be happy to go or stay if you will be happy in my going or staying." That is the way for a daughter to talk. The father only says his will and his daughter is happy either way. Girls, father says you cannot go, and you sweep out of the room and run up stairs and pout for a week. " The Lord knows he never did let me have any pleasure. I wish I was dead, that's all I wish." (Laughter) God pity the girl who does not know enough to submit such a question to mother, who does not love mother enough. Now, children, I spoke of that little girl simply to show you if you run on that line father will talk about you just as I talk about that darling child. The balance of them are just about as bad as you are, but, thank God, that is one good one. Children, do right, live right. Mind these plain things. I could have told you a lot of ghost stories and had you all sobbing, but LIFE ain't a life OF GHOSTS. I don't want to scare you with ghosts, and make you laugh and cry over things that have no existence. But I have talked candidly and plainly, and may God sanctify the talk to the good of every one present. And now I want every young lady that says " God help me, I am going to lead a better life than I ever led before " to stand up. (Nearly all rose.) Well, thank God for such a sight. Little girls, elder girls, everybody, when you pray, pray that God may help me that I may be useful wherever 1 go to work in the name of Jesus Christ. Hj ■m ■ >■■ ^m^ ■^^■^ . i <,i-i«-,. 100 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. APHOBISMS. What a blessed family that is where each is unselfish and kind to the other. Where is the woman who can stand up and say, " I never said an unkind word to my sister ? She is here to-night, but she hasn't got any sister. Brother, let you and I spend the rest of our days con- trolling our tongues for good. If you play progressive euchre you are in the sight of God as much a black-leg as the worst gambler in this town. If your father, as good as he was, raised such children as you are, what will become of your children when you turn them out to the world ? 'J^he biggest fool God's eyes ever looked upon is the woman who stirs the toddy for her husband, and helps to debauch the man. Let home be the last place you ever debauch. You drink beer for your health ; your children because they love it. A precious sainted mother in heaven is much better than a mother setting a bad example to her children. Thank God, I never learned my meanness at home. If your son gets religion and goes to your cold, careless home, it will not be six months before he is as bad as you are, and you will say that Jones had better come back again and convert him over. If you follow in the footsteps of Christ you never will mislead one of your children. If the pulpit thinks it can dodge the question of capi- tal and labour, it has got to be the best dodging machine in this world. There are too many big piles of money, and too many poor men. Ten hundred million dollars is too much for one man, and half a dollar is too little for another. John Jacob Astor had 200 houses in New York, and N fHP^i" "FT Tt.'-'' Ji.Vf ' lived in only one ; and I have only one, and I live in as many as he did. Be right and do 4*ight, and that is the only assurance we have in this world that God will protect us. A woman first reaches hunger, and then she reaches despair, and then she reaches degradation. The employer who will debauch the virtue of his hire- ling is the meanest man God's eye ever looked upon. Let the hireling get the best wages he can or leave his work ; but do not let him take a club and thrash the head of the man who takes his place. That is anarchism. Brother, remember that the law must be supreme, but let's change the law or obey the law. A law on the statute books that is not enforced is anarchy begun ; a law in the statute book that cannot be enforced is communism begun. In the elegant part of your city there isn't a bar-room every two miles, and in the poorer parts the bar-rooms are as thick as stars in heaven. At a workingmen's picnic in the States the banners bore the motto, " Our children cry for bread," and on the grounds 1,400 kegs of beer was drunk. Their children need not cry for beer. If you would have equity you: must do equity. When you are doing a manufacturing business the question is not how much you can hire a man for ; but when you have made up your gains, have you divided fairly with him. Brethren, there's but one way to meet a debt, and that's 100 cents on the dollar, or die trying to do it. I wouldn't like to be in heaven with a lot of fellows who have swindled me here. The poor don't care how much money people have ; it's the display of it makes the poor mad. You have no more right to flaunt your diamotiids and your riches in the face of the poor than you have^ shake bread in the face of a hungry man and not give him any of it. m w: SERMON VI. A MEMORABLE NIGHT. Two thousand people turned away from the door — a most power- ful sermon. P^ EFORE I take my text I will say I have received many communications, more than I can read. It was impossible for me to answer this many com- munications. I will turn them over to my secretary, and he will pick out such ones as demand answering, and I will dictate answers to him. I have received some twenty or thirty dollars enclosed in letters for the Or- phans' Home. I thank you very heartily, and I take this opportunity of thanking you and acknowledging receipt of this amount. God bless you. My heart and mind are overwhelmed with Tt A SCENE LIKE THIS. It was scarcely possible for me to get into the door of this building to-night, owing to the great surging mass of people on the outside so eager to get in. I suppose, well, I might say, thousands sought admittance liere to- night and did not find admittance. Oh, how it bleeds my hjiart to see the hungry world. God feed them all with Bus truth and grace. I want to say, many of you I may *r k MEMORABLE NIOHT. 103 id IS d V . > never see again this side of the judgment bar of God. I want to say to you, I have been drawn towards you as a people. I came here with admiration in my soul for Toronto and her people, and that admiration has been turned into love, the diviuest passion that ever stirred a human heart. I thank God I ever came to this city. I only wish that this association might be continued in- definitely. I say to you I LOVE YOU, and I trust that this love can be mucual. And, brethren, let me say to you, give us your prayers and your sym- pathy, as others in other places have prayed for the bless- ing of God upon us in our work. We want your pray- ers upon our work in Omaha, Boston, San Franscisco, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and those cities that lie out before us with open doors waiting us to come. I want to say to you that this work overwhelms me with the responsi- bility of it. I carry all them, as God may help me carry the responsibility of a work like this. I am imperfect. I am a man. I am glad I am a man. The sun without its spots would be a sight this world never saw. I am as frail as any of you. I have as many imperfections as many of you. I have as many FAULTS AND FOIBLES as any of you. And yet understand, brother, that my heart is full of love of God, mv heart is full of love to my fellow-man. I know I love God, and I know I love every man that walks this earth, and 1 love every woman just as much as my wife will let me. (Laughter.) (Dr. Potts here whispered " precious wife.") As Dr. Potts would have me say, " my precious " wife. He seems to object to that term. I don't know why. Dr. Potts — ^We approve of it. We are going to adopt it here in Toronto. 104 8AM JONES IK TORONTO. Sam Jones confiinuing said : — I am a peculiar feller. I do love my wife. (Hear and laughter.) My brother, I am so gla^d that men have different views and different tastes. Suppose everybody in the world was just like me, and then everybody would want my wife, and I would not be satisfied with that. (Laughter.) I am so glad that we differ in a hundred ways. I have often said : — God never made two men alike ; if he did, the duplicate would be of no account. Starting with all my faults and all my shortcomings, I expect I have said a great many things I might have left unsaid. I have no doubt of that. If you will pull on brain and memory as much as I do, with as little time to read, with ail speaking extemporaneous, and you don't miss the line any more than I do, you may consider yourself in good luck, to say the least of it. I SHALL RBQRET FOREVER the things I have said that I should not have said. But I can say this much, thank God — I haven't said anything in a bad spirit. Everything I have said was said with a food spirit. I know that to be true. Sometimes I say, will do better next time, but I do make the slowest progress of any poor fellow you ever saw. I tried to play the gentleman once. My wife was present and saw me and all my movements. So finally she asked me what I meant on that occasion. I told her I was trying to be dignified, and she said : Never attempt that again ; you looked ridiculous. (Laughter.) I never have attempted it any more. I believe the best thing we can do at all is to be ourselves, and be perfectly natural. Don't get in anybody's way with your naturalness, but try to be your- self everywhere you go. And above all things carry with you a loving spirit towards everybody, and this world will make >i A MEMORABLE NIOHT. 106 ROOM FOR YOU EVERYWHERE !^ you go. (Hear, hear.) I never iiave, thank God, been anywhere yet in the work of the Gospel but what I found Christian hearts to love rae, f.ud Christian men to help me and Christian women tc pray for mo. O, brethren, God never made a man that feared his enemies )o8s than I do. God never made a man that leaned on friends more than I do. Thank God for friends. I do love these to help me. I love them and all those that don't love me I love them, but I don't admire them. I think there are some people the Lord don't admire. What do you think about that ? I really think and I know that God loves everybody, but there are some people God don't admire. I think so. Now take these things in the spirit in which I have said them, and let us go into this text. I think I will get through in an hour and a half or two hours. '* For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching ub that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, end purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." I have selected this text, brethren, not in special refer- ence to the services we might have here to-night, but with special reference to what life may be as we live it in future. For the grace of God that brought salvation hath appeared unto all men. THIS TERM GRACE is peculiarly a New Testament term, and it has for us a meaning full of love, kindness and mercy. When I would estimate what this grace is to us, I would not estimate this as I do other things. We estimate generally, and get by what we give for it and what we can get for it, 'nA m 106 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. find what its market value is. But how can we estimate the Grace of God in that way ? The apostle tells us we are not redeemed by contemptible things, such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of the Son of God. Never did salvation's fullest tide sweep over a sinful world until the Sun of God bled on the Cross for the human race ; and then the recording angel dipped his pen in that precious blood and wrote on heaven's chancery " Peace on earth and good will towards men," The grace of God that bringeth salvation. I am glad of that word. Not the grace of God that makes me see my sin, that makes me repent of my sin, that gives me a name and place in the Church of Christ — though all these would be great graces — but the grace that bringeth salvation in its incomprehensible sense, hath appeared unto all men. I believe God not only wills salvation for mankind, but he has provided salvation for each individual. I am so glad when I look in my Bible. I can put my hand on my heart and say, " I believe Jesus died for me;" and then I look at my wife and children and say, " Blessed be God who died for them." And He died for 3^ou and for your wife and children to all generations. f- IF YOU OR I ARE LOST at last, there will be a crown in heaven no head shall ever wear; there will be a palm no hand shall ever wave ; there will be a harp v/hose strings shall never be tuned. If you or I are lost at last, we will go into hell, as Bascom says, with the rainbow of God's mercy gilding our vision, and the waters of salvation purling in our ears. I am so glad that not only are the gates of Gospel grace open night and day, but that the way to Heaven is as broad as the shoulders of Jesus Christ. Throw down your sins and weary men can walk one abreast right into the good gate and be saved. But if you have sin in your heart the way is too narrow. It is n A MEMORABLE NIGHT. 107 not ho«v many are on the way, but whether they have their sins with them, or have given them up, and are starting on the way to eternal life this grace of God is "teaching us." A great many people think that this frace comes and takes hold of a man and saves him. rimarily, they say that is the object of grace. But the apostle tells us of the grace of God " teaching us." I believe God puts His anger into the tip of a man's head, bores down through his brains, and then through his*^ heart, and when it strikes his pocket it springs up like an artesian well. There is too much of this LITTLE HEART RELIGION. I am glad we've got schools. I am glad we've got heads. I wish we would all use them. I do despise to see a man that the animal predominates in him. I want to see a man who thinks, and reasons, and studies. And I want to tell you right now — one of these three things is true : Either the Gospel of Jestis Christ is inadequate to reach the depths of a man's depravity ; or else it is not preach- ed ; or else men and women have no room in their hearts for the gospel. Which is it ? The great trouble in this world is not so much the inculcation of truth as the ex- traction of error — ^the making room for the truth. No two substances can occupy the same space at the same time ; and when a heart is chuck full of error there is no room in. there for the truth. Let me say at this point that I believe every man in this country, more or less, is DISTURBED BY A FULNESS, and that fulness is caused by his own opinions about things. Everybody in Toronto is chuck full of opinions. " I have my opinion." I say you haven't got a thinking man, may be, in the city, and yet everybody is full of opinions. One or two great minds do the thinking for all '^it^m.^ fXaa^t^^^iUii' 'i**i':^if.!"- nmjia'f^i^f. 108 SAM JONES IN fOR6NtO. ^' Europe. One or two great minds do the thinking for the American Continent. While here we are to-day with a multitude of people full of opinions, and yet so few of us think the thoughts of God in the line of truth. Our little boys have their opinions and grown people have their opinions. " It is my opinion." " It is my opinion that a man can be just as good out of the church as he can in it." " It is my opinion that there is no harm in dancing." " It "is my opinion that there is no harm in a social dram." It is my opinion there is no harm in a game of cards." " It is my opinion that I can stay at home and read the Bible and be as good as a man going to church." And every man when you taste him is full of his own opin- ions. Still now let us see about that a little. The way TO ESTIMATE AN OPINION is to trace it to its source where it comes from. I will venture the assertion, if you bundle up your opinions and trace them to their source, you will find that nine-tenths of your opinions came from hell and they are going back there and will take you with them if you don't take care. You can put that down. " My opinion is so-and-so." " My opinion is so-and-so." They are not your opinions. You will see a boy ; he is hearing that godless man talk and go on with such x rigmarole, and not a hundred yards from where he heard that man say so-and-so, the boy says so-and-so. This is his opinion. He got his opinions from the old merchant or lawyer yonder, and these opinions are not that merchant's or that lawyer's opinions. They are the devil's. (Laughter.) If I were you, I would not daddy such opinions as are running among a great many people. " My opinion is so-and-so." I say to you to-night, in love and kindness, a man becomes encased in his opinions, and you cannot move him with the Gospel. You see THAT THUNDER-STORM passing over the farmer's house. The farmer is sitting in his house, smoking away at his pipe, and ail at once the V * ^ * f > MH ^m le ir a mmm mmm ^.,..r^ > I A A MEMORABLE N^HT. 109 electricity darts down from the clouds to that man's house, but it strikes the lightning-rod, and it shoots into the ground, doing no harm. That old farmer is just as quiet as if nothing had happened. In like manner I have seen the Gos;)el of Jesus Christ Hash above the heads of the multitude, with its sin-cleansing and soul-saving power, and that man's being is so encased that he walks out of the church and says, " That peacher has his opin- ions ; I have my opinion." You might as well preach to a goat as to preach to such men as them. Now let me talk A LITTLE PLAIN COMMON SENSE. » right along on this line, brother. 1 assert it, and T assert it advisedly. I assert it that no living man has a right to an opinion on a moral question. (Hear, hear.) The way to tell whether a thing is correct is to put the straight edge to it. Ain't it ? If you have the straight edge there, what do you want to stand there and gaze like a fool for, and say this is your opinion ? Why don't you run the straight edge to it ? That will tell you. Now hear me. I don't say a man has not a right to an opinion on a theo- logical or a doctrinal question, but I do say that no man has a right to an opinion on a moral question. God says this in his own Book in unmistakble terms, and He tells me what is right and what is wrong. Do you know a man's opinion don't change a thing ? It might be his opinion that that chair Dr. Potts is sitting on is a marble chair, but it might still be a walnut chair. My opinion of a thing don't change it one particle. Oh, brother, a child is loved by God because a child has no opinion and wants to learn something. (Applause.) The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath power unto all men, teaching us — what ? *' That, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this pre- sent world." And brother, right here I want to say that religion consists in two things, negative goodness and i *- ( 1^^ •isf" 110 SAM ^ONES IN TORONTO. : - positive righteousness. There is no force in electricity unless you bring the positive and the negative together. Religion is this : — Is that thing wrong ? " " Yes." " I won't do it, I'll die first." " Is that right ? " "Yes." " Well, I am in for it, with all I can command, for time and eternity." These goody-goody people in the church that are so good, they're good for nothing. One of them will get up and say, " I have been in the chuitsh forty years, and nothing has ever been brought against me yet." Who wants that sort of religion ? It re- minds me of a man who said of another : — " Pastor, he's a mighty good man ; he lives close by me ; there's but one thing that could be said against him ; he's a little inclin- ed to quarrel when he's drunk." (Laughter.) That's too frequently the estimate people put on holiness and piety. I like a man that will die before he will do wrong. You can bank on him then. I want a man to be aggressively, posi- tively good. Frequently in this country we have got men who are everlastingly talking on the side of whiskey, but they claim to be on the side of decency and God's people. If there's a man in the universe I want to smash, it's the fellow that's allied with whiskey and the devil, who claims to be on the side of decency. " I don't believe in drinking ; I am a temperance man ; but I tell you you're fanatics." I LIKE FANATICS, and the highest honour I ever had paid me was when they called me a fanatic. I took charge of a church two or three >ears ago, and during an interval between two services a young lady — a grand woman, who was teaching Sunday school .in that neighbourhood — came to me, and after she was gone some of them came up to me, and said, "Did you notice that Miss Annie was a little cracked on the subject of religion ? " I said, " No." " Well," they said, " she's ->' V i f w I't ,m piripi^p^if"p V Z' A MEMORABLE NIG^T. 111 cracked on the subject of religion." I said, " Well, if you call that being cracked I want to bust wide open." (Laugh- ter and applause.) If you're a Christian they'll call you a crank. Well, at least, you'll get the crown of everlasting life to wear as a compensation for being CAIXED A CRANK. Oh, sir, if your Bible is true, and I believe it's true, I de- clare to you to-night I want to be so cranky that 111 walk around this world on my knees praying for lost hu- manity every moment. I want to be so cranky that I can't keep my mouth shut a moment. Lord, give us enough cranks to get this world out of sin. And I want to say this further, to-night, if the Bible is true, if you ain't doing your duty, you are a crank ; you are one of that sort of cranks that pretends to believe in religion, but won't do anything to help it on. That's the sort of crank that does the harm. Bob Ingeroll's sort of infidel- ity never hurts anybody. He is doing no harm because he'll never turn the mind of anybody who's responsible for his actions. The infidelity that hurts is the infidelity of the man who makes out he is on God's side, and then won't live up. That's the infidelity that hurts. " Teach- ing us." Teaching us what? You are a sinner and must quit it. That's THE FIRST LESSON y the grace of God ever taught me. You've been doing wrong and must quit it now and forever. You must live " soberly, righteously and godly in this present world." Before I get away from here to-night I want to say, that while I despise drunkards, and you know I do as much as anybody does, but I have seen some church members who get drunk once in every three or four months, and then work like forty till he gets drunk again, and do far 112 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. more good for the Church than some of you sober fellows that pretend to believe in religion and never do anything to help it on. I'd rather be the man who got drunk than the other fellow. " Teaching us " that, denying ungodli- ness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteous- ly and godJy in this world. This term soberly has special reference to myself. A sober man ! a man that's the same thing all the time ! I like that. Sober-minde Iness in a Christian is just what governors are to a stationary engine. I like Job, THE SOBER-MINDED MAN, alike in prosperity and adversity — the man who could say when his last dollar was taken away from him, and his children were dead, and he was smitten with disease. " The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ; " and a^ain, " Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him." A sober-minded Christian is the same all the time, and, brother, I like that sort of man. I don't like those people that come to me one thing one day and another thing next day. If ever I get that way I believe it's on account of good living. Good living makes the liver tor- pid ari inactive. I believe the grandest thing for an in- active liver is an earnest Christian life. Sober-minded- ness ! I tell you where to find it. Look in the word of God and you'll read of those old, sober-minded heroes. Look you in the reign of Bloody Mary, of England. Read of Cranmer and Ridley dying at the stake, being burned alive at the stake, and as the flesh of Cranmer's arm is scorched and burned in the flame, he says, " Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, for we shall light a fire in England to-day that the world can never extinguish." And then they talked to one another like two little schoolboys. Really I am ashamed of myself when I look on that picture. Lord, give us such sober-mindedness as that. Enable us to face hardship and death, and think nothing V V'-i, wm A MEMORABLE NIQHT. 113 an li- s- ial he of it. St. Paul, after all the dangers and punishments he passed through, said, with a Jheavenly smile on his face, " None of these things move me." I like a sober- minded Christian — a man who'll be the same thing all the year round ; who'll be the same on Thursday as he is on Sunday. That's the sort, " Teaching us that we should live soberly and righteously." That is soberly .as to ourselves, and righteously as to our neighbours. Righteously, THAT MEANS LIVING STRAIGHT. V f rs Religion makes me do right towards ray neighbour* There's many a rascal in this country ^whose only enemy is himself. The worst enemy some men have in this country is that fellow who's got on your coat to-night. If another fellow were to come to you as many times a day as you know you do, and pour that stuff down your throat, you'd kill him. If any other man were to come to you and smirch and blister your mouth with oaths as you do yourself you'd kill him, too. You may just say ; " That man who's wearing my coat is the worst enemy I have." You are a worse enemy to yourself than the devil is. " Righteous toward my neighbour ! " Brother, what I do want to see is every member of the Church of God a man that will do right towards his neighbour. I want to see merchants act righteously towards their customers, and the customers towards the merchants. I want to see the community do right towards the preacher, and the preacher towards the community. I want to see us have reverence to others as well as to ourselves. Right- eously ! Righteously ! Again, to save my life, brother, I can't blame a man for taking advantage of the bank- ruptcy and homestead laws of this land, which are such a curse to us. I am not here to censure, but I'll say thia much, those laws are wrong in principle. I am talking the word of God, I read in the old book, regarding the '-^4' ' '*■' V 114 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. prophet Obediah, that he borrowed a sum, say $500, from Ahab, and when he died AHAB SUED THE WIDOW for the money, and came near making her sell her two boys as slaves to pay the debt. And what did she do in her trouble ? Go to a lawyer ? No ; she did not go within a hundred miles of a lawyer, but sought out God's holy prophet. Don't understand me as saying there is anything wrong in being a lawyer, but I merely want to say that that woman never went to one. Perhaps they didn't have good lawyers in those days, and anyhow if she'd been living in Toronto, with so many clever law- yers, she might have gone to one. But don't understand me to say anything against lawyers. There are lawyers in this city that would honour any pulpit in this world, and a good lawyer is next to a good faithful preacher. But of all imps of the devil that I ever saw, the worst is cne of those little pettifogging five dollar lawyers that will do anything for money, " What did you do that for ? " you ask him when you catch him in a piece of dirty business. " For my client," he says. I reckon when you jump into the pit of everlasting destruction j^ou'll jump up and tell them you're there as a lawyer. Do that now. You did all your devilment as a lawyer. No true lawyer will do anything as a lawyer that he would not do as a man. (Applause.) A man running round getting any dirty little five dollar job he can lay his hands on ! I'd rather go to the poor house than I'd pass my life as the' SCAVENGER OF THE DEVIL. Now, I've nothing* against lawyers. I've been one my- self. I know how^it is. A noble lawyer — a true lawyer — I honour him as one of the best and noblest gifts to men ; but you find me a lawyer on the wrong side who Y mm mmmm fl. A MEMORABLE NIGHT. 116 m |in > s is to Y will do anything for money, and I'll show yon the great- est curse to the community next to the wine bibber and the unfaithful man in the pulpit. There are some pas- tors in this city that would not come into this rink to hear me preach to save their lives, but if they will quit preaching or quit drinking by the time I come back here again, they'll be the best helpers I ever had in this town. Now, I don't say every pastor that is not helping us is a drunkard. I just say this for those who drink. If they say they do, I say so ; if they don't, I don't. Every fel- low knows whether he is fitted, and he can wear it or not. The press has been so kind to us. The Mail has received so many letters about me and my work, and it has just thrown all the strong letters to one side, and just published THE VAPOURING OF THE IDIOTS. (Laughter.) I am so glad they didn't let in the sensible men's letters against me — they might have hurt me, I don't know — Rev. Dr. Potts — They hadn't any sensible men on that line. Rev. Mr. Jones — The newspaper men ought to leave that out, because it will hurt their feelings. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly — that's it. Right- eously towards my neighbour. Brother, let me say this : When that woman went to the old prophet she stated her case. " They have levied on my children. They are going to sell my children." The old prophet said, " How much is it.?" "Five hundred dollars.'' "What have you got in the house ? " " Nothing but a pot of oil" Did the old prophet say, " I will put you into bankruptcy. If I ever saw a case that should go into bankruptcy it is yours ? " No. He said, " You go and sell that oil and pay the debt." She went home and drew oil enough to pay the debt ; and the oil multiplied, and when she had 116 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. enough oil to pay the debt, she had more left than when she began. That was God Almighty standing up for an honest woman. And T believe God will stand by and save an honest man or an honest woman. Do right ; give up all you have, and then, if the worst comes to the worst, God will put the ANGHLS ON HALF-RATIONS before He will let you suflfer. They put me on a large circuit a few years ago, and the whole country had been parched by drought. Their corn scarcely made a bushel to the acre ; their merchants had liens on their stock and farms. I commenced to preach righteousness. I said: — " Don't take advantage of any homestead law. Let them take your stock and levy on your farm and sell out, and then take your wife and children out into the wood, and say, " Wife and children we have no home or bed, but you've got an honest husband and an honest father ;" and I would rather say that than own all Canada and be dis- honest. (Applause.) I have been in debt. It is a terrible thing. When I first started to preach THE DEVIL HAD BANKRUPTED ME for both worlds ; and I have gone out and preached the best I could, and after the sermon I would hear some one say, " I would think a world of Mr. Jones, if he were to pay his debts ;" and those words went like a sword into my heart. I struggled and struggled, and wife helped, cooked and ironed, and did all her own work ; and I would pay ofi* a little at a time. And I believe the best thing a man can do is tc deny himself, and when he (^oes get out he will be a man. And I would rather be one good, noble, true man than be an angel in heaven. (Hear, hear). Bre- thren, never let a church get to the point where anj'^body will point a finger at her, and say she has in her fold a Y m ii i. MF'-MORABLE KlQHT. 117 ^hen }r an and rht; the Y crowd of bankrupts, wb -» won't pay their debts. I say, brethren, the whole principle of the Bankruptcy and Homestead Law is wrong, and I wish to God the law would keep its hands off law of this kind. I say MAKE A MAN PAY HIS DEBTS. I believe that is right, and I know that is not popular either. More of us are in debt than out of it, don't you see ? (Laughter.) Some of us are like old John Underwood, who said : "I am ready to die. I owe about as many as I don't owe, and I have nothing to pay." " Some of us are even with the world that way." Some of us are like the other fellow when they asked : " Is your note good ? " He said it was, for nearly everybody in town had it. (Laugh- ter). His paper was commercial paper. Everybody had it. Brethren, let us do right. I declare to you I would rather be a true man and live and pray, than to be a man living on others, and living on the fat of the land. Law ! Law ! Law ! You take a horse that's got sore spots on him, and start up to him with a currycomb, and he'll start kicking before you get up within a yard of him ; but take a sound horse, and when you start up to curry him, he'll not kick at it, but he'll lean up to you as soon as he sees you coming with the currycomb. (Laughter and loud ap- plause.) My brother, there's A MORAL POINT in that. If we're right we can't be hurt by the truth, and if we ain't right we ought to be hurt righteously. Do right, brother, and then, living soberly as to myself, righteously as to my neighbour, I shall live godly to Him, who loved me and gave Himself for me. When a man will conduct himself right towards himself and right to- wards his neighbour, hasn't he got the right sort of re- ligion ? Brother, when you get up on a plane like this you are all able to look up and see the glorious appearing ^m 118 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and a sight like that inspires the soul. Oh, what a sight this is to the spiritual vision ! Looking to his coming ! Two or three times I thought in my poverty that I would go back to the law, and make a competency for myself and family. It was a sore temptation, but when I felt like yielding I would get my eyes on that blessed vision, and the old world would get smaller and smaller, until it got so small that I could kick it around like an india-rubber ball. What's this old world after all ? Suppose I have a hun- dred thousand dollars, what then ? Suppose I have a million, what then ? Let's run on the principle that Man needs but little here below, Nor needs that little long. « I say, brother, when you get that sight before your eyes, you don't care much for the world. You can't starve a man that's doing his duty. Be devoted to God and look to that blessed hope. Run into heaven barefooted and bareheaded rather than miss it on account of anything in the world. KUN WITH PATIENCE the race set before you. Just one more thought now, and God impress it on your minds. T want to see God's people a zealous people, working for God. Where will I find zeal in the Church ? Eighteen hundred years ago Jesus Christ called his disciples around him and sent them forth to preach the gospel to all the world. And the zeal of those twelve apostles dragged down old Ju- piter and Venus from their shrines, and started the gospel around the world, and if we had had the vim these men had there would not nave been an unchristian man in the world to-day. " A peculiar people zealous of good works." Oh, brethren, let us Lave that zeal. Let us work the town for bread. Don't let any body suffer for bread. Sister, you take the three blocks next ^ sA fl A MEMORABLE NIOHT. 119 like the hree to nily. ig I old mall ball. you on both sides and see that nobody there shall sutter for anything that you can supply. If there is not one in, three blocks of you, get in that nice carriage of yours drive through the poor streets of the town. Take a block and see that nobody in that block shall suffer for anything you can do for them. I would hate to be caught dead "within a mile of a good person that was suffering — a peo- ple zealous of good works. If any man wants to be a Christian, let him join some church. I wouldn't give a flip for any of these. * I Y v< MORAL BUSHWHACKERS. You go and join some church. I don't care which one. I never asked a m n to join the Methodist Church. But I can say this much, if you are inclined to be a Metho- dist, you need'nt be ashamed of being a Methodist in this town — nor anywhere else where I've been. And if any- body asks you what I am, tell them I'm a Methodist, with a big M, and every other letter big, all the way through. But all I want you to do is to hunt up the Church of your choice and join it, and the Lord God help you workers to push this work on. To-morrow night there will be revival services in ten churches. Let us go to those churches. There is but one way you can make me sorry I ever saw Toronto, and that is to have it said " Jones took the whole thing away in his pocket." Live right. Go and help those brethren. Stand by them till the last. If you have been running out to hear Sam Jones without any thought of saving souls, I'm sorry I ever came. But if you have been interested in your own soul and others' souls, you are going to see me get A GREAT HARVEST here. In St. Joe, Mo., and Nashville, Tenn., they had these meetings and they took in hundreds and thou- • ' 120 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. sands of souls. Stand by your preachers. Let us carry on this work and we will see that ten thousand souls were brought back through the instrumentalities of these pastors and of their services. New I want you to say, I want every Christian here and every sinner here that says, " God help me, I want to live on the line you have tried to preach on to-night." I want you to live on that line, and may you enter that world up yonder. In my heart of hearts I want to bj good anci live right. I want to see you stand up a moment. I want to see how many of this audience will stand up. The entire audience stood up. Well, thank God, thank God. Here is over 6,000 people that say, " I want to live on that line and make my way to heaven." Now sit down. Now I want all you Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Methodists that you will help us where you can. Brothei, brother, encourage these pastors and preachers by saying you will stand up and further the work of these men. I want all who say, " I want to work for God," to stand up. The entire congregation, which had seated at the bid of the revivalist, stood up again, when with a look of delight in his face, he said : — " Now, you see, there are about 6,000 more on that proposition, I trust you will go to a church to-morrow night and help all you can." The audience was seated, when the revivalist said there would be no after service, and the meeting closed with the benediction. APHORISMS. We are in no position to help or hurt the Church until we are inside it. The trouble with the Church is that it is a vast hos- V A MEMORABLE NIGHT. 121 carry souls pital ; it takes all the well ones to take care of the sick ones. You can help your preacher, instead of everlastingly calling on your preacher to help you. Nobody ever went to sleep indifferent to religion and waked up in heaven. There is nothing better in heaven than religion. Our actions of to-day are the thoughts of yesterday. If you live in impure thoughts you will be impure in your lives. A truthful woman is the grandest adornment of a home. Secrets have ruined many a girl. I want to see our young girls grow up better women than our mothers and wives are. A child is loved by God, because it has no opinions and wants to learn something. The man who w^.ll break one of God's commandments habitually and continually, if you will turn him loose will break them all. Profanit}'' is more or less a profession of your loyalt/ to the Devil. Many a man in this town's going to hell as a Sabbath- breaker, and goes about bragging all the time what a good Sunday we have here in Toronto. You show me a man who keeps the Sabbath Day holy, and I'll show you a man that's a Christian all the week. Dishonesty in the Church is really crippling the Church more than anything else. It's got so now that if you steal $5 they'll put you in gaol, but if you steal $10,000 they'll call you colonel. I believe a black-leg gambler is a gentleman beside a Church member who speculates in stocks and futures. A Church that can't do anything but keep itself straight is a failure. I never heard yet of a committee asking for a preacher that is popular with God Almighty. H 122 SAM JONES IN TORONTO. s ■ i It takes prayer, study, and thought to get up a first- class sermon. It takes a first-class preacher and a first-class hearer to get up a first-class sermon. Find me a man preparing himself to hear the Gospel, and I can show you a man that is going to be benefitted by the Gospel. It takes a cold pew to make a cold pulpit. I'm a peculiar fellow, I do love my wife. Run into heaven barefooted and bareheaded rather than miss it on account of anything in the world. Don't get into anybody's way with your naturalness, but try to be yourself wherever you go. When a heart is chuck full of error, there is no room in there for the truth. The infidelity that hurts is the infidelity of the man who makes out he's on God's side, and then won't live up. If we're right we can't be hurt by the truth, and if wo ain't right we ought to be hurt righteously. Self -dedicatory love is the very bed-rock and founda- tion upon which you can build a happy married life. Love is not only the divinest and sublirnist, but the most omnipotent power in the world. It is the little things in this life that keep up the worry. The wife either makes or unmakes her husband. Their are few men in this world better than their wives. A Christian girl runs a great risk when she marries a worldling. The girl that will marry a boy whose breath smells with whiskey, is the biggest fool angels ever looked at. God pity the woman that has no more sense than to marry a man that drinks. It ain't whose wife you are, but what sort of a wife that fellow has got where you live. Y / mf^mmm st- to )el, bed ler iSS. )in an ip. Y la- ihe he Bir } a Us to fe / '^^mmii i I. i REV. SAM W. SMALL. ^1^ ' EEV. SAM. W. SMALL Y NH; of the curiosities of humanity is the history of Samuel Small, the converted journalist. L" Moody and Sankey " are no more inseparable than the " Two Sams." Mr. Jones' co-labourer in the Lord's work was bom in Knoxville, Tenn., about 1842. He lived in Georgia and New Orleans in youth, and gi-aduated at a Virginia col- lege, and became a lawyer. Obeying natural impulse, he changed into a journalist. After working on several papers, and marrying a Con- gressman's daughter, Mr. Small accepted a place on the Staff of the Atlanta Constitution^ and became official sten- ographer of the Atlanta Superior Court. His writings, as "Old Si," in the Negro dialect, gave him a national repu- tation as a humourist. After occupying various- government clerical positions, and working at the journalistic tread-mill, he came to the pivotal point of his life. He took his children, a valise, a clean shirt, and a bot- tle of whiskey, and went to Cartersville, to see and hear Sam Jones, and tnere became converted, and abjured whiskey and journalism forever. Since December 13th, 1884, Mr. Small has done what he could for the advancement of the Redeemer s kingdom, and has a brilliant future before him. ts - ' I I " "I II '' -i » ..i . iii »in i< jnir . i i..i, « j-ii '. i i .i .. ., i ' I r II. I I I j| . P j i vyl ' ^ i iiji i ' i ifitt'.ijl li^ l*' . ■ ■. .'' -4". •^, V : .,.■' * i V SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. V s> ' SERMON VII. ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION AND EXPERIENCE. And His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know ; yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all."— Acts iu., 16. T is said that on one occasion there came into the busy market of a far eastern city AN AGED AND DECREPIT STRANGER. He walked through that busy throng, apparently unknown to any in the place, and taking but little interest in the the vast stores of merchandise, and the curious works of handicraft gathered from all parts of the world. His con- dition and his listlessness attracted the attention of some of the idlers in the place, and they followed him to see what he might do there. All at once he paused before a booth on which there were cages, behind whose gilded bars were tmmmamim& 128 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. confined little song birdy, captured in a far distant moun- tain and brought there for sale. He seemed to recognize them, and bent his ear, if haply he might catch some note of the well-remembered song. But these little pri- soners had fretted themselves for days and weeks against the gilded bars of their cages, in the vain endeavour to release themselves, and at last, despairing, they had fallen into that listless mood, and their despair repressed all of the native melody of their throats. And as the stranger gazed upon them, the great tears began to trickle down his dust-covered cheeks. At last, he ran his hand into the folds of his garment, and drew forth the coin of a strange country, purchased one of the cages, and held it up, looked at the little bird, then opened the door and let it out. It fluttered for a few moments above the heads of the people, as if impatient to fly ; then, as if nature restored the equilibrium of its wings, it began to circle over the heads of the multitude, and went higher, higher, higher, until it reached an altitude from which it caught a glimpse of its distant moimtain, and as that familiar scene appeared upon its vision, its melody returned, and its throat swelled with l ^ ONE GLAD SONG OF TRIUMPH over its deliverance, and it sped its way homeward, home- ward bound. And one by one the old stranger purchased these cages, and turned those little song birds loose, and each one mounted until it reached a height where it could catch a glimpse of its distant mountain ; then its melody poured forth into a glad song of praise, and it sped away to its long-remembered home. And when they turned upon him, after he had released them all, and said, " Why do you do this strange thing ? " he turned upon them a face that was radiant in its eloquent sympathy, and, as the great tears coursed and furrowed down his cheeks, he said, " Gentlemen, I was once a captive, and I know > 1 n- ze LSt to ^ ^ ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 129 something of the sweets of liberty." And thus, in the presence of that throng, he had attested to these little song birds his own gratitude for his deliverance. I say to you, my brothers and sisters, to-night, I WAS ONCE A CAPTIVE, I was once enchained and enslaved in bonds that were far more galling to the human nature, and far more re- pressing to the natural melody of the human soul, than were those gilded bars to those little song birds in the market place. But, thank God, Jesus Christ reached down and lifted me up from that bondage, and broke the shackles from my limbs. He broke the shackles from my limbs and freed me from those bonds of passion, and ap- petite and sin, and turned me loose, a free man, among my fellows, to sing his praises with a new song of joy, and come forward, and in gratitude for the deliverance, acknowledge all his love and mercy, and tell my fellow- men how he delivered me. I would that to-night I might so give you the story of my life, and so tell you the words that Jesus spoke to me, that the liberty that you see, and the soundness that I present before you, through the power which is in me, might win from you the great response that should come from the heart of humanity, that as we are free men through Christ Jesus our Lord, so shall our brethren in bondage be free through love and mercy. That I may show you how great is this de- liverance ; that I may show you what a precious boon it is to a human soul to be thus freed, it may be neces- sary that, without egotism, I shall tell you SOMETHING OF MY OWN HISTORY. I was well born and had as precious and noble a mother as boy ever had. She treasured me against her bosom and poured the energies of her life into my veins and into ss mm 130 bAM SMALL IN TORONTO. 1 I i I i my body, and sought to pour into ray spirit the deep de- votion and religious fervour and the faith and confidence of her loving heart toward God ! She brought me up to reverence the Holy Scriptures, and from the first hours of my capacity to learn such things, taught me to read the Word of God. She gave the goodly counsel of her own judgment and experience and knowledge, and sought to train me in good impulses and virtuous thoughts, and to direct me upon paths that were virtuous and honourable and just. I had a father who was a noble man. He lived and died with the esteem of his fellow-men. He was noted among the men with whom he had to do as the soul of honour and integrity. He had ambition for me, his first- born, and sought to guide my young life aright, and to instil in it religious purposes and lofty aspirations that would make me an honour not only to«my family and my name, but to my fellow-men, my country, and to God. And as long as I remained at home under the old roof- tree, and WORSHIPPED AT THE FAMILY ALTAR, and had the benefit of godly and golden admonitions from the lips of father and mother day by day, I was encou- raged to believe that I was gro Aring strong in the princi- ples of virtue, and that I would bring the fruition of the hopes and desires of their fond and loving hearts. But the day came when I must imprint the farewell kiss upon the lips of mother and upon the brow and cheeks of father, and leave my home to seek an education and after- wards a profession. I went to one of the colleges of my own country, filled with young men gathered from all parts of the greai/ Republic. I found many of them of my own age who had tasted of what had always been to me for- bidden fruits. I found those who had trodden to some extent tracts and paths forbidden to me, I found them already acquainted with the ways of the world, already having dipped into the exercises and passions and prac- /;! ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSjON. ISl tices and customs of the general society of the day, and as they painted for me ALLURING PICTURES, bright in the couleur de rose of this manner of living that before had been unknown to me, I found my nature re- sponded to them. I found that my senses were being fascinated. I found that my desires were leaping up to catch all of the knowledge on those lines that could be given me, I found that I began to long to taste and enjoy those things of which they had told me. After I had passed through m v college course and graduated, I went into the capital city of one of the States of the Republic and BEGAN TO STUDY FOR LAW, and to prepare myself for its practice. I thought now, as I entered upon the threshold of life, equipped with a pro- fession, and my own man and master, I would be able to indulge in those things of which I had already tasted, and to enter freely upon those pleasures and know how much of pleasure and passionate indulgence those things can give to a man. I looked at my fellow-men about me, some of them men who had risen to eminence, men who had climbed to the highest step in the ladder of popu- larity, and some among them men who had been chosen to represent the fellow-citizens of their State in high capa- city in Government circles ; men who were successful in the eyes of the world — successful in acquiring fame and opulence and position in society and politics. I had THOSE AMBITIONS IN ME ^ that led me out after those things that they had acquired. I was desirous, too, to be popular and to make myself in- dependent in the world, so far as temporal matters were s i: f; I 1 P s 132 HAM SMALL IN TORONTO. conceniod, to be Jit the higheHt point of my profesHion ; and as I looked at those men who were pointed out as examplars to me, I nought to get at the means; I endea- voured to find the instrumentalities and the agencies they had used r,s stepping-stones on which to mount to their successful positions, and I saw that many among them, some of the highest among them, some of those most loudly applauded and most popular among their fellow- men, were indulging in those customs, those social prac- tices to which I lull been looking for enjoyment. I saw that they gave lein to their passions and appetites, and I concluded that it was to those practices and customs that they owed their rise to opulence, and power, and popu- larity. I made that fatal mistake that so many young men make, of thinking that those things which were but incidents in the lives of these men, were the stepping- stones by which they had mounted to their positions, and that if I too made use of the same ideas, the same suc- ^cess would follow with me. And so I was tempted on and on by those things and by the rising passions of my own nature. I went on and on until I had been admitted to my profession as a member of the bar. Suddenly, after a while, thinking I saw some nearer goal to the successes I longed for, I changed my profession and ENTERED JOURNALISM. I went on indulging in those things and keeping those same objects just ahead of me ; and all the time there were rising in me those lusts and passions of the flesh that I had been cultivating. After a while, being moder- ately successful in my profession, I married a beautiful girl, devoted to me at the time, and devoted to me still, a girl to whom the slightest taint of anthing disgraceful was like a knife stabbed to her heart, and when she look- ed to the sad fact that I had passions, and desires, and ambitions that were outside the circle to which her influ- •V aByBtg^ Ekiiik-Byw ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 133 -N ence and power extended, that I was given over to de- bauchery, and to the gratification of pjusaions that were inimical to sobriety, and virtue, and honour, she prayed day by day, with tears streaming from her eyes, that I might be brought back into the paths of sobriety and virtue. I went on and on, indulging in those things, pur- suing those lights of hope and ambition until GOD SENT CHILDREN to my home ; and I thought sometimes, as I looked down into their faces, as they lay in their cradles, the smiles of God, as it were, reflected in their faces; but as I raised my eyes and looked out beyond their cradles into the horizon of their young lives, I saw that already the dark and ominous clouds were bearing down on that horizon, and threatening, before long, to cover the firmament of their young lives with the gloom of darkness and despair. Year after year I went on so. I saw strong men stagger and fail beneath the weight of the very practices that I was pursuing, but I said to myself that if those vices ever grew so strong in me as to be dangerous, I would summon all the powers of my manhood, all my strength of will, and all my pride of character, and my know- ledge and information of the natural course of things, to put away those practices, and reassert my manhood. But I went on and on, indulging in those practices, until at last the day came when I saw nothing but gloom and de- spair ahead of me; nothing but chaos and confusion. Worse and worse yet, as the years rolled on 1 Fairly suc- cessful in business, by the help of friends who would not let me go, in the faint hope that I might yet reform, I had plenty of money with which to indulge myself. I was not cramped or stinted for the /means to procure those indulgences. On and on, until I began to see that I was losing control over my own powers, 134 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. I- 's 1 i. V 1 LOSING POWER OVER MY TALENTS, and my abilities, and disposition, and the respect of my- self, my family, and my fellow men. And hope began to die out in the bosom of my wife, in which at last I saw that all idea of my ever being reformed, and being to her the husband I had promised to be at the altar of Cod, had been abandoned. I saw that my little children had come to years of consciousness, and that they knew that I was not the father God intended me to be ; that instead of running into my arms to greet me with a kiss, they would flee away at the sound of my staggering foot- steps. All the time my friends kept trying to help me, refused to let me go, and set before me inducements to lift me up. I saw that my precious mother's hair was turning gray ; she bowed her head, and she left me suddenly one night, without a word of warning. She has gone to her rich reward in heaven, and there she is with her God to-night. Then my father passed away, and I know he is in hea' n to-night awaiting me. But these things did not recall me to my senses. I knew that my course, my waywardness and recklessness, had added to their cares, and perhaps taken years from their life ; and the con- sciousness of this bore in upon my soul and agonized my mind, and DROVE ME TO A WORSE DESPAIR; -WX' and I sought relief in those ribald pursuits, and in those flowing potions that had so often been my relief from the agonies of remorse. I went on, until at last all effbrts were centered upon me to save me from an awful doom. My wife went to the judge of the court in Atlanta, of which I was an official, and got him to write out, in the tvrms of the Georgia law, a notice to each of the bar- keepers in Atlanta, commanding them not to sell me liquor. That was personally served on every bar-keeper^ ^ ■MIM*N»«i"^ ACCOUNT or HIS CONVERSION. 135 in Atlanta. And yet those men — the communists of the present, and the anarchists of the future — laughed to scorn the warnings that were sent them under the law hy my wife ; trampled upon the statutes of the State ; jeered at the tears t j.d entreaties of my children ; posted the notices in mockery in their very bar-rooms, and then sold me the liquor that they knew I would sacrifice my last dollar to pour down my throat. My wife even em- ployed a detective to follow me from bar-room to bar- room, and forbid the keepers to sell me drink ; but still the stuff was sold to me. All the antidotes that were ever published in this country or Europe I tried in vain. We consulted the best physicians who sought to eradicate the miserable habit from my nature ; but after they had exhausted every resource of skill and science, they told my wife that there was no relief for me. They LEFT HER IN COMPLETE DESPAIR in the idea that I must at last end in insanity or a drunk- ard's death. She did not know what day I might be brought in wounded unto death in some bar-room brawl. She knew not what day the sheriff might come and dis- possess her from the roof that sheltered her and her inno- cent children. She did not know what day a heartless land- lord might take her household goods and turn her and her little children into the streets, upon the cold charities of the world. It was in such a condition, on the 13th of September, a year ago, when I sat face to face with the dread alternative of insanity or suicide, that something came to me and said, " Take your little children, as a sort of repayment for weeks of neglect, and go on the train up to Cartersville." I took my children and went to hear Sam Jones preach. I pulled out a note book, and began to take notes of his sermon. He preached that wonderful sermon of his on conscience. He showed how a man can outrage conscience ; how he can stop it by sue- 136 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. cessive sins, until it breathes its last and expires almost in Lis bosom ; until at last it is silent as far as any sug- gestion to him is concerned. As his words flew thick and fast over the heads of the audience, sorae of them fell short and struck upon the incrusted casements of my heart as I sat at the reporters* table, and broke them down with the power of conversion. When he had finished the wonderful sermon I rose from my feet the most thoroughly convicted man that ever sat under preaching. I took my little ones back to Atlanta. I was ONE SEETHING CAULDBON OF REMORSE. My conscience was alive again. It was in arms against my life and record ; it was bringing to my view all the errors of my past life, all the horrors of the future. I sought relief again* in the bar-room. I sought to drow»i out those pangs of conscience, these lashings of the out- raged monitor, with the potations that so often had given me relief. All night Sunday, all day Monday, Monday night, I was still drinking, carousing with my godless companions. But somehow whiskey would not do its work. It would stupefy me so far as the body was con- cerned, but it never seemed to reach my brain. My brain would not become sodden again. My brain was still act- ive ; my brain was still suggesting to me the terrors of my state. And though I stood at the bar-room counter and poured out the liquor, my hand would fall, and my head would come upon my hand. AT LAST GOD TOOK MERCY upon my soul. At ten o'clock Tuesday, my wife drove into the city and called for me, and I went home with her. My mind went back to my precious mother, to what she had told me of the consolation that Jesus had brought ])er throughout her troubled life. At last the photograph M mm ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 137 almost Qy sug- ick and em fell of my them he had Peet the under I was against all the ure. I drown he out- d given londay godless do its as con- y brain bill act- Tors of counter bnd my of memory turned back in my brain until it came to those words, " Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I believed that this was the last chance, and I resolved that I would take it — that I would go to God. J. went up into the library alone ; I locked myself in, and got down before the lounge, and there I laid my head upon my hand at twelve o'clock and began to pour out my whole soul before God. It was a long and serious struggle. For four mortal hours I re- mained there on my knees. I never suffered more of physical agony, more of mental torture, more of spiritual despair than I did in that four hours, wrestling with the spirit of God. I sought to count up all the sins of my life and lay them before God and ask for forgiveness for them. But as I turned back through that black and dis- mal record I found that these sins were more innumerable than the sands of the sea, and that thought plunged me into despair. Then I looked back again and sought to find something in ray life that was meritorious and would claim the attention of God, and secure forgiveness ; but it was one mass of corruption, of ribald wretchedness, of rebellion against God. Then I thought, " My God, is it possible that there is no way of escape ; is there nothing I can bring, nothing I can offer ? " At last, about four o'clock, I threw myself in despair on the floor and said, " Here, Lord, I give myself away ; it is all that I can do." And I seemed to hear His voice saying, " Nothing but life shall you receive "; and A SWEET CALM AND PEACE drove e with 3 what rought ograph came over my whole being. The fever of anxiety passed away and a sweet, soothing thought came over my spirit, my mind, my body, and my soul that I could not mistake. I got up and rushed out of the room, my face illumined with joy, and feeling a sweetness I had never felt in all my life before. (Praise God.) I went down stairs and told I 138 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. « ' i t i I my wife what had happened, and she looked on me in dis- may and thought : " At last ! At last ! What we feared has come, and this is the enthusiasm and exultation of a foi*m of insanity," aad I believe in that hour she suffered more than she had ever suffered in all her life before, and wept the bitterest tears that ever had fallen from her eyes. But something seemed to tell my little children — three little ones about that high (indicating the height), that there was truth in it. They said : — Papa, we believe it, and we thank God for it. (Praise God ; bless the little ones). I TOOK THESE LITTLE CHILDREN in my carriage and went out on the streets to a friend of mine who was a printer in the city. He was a good friend of mine and a member of my lodge, a godly man, and a member of the Church, who had often spoken to me about my wayward courses and my wickedness and intemperance, and begged me in the name of friend, and in the name of family, in the name of wife and of children, to reform. I went to him and said: — I want you to print me three thousand circulars, stat- ing that Sam Small will preach to-night at seven o'clock at the Artesian Well (the most prominent place in the city of Atlanta). And he looked at me in blank amaze- ment, and said : — You do not know what you are saying, I'll have nothing to do with it — and he wouldn't. He thought I was crazy and he would not touch it. He wouldn't print the circulars, and he said my friends ought to take charge of me and take care of me because I had gone clean daft. However, I went across the street and foimd another printer, less scrupulous perhaps ; at any- rate when I gave him a dollar and a half for the job he printed without caring anything about it. And let me . tell you, you'll find a heap of printers of that sort in the world. At any rate these three thousand circulars were printed, and between five and six o'clock that evening usmsmBmamma/m ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 139 they were distributed throughout the city. And at seven o'clock that night, upon an improvised platform, made of some boards thrown across the heads of some whiskey barrels — and I may say it was the first time I ever made a good use of whiskey barrels — I stood up with nobody on the stand to support me except my three children ; and, in the presence of 2,') 00 or 3,000 of my fellow-citi- zeDS, who had gathered there to see what new freak I would be guilty of, or what ebullition of insanity or drunk- enness might be the outcome of my effort. I told them in words similar to those I have spoken to you to-night, in WORDS OF SOBERNESS AND SINCERITY, what God had done for me. I toid them I had not the slightest shadow of apprehension or doubt that God had forgiven my sins and blotted out my transgressions; had cancelled the debt of my unrighteousness with the right- eousness of Christ. I said : " My fellow-citizens, you know my record, you know it's recklessness, it's wicked- ness ; I don't blame you for your doubt. I know what I shall have to meet and contend with ; I know the doubt, cavilling, criticism, and suspicion with which I shall be regarded. I know what I shall have to encounter, but with unfaltering trust in my Lord and Redeemer, I pledge my life from this time forward to His service ; like the man from whom the devils were driven, though I would love to be with my Lord I will go out into Decapolis and tell to the world what he has done for my soul. And from that day to this I have been endeavouring to re- deem the time and the pledge. I have been telling my fellow-men, with whatever words of sympathy and love and compassion for deep humanity that the Holy Spirit of God would give me, of that great blessing Jesus Christ brought to my soul, and of the continued blessing He is to me every* day of my life. I went back home to my wife that night and found Jesus had been sweeter and more KK. 140 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. gracious and kinder than I had hoped He could be. When I crossed the threshold I found He had come as He did to the honae of Lazarus, and knocked at the sepulchre of MY WIFES BURIED LOVE and said to it, Ooi. t forth," and it was flashing in her eye and blooming on her cheek, and from that day to this we have had one of the happiest homes on the face of God's earth. (Glory be to God.) We have been prais- ing God night and morning in our home. Soon after Brother Jones called me to the work with him, and I gave up my official position and left my profession, fear- ful lest I should not be redeeming the pledge I had made to God, and every day since, I can say after thirteen months, has been one of unalloyed joy in the Holy Ghost. (God be praised.) The next morning, after a night spent in the deep sleep of exhaustion, physical and mental, when I awoke to one of the saddest consciousnesses of my life, I found before I got from my bed 'hat every fibre of my body, and every pore of ray skin seemed to be calling for drink. Oh, there was a horror about it that was simply indescribable, and I felt as I shall never feel again in this world, 1 trust, and as I had never felt before. I called my precious wife and told her: The demon of drink has come back into his old lodgment, and every pore of my skin, and every part of my nature is calling for drink with insatiable appetite. She asked : Are you sure of your conversion ? I answered : Yes ; I never was surer of anything. I know that God forgave my sins — there is no trouble, there is no doubt upon that point. But THIS HORRIBLE APPETITE, this awful craving, this terrible demon is upon me again, and I dare not move out of this house with this thirst ^ mmfmiffm ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 141 "r consuming me. Stay in your bed and I will stay by you, and together we will do our best to overcome it. No, I said, we have done that before. Well, she said, why do you suppose it has possessed you this morning i I re- plied : I suppose that yesterday, in the great struggle of my life to have my sins forgiven, I did not mention this terrible thing to the Lord except as to its past effects. I am going back to Him to tell Him. I went back upstairs to the same room, and in the same place, and kneeling by the same lonnge, I laid my head in my hands, and talked with God about it. I told Him : Oil, Lord, you see exactly what my condition is, you know how my whole nature is possessed ; you can see I dare not go out to redeem my pledge, unless you give me some assurance here and show that I shall have strength that will save me from the power of temptation. But, oh ! Lord, if it be Thy will, take away the evil the remainder of my life, and leave me not to struggle with temptation on this line. Thou canst do it if Thou wilt. I pray Thee now to do ii. At THE END OF TWO HOURS. I felt that calm and peace come back over my soul, and I jumped upon my feet and walked out of that room as fully satisfied that the appetite was gone as if I had taken off my coat and left it and walked away. Blessed be God, from that moment to this, I have never felt a pang or a temptation. (Praise the Lord.) Now I know that the Son of Man hath redeemed me ; I can see the foundation and source of it all. I know where it began, I know from what sprang the fatal reC tide, symbolical of blood that bore me on toward death and damnation, and it was this awful vice of intemperance, which has been ravaging nol only the great republic of the United States, but the Dominion of Canada and the Mother Country, and is 142 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. SPREADING ITS AWFUL PALL > .■ '^. over the nations of the earth. And in the power on earth, not only to forgive sins, but to heal the diseases of these mortal frames of ours. Now, brethren, with this plain, unvarnished tale of my life before you, told to you frankly and freely, I say to you that, looking back over my past life, looking back to the spring and foundation of all this sin, and all this horror, and all this world liness and wickedness, in the face of an awful vice like that : one that is ravaging your homes, and threatening the destruc- tion of your country ; will you look quietly on, or will you rise to your duty, and, like good citizens, like true Cana- dians, like God-like, Christian men, rise to the measure of your duty ? I will not take up your time by painting for you historical figures that may be fascinating and pictur- esque, but yet which, in the luridity and glare of the very colours of hell, show you the enormities that are perpe- trated in this country by that foul spirit of hell. I say to you simply that which you know for yourself. I say to you simply that fact that the conscience of every hon- est man in this country tells him and convinces him every day that he lives ; for as the angel of death spread his black wings over the homes of the children of Israel, when they were held in bondage in Egypt, and left the first-born cold and chill in the embrace of pallid death, so the FIERY EYE AND THE FLAMING WINGS V of the demon of drink has spread his wings and flown over the homes of the cities of this Domini r* and this continent, and there is scarcely a home in the Dominion of Canada, or in the Republic of the United States, that has not its skeleton, or its hidden sorrow that grew out of the beer-barrel or whiskey-bottle. They tell us of old mmm *"■*■*■ ■'^ ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 143 Diogenes, that when one day he saw a young man of brilliant parts and fine talents, going into a place of de- bauchery and sin, the old man seized him forcibly and prevented him from going inside. He took him home to his friends and parents, and said to the latter, " My friends, you owe me a debt of gratitude for having saved your son from debauching himself." Oh, my brothers, shall the example of the old heathen philosopher be too hard for the Christian of the nineteenth century ? God for- bid ! Let us look our duty squarely in the face, and come up to it like men in the full confidence that we have the eternal grace of the Holy Spirit, and the endorsement of the omnipotent God above all Gods. " Oh," you say, " you should not introduce the SUBJECT OF PROHIBITION or local option into the pulpit." If you would not, where would you ? (" Hear, hear," from Dr. Potts.) You take it into politics, and you hear these little six by ten politi- cians say. " Oh, don't bring that in here ! It's a disturb- ing element in politics, and we don't want it in here." They don't want the question in there, but they have the whiskey and the beer in there, and are using it as the damnable enginery to corrupt the citizens of this country, and to keep themselves in the usurpation of power that does not belong to them. (Applause.) If you politicians don't want it in politics, kick it out, and we won't meddle with your dirty politics. Put it out in a field where we can get at it. You hear these little politicians talking about natural rights. NATURAL RIGHTS ! As if man had a natural right to debauch and damn his fellow-men. Only one creature has that right, and that is the devil in hell, and every man on the top of this eariii 144 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. I> I and every spirit in hell that claims that right is of his father the devil. (Applause.) The Emperor of China, when he was asked to put a tax on opium, because it would be an immense fund of revenue to himself, said : *' This opium traffic is forced on me by treaty, and I will never put a single coin in my treasury that is wrung out for me by debauching my people." Instead of sending missionaries to China to convert the heathen, don't you think it would be a good thing in Canada and the United States to get a few Chinamen like that in our Congresses and Parlia- ments ? (Applause.) You go up to political conventions, into these ward assemblies, and into the congresses and parliaments of the country with this drink question and demand your rights upon it. The politicians will trem- ble and quake for a moment, but the liquor men will rush up to their backs with their money to support them, and then they tell you, " This is not the place to discuss the question." I begin to believe that it has no place in poli- tics, that it has no place in statesmanship, that it has no place in government, that it has no place — this infernal drink traffic — NO PLACE BUT HELL, from whence it came, and I think the duty of sending it back there belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. (Ap- plause.) I stand, consequently, upon this proposition, that there is not an agency of the devil in all this world to-day that is doing more damage to human souls, that is de- bauching and damaging more of our fellow-men, and disgracing the Cross of Christ, than whiskey, rum, gin, and beer. (Applause.) And T say that every man who wears the cross of a minister of Jesus Christ, by his oath of al- legiance, by his mission, by his habits as a minister, IS PLEDGED ETERNALLY to raise his hands and voice and exert his power against the continuance of this traffic. (Applause). I have a most ^. ACCOUNT OF HIS CONVERSION. 145 ^. supreme, unutterable contempt for the man who will stand in the pulpit of any church of any denomination that names the name of Christ, and either defend or apolo- gise for this drink traffic, or is so miserably cowardly as to keep his mouth shut about it. (Applause.) He is either a participant in the works of darkness and iniquity, or bribed by liquor men to defend this damnable agent of hell, or he is too cowardly to be a minister of God. And as for Christian people, I stand upon this proposition — that no man who names the name of Christ, and claims to be a Christian, and stands out before his fellow-men with that profession, can either be a participant in the whiskey traffic or have any agency in its continuance, or be in any way responsible for its continuance until he can reconcile Jesus Christ with whiskey and the liquor traffic. I don't know how this question stands with you people in Canada. Rev. Dr. Potts — Well, sir, we are just very near the point of demanding prohibition. (Loud applause.). Sam Small, continuing, expressed his conviction that i / ^ IN A FEW YEARS N the manufacture, sale, and importation of liquor would be against the law of the United States. He concluded by asking all those who would pledge themselves to try to rid the country of the great evil of intemperance to stand. The whole congregation seemed to rise in response to this appeal. SERMON VIII. A GREAT SERMON ON HELL. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood by the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of Grace. ^r -JHESE two verses, taken together, constitute an ar- j^ gument by way of suggestion. The word " des- ^ pised " in the text was the word used by a man when he repudiated anything. When a man despised a thing he had no use for it. To despise a law was to hold it in supreme contempt, and to reject its authority, and pay no heed to it. He that despised Moses' law was put to death. HIS BODY WAS KILLED. He died without mercy. How much sorer was the pun- ishment, suppose ye be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God ? How much sorer ? What sorer punishment can be inflicted than death to the body ? There is a punishment that is worse than killing the man. Human justice can punish an offender no further than to kill the body. This is the ultimatum of human justice. This sorer punishment was the punishment inflicted upon the immortal soul of man. The sorer punishment comes i: H i . i .iXLJUM HIS SERMON ON HELL. 147 upon a man's soul when he despises the Son of God. God has said it. This sorer punishment was in AN ETERNAL HELL. You say, do you believe there is a holi ? Is it possible that we cannot have a revival without somebody preach- ing the doctrine of an ( iornal hell? That is the truth. God forbid that he should preach an eternal hell to scare people. If he was a minister of a church to which any person came after being scared into religion, he would not let that person join the church, until he got the right idea of Jesus Christ. He preached God, a loving God. No man would inherit hell who V ' KEPT HIMSELF DIVORCED B^ROM SIN. No man would suffer eternal damnation unless he was allied to sin, and refused to accept Jesus Christ. A man says: — "There is no hell. Science has proved it." The preacher had read a few scientific works. He had been for twelve years an active man in the manufacture of a news- paper for the education of the people. He had never read a book, or heard of a book, in this world that had altered revelation from God upon eternal punishment as given in the Bible before him. Science had never made one .step of true progress unless it was PIONEERED BY CHRISTIANITY. Some men had read Bob Ingersoll, Tom Paine, and Vol- taire, and a few of these infidels. The disciples of these men were to be found on street corners. They talked about there bein* no God, there bein no hell, and there bein' no eternal punishment. Where were the followers of these infidels ? Had anyone ever seen a congregation of ■WW 148 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. this sort ? No. Bob Ingersoll, for fifty cents or a dollar a head, would mouth over things in his satirical way, but he found no disciples. A gentleman once called upon Bob Ingersoll at his office, and seeing a, beautifully bound copy of Voltaire's works lying on his desk, he said: — " Ingersoll, what did that work cost you ? " Ingersoll replied : — '' It just cost me the governorship of Illinois." (Hear, hear,) The people of the State did not want AN INFIDEL AS THEIR GOVERNOR (praise God), although Ingersoll was the most prominent man for the governorship. When Mr. Garfield was elected President of the United States, he had it in his mind to appoint Mr. Ingersoll Minister to the Court of St. James. The President's mind was changed, and it afterwards came out that the reason why Ingersoll had not been appointed was that, when his pronounced views on infidelity had become known, he would not be received at the Court of St. James. A man who had not the common sense and decency to believe in God would not be received. (Ap- plause.) HE THANKED THAT GOOD QUEEN OF ENGLAND and her Ministers for teaching the United States that much. (Renewed applause.) A man said : " I don't know ; there may be a hell. It may be. I will not stop to dis- cuss it ; but I will tell you I believe a man gets his hell here on earth." A man must be mighty idiotic to believe that. For his part he would rather God would judge him. Mr. Small continued: You take that young man back there who goes againit the advice and counsel of his father. He has no respect for him. Eighteen years old now, and his father's grey hairs have no influence with him. Eighteen years old now, and he defies that father to check him in his wayward course. He cares nothing for mmm ■IH HIS SERMON ON HELL. 149 the ifnes of grief on his mother's brow. He cares nothing for her prayers. He cares nothing for the bleeding and dripping heart that he knows is in his mother's bosom. He takes to DRUNKENNESS AND LEWD WOMEN ^- and revels in it. He finds his highest enjoyment in it, and perhaps he dies in one of these abominable orgies. And you tell me that he has suffered for all here. He might have died with his arm around a courtesan, one of the lowest. He delighted in this sort of thing and it was no punishment to him while he lived. Take that husband out there. He swore at the altar of God and took the most solemn vow that a ^man takes in his life, when he took a precious, lovely young woman to his heart for the rest of his life. To-day he is a perjured scoundrel. He has become a drunken sot, and has inflicted woe upon his poor wife and children. His wife and children perhaps fall into degiadation. His sons become convicts OR DROP INTO HELL through the trap in the gallows. And yet you tell me that this perjured father, that debauchee who lived in his selfishness, pays the penalty of his sin in this world. It is a horrible lie. He does not suffer here. He will have his good time if he goes to hell for it, and he does go to hell. I believe a man is conscious in hell. A man says : " I think when we die that is the end of it. I don't believe the soul is conscious of the death." This doctrine shuts out heaven as well as hell. That makes a hog out of you to start with. That makes you a brute. If I believe there is a heaven, I believe there is a hell. The one is in- volved, in the existence of the other. I believe the one is as eternal as the other. You tell me when sin dies and 150 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. I WILL TELL YOU WHEN HELL STOPS. The story of Dives and Lazarus was introduced to give us a peep into hell. Dives was conscious that he was in hell. Water was what he wanted to quench the flames. A man must be saved before he dies. There is no mercy in the grave. There is no repentance in hell. I believe the devil in hell would repent to-night if he could. I do not believe in death-bed repentances. Every man has his chance. Death sometimes comes quicker than repentance. If the smallest of God's laws are broken, all his laws are broken. Another man says : " God would not keep a man in hell forever for a small offence. He would keep him there for a little while and let him out." This is a very foolish doctrine. A man would look nice going into heaven to meet his loved ones as AN EX-CONVICT OUT OF HELL. Cv ^ I do not intend to paint hell to jou to-night. I be- lieve hell is just what the Bible says it is. The devil will paint hell to a man any way he wants it, but when he gets him in hell he won't let him out. If hell was any- thing else than to project yourself just as you are to- night into eternity and fix you, there is a terrible fact. Would you want any worse hell than that ? Your life may be full of greed for gold. You will do anything for the almighty dollar. All your strength and energies are used towards this end. Just project your life into eter- nity and your thirst for gold continues. You grasp at the glittering stuff, and when you grab it you find it is nothing but ashes and leaves. There is no gratification. Take the man out there who is a gambler. The aim in life is to speculate, play cards, shake dice and bet on any- thing. He also takes his chance for eternity. Let him project his life into eternity, and be fixed there. He hears t m mm HIS SERMON ON HELL. 151 THE CARDS GO FLIP, FLIP, FLIP, and the roll, roll, roll of the wheel, and the rattle, rattle, rattle of the dice, and yet there is no gain, no satisfac- tion, and no end to the horrible thing. It is awful. Take that woman who dances in preference to taking Christ. Her life is projected into eternity, and she dances, dances, and dances. There is the waltz, the German, and the polka. She wishes that horrible music to stop, but it does not. It goes on forever. Take that man who drinks. He says : " I would rather have my dram to-morrow morn- ing than have the religion of Jesus Christ. I would rather drink." HE WILL DRINK, DRINK, AND DRINK, and bring his wife, mother, children, and himself into dis- grace. Project him into eternity. Can you think of any- thing more awful than that man running over the burning cinders of hell, and drinking the molten lava that runs from its volcanoes. This one idea of hell was horrible enough. It is a question of receiving Christ or facing the awful certainty of going to hell. He concluded by ask- ing all those who wished to be prayed for, or had dear ones to be prayed for, to stand up. A great many in the audience rose SERMON IX. WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? I'r " But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were afar off are made nigh in the blood of Christ So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow- citizens with the saints and of the household of God. " — Ephesians ii. 13, 19. 'HEN we look out over the mass of our fellow- men, whether they be in the active and busy pursuits of worldly affairs, or whether we look over them in the presence of large congregations gather- ed in a place like this, there is a painful consciousness in the heart of everyone of us who are spiritually in- clined, chat a great many — a large per centage, indeed — of these, our fellow-men, are in a state of alienation, a state of estrangement, a state of rebellion — frequently active rebellion — against God. There is no peace between them and the great Creator. There is no sense of freedom from condemnation in their hearts. There is no sense of perfect reliance on God, no sense of perfect willingness to submit to the word of God. And when we come to enquire why this strange state of affairs should exist ; why these men and women should be alienated from their Creator, we are necessarily plunged into WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? 153 5ff are made ire no more ;h the saints ir fellow- and busy r we look IS gather- iciousness ually in- indeed — ■nation, a equently between freedom sense of llingness come to i exist; 5d from A LARGE SEA OF QUESTIONINGS and investigations, and that question in its concrete form is the one which agitates the great world to-day. It is the one question with which the pulpit has to deal in its concrete form. The solution of that question is the one over which the great world is now agitated, and in the solution of which it is struggling to bring men's minds up to that spiritual plane where they can comprehend truth and apprehend it, and apply it in their lives, and bring it themselves through the Gospel into a state of reconciliation with God. The reason why so many of our fellow-men are in this state of alienation is ^ot because they do not recognize that there is a God, not because they deny the existence of a God, because the existence of God is an omnipresent consciousness with men. Wherever you find men, even in the most be- nighted parts of the world, even in the centre of the dark continent of Africa, you will find men who have the uplifting of the soul to the Supreme Being ; you will find expressions which represent the longing of the soul for the Supreme Essence, the Supreme Power, the Su- preme Being, which are an uplifting of the soul to God. And everywhere we find it, among the most benighted as well as among the most cultured ; and the great trouble of the world to-day is not that it is in a state of open denial of the existence of God, for the rational creature has passed that part of the world's history, that part of intellectual life, that part of moral and spiritual responsibility where he would deny the existence of God. When he LOOKS OUT ON NATURE itself and sees the thousand magnificent works with which it is crowned; when he sees the majestic mountains, when he sees the spread-out lakes — this beautiful one at your very doorj when he sees the broad plains; when he J ns with saints. , and I do not rstand all the aot know what tion. I do not WHAT MUST I DO TO BK SAVED ? 159 know, because Christ himself hesitated to explain it in what He said to Nicodemua. I do not know that it is neces- sary for me to know all the profundity of God in His plan of the new birth. But I can tell you a thing that has brought peace and perfect satisfaction to me. In all countries we have what are called our naturalization laws. We have the machinery by which foreigners from another country than ours may become citizens of our country. Among all these nations these laws vary in non-essentials, but in the essentials they are the same. It is named " naturalization," because it is intended to make a man, as it were, over again, to give him a new nature as a citi- zen of our country. Suppose he comes from the United States to Canada, the real essence is that you must renounce your allegiance to your old Government — renounce it completely — aud come away from it and withdraw your loyalty and love and service from it. The next thing is to swear eternal loyalty to this Government and to its lands and its constitution, and give it your loyal service, your faith, and your confidence and sup- port. Now, when a man has done that he is made a citizen of this country. He was a foreigner before, but the very moment he pronounces the Oath of allegiance, and takes on his new allegiance, he dies as a citizen of his former country, and lives as a Canadian. If he does not he commits a fraud upon you. That is the purpose of the naturalization laws. I rest in perfect confidence, in perfect peace, in perfect faith in the fact,' that on the fifteenth day of September, a year ago, I came to that point and renounced the devil and all his works, and sin and its bondage, and all loyalty to them; withdrew service from them, and walked up and took the oath of allegiance to Jesus Christ, and to the laws of God, and I say that Sam Small, as a sinner, died, and Sam Small, as a fellow- citizen of the saints, was born. (Glory be to God). It is by the blood of the Cross, and only by the blood of the Cross, that I was brought in, and no more was I a stranger 'fTf ' "TlfT 160 SAM SMALL IN TORONTO. and an alien and a foreigner, but I became a fellow-citizen of the saints, and was brought into the household of God, I know it, I feel it. I felt then, as I felt every day since THE BLESSINGS OF NEW KNOWLEDGE, intention and purpose in every fibre of my being, I have felt I am a new man. I have looked upon my relations to God with new thoughts. I have looked upon human afiairs through new eyes, and with new faith and new love. Indeed, I was made a new creature in Christ Jesus. My wife and children know it. I have sixty thousand fellow- citizens in the City of Atlanta, who, I am sure, would be ready to go on the witness-stand and take oath that I am a new man, and not the same man I was before. I say 1 was born again. The preacher concluded with a powerful and poetic peroration, and which he finished with the lines : Hallelujah, 'tis done, I believe on the Sn ; I am saved by the bloor' Of the crucified one. ■rfftf£i»ini1^> , fellow-citizen sehold of God, very day since DGE, jing, I have f elt elations to God human affairs and new love, ist Jesus. My lousand f ellow- jure, would be oath that I am lefore. I say 1 •ful and poetic a lines :