“I went with her to the class-meeting, as I had often done before. About a dozen persons were present in a little schoolhouse. The leader had spoken to all in the room but myself and two others. He was speaking to the person next me, when the thought occurred to me: he will ask me if I have anything to say. I said to myself: I have decided to be a Christian sometime; why not begin now? In less time than a minute after these thoughts had passed through my mind he said, speaking to me familiarly—for he knew me very well—‘Brother Charles, have you anything to say?’ I replied, with perfect coolness, ‘Yes, sir. I have just decided, within the last thirty seconds, that I will begin a Christian life, and would like to have you pray for me.’
“My coolness staggered him; I think he almost doubted my sincerity. He said very little, but passed on and spoke to the other two. After a few general remarks, he turned to me and said, ‘Brother Charles, will you close the meeting with prayer?’ He knew I had never prayed in public. Up to this moment I had no feeling. It was purely a business transaction. My first thought was: I cannot pray, and I will ask him to excuse me. My second was: I have said I will begin a Christian life; and this is a part of it. So I said, ‘Let us pray.’ And somewhere between the time I started to kneel and the time my knees struck the floor the Lord converted my soul.
“The first words I said were, ‘Glory to God!’ What I said after that I do not know, and it does not matter, for my soul was too full to say much but Glory! From that hour the devil has never dared to challenge my conversion. To Christ be all the praise.”
Many people are waiting, they cannot exactly tell for what, but for some sort of miraculous feeling to come stealing over them—some mysterious kind of faith. I was speaking to a man some years ago, and he always had one answer to give me. For five years I tried to win him to Christ, and every year he said, “It has not ‘struck me’ yet.” “Man, what do you mean? What has not struck you?” “Well,” he said, “I am not going to become a