driven out, but returned
under the protection of some soldiers and conducted gospel services
through a whole week in order to give courage to the believers and to
demonstrate that the Protestants could not be driven out. A news
account of this persecution was published in a daily paper in
Pernambuco. A boy cut this article out and gave it to his teacher, a
priest in the Silesian College. The teacher read the article and wrote
a letter to Missionary Cannada and asked him to come to the college at
midnight to explain the gospel. Two letters were passed before the
missionary finally went at midnight to hold a conference. The priest
came out and discussed the gospel with the missionary and then returned
to the college, taking with him a copy of the New Testament. After a
month the missionary went again at midnight to the college and the
priest came away with him once for all. The priest went to the home of
the missionary and for two months studied the Bible, after which time
he was converted. He at once began to preach the gospel to his friends
as he would meet them on the streets. He also made a public declaration
of his conversion in print. The President of the college from which he
had gone obtained an interview with him and offered him every
inducement to return. His parents disinherited him and many other
trials came to him, but through all, he stood firm. He has just
graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, taking the
Th. D. degree and has been appointed to teach in the Baptist College
and Theological Seminary in Rio. His name is Piani. About a year after
Piani's conversion he induced another priest to leave the same college.
This man spent a month in the missionary's house studying the Bible,
but was enticed back by the priests and hurried away to New York in
order that he might escape the influence of Piani. Three months after
reaching New York he was converted and joined the Fifth Avenue Baptist
Church and is today a pastor of a Baptist church in Massachusetts.

In no place where our people have endured persecution, even though it
may have been severe enough to cost the lives of some, has the work
been abandoned, but in every place the weak, struggling congregation
which faced obliteration at the fury of its enemy, has in the end
increased, and today enjoys the blessing of growth in numbers and in
the sympathy of the people. Persecution is a good agency in the spread
of the gospel.

CHAPTE