to eat or
to sleep because she realized the lost condition of those about her.
At last when she was so weak that she could not pray, she had rest only
when those about her prayed for her. When Mr. Finney reached that town
one of the greatest revivals in his history as an evangelist was the
result.

I was one day engaged with other pastors in an eastern city in a Gospel
campaign. The ministers were preaching in turn each day and when it
came my time to preach I could find in all the audience scarcely one of
my people. Up to that day the interest had been remarkable, but
somehow from that day on, although people had been converted by the
hundred, there was no perceptible spiritual impression. When the
meetings had closed one of the prominent society leaders of my church
came to explain to me why she was away from the service and she said,
"I gave my afternoon reception and the people of our church were
there." When I told her that I felt that as a result of that afternoon
reception our own church had lost a blessing she seemed utterly amazed;
and yet to this day I am firmly persuaded that hundreds of people might
have come to Christ if we had not in that day grieved the Spirit.

II

The text means that those of us who are Christians shall show by our
very faces that we are on the king's business and that it is solemn
business.

One day a man knocked at the door of my study, was admitted, sat down
on the couch in the room and began to sob. He did not need to tell me
why he had come. I knew, but finally when he sobbed it out this was
his message: "I have come to ask you to bury my wife, and to ask if you
will not go with me to comfort the children, for they are heartbroken."
I knew by the very look of his face that he had lost a loved one. Do
you think for a moment that those who gaze at us would imagine that we
had the least conviction that people away from Christ were lost? I am
sure they would not.

The text also means that we shall be desperately in earnest. A father
and his boy heard a minister preach a sermon on the judgment and as
they went to their home the father said, "My boy, it was a great sermon
and you must think about it." And the boy did. He made his way to his
room and threw himself on his bed only to hear his father downstairs
laughing and singing; and he said to himself, "It is not true, for if
my father believed I was in danger of the judgment he could not laugh
and he would not sin