t one of those big lamps there in the
Avenue; it's but a little light you can give, but little lights are
useful as well as big ones, and may be you can warn, if you cannot
illuminate."' And then with enthusiasm they sang together,--
'Jesus bids me shine with a clear, pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness we must shine--
You in your small corner, I in mine.'
Then follow other testimonies and prayer, and by-and-by first one and
then another cries to God for mercy, and as the word of pardon is spoken
from above, and one after another enters into the Light, heaven indeed
comes down their
'souls to meet
And glory crowns the mercy-seat.'
This is no fanciful picture. It is an every night occurrence. The old
times of the evangelical revival are lived over again in that
'glory-room,' and hundreds are started upon a new and higher life.
But it is time to separate, and with a verse of the soldiers' parting
hymn the comrades go their various ways, and the blessed Sabbath's
services are over--over, all except one service more, the service in the
barrack room, where each Christian man kneels down by his bed-cot and
commends his comrades and himself to God. In the case of new converts
this is the testing-time. They _must_ kneel and pray. It is the outward
and visible sign of their consecration to God. A hard task it is for
most; not so hard to-day as it was a few years ago, but difficult still,
and the grit of the man is shown by the way he faces this great ordeal.
Persecution generally follows, but he who bears it bravely wins respect,
while he who fails is treated henceforth as a coward. This testimony for
Christ in the barrack room rarely fails to impress the most ungodly,
though at the time the jeering comrades would be the last to acknowledge
it.
At the risk of appearing to anticipate, let me tell a story.
=Jemmie's Prayer.=
In a nullah in far-away South Africa lay about a dozen wounded men. They
had been lying there for hours, their lives slowly ebbing away. One of
them was a Roman Catholic, who had been a ringleader of persecution in
the barrack room at home. Not far from him lay 'little Jemmie,' wounded
severely, whom many a time the Roman Catholic had persecuted in the days
gone by. Hour after hour the Roman Catholic soldier lay bleeding there,
until at last a strange dizzy sensation came over him which he fancied
was death
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