no higher calling than that of telling of the saving grace
of God. For fifteen years I was a cold professor of religion, but I
lacked vital salvation. I belonged to the church and paid the preacher,
and somehow I thought I would get through all right. I sinned more or
less every day and did not know that I could be saved from sin. In fact,
I never had been converted. I tried to live a Christian life, but I was
powerless. After fifteen years of this miserable existence I got a new
vision of things. God removed the scales from my eyes and I saw my lost
condition. I saw myself in an entirely new light. I wept before God
because of my sins. I was made very conscious that unless I was saved
from my sins they would damn me in hell forever. My churchianity and my
self-righteousness and my morality looked ridiculous when I saw myself a
sinner in the sight of God. I came to God and poured out my soul in
bitter repentance, and said, 'Save me, or I perish.' I promised him that
I would forsake my sins, make my wrongs right, and walk in the light. I
read in 1 John 1:9, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' Well,
I confessed my sins and forsook them, and God for Christ's sake pardoned
all my sins. Praise His name. The joy and peace that filled my soul were
unspeakable. I was a new man. I loved everybody, even my bitter enemies.
Christ, in all his blessed reality, came into my heart as an abiding
companion. Some time after my conversion, through a holiness paper,
which fell into my hands, and through reading the Bible, which had
become a new book to me, I learned that it was possible for me to be
wholly sanctified and to have the Holy Spirit as an abiding comforter.
Oh, the joy of this blessed life. Its glories are untold."

Poor Jake stood amazed. He had never heard anything like this before.
He burst out, "If that's religion, I confess I hain't got none; and to
be plain, I ain't much inclined to believe such stuff as that. I have
been a member of Mount Olivet Church for twenty-seven years and I never
heard such preaching as that. That must be some new religion that's
goin' around. Talk about bein' saved from sin, why there's our dear old
Brother Simms, who was our last pastor at Mount Olivet. He died last
March and since then we ain't had no pastor--why I heard him say more'n
once from the pulpit that folks can't be saved from sin till they get to
heaven