houghts.
_I thought_. Exactly so. He turned away in rage and disappointment.
He thought the prophet would have come out to him very humble and
very subservient, and

BID HIM DO SOME GREAT THINGS.

Instead of that, Elisha, who was perhaps busy writing, did not even
come to the door or the window. He merely sent out the message:

"Tell him to dip seven times in the Jordan."

And away went Naaman, saying, _I thought, I thought, I thought_.

I have heard that tale so often that I am tired of it. Give it up,
and take God's words, God's thoughts, God's ways. I never yet knew a
man converted just in the time and manner he expected to be. I have
heard people say, "Well, if ever I am converted, it won't be in a
Methodist church; you won't catch me there." I never knew a man say
that but, at last, if converted at all, it was in a Methodist
church.

In Scotland a man was converted at one of our meetings--an employer.
He was very anxious that all his employees should be reached, and he
used to send them one by one to the meetings. But there was one man
that wouldn't come. We are all more or less troubled with
stubbornness; and the moment this man found that his employer wanted
him to go to the meetings he made up his mind he wouldn't go. If he
was going to be converted, he said, he was going to be converted by
some ordained minister; he was not going to any meeting that was
conducted by Americans that were not ordained. He believed in
conversion, but he was going to be

CONVERTED THE REGULAR WAY.

He believed in the regular Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and that
was the place for him to be converted.

The employer tried every way he could to get him to attend the
meetings, but he wouldn't come.

After we left that town and went away up to Inverness, the employer
had some business up there, and he sent this employee to attend to
it in the hope that he would attend some of our meetings.

One night as I was preaching on the banks of a river I happened to
take this for my text: "I thought; I thought." I was trying to take
men's thoughts up and to show the difference between their thoughts
and God's thoughts. This man happened to be walking along the banks
of the river. He saw a great crowd, and heard some one talking, and
he wondered to himself what that man was talking about. He didn't
know who was there, so he drew up to the crowd, and listened. He
heard the sermon, and became convicted and converted right there