What a Sister Can Do

    I want to say to young ladies, perhaps you have a godless father or mother, or a skeptical brother, who is going down  through drink, and perhaps there is no one who can reach them but you. How many times a godly, pure young lady has taken the light into some darkened home! Many a home might be lit up with the Gospel if the mothers and daughters would only speak the word.

    The last time Mr. Sankey and myself were in Edinburgh, there were a father, two sisters, and a brother, who used every morning to take the morning paper and pick my sermon to pieces. They were indignant to think that the Edinburgh people would be carried away with such preaching. One day one of the sisters was going by the hall, and she thought she would drop in and see what class of people went there. She happened to take a seat by a godly lady, who said to her:

    "I hope you are interested in this work."

    She tossed her head and said: "Indeed I am not. I am disgusted with everything I have seen and heard."

    "Well," said the lady, "perhaps you came prejudiced."

    "Yes, and the meeting has not removed any of it, but has rather increased it."

    "I have received a great deal of good from them."

    "There is nothing here for me. I don't see how an intellectual person can be interested."

    To make a long story short, she got the young lady to promise to come back. When the meeting broke up, just a little of the prejudice had worn away. She promised to come back again the next day, and then she attended three or four more meetings, and became quite interested. She said nothing to her family, until finally the burden became too heavy, and she told them. They laughed at her, and made her the butt of their ridicule.

    One day the two sisters were together, and the other said, "Now what have you got at those meetings that you didn't have in the first place?"

    "I have a peace that I never knew of before. I am at peace with God, myself, and all the world." Did you ever have a little war of your own with your neighbors, in your own family? And she said: "I have self-control. You know, sister, if you had said half the mean things before I was converted that you have said since, I would have been angry and answered back, but if you remember correctly, I haven't answered once since I have been converted."

    The sister said, "You certainly have something that I have not."

    The other told her it was for her, too, and she brought the sister to the meetings, where she found peace.

    Like Martha and Mary, they had a brother, but he was a member of the University of Edinburgh. He be converted? He go to these meetings? It might do for women, but not for him! One night they came home and told him that a chum of his own, a member of the university, had stood up and confessed Christ, and when he sat down his brother got up and confessed; and so with the third one.

    When the young man heard it, he said: "Do you mean to tell me that he has been converted?"

    "Yes."

    "Well," he said, "there must be something in it."

    He put on his hat and coat, and went to see his friend Black. Black got him down to the meetings, and he was converted.

    We went through to Glasgow, and had not been there six weeks when news came that that young man had been stricken down, and had died. When he was dying he called his father to his bedside and said:

    "Wasn't it a good thing that my sisters went to those meetings? Won't you meet me in heaven, father?"

    "Yes, my son, I am so glad you are a Christian; that is the only comfort that I have in losing you. I will become a Christian, and will meet you again."

    I tell this to encourage some sister to go home and carry the message of salvation. It may be that your brother may be taken away in a few months.