How Moody was Encouraged.
I remember a few years ago I got discouraged, and could not see much fruit of my work; and one morning, as I was in my study, cast down, one of my Sabbath-school teachers came in and wanted to know what I was discouraged about, and I told him because I could see no result from my work; and speaking about Noah, he said: "By the way, did you ever study up the character of Noah?" I felt that I knew all about that, and told him that I was familiar with it, and he said, "Now, if you never studied that carefully, you ought to do it, for I cannot tell you what a blessing it has been to me." When he went out I took down my Bible and commenced to read about Noah, and the thought came stealing over me, "Here is a man that toiled and worked a hundred years and didn't get discouraged; if he did, the Holy Ghost didn't put it on record," and the clouds lifted, and I got up and said, if the Lord wants me to work without any fruit I will work on. I went down to the noon prayer-meeting, and when I saw the people coming to pray I said to myself, "Noah worked a hundred years and he never saw a prayer-meeting outside of his own family." Pretty soon a man got up right across the aisle where I was sitting, and said he had come from a little town where there had been a hundred uniting with the Church of God the year before. And I thought to myself, "What if Noah had heard that! He preached so many, many years, and didn't get a convert, yet he was not discouraged." Then a man got up right behind me, and he trembled as he said, "I am lost. I want you to pray for my soul." And I said, "What if Noah had heard that! He worked a hundred and twenty years, and never had a man come to him and say that; and yet he didn't get discouraged." And I made up my mind then, that, God helping me, I would never get discouraged. I would do the best I could, and leave the result with God, and it has been a wonderful help to me.
"We Will Never Surrender."
There's a story told in history in the ninth century, I believe, of a young man that came up with a little handful of men to attack a king who had a great army of three thousand men. The young man had only five hundred, and the king sent a messenger to the young man, saying that he need not fear to surrender, for he would treat him mercifully. The young man called up one of his soldiers and said: "Take this dagger and drive it to your heart;" and the soldier took the dagger and drove it to his heart. And calling up another, he said to him, "Leap into yonder chasm," and the man leaped into the chasm. The young man then said to the messenger, "Go back and tell your King I have got five hundred men like these. We will die, but we will never surrender. And tell your King another thing; that I will have him chained with my dog inside of half an hour." And when the King heard that he did not dare to meet them, and his army fled before them like chaff before the wind, and within twenty-four hours he had that King chained with his dog. That is the kind of zeal we want. "We will die, but we will never surrender." We will work until Jesus comes, and then we will rise with Him.
The Faithful Aged Woman.
An old woman who was seventy-five years old had a Sabbath-school two miles away among the mountains. One Sunday there came a terrible storm of rain, and she thought at first she would not go that day, but then she thought, "What if some one should go and not find me there?" Then she put on her waterproof, and took her umbrella and overshoes, and away she went through the storm, two miles away, to the Sabbath-school in the mountains. When she got there she found one solitary young man, and taught him the best she knew how all the afternoon. She never saw him again, and I don't know but the old woman thought her Sabbath-school had been a failure. That week the young man enlisted in the army, and in a year or two after the old woman got a letter from the soldier thanking her for going through the storm that Sunday. This young man thought that stormy day he would just go and see if the old woman was in earnest, and if she cared enough about souls to go through the rain. He found she came and taught him as carefully as if she was teaching the whole school, and God made that the occasion of winning the young man to Christ. When he lay dying in a hospital he sent the message to the old woman that he would meet her in heaven. Was it not a glorious thing that she did not get discouraged because she had but one Sunday-school scholar? Be willing to work with one.
A Dream.