work. I'd get up in prayer meeting, and I'd pray with the others, but just to go up to a man and take hold of his coat and get him down on his knees, I hadn't yet got round to that. It was in 1860 the change came. In the Sunday school I had a pale delicate young man as one of the teachers. I knew his burning piety, and assigned him to the worst class in the school. They were all girls, and it was an awful class. They kept gadding around in the school-room, and were laughing and carrying on all the while. And this young man had better success than any one else. One Sunday he was absent, and I tried myself to teach the class, but couldn't do anything with them; they seemed farther off than ever from any concern about their souls. Well, the day after his absence, early Monday morning, the young man came into the store where I worked, and, tottering and bloodless, threw himself down on some boxes. "What's the matter ?" I said. "I have been bleeding at the lungs, and they have given me up to die," he said. "But you are not afraid to die?" I questioned. "No," said he. "I am not afraid to die, but I have got to stand before God and give an account of my stewardship, and not one of my Sabbath school scholars has been brought to Jesus. I have failed to bring one, and haven't any strength to do it now." He was so weighed down that I got a carriage and took that dying man in it, and we called at the homes of every one of his scholars, and to each one he said, as best his faint voice would let him I have come to just ask you to come to the Saviour," and then he prayed as I never heard before. And for ten days he labored in that way, sometimes walking to the nearest houses. And at the end of that ten days every one of that large class had yielded to the Saviour. Full well I remember the night before he went away (for the doctors said he must hurry to the South), how we held a true love-feast. It was the very gate of heaven, that meeting. He prayed and they prayed; he didn't ask them, he didn't think they could pray; and then we sung "Blessed be the tie that binds." It was a beautiful night in June that he left on the Michigan Southern, and I was down to the train to help him off. And those girls every one gathered there again, all unknown to each other; and the depot seemed a second gate to heaven, in the joyful, yet tearful, communion and farewells between those newly-redeemed souls and him whose crown of rejoicing it will be that he lead them to Jesus. At last the gong sounded, and, supported on the platform, the dying man shook hands with each one and whispered. "I will meet you yonder." Some of the very best, most constant teachers I had before going to Europe were converted at that time, and they, in their turn, have gathered many sheaves, and I myself was led by this incident, this wonderful blessing of God on individual effort, to throw up my business and give my whole strength to God's work. Shall not that young man have a high_place, a place very near the Saviour of men, in the day when He makes up his jewels? Oh, friends, if you want to shine in the kingdom of God, work for Him to-day. Shall we not, every one, go out of this building saying: "I will try to bring one soul to Christ to-day ?" "A Friend that sticketh closer than a brother."-Prov. xviii. 24. ONE there is above all others, Oh, how He loves! His is love beyond a brother's, Earthly friends may fail or leave us, Oh how He loves! 'Tis eternal life to know Him, Oh, how He loves! Think, oh, think how much we owe Him, With His precious blood He bought us, To His fold He safely brought us, Blessed Jesus! would you know Him, Give yourselves entirely to Him, Think no longer of the morrow, From the past new courage boirɔw, All your sins shall be forgiven, Backward shall your foes be driven, Best of blessings He'll provide you, To the Afflicted. F I were to ask this audience what Christ came into this world for, every one of you would say to save sinners, and then you would stop. A great many think that is all Christ came to do--to save sinners. Now, we are told that he came, to be sure, to “seek and save that which was lost;" but then he came to do more. He came to heal the broken-hearted. In that eighteenth verse of the fourth chapter of Luke, which I read to you last night, He said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him, and that He was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, and in the next sentence He tells us, He is sent to heal the broken-hearted. In another place we are told. He came into the world to declare who the Father was, and reveal Him to the sons of men. To-night I want to take up this one thought-that Christ was sent into the world to heal the broken-hearted. When the Prince of Wales came to this country a few years ago, the whole country was excited as to his purpose. What was his object in coming here? Had he come to look into our republican form of government, or our institutions, or was it simply to see and be seen? He came and he went without telling us what he came for. When the Prince of Peace came into this dark world, He did not come in any private way. He tells us that He came, not to see and be seen, but to "seek and save that which was lost," and also "to heal the broken-hearted." And in the face of this announcement, it is a mystery to me why those who have broken hearts will rather carry them year in and year out, than just bring them to this Great Physician. Chicago How many men in are just going down to their graves with a broken heart? They have carried their hearts weighted with trouble for Can see the passage telling us that He came here for the purpose of healing the broken-hearted. He left heaven and all its glory to come to the world-sent by the Father, He tells us, for purpose of healing the broken-hearted. the You will find, my friends, that there is no class of people exempt from broken hearts. The rich and the poor suffer alike. There was a time when I used to visit the pror, that I thought all the broken hearts were to be found among them, but within the last few years I have found there are as many broken hearts among the learned as the unlearned, the cultured as the uncultured, the rich as the poor. If you could but go up one of our avenues and down another, and reach the hearts of the people, and get them to turn out their whole story, you would be astonished at the wonderful history of every family. I remember a few years ago I had been out of the city for some weeks. When I returned I started out to make some calls. The first place I went to I found a mother, her eyes red with weeping. I tried to find out what was troubling her, and she reluctantly opened her heart and told me all. She said, "Last night my only boy came home about midnight drunk. I didn't know that he was addicted to drunkenness, but this morning I found out that he has been drinking for weeks; and," she continued, "I would rather have seen him laid in the grave than have him brought home in the condition I saw him in last night." I tried to comfort her as best I could when she told me her sad story. When I went away from that house I didn't want to go into any other house where there was family trouble. The very next house I went to, however, where some of the children who attended my Sunday school resided, I found that death had been there and laid his hand on one of them. The mother spoke to me of her afflictions, and brought to me the playthings and the little shoes of the child, and the tears trickled down that mother's cheeks as she related to me her sorrow. I got out as soon as possible, and hoped I should see no more family trouble that day. The next visit I made was to a home where I found a wife with a bitter story. Her husband had been neglecting her for a long time, "and now," she said, "he has left me, and I don't know where he has gone. Winter is coming on, and I don't know what is going to become of my family." I tried to comfort her, and prayed with her, and endeavoured to get her to lay all her sorrows on Christ. The next home I entered I found a woman crushed and broken-hearted. She told me her boy had forsaken her, and she had no idea where he had gone. That afternoon I made five calls, and in every home I found a broken heart. Every one had a sad tale to tell, and if you visited any home in Chicago you would find the truth of the saying, that "there is a skeleton in every house." I suppose while I am talking, you are thinking of the great sorrow in your own bosom. I do not know anything about you, but if I came round to every one of you, and you were to tell me the truth, I would hear a tale of sorrow. The very last man I spoke to last night was a young mercantile man, who told me his load of sorrow had been so great, that many times during the last few weeks he had gone down to the lake and had been tempted to plunge in and end his existence. His burden seemed too much for him. Think of the broken hearts in Chicago to-night! They could be numbered by hundreds-yea, by thousands. All over this city are broken hearts. If all the sorrow represented in this great city was written in a book, this building couldn't hold that book, and you couldn't read it in a long life-time This earth is not a stranger to tears, neither is the present the only time when they could be found in abundance. From Adam's days to ours tears have been shed, and a wail has been going up to heaven from the broken-hearted. And I say it again, it is a mystery to me how all those broken hearts can keep away from Him who has come to heal them. For six thousand years that cry of sorrow has been going up to God. We find the tears of Jacob put on record, when he was told that his own son was no more. His sons and daughters tried to give him comfort, but he refused to be comforted. We are also told of the tears of King David. I can see him, as the messenger brings the news of the death of his son, exclaiming in anguish, "O, Absalom, my son, would that I had died for thee!" And when Christ came into the world the first sound He heard was woe-the wail of those mothers in Bethlehem; and from the manger to the cross, He was surrounded with sorrow. We are told that He often looked up to heaven and sighed. I believe it was because there was so much suffering around Him. was on His right hand and on His left-everywhere on earth: and the thought that He had come to relieve the people of the earth of their burdens, and so few would accept Him, made Him sorrowful. He came for that purpose. Let the hundreds It of thousands just cast their burdens on Him. He has come to bear them, as well as our sins. He will bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. There is not a burdened son of Adam in Chicago who cannot but be freed if he will only come to Him. Let me call your attention to this little word "sent," "He hath sent me." Take your Bibles and read about those who have been sent by God, and one thought will come to you-that no man who has ever been sent by God to do His work has ever failed. No matter how great the work, how mighty the undertaking; no matter how many difficulties had to be encountered, when they were sent from God they were sure to succeed. God sent Moses down to Egypt to bring 3,000,000 people out of bondage. The idea would have seemed absurd to most people. Fancy a man with an impediment in his speech, without an army, without Generals, with no record, bringing 3,000,000 people fim the power of a great nation like that of the Egyptians. But God sent him, and what was the result? Pharaoh said they should not go, and the great king and all his army H |