body should be in a like position, so he reverently and unpretentiously knelt beside the rough board pulpit.  The four singers on the platform knelt simultaneously with the Evangelist.  This placed the members of Mount Olivet in a rather embarrassing position.  They disliked the idea of being so unreligious as to sit erect during prayer, and they could not bear the humiliation of kneeling at a holiness meeting.  A few of them under the press of the circumstance did kneel.  A few stood up.  Most of them sat with bowed heads.  “Spooky” Crane easily adjusted himself to the situation and promptly knelt in the straw, and with his face in his hands peeped between his fingers at the Evangelist.  Jim Peabody, the infidel, sat arrogantly erect with an impish snarl on his lip.  To him the whole business of praying was a huge piece of foolishness—­except, of course, when under the wagon-box.  Aunt Sally Perkins knelt beside the front bench and clapped her hands hysterically during the prayer.  And Deacon Gramps had slipped under the outer edge of the arbor, where he sat on a low bench with his elbows on his knees and chewed his tobacco most vigorously.

Evangelist Blank, himself, led in prayer.  His prayer, like himself, was simple, but mighty.  It ran something like this: 

“O Lord of heaven and earth, we thank thee for this hour.  We have come here in thy name; we plead no worthiness and no efficiency of our own.  Thy blood and thy grace is all our plea.  We would not thrust ourselves into thy holy presence on any human merits.  But in thy name and through the blood of Christ our Saviour we come boldly before thee.  We praise thee, Lord, for thy great salvation, by which thou dost save us and sanctify us.  O Lord, make thyself mighty in the salvation of this people among whom we have come to labor.  Let thy matchless power be manifested and thy righteous name be exalted.  Be thou lifted up before the people.  Lord, we rededicate ourselves at this hour to be used of thee in the salvation of men.  Come into these temples of clay afresh at this hour, O Lord, and let the fire of thy holy presence consume all the dross that may be in us.  Anoint our feeble lips to speak the unsearchable riches of Christ ...  Hear us, Lord, we ask in Jesus’ name.  Amen.”

This prayer made a profound impression on the audience.  When it was finished, a few other songs were sung, and then Evangelist Blank arose to address the audience.  There was something about the preaching and personality of this man that made him a unique figure in the field of preacherdom.  In the first place, he was masterful in his knowledge and use of the Holy Scriptures.  He knew God’s Book.  By patient study and long practice he had brought himself to the place where he could readily bring to his defence an impregnable line of Scriptural proof to sustain the propositions that he held.  He was not only proficient in the Scriptures, but he had a thorough training covering the whole range of ministerial and theological thought.  He had the happy and unusual combination of those qualities of mind that make for forceful oratory and clearness in theological thought.  And last, and far from least, he walked with God.  He had a yearning for the lost of earth’s millions.