“Young man, whoever you are, no matter how cursed with sin or polluted with iniquity you may be, put your trust in Jesus and all your sins will be blotted out.  Are you a drunkard, with an appetite for drink that is gnawing your life away?  Throw yourself into the arms of Jesus, and he will take away your appetite for strong drink and give you strength to overcome all the temptations of your former life.  Let the light of Jesus once shine into your soul, and neither cloud nor storm shall ever enter there again.  All will be brightness and purity.  Old things will have passed away, and all things will become new.  I offer you this salvation to-night, O, weary, sin-sick soul.  Take it, I beseech of you.  Let the Sun of Righteousness break in upon you at this hour, and never will you be in darkness again.”

The man glowed under his theme, and his audience warmed with his impulsive appeal.  “Dodd’s” soul grew hopeful.  All these things promised were the very things he was longing for.  He had pledged himself time and again to stop wrong doing, and had broken his word in every case.  He hated himself for this, and he stretched out his hands for salvation from his miserable estate.  Here, help was offered.

Why should he not take it?

And then the great congregation arose with a sound as of a rushing, mighty wind, and all sang together, with an effect that must be seen to be realized, “Just as I am, without one plea,” etc.

You know what followed, do you not, ladies and gentlemen?  “Dodd” Weaver “indulged a hope” before he left the church.

CHAPTER XVIII.

If it were not for clouds and storms what a sunshiny world this would be, to be sure!  But there are clouds and storms everywhere that I know anything about.  There are legends of lands of perpetual sunshine, I know.  I have visited such climates.  I have found clouds and storms there also.  The natives have told me that such were exceptional.  Doubtless they were, but the clouds shut out the sunshine there, just the same as they do elsewhere, and I took a terrible cold once, one that came near being the death of me, from going off without an umbrella, in a country where I was positively assured it never rained—­at least, not at that season of the year.

So the result of all this is that I have learned to distrust the tales of eternal fair weather in any spot on all this green earth, no matter how strongly they may be backed up by the affidavits of good, well-meaning, and otherwise truthful men and women.

It is so easy to state an opinion that is not based upon a sufficient number of facts to warrant its assertion.

What has happened to me in the matter of sunshine and storm, in this weather-beaten world, happened to “Dodd” Weaver in his religious experience.