One good old mother in Israel said to me lately, in regard to the weekly prayer-meeting:  “I begins in de mawnin’ to lay my plans fur dat meetin’, an I don stop ter eat so’s to get my work along froo de day.  And I tinks and prays a heap about dat meetin’ all day, I does.”

How many of you at home do as much for your prayer-meeting as this poor old colored woman?  No dull summer prayer-meetings when church members go prepared like this.  I have said that these people have ideas and can express them.  At my last prayer-meeting before departing for my vacation, one good brother prayed that the “Lord would bless the pastor in his absence and continue to fill him up with new things, so he can give them out to us.”  The pastor is filling up as fast as possible.

One of the questions most often asked is, “Are the colored people improving?” One has to say, “Of course they are.”  But are they progressing rapidly?  Yes and no.  Yes, considering their antecedents and present advantages.  No, if one were to measure their rate of progress by our impatience.  The surest progress is not the swiftest.  Slow and sure is the rule by which we work.  Statistics but feebly tell the story of the improvement of the Freedmen since the war.  They can best testify concerning the advance who have been in the field since the beginning of the work.

But even if it is slow, it pays well.  There came into my church one Sunday not long ago a poor old lady who was a comparative stranger in the city.  During the sermon she sat with mouth, eyes and ears open.  After the service she came to me and said, “I tank de Lord He bro’t me year.  I done been gwine ter church dese fifty years, an I nebber heard de tex ’splained befo.”  This old lady has since united with our church, and when she is not there I know something serious is the matter at her home.  It is worth a year’s preaching to have the privilege of enlightening one benighted soul like this.

I called recently on an old gentleman who had become generally disgusted with “dese yere churches roun year.”  I found him poring over a big, well-worn Bible, the perspiration pouring down his shiny face, and with a big pair of spectacles resting on the tip of his nose.  With an air of superior wisdom he surveyed me over the top of the spectacles, and then solemnly stated to the few who gathered around as I sat down on an old soap box, “Dat a preacher?  I kin tell a preacher the fus question I ask him.”  Then taking off the spectacles and slowly closing the big Bible, he went on:  “Now I’se gwine to put you all a question” (looking at the others) “an den I’se gwine ter ask de preacher, an I can tell whedder he’m a good one or not.”  “Now,” said he, “when we gits cold and wicked follerin’ our own ways, how does de Lord brung us back again to our senses?” This question was put with various modifications to each in turn until it came to me.  “Now, what does you say?” he said to me.  I replied that my experience said “Trouble.”  “Yah!  Yah! dat’s it, Trouble.  You’s answered it, shore; dese yere ignorant niggers, dey don’t know nuffin.  Ise gwine up to hear you preach next Sunday.”  And sure enough, there he was the next Sunday and his wife with him.  This is about the way we gather them in, one by one.