“I know it is late and you are all tired, but I want you to stay a little while and pray for me.  This has been an awfully hard day.  I have ridden fifty miles and visited more than twenty patients, but I am the sickest man of them all.  Two sermons have been preached to me; a faithful one yesterday by my pastor; the other this morning when I had to tell a woman she had better get ready to die, for she could not live.  As I drove away I said to myself, ’You have warned another, but you are not ready yourself.’”

To go to a man and speak to him directly and plainly about his responsibility to God, and warn him to flee from “the wrath to come,” may take more courage than to preach to a thousand; but it pays, and it must be done if the dying multitudes are ever saved.

STUDY XXIII.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Memory Verse:  “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with
    mine own hand.”—­(Gal. vi, 11.)

Scripture for Meditation:  Philemon.

What a beautiful letter is that which Paul wrote to Philemon!  How it breathes affection, and sympathy, and tender entreaty!  And it was written by his own hand.  Study this letter, and have your heart saturated with its spirit.  You will then know how to write “words that touch” to your unsaved friends.

There are special occasions [Transcriber’s note:  original reads ’ocasions’], such as the time of bereavement, of sickness, of trial, or of success, when this method may be employed to advantage.  Many a soul has been won for Christ, and many a lonely life cheered by a sympathetic, wisely-worded letter, winged by prayer.

Sitting in a public park, a young man was seen poring over a letter while the tears rained down his face, and he almost sobbed aloud.  “It is from my mother,” he said.  “She wrote it herself, and though I ran away from home and broke her heart, yet she says that she still loves me, and is praying for me, and wants me to come home.”

Dr. T.L.  Cuyler went to make his first call on a rich merchant.  It was a cold winter evening, and as the door was opened when the minister was leaving, a cold, piercing gale swept in.  Dr. Cuyler said, “What an awful night for the poor!” The merchant went back and brought a roll of bank-bills, saying, “Give these to the poorest people you know.”  Some days after, Dr. Cuyler wrote him, telling him how his bounty had relieved many poor, and then added, “How is it that a man so kind to his fellow-creatures has always been so unkind to his Savior as to refuse him his heart?” That sentence touched him.  He sent for the minister to talk to him, was converted, and told Dr. Cuyler that he was the first person in twenty years who had spoken to him about his soul.

Do not allow letter-writing to excuse you from direct personal work; but watch for opportunity to write, as well as speak, that “by all means you may save some.”