Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

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Now I am all vividly alive and keen, for standing straight not far from where I sit, is a grand figure of a man. He is bronzed, deep-chested, lithe, and in the setting of his shoulders there is splendid strength, which shows again in the broad, clean-cut hands that quiver in their grip upon the seat in front. He has the modest bearing of a gentleman, and his unfaltering voice vibrates with a compelling sense of deep sincerity.

“I haven’t any story different from what you’ve heard to-night, but I, too, want to tell what God has done for me. When I got my growth I went West, and turned cow-puncher. I was young, and I liked the life and the men, and I went over pretty much all the western country, and there ain’t any kind of devilment that cowboys get into that I didn’t have a hand in. I never thought of God nor of my soul. I never cared. I despised religion. I thought that I was strong and master of myself. I drank and swore and gambled, and did worse, and it never troubled me a bit. But a time came when I found that I wasn’t master. There was something in me stronger than me, and that was the love of drink. And, friends, that was the beginning of the end. I began to lose my self-respect, and the end of it was that there ain’t a poor devil in this town that is sunk any lower than what I was. You know what that means. One night, a year and a half ago, I was walking through Harrison Street. I was half-drunk on barrel-house whiskey, and all I was thinking of was how I could get up pluck enough to kill myself. But I stopped in a crowd around some Salvation Army people. A man older than me was telling how he was helped by the power of God out of a life like mine and made a man of again. I liked the way he had, for he seemed straight. I waited for him, and he told me, all to myself, the story of Christ’s power to save lost men, and how He lived and died to save us. It seemed too good to be true. I’d known it in a way, but I never knew it was meant for me. And right away when I began to see that there was hope for me yet, that I could get back my self-respect, and be master of myself, not in my own strength, which had failed me, but in His strength, why, friends, my heart went right out to the Saviour in a prayer for help. And what I want to say most of all is this, that in all the hard fight that I’ve had since, in all the ups and downs of it, He hasn’t failed me once. He’s made my life new to me, and I love Him from my heart, and I know that in His strength I will gain the victory at last. Friends, what the Bible tells us about His ‘saving us from our sins’ is true.”