The Personal Touch

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A Testimony

I have the very best of reasons for believing in the power of the personal touch in Christian work, especially as it may be used in the winning of others to Christ.

My boyhood's home was in the city of Richmond, in the State of Indiana, my mother was a devout member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the first years of my life in company with my father and the other children of the household, I attended the church of my mother. When she was just a little more than thirty-five years of age she was called home. My father in his youth had been trained as a Presbyterian; many of his ancestors having belonged to that denomination; therefore it was quite natural that he should return to the Church of his fathers when my mother had gone home.

It was thus I became a member of the Presbyterian Church, and my Church training as a boy after fifteen years of age was in that denomination. Because of this special interest in both the Church of my father and my mother, I attended two Sunday Schools. In the morning I was in a class in the Presbyterian school and in the afternoon was a member of a class in the Grace Methodist Sunday School, my teacher in the afternoon school being Mrs C.C. Binckley, a godly woman, the wife of Senator Binckley of Indiana, through all her life from girlhood, a devout follower of Christ and a faithful teacher in the Sunday School. Not so very long ago I heard that she was still teaching in the same school, and I am sure, as in the olden days, winning boys to Christ.

I fear that I was a thoughtless boy, and yet the impressions made upon my life in those days by the death of my mother, the teaching of my father, and the influence of my Sunday School teacher, were such that I have never been able to get away from them.

One Sunday afternoon a stranger came to address our school—his name I have never learned; I would give much to find it out. At the close of his address he made an appeal to the scholars to stand and confess Christ. I think every boy in my class rose to his feet with the exception of myself. I found myself reasoning thus: Why should I rise, my mother was a saint; my father is one of the truest men I know; my home teaching has been all that a boy could have; I know about Christ and think I realise His power to save.

While I was thus reasoning, my Sunday School teacher, with tears in her eyes, leaned around back of the other boys and looking straight at me, as I turned towards her she said, "Would it not be best for you to rise?" And when she saw that I still hesitated, she put her hand under my elbow and lifted me just a little bit, and I stood upon my feet. I can never describe my emotions. I do not know that that was the time of my conversion, but I do know that it was the day when one of the most profound impressions of my life was made upon me. Through all these years I have never forgotten it, and it was my Sunday School teacher who influenced me thus to take the stand—it was her personal touch that gave me courage to rise before the school and confess my Saviour....