Lanterna Rally

Author: Edward Leigh Pell

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 9781230403724

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... FOREIGN LANDS i EARLY MISSIONARY EFFORTS OF AMERICAN METHODISTS THE thing that first stirred up the Methodists Thestraps of America to send the Good News of Christ stewart to the heathen was the strange story of John Stewart. Stewart was an ignorant Virginia Ne-gro who, at the time his story begins (1816), seems to have been doing duty as a drunken nuisance around the little town of Marietta, Ohio. One day he came to himself and fell on his face before God, and when he arose he was amaz-ingly transformed: the worthless sot, along with his violent passion for drink, was gone and a clean servant of God with a flaming passion for Christ stood in his place. Tradition has woven many strange stories around this man's remarkable conversion, most of which perhaps are untrue; but of the event itself there can be no sort of doubt. One may question many things about a man who has suddenly turned his face from the south and is facing due north, but one cannot question the fact that he has changed his course. And John Stewart had changed his course as completely as that. He had had a wonderful vision and he had no eyes for anything else. He had a new enthusiasm and it was boundless. He wanted to carry the Good News of Christ to the ends of the earth. In those days, and indeed for many years afterwards, simple-hearted Negroes seldom passed through a religious crisis without hearing voices. And John, s brain was full of voices--apparently the utterances of a God-quickened conscience. There were voices calling him to go, and there was a voice--a very startling voice--that called him in the direction of the Northwest. He did not know what he would find in the Northwest, and he had only a hazy idea of how he could serve Christ when he got there; but it was...