He said, “I try to be as tactful as though I were selling a contract of cars.  Though there’s a fine reverence here that never gets into business talk.  And then if it seems good, without causing him any embarrassment, we have a bit of prayer together.  Not always, but often.”  And he said to me, with a tender eagerness in his voice, “Gordon, it’s been the delight of my life to have man after man accept Jesus in my library corner.”

And I looked at him.  We were driving along the busiest block of the busiest street in Columbus.  The Capitol building on this side.  And the old Neil Hotel on this.  And all around us were the electrics, and wagons and carriages; so much noise and dust.  And there that man sat by my side so quiet, with his eyes dancing as they looked off at something I could not see.  And if ever Moses’ face shined or Stephen’s, his did that morning.

I was caught as I looked.  That was the delight of his life.  Not his money, nor his business, nor his social relations, though he took keen interest in all of these, but this.  And the sound of his voice, and the sight of his face that morning, seemed to kindle the fires in my heart that I might, in my own way, as came best to me, be doing something of that same sort.  That is what I mean by a deep-seated purpose, under every other, to try to win men.

I was telling this story one night to some people in his state, not thinking that I was within maybe two hundred miles of his home.  And as the audience was dismissed I saw a man coming up the aisle toward the pulpit, apparently to meet me.  So I went down his way.  He looked like a business fellow, with a clean-cut way about him, and a strong manly face.  Before we met I noticed something glistening in his eye, and yet a smile across his lips.

And he gripped my hand.  I can feel that grip now.  And he half-blurted out, “I’m one of those fellows!  And there are a lot of us that are thanking God with full hearts for that man’s library room.”  And the grip of that hand seemed to make the fires within burn just a bit stiffer.

In an after conversation this friend told me how he had wanted to be a Christian, but didn’t seem to know just how.  And nobody had ever spoken to him about it, he said, though so often he had wished somebody would.  There are a great many just like him in that.

“Two Missing”—­“Go Ye.”

Same years ago I was a guest at a small wedding dinner party in New York City.  A Scotch-Irish gentleman, well known in that city, an old friend, spoke across the table to me.  He said he had heard recently a story of the Scottish hills that he wanted to tell.  And we all listened as he told this simple tale.  I have heard it since from other lips, variously told.  But good gold shines better by the friction of use.  And I want to tell it to you as my old friend from the Scotch end of Ireland told it that evening.

It was of a shepherd in the Scottish hills who had brought his sheep back to the fold for the night, and as he was arranging matters for the night he was surprised to find that two of the sheep were missing.  He looked again.  Yes, two were missing.  And he knew which two.  These shepherds are keen to know their sheep.  He was much surprised, and went to the out-house of his dwelling to call his collie.