Mrs. M. E. F.
FROM A PRISONER"S DAUGHTER.
Denver, Colo., Jan. 7, 1903.
My Dear Mother Wheaton:
Praise G.o.d for salvation this afternoon! I am glad I found your address, for I have wanted to write to you for a long time and tell you the result of your visit to R. State Prison, where you talked with my precious father.
He wrote me soon after you left and said you left him under awful conviction. He confessed and forsook his sins and is now a man saved by the blood that was shed on the cross for him. He said that he was restless from the time you left until he found Jesus.
He told how you and a young lady talked and prayed with him, and how, after he retired, he rolled and tossed in awful agony until about eleven o"clock, when he cried to G.o.d for mercy. G.o.d heard his cries and came to his release. O hallelujah! It just makes me shout to read his letters now. I can tell by them that he is really resting in Jesus. He before seldom wrote more than two pages, and now he writes from fifteen to twenty-four. And oh, such letters! I just can"t help but cry for joy when I read them and realize that my precious papa is serving the only true and living G.o.d. I give G.o.d the glory and all of the honor for what has been done; and I praise G.o.d for using you as an instrument through whom He worked. Eternity alone can reveal the result.
My heart is full of praises to Jesus my King this evening. He has done so much for me lately. He blesses me in soul and body and supplies all my needs.
I may go to C. soon and try to do something for my father. Pray that G.o.d may lead me and that the devil may not hinder in any way, if G.o.d sees fit to release papa from prison. I am perfectly resigned to G.o.d"s will.
Your sister for Jesus, M. H.
(This daughter was a successful Christian worker.)
FROM AN EDITOR.
Ashburn, Ga., May 12, 1897.
Dear Sister:
Grace and peace be multiplied to you. I received your letter and communication for "Holiness Advocate," which will appear in the next issue. Always let me know where to find you. I would have written sooner, but have been away to Macon, where I saw Sister Perry. She has been here and visited the convict camps since you were here. I have been visiting those camps pretty regularly since you left here. You put it on me and I am trying to be faithful. You asked me in your letter if you knew me. Yes, I met you here. It was in front of my store. You held the street service here at Ashburn, while waiting for the train, and I was with you until the train left. Well, sister, I will never get done praising G.o.d for ever meeting you. It marked a new epoch in my experience. I want you to take my paper on your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to run it for me and the Father to supply financial help. I am trusting Him for it. How glad the prisoners in the camp will be to hear from you in this way. I will send up to both the camps a bundle of the issue containing your letter. I want you all to pray for the South, that a deeper work may be done in the hearts of the Holiness people; that the missionary spirit may get hold of us so that we will send out our sons and daughters to tell of Jesus" love to a perishing, dying world.
May the Lord bless you and use you in the future even more powerfully than in the past. Come and see us when you can.
Yours, bound for Heaven, J. LAWRENCE, Ed. Holiness Advocate.
Ashburn, Ga., August 25, 1898.
Dear Sister Wheaton:
Your letter came to us all right, and you have no idea what gladness it brings to us all to hear from you, and yet conviction. For it certainly convicts us for the little we are doing when we see how the Lord is enabling you to put in full time. Pray for me that I may be more zealous. Things are taking a deeper move in the South. A great number of the Holiness people are getting down for a real experience. We have been satisfied long enough with a profession. So you may expect something from the South in the near future. Men and women giving themselves for the foreign field and for the home field, working in the slums and in the prisons and wherever G.o.d may lead them. Love to all the saints at Tabor. I have never met any of them, but I do love them and the work they are doing. "Blessed be the tie that binds."
G.o.d bless you, and may you be preserved blameless unto His coming.
Yours in Jesus" love, J. LAWRENCE.
FROM AN EX-PRISONER.
Sioux City, Ia., Jan. 31, 1901.
Mrs. Wheaton: I don"t suppose you will remember me, but possibly you may, as I think I was one of the most wretched in or out of prison at that time. It was at Sioux Falls, So. Dak., between three and four years ago, if I remember correctly. You visited the prison and spoke to us in chapel, and later in the day you and a lady with you, came around to the cells. I was in cell No.
13. You shook hands with me and asked, "Are you a Christian?" I replied, "No." Again you asked, "Have you ever been one?" "No."
"Will you meet me in Heaven?" you asked again, and I answered, "I will try to." You spoke only a few words, saying, "Do not be discouraged." These few words and that warm hand-shake helped me very much. I was indeed much discouraged. Life seemed dark indeed. I was serving an eleven years" sentence. I was under deep conviction of sin. Not long after that the blessed Christ came into my heart. I believed on His name and He saved my soul. Two years ago last August I was pardoned from the prison. The 17th of last March I became Superintendent of a Rescue Mission in Dakota, and for ten months or nearly that I was there and the Lord blessed our efforts by saving souls. I am now married. My wife was converted in the mission last June. She is an accomplished musician and singer and, the Lord being willing, we expect to go out and preach the gospel among railroad men in the near future.
I have often thought of you and your labor of love among prisoners. May G.o.d bless and encourage you in the work, is my earnest prayer. I heard that you were in Sioux Falls at the prison a short time ago. I did not know it in time to see you. If the prisoners only knew what joy and peace there is in the service of Jesus, it seems to me they would yield their hearts to Him. Again I wish you G.o.dspeed in your work. May you have many precious jewels for the Master"s crown. To Him belong the praise and glory.
Good-bye, and G.o.d bless you and the sister that was with you.
Never be discouraged. Jesus loves and uses you.
Yours, in His service, T. F. M.
Sioux Falls, S. Dak., Feb. 9, 1904.
Mrs. E. R. Wheaton.
Dear Sister: Your card of November was received. Hope you will pardon me for not writing before. I am glad that you are still trusting Jesus, and working in His vineyard. May G.o.d bless, comfort, strengthen and keep you.
Jesus is coming again, perhaps soon. It may be that we shall be alive when He comes. If so we shall be caught up together with the dead in Christ to meet Him in the air, so shall we ever be with Him. Blessed be His name. (I Thess. 4-17.) I want to exalt Him. I want my daily life to be a testimony of His power to save and to keep. Many years of my life were spent in sin. Finally I was tried, convicted and sentenced to state"s prison for a long term of years. G.o.d says: "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, for He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Galatians 6:7, 8.) G.o.d"s word is true.
I found my mind giving away and my body a physical wreck. I read the Bible and G.o.d showed me that I was a lost man. I tried to destroy my life, but G.o.d in his love and mercy would not permit it. I was in great darkness. I said to a friend, there is no hope for me in this life or the life to come, but I did not know Jesus Christ nor His saving power. G.o.d sent His ministers each Sunday morning to preach the blessed gospel, and one Sunday morning He sent "Mother Wheaton" to us. In the afternoon, I believe it was, she visited us in our cells. I had quarreled with my cell-mate, and he had left me. Mrs. Wheaton came and shook hands with me, and asked if I was a Christian. I said, "No." Again she asked, "Have you ever been a Christian?" I replied, "No." She said, "Will you meet me in Heaven?" I said, "I will try." With a warm hand-shake and a few words of encouragement, she left me. G.o.d helped me to believe in Jesus Christ, and there came into my life joy and peace such as I had never known before, even in my best days on the outside.
After my conversion I asked G.o.d if it was His will that I might be pardoned out. He also heard and answered that prayer. G.o.d is love. He loves the vilest sinner. To-day I have a loving Christian wife and two lovely children. I have no desire for the old life of drinking, gambling, etc., but my desire is to love and serve G.o.d and help my fellowmen to find Jesus, who is mighty to save and to keep. To Jesus belongs all praise and glory. If it is his will, may He use this testimony to bring souls to Himself.
T. F. M.
4064 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, Mo., October 25, 1899.
My Dear Mrs. Wheaton:
I thank you so much for your letter. I was greatly pleased in reading it. I will be so glad to see you when you come. I realize, as you say, that I have never fully let go of myself in the Master"s work, but I have given my life to Him, and if I know my own heart, I am willing to be and do anything He shall choose for me. I love to help lost ones, and if the Lord should use me as He does you, I believe I should be the happiest person in the world. Do pray for me, won"t you, that the Lord may lead me into all His will? Time is flying, and soon all of our opportunities will be over and our Lord will take us to Himself. Pray that the Lord will keep me busy serving Him. I love you and pray for you.
May you be kept rejoicing in hope even though you see nothing but sin and sorrow around you. (Psalm 125:5, 6.)
Lovingly yours, TULA D. ELY.
Sapphire, N. C., August 15, 1901.
My Dear Sister:
I received your letter to-day. I have been thinking about you and praying for you often, and see by your letter that G.o.d has made all of your trials a blessing to you and know that G.o.d can make up for any loss He lets us have. What a hard time you did have, dear sister. I praise G.o.d for bringing you through it with such joy. Sometimes it seems true He does with us like He did with Job--just tells Satan he may do everything but take our lives, and when our self-justification and friends are gone, He joins us in with Himself and makes us powerful in His own power. He knows whether we want Him, and if we do we will be taken through death to self and put to hard tests. It seems sometimes as if He hides His face to let us suffer and say, "Though He slay me yet will I trust Him." I am glad you are with the people who hold you up in prayer. We need one another"s prayers in these times when Satan has so many snares. Tula is well. She and Mildred send love.
Affectionately and in Jesus, love, CLARA D. ELY.