Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/47

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A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE.
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bilities of milliner's bills. So her opposition in that direction ceased.

Gray would say that religion had its rotten-egg stage. The early Christians had to encounter it, and so now have the early Mormons. But if he had to be prudent and guarded outside the society's walls, his zeal did not spare us within. The future, he would assert, belonged to Mormon truth, and he would like, of all things, to witness the spread and triumphs of his Church five hundred or a thousand years hence. Until his conversion he had been negligent in the religious sense; but now he was himself full of converting zeal, and, with a solemn and adroit way he had, he was not unsuccessful. For instance, standing at his own door one evening, when a person passing in the street inquired of him the way, he got him inside, promising with serious manner to show him the true way. There he succeeded in engaging his visitor in earnest discussion and prayer; and the man, who frankly admitted that he had not previously attended much to religion, was so struck by Gray's words and manner, that he called repeatedly afterwards for further insight, and ended by conversion to Mormonism.

Gray had great faith in getting people to their knees. He would say that half conversion's battle was over at that stage. An odd incident once happened to him, in that converting way, on meeting accidentally, in the railway train, an equally zealous rival missionary of one of the smaller and more active religious bodies, who was, like himself, a great scare converter. The particular method of this latter party was to run up to people passing on the highway, and