CHAPTER XX
"MY COUNSEL SHALL STAND"—(Isiah XLVI, 10.)
We arrived at Louisville, Kentucky, January, 1899, after an absence of about two months. We commenced meeting in Bolle's Hall, where the converts of the previous year were holding meetings, and had been ever since we left the city. We found them at their post. I never saw a braver or more powerful band of workers for Christ, or more successful in winning souls and building up Christ's kingdom than these Holy Ghost soldiers in the wicked city of Louisville.
I did not leave a pastor or minister who had had years of practice to take charge of these young lambs and carry the work on, but put in charge of one that had been converted in the meetings.
We stayed two weeks and I organized a church. It was hard to leave them, but I felt God had prepared them to carry on their own work.
From Louisville, Ky., I was led by the Spirit to go to the little town of Shawnee, Ohio. in a valley of dry bones, and lo! they were very dry.
This was a mining country, and there were rolling mills, furnaces and new railroads being built. Nearly all nations under heaven were represented in our meeting.. Sometimes eight or ten different languages were at the altar, all praying at once to the one. God of heaven who is no respecter of persons or conditions. God bless the hard laboring classes who are so often despised by those, who call themselves Christians. Jesus said the common people heard him gladly, and it was so here. But. others sat in the seat of the scornful and stood in the way of sinners, and criticized and mocked the plain gospel of Christ, and denied the power of the Holy Ghost.
One saloon keeper, who had been in the business nearly all his life, was lifted from the gutter and stood up before the people and praised God for saving a poor wretched sinner like him.
Many old men and women were plucked as brands from the burning. Some had not been to church for twenty-five years.
One night eight old white-haired men were converted side
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