convinced; just as soon as I am convinced that the Bible is the Word of
seat, and from man to man, and put to every man and woman out of Christ this question: What are you waiting for before you come out on the side of Christ? I would have you tell me your real reason. I would have you give me an honest answer, and then I would sit down beside you with the Word of God, and show you h little there is in your reason. If I could do that I believe I could get almost every man and woman in this building that is out of Christ to accept Him tonight. But there is no time of course for that, it would take days and weeks and months, so I am going to ask you to do the next best thing. I am going to ask every man and woman who is not a Christian to forget about every one else, and not to look at me as preaching a sermon to a multitude, but to think of you and me as being here alone in personal conversation together, face to face. Will you put to yourself this question before we begin our conversation, "What am I waiting for? Why do I not come out on the side of Christ tonight?" Now we are going to have a few momen ts of silence and prayer, and I am going to ask every Christian man and woman in the room to pray that every one may be honest, and I am going to ask all of you who are not Christians to put this question to yourselves, "What am I waiting for?" Let us have silence. Will every man and woman put to themselves the question, "What is the real reason that I do not accept and confess Christ tonight; what am I waiting for?" Now I will take up your answers one by one. 1. Some of you have said tonight, ""I am waiting until I shall be convinced; just as soon as I am convinced that the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is the Son of God, I will accept Christ as my Saviour, and confess Him before the world." Now, I want to make an offer to every man and woman who has made that answer. If you will come to me at the close of this meeting, I will show you the way to find out that, beyond all peradventure, the Bible is God's Word, and Jesus Christ is God's Son. Now, if you are an honest skeptic, you will accept that offer, and if you do not accept it, never say again that you are a skeptic. You are a humbug. Of course, if you are only a trifler I have no time to waste upon you, but if you are a sincere doubter, I would rather speak with you than anybody else in the building, for I have yet to find the first sincere doubter, the first sincere agnostic, the first sincere atheist, the first spiritualist, the first Christian Scientist, the first Theosophist, who really wanted to know the truth, that I could not show the way to find it. All over the world tonight there are men who used to be agnostics and doubters whom it has been my privilege to lead to Jesus. If you are an honest skeptic, you will accept that offer, and if you do not, at least one good result will come of ityou will know when you go out of this hall that you are not an honest skeptic. I went to a man one night during my first pastorate; he was standing away at the end of the hall between the two doors, and I stepped up to him and said, "Mr. B. (I k
new him very well, he was one of the most prominent business men in the place and one of the most highly esteemed) "Why are you not a Christian?" "Well," he replied, "I don't boast about it, but I don't believe anything." I said, "Don't you believe there is a God?" And he said, "I have never given up faith that there is a supreme Being." "Well," I said, "if there is a God, you ought to surrender your will to Him. Will you do it? Will you take your stand upon the will of God, and follow it wherever it carries you?" He replied, "I try to live now as near right as I know how" (I believe he did, for he was one of the most upright men in the community). But I said, "That is not what I asked; will you take your stand upon the will of God, and follow it wherever it carries you?" He said, "I have never put it in quite that way." I said, "Will you put it that way tonight?" He said, "I will." Then I said, "One more thing; do you believe God answers prayer?" "No," he said, "I do not." He said, "I have often lain awake at night thinking about that, and I have come to the conclusion that God does not answer prayer." "Well," I said, I know He does, and you can test it today. Pray this prayer: "Oh, God, show me if Jesus Christ is Thy Son or not, and if You show me that He is, I promise to accept Him as my Saviour, and confess Him before the world." He said., "I will." That same week I saw that gentleman come in to the prayer meeting at the church, a very unusual thing for him to do, and as soon as I threw open the prayer meeting, I saw this man rise to his feet. He said "Friends, I doubted everything; I was in a perfect mist; I did not know what I believed; I did not know as I believed anything." Then he told us what he had done. He had been honest with himself and with God and with truth, and he had done what he had promised to do. "And now," he said, "my mists have all gone, and I do not know where they have gone." You say, "I doubt that story." Well try it for yourselves. Another Man in that same community lived across the street from my house, and I went to see him one evening; the sun, was just setting, and I was standing on his front lawn, talking with him, for, though he was an agnostic and I was a Christian minister, we were good friends. Christians ought not to get off somewhere where nobody of an ordinary kind can touch them. The Word says, "Ye are the salt of the earth." You cannot preserve meat by putting meat in one barrel and salt in another. Well, I was standing on this man's lawn; suddenly he turned to me the sun had gone down and there followed a peculiar glow in the sky, and I think he felt a strange influence from it he said to me suddenly, Dr. Torrey, I am sixtysix years of age, and I have no one to leave my money to" (and he had a good amount to leave). "I cannot take a penny of it with me, and I would give every penny of it, if I could believe as you do." I said, "I can tell you how." He said, "I wish you would." I said, "Let us go in." We stepped into the house and I asked his wife for a sheet of paper, and I wrote on it something like this: "I believe there is an absolute difference between right and wrong" I did not say