d pounded and shouted until some of our
heads seemed almost splitting, and some felt they must retire from the
meeting; and when a brother went to expostulate with them and urge them
that things be done decently and in order, they swore at the brother who
made the protest. Still later a man sprang up in the middle of the room
and announced that he was Elijah. The poor man was insane. But these
things were distracting, and there was more or less of confusion until
nearly midnight, and some thought they would go home. But it is a poor
meeting that the devil can spoil, and some of us were there for a blessing
and determined to remain until we received it. About midnight God gave us
complete victory over all the discordant elements. Then for two hours
there was such praying as I have rarely heard in my life. A little after
two o'clock in the morning a sudden hush fell upon the whole gathering; we
were all on our knees at the time. No one could speak; no one could pray,
no one could sing; all you could hear was the subdued sobbing of joy,
unspeakable and full of glory. The very air seemed tremulous with the
presence of the Spirit of God. It was now Saturday morning. The following
morning, one of my deacons came to me and said, with bated breath,
"Brother Torrey, I shall never forget yesterday morning until the latest
day of my life." But it was not by any means all emotion. There was solid
reality that could be tested by practical tests. A man went out of that
meeting in the early morning hours, took a train for Missouri. When he had
transacted his business in the town that he visited, he asked the
proprietor of the hotel if there was any meeting going on in the town at
the time. He said, "Yes, there is a protracted meeting going on at the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church." The man was himself a Cumberland
Presbyterian. He went to the church and when the meeting was opened he
arose in his place and asked the minister if he could speak. Permission
was granted, and with the power of the Holy Spirit upon him, he so spoke
that fifty-eight or fifty-nine persons professed to accept Christ on the
spot. A young man went out of the meeting in the early morning hours and
took a train for a city in Wisconsin, and I soon received word from that
city that thirty-eight young men and boys had been converted while he
spoke. Another young man, one of our students in the Institute, went to
another part of Wisconsin, and soon I began to receive let