the first time I went down from the
Sierra Nevada Mountains and dropped into the Valley of the Sacramento,
I was surprised to find on one farm that everything about it was
green--all the trees and flowers, everything was blooming, and
everything was green and beautiful, and just across the hedge
everything was dried up, and there was not a green thing there, and I
could not understand it; I made inquiries, and I found that the man
that had everything green, irrigated; he just poured the water right
on, and he kept everything green, while the fields that were next to
his were as dry as Gideon's fleece without a drop of dew; and so it is
with a great many in the Church to-day. They are like these farms in
California--a dreary desert, everything parched and desolate, and
apparently no life in them. They can sit next to a man who is full of
the Spirit of God, who is like a green bay tree, and who is bringing
forth fruit, and yet they will not seek a similar blessing. Well, why
this difference? Because God has poured water on him that was thirsty;
that is the difference. One has been seeking this anointing, and he
has received it; and when we want this above everything else God will
surely give it to us.

The great question before us now is, _Do_ we want it? I remember when
I first went to England and gave a Bible reading, I think about the
first that I gave in that country, a great many ministers were there,
and I didn't know anything about English theology, and I was afraid I
should run against their creeds, and I was a little hampered,
especially on this very subject, about the gift of the Holy Spirit for
service. I remember particularly a Christian minister there who had
his head bowed on his hand, and I thought the good man was ashamed of
everything I was saying, and of course that troubled me. At the close
of my address he took his hat and away he went, and then I thought,
"Well, I shall never see him again." At the next meeting I looked all
around for him and he wasn't there, and at the next meeting I looked
again, but he was absent; and I thought my teaching must have given
him offense. But a few days after that, at a large noon prayer
meeting, a man stood up and his face shone as if he had been up in the
mountain with God, and I looked at him, and to my great joy it was
this brother. He said he was at that Bible reading, and he heard there
was such a thing as having fresh power to preach the Gospel; he said
he mad