A trustee in the Baptist society, and officer in the city government in one of the cities where I was holding a meeting, attended the meeting a few days, and was powerfully convicted of his lost condition.
I think fully twenty Christians in the meeting were really burdened in prayer for his conversion. There seemed to be groanings that could not be uttered, for him. My own heart was so burdened for his conversion that I went to my room, and wrote him a kind letter, pointing out the way to Christ.
But before I took the letter from my room, I lost all burden for him. I kept the letter until I could see the twenty who felt so deeply for him, as the letter would be of no service to him if he had sinned away the day of grace, and grieved away the Holy Spirit.
I found, as far as I could learn, that all the burden of prayer had been taken from every one of those Christians about the same hour, so I did not send him the letter, but carefully watched the results.
He went from the meeting, and took the intoxicating cup, and then would use profane language. But the Spirit strove with him again, and again he would take the cup, until the Spirit took his flight.
Then none of us could pray for him. God has said. There is a sin unto death. I do not say that ye shall pray for it. No one can have a spirit of prayer for one who has committed this sin.
This man stretched a bar of iron across the door of his pew, turned over the curtain, and labeled it, cursed the society of which he was a trustee, said he would have nothing more to do with them.
I followed him for six years in his downward career. He took larger draughts of intoxicating drink, lost his position as a city officer. His family could not live with him. He became a vagabond, and finally committed suicide. Oh, that all would be very careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit!
A. B. Earle, From: Incidents Used… In His Meetings, published in 1888.
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