© 2017 Adventist Pioneer Library

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Originally published in 1921 by The Life Boat Publishing Company.

Original page numbers are in brackets.

Published in the USA

October, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-61455-056-3

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1—A Pony and a Dying Promise

Chapter 2—An Overruling Providence

Chapter 3—Turning Toward Chicago

Chapter 4—Results of Faith Applied to Hopeless Cases

Chapter 5—A Time of Testing and Other Experiences

Chapter 6—The Story of Hinsdale

Chapter 7—Keeping Time with God’s Clocks

Chapter 8—Founding a Home for the Fatherless

Chapter 9—Trusted a Bank That Never Fails

Chapter 10—Prosperity and Revivals

Chapter 11—The Anchor That Held Through Deep Trouble

Chapter 12—Sparks from a Live Wire

Preface

We are sending forth this little volume, not as a literary production nor as a treatise on the subject of faith, because it is neither. But we are sending it forth because it is so full of vital Christianity that it has in it the power to change and transform the lives of those who, when reading it, will allow the Spirit of God to work on their hearts.

Those who knew the author and came under the spell of his remarkable life of faith and prayer will again be inspired as they read this book. Those who never met this man of God, however little or much they may have accomplished in life, as they trace the footprints of this man of faith they will find in their own hearts a longing for a deeper spiritual experience and more power, more faith in God.

The author of this book was born of Danish parents on October twenty-seven, 1868, on a farm near Raymond, Wisconsin. When he was but six years of age his parents moved to Clay County, South Dakota, and settled on a farm twenty miles from the town of Vermilion. It [IV] was here that he “grew up on the Western plains,” as he often expressed it when speaking of his early life. It was here that when facing death’s door at the age of seventeen he gave his life unreservedly to his Saviour; and from that time on he drew men and women to Christ.

The reader can follow him through his school days at Battle Creek, Mich., in New York City, and later in the heart of the slums of Chicago, always helping the unfortunate and neglected masses and training medical missionaries. The three institutions at Hinsdale near Chicago, namely: The Hinsdale Sanitarium, the Good Samaritan Inn, and the Life Boat Rescue Home, also the Life Boat magazine of which he was editor, all stand to-day as monuments of his later life of faith.

Born with a weak body, and working as he did untiringly, never sparing himself, resulted in a complete collapse at the early age of forty-eight when he finished his work and went to his rest, October 15, 1916, to await the call of the Life-Giver.

His companion, Dr. Mary Paulson, who was his efficient co-worker and counsellor in all he undertook, was left to continue the work, with [V] the assistance of his brother, N. W. Paulson, a younger brother, Julius Paulson, who had connected with the work only a few months previous to the Doctor’s death, and a large company of more than one hundred faithful workers.

We have culled from the author’s files and notes of his talks, his own account of the various experiences which he had, and have endeavored to put them in chronological order, although somewhat fragmentary, placing with each some of the great lessons which he learned and life-giving principles which he enunciated. This is not a connected biography but rather a collection of footprints from his great life of faith. So we send this little volume forth, praying that God may in some way hide the imperfections and use it to lead many souls to our Lord and Master.

Publishers.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,

And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother
Seeing, shall take heart again.

—Longfellow.

Chapter 1—A Pony and a Dying Promise

Some of you have prayed for some special thing and your prayer was apparently not answered, so you felt discouraged. When I was a mere lad my father hired me out to herd cattle on the Western plains. Other boys had ponies, but my father could not afford to buy me one, so I had to stub my bare feet; and I had a sorry time of it.

I asked the Lord to send me a pony, and every time I saw someone drive down the road with a pony, I thought, “Here is God answering my prayer”; but each time I was grievously disappointed. It was many years later before I found out why the Lord did not send me a pony: I have had to do much hard work in my life which required sound muscle. The muscles in my limbs are almost as hard as wood, and I developed them chasing after the cattle barefooted. If the Lord had answered my prayer, the pony would have gotten the muscle and I would not. The Lord looked ahead and knew it was not best [4] for me to have my prayer answered. But I did not make the mistake some folks have made; I kept right on praying for other things, which the Lord has given me.

The reason some of you have not had your prayers answered is because you are praying for ponies. Moses must have had a terrible disappointment when he had to herd sheep for years and years. He never would have planned it that way, but finally he saw in it a burning bush, yes, a great mission for his life. It put character into him, it made him the leader of a great nation. So the Lord can take the most grievous disappointment in your life and show you the burning bush in it.

When I was seventeen years old, an epidemic of virulent diphtheria invaded our neighborhood. An older brother died of it after a few days’ illness. I contracted the disease, and directly was at death’s door. I heard them say there was no chance of my living more than a few hours. I had had the religious experience of the average young people of our church that I knew, [5] yet I might as well have tried to make a plank reach across the Atlantic Ocean as to have made the faith I had in Christ tide me over to the next world. In other words, somehow I had missed the real thing.

In the agony of my soul I promised the Lord that if He would raise me up I would unreservedly dedicate my life to Him. And He answered my prayer. I took God in as my partner, and all that has come into my life that has been sweet, and all I have been able to do, has come and has been done as a result of that sickness.

I then appreciated the necessity for some sort of an education. I had grown up on the Western plains with practically no educational advantages. I could not have told the difference between a noun and a verb if I had met them on the street.

A couple of years rolled by, and by almost herculean efforts I secured enough money to carry me through one year in Battle Creek College. When that year was over, I knew I had only scratched the surface of an education. [6] I decided to go to work for the Battle Creek Sanitarium during the summer vacation, with the hope that they might permit me to continue to work for them for my expenses while going to school the next year.

I rose early in the morning and carried hot water to the patients’ rooms. I washed tinware in the kitchen during the day, then ran calls in the evening until ten o’clock. I beat carpets, scrubbed floors, washed windows, tacked down carpets, and did a hundred and one other things that a boy naturally dislikes to do. The physical strain of that program nearly cost me my life, but the Lord helped me to win the good will of the managers, and when practically all other applications for student help were refused, mine was accepted. Meanwhile at the College the good Lord was using the teachers to satisfy an insatiable thirst for knowledge that He had planted in my soul.

Time rolled on, and I was promoted to be night watchman for the latter half of the night. That gave me a little chance to study between the regular rounds while I was on duty. At the [7] same time, it was extremely difficult, in a great institution, to get enough sleep early in the night to keep one’s nerves in the right tone.

The small salary I received in the summer time enabled me to get my clothing; what I earned at the sanitarium during the school year practically covered my other expenses. Finally after three years I was graduated.

That promise on my deathbed brought me to the Battle Creek College for a preparation; it brought me to the Sanitarium; it brought me to the Ann Arbor medical college; it brought me to a life of toil in sin-cursed Chicago; it brought me to the disheartening task of building up a sanitarium at Hinsdale in “troublous times.” It has enabled me to bear with joy the scoff and scorn of others who saw no light in my program.

I got that secret when I was looking into an open grave. I have been living on borrowed time ever since. I have not had a day of real sound health from that day till now, but I have been trying to work for the Lord. I never had a day when I didn’t have plenty to do. [8]

I am here carrying out that promise, but incidentally, I have had the time of my life doing it. I would recommend to others who are sick to give themselves to the Lord to be used of Him.

The experience that God gives us to-day, be it light or dark, is worth a great deal more to us than if He repeated for us the brightest experience we ever had; for that is dead and gone, and would be only a second-hand thing. God is so wonderful an educator that He can teach us equally well in the dark or in the light. To-day from a trying experience we may learn something that will so wonderfully impress us that some time in the future it will be worth more to us than any other we have yet known in our lives. Sometimes it seems as if God were showering blessings over us, and at other times it appears as if He were not doing much for us. But it takes all these varied experiences to make us all-round workers.

Sometimes we may appear to be floating on the top wave of success, and at other times our faith will be severely tested, and we may seem to be lost in the depths of despair; but these [9] experiences all serve as spiritual gymnastics to develop the right kind of spiritual muscle and sinew.

While working my way through school, how I envied the boys and girls who did not have to work their way through! But now I feel sorry for some of them—and why? Because in order to get my education I was compelled to learn the trick of studying and working at the same time. Most students, when they begin to work, cease to study, and when they begin to study again, stop work. I learned to do both at the same time, and this habit has been of priceless value to me, as it enables me to do about the same amount of study each year as I did when I went to college, and that without slighting any of the ordinary duties that life has brought to me.

Let me say to those who are compelled to “work their finger nails off” in order to secure an education, instead of murmuring at your lot, thank the Lord for the opportunity. The man who does not learn to study and work at the same time, will, within a few years after he has begun his life work, have forgotten nine-tenths of what [10] he learned, and so will soon be left far behind in life’s struggle.

How many discouraged persons are ready to say, “If only I knew how to study, or at least were able to recall what I have studied, I would feel encouraged; but my mind is like a sieve. I fear I shall never amount to anything.” The fact that you believe that you have a poor memory is no evidence that such is really the case. The best way for you to test the matter for yourself is to consider a few questions: Did your house ever burn down? Have you any difficulty in remembering all about that? Was your brother or your sister killed in an accident? If so, have you forgotten all the shocking details? Do you remember the tragedy that occurred in your community? Or do you have to stop and review such things every few days, for fear you may forget all about them? You may say, “Oh, but that is different.” No, it is not different; it requires the same kind of memory to recall such things as is needed to remember what you see and read and hear. The only difference is that such events make a vivid impression on your [11] mind, while you have failed to learn the valuable secret of making what you regard as “ordinary” things impress you in a similar manner.

When we get down to the root of the matter, there is nothing really ordinary in the world. Every act of our lives is full of realities. Every opportunity we have of looking into a book ought to change us for time and for eternity. The great secret of remembering what is studied is the ability to concentrate the mind fully upon it, thus shutting out everything else for the time being. Then a definite, ineffaceable picture of what is read is made on the mind; and in proportion as we appreciate the importance of what we are studying, to exactly that extent will it become easy to concentrate the mind upon it. We should never read nor study anything that is not worth focusing our attention upon almost as intently as if our very life were at stake. Has not God bidden us study to show ourselves approved unto Him, as workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth? You can study even the truth, and get so muddled and confused an idea of it that it will seem [12] tame and uninteresting to those to whom you try to tell it; or you can so study it that it will fall from your lips clear-cut and beautifully expressed, fascinating to all who hear. The thought of having God’s approving smile upon us moment by moment in our study ought to be a sufficient incentive to thoroughly concentrate our attention upon it, so that as vivid a picture may be made upon the mind as would be made by a burning house.

Dedicate your life fully and completely to the Master. Don’t wait for an attack of diphtheria or a glimpse of an open grave to lead you to do so. Not until you have thus dedicated yourself do things begin to come your way in a manner that makes life full of agreeable surprises at every turn of the road.

When I went to Battle Creek I was given the job of washing dishes in the kitchen. Then later I was told I was needed on the call force. During all that time I felt I was not working altogether for the Battle Creek Sanitarium, I was working for the Lord. So I thought if the Lord gave me some extra time in the evening I [13] could do so much more work for Him. I thought the more sick people I could see, the more work I could do for the Lord. I literally ran calls. The other boys said, “Paulson likes to work, let him do it,” so I ran most of the calls. I had the time of my life working for the Lord while they were getting along the easiest way. When Mrs. Hall, the matron, was gone away, the boys did not work. I kept working. They said, “Paulson, why do you work?” I said, “I am not working for Mrs. Hall, I am working for the Lord.” I kept on working for the Lord, and if the Lord didn’t want me to do a certain thing, I didn’t do it. Do you think I was put out of the institution? No. I stayed there until I was acting superintendent while the superintendent was in Europe.

Every time we violate a principle we betray our Lord. Our personal influence does not amount to much unless measured by principle. Those who, like Daniel, “purpose in their hearts” to do right, will pass through both fire and water rather than sacrifice principle. [14]

If we live by principle, steering straight ahead, sometimes we shall suit other people and sometimes we shall not; but we shall always be sure of pleasing God. Many of those who point the finger of scorn at a man of principle possess in their hearts a secret admiration for him and a desire to be like him. If we have a divine purpose in our hearts, no matter where we may be found, or under what circumstances we may be placed, that purpose will remain steadfast with us.

It is our privilege to have the Spirit of God unfold to us simple, definite principles, which we may incorporate so thoroughly into our life’s experience, that, like a master key, they will serve to unlock our most troublesome perplexities.

The person whose Christian experience is one of impulse only, cannot expect to be a source of strength to others; because while one day he may utter some great truth or do some noble deed, the next day he will likely do some inconsistent thing which will cause others to lose faith in him altogether. [15]

Do not ask permission to carry out your principles. Leave those with whom you associate to take it for granted that you are true to principle. They will never think to question, for instance, whether you are honest or not. If we serve God from principle, He will make even our enemies to be at peace with us.

If you are situated where you are called on to do something which you cannot conscientiously perform, do not arbitrarily substitute some other course of action, but in a quiet manner withdraw from the arrangement, rather than compromise principle.

When a man is continually looking longingly back to various idols from which he has parted in order to live by principle, he is in a dangerous position. The moment he backslides, even a little, he will at once embrace the idol that is nearest and dearest to him.

Those who weave the magnificent tapestries produced in Oriental countries work under the goods, and see only the rough threads hanging down beneath; but they have in mind a definite pattern of the beautiful figure that is being [16] wrought out on the top. Often in our daily work, seeing only the loose threads, we seem to have abundant reason for discouragement; but if we work from principle, we may be sure that a Divine Hand has marked out for us a glorious pattern which will abide through all eternity.

An unsightly block of marble may have been used merely as a doorstep; but by and by a sculptor finds it and begins to chip off its rough comers and edges. Where others saw nothing but a rough, undesirable stone he sees the form of an angel. Every blow brings out more fully his ideal. So from the standpoint of sight and feeling, we may be only rough stones; but the various trying experiences through which God allows us to pass will, if we submit to them as does the block to the chisel, serve as blows to bring out the figure of the divine where before appeared only unformed material.

An eaves trough made of ordinary lumber may carry off as much water, provided it is so hung as to catch the drops, as one made of silver. So although, from a human standpoint, we may not seem to be very promising, if we are willing [17] to be placed of God, where the droppings of the latter rain can fall into us, we shall be happy ourselves, and a blessing and help to others.

Years before I left the Battle Creek Sanitarium I learned as a personal experience that if a man bows before his Creator he never needs to bow before his fellow men. The Lord will see to it that he has standing room. He will never need to beg his fellow men for elbow room. [18]

Chapter 2—An Overruling Providence

The opportunity came for me to study medicine at Ann Arbor, Mich. The Lord raised up some folks to lend me some money and Providence opened up splendid opportunities for me, in fact, some of the best that were obtainable in those days. Some of them I know came directly in answer to my prayers,—and why not? I had no selfish purpose in wanting to become a medical man; I desired to do somebody some good with it.

It is easy for us to recognize an overruling providence in the large events of life, those that clearly and visibly affect our destiny; but why do we not see it also in the smaller things? Life does not consist of haphazard and chance circumstances; but God has a definite plan for each one of us, which is just as complete as if we had been the only ones that lived on the earth. The attention of God has been specially directed to the careful arrangement of all details and all [19] heaven is at our disposal, if necessary, to assist us not only in finding our work, but in performing it.

Sometimes the dense fogs of human discouragement envelop us to such an extent that our natural eyes cannot discern the glorious possibilities that God is holding out to the youth in this generation, who are to see the culmination of all things, and who may repeat in their earthly career the very life that Christ lived as He walked among men. But let us remember that even in the darkest moments of our experience, the same power that controls and upholds the universe is directing our lives.

One who has fully grasped the thought that every circumstance that comes into his life is permitted by the hand of divine love, will begin to enjoy some of the sweets of heaven while still on this earth.

I went to Bellevue Hospital, New York, to complete my medical course and to secure greater opportunities in real medical missionary work. While there, I lived in the mission home of Dr. [20] Dowknott, a man of great faith who was at that time conducting a splendid medical missionary work in the slums of New York City.

I had a small rear room with very poor furniture, and I soon discovered I had a lonesome feeling. A man came and asked me if I did not want to go to the mission. I said “Yes,” and he took me into some poverty-stricken places where there was nothing to eat and no comforts in life, and then to the mission. He gave me a glimpse of the world’s need.

When I went back to my room that night, the wall paper which hung down from the ceiling in one corner looked like a beautiful scroll such as you see on Christmas cards, and the old furniture had been transformed into sixteenth century antique furniture, such as you pay a high price for these days. The room was the same as when I left, but I had been transformed. I had seen the needs of the world.

I had not been there long when the Doctor announced to me that I was to lead the mission meeting the next Tuesday night. I began to make excuses,—said I could not do it. He said, [21] “Tut, tut, man, you are to lead that meeting.” I did it.

One of my first experiences comes to my mind. A man came to me and wished to be shown the way to God. I read him text after text, demonstrating the plan of salvation, as I thought, in a very conclusive way. Everything was arranged under appropriate heads: there was a firstly, a secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, and so on. When I was through, the man said, “Is not there a shorter way?” I was obliged to answer that I knew of none. “Well,” he said, “then I can’t be saved; this is too much for me.” When I went back to my room that night I asked the Lord to show me a shorter way if there was one, and He did so. All there is for the sinner to do is to come; God will do the rest. The promise is, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.”

I was invited to take charge of a Sunday school class of boys who bore every evidence of being more interested in the candy they so vigorously [22] tried to snatch from one another than in the peaceful gospel of Christ; but I breathed a prayer to God that I might be filled with the Spirit of the Master that I might love the unlovely, and that I might make the gospel so interesting that the boys would forget to pull each other’s hair or to crawl under the seats. Instead of the fond mother’s embrace and tender sympathy that was bestowed upon us, these children have the blows of a drunken father and the curses of an equally fallen mother. Talk to these children of love; it has no meaning; it can only be conveyed in one way, and that is to love them.

A boy whom they could not control in the other classes was given to me. He tried my patience to the uttermost and almost broke up the class, so I dismissed him. The next Sunday he was not there, but my heart yearned for him. I had read the words, “Those whom we push off may be the ones whom Christ is especially seeking to save.” So I went and hunted up this boy and told him that I loved him and asked him to forgive me and come back and we would get along all right. That boy was changed, and I hope to spend an eternity of bliss with him. [23]

I asked permission of the superintendent of the mission to let me have the mission room every Sunday afternoon that I might put something into the lives of those children. In they came,—those dirty, ragged, undisciplined street Arabs. I told them about a God of love who, like as a father pities his children, pitied them (Psalm 103:13); but it made absolutely no impression on them. On the contrary, I thought they resented it. They had been kicked and cuffed and mistreated by their parents and they did not want to hear anything about a God in heaven who would treat them the same way.

The thought came to me, I myself must love these youngsters. It was easy to feel sorry for them, but to love a dirty, rough street urchin whose hair was full of vermin—how could I do it? I asked God to put his love into my heart for them and He answered my prayer, and then I found it was unnecessary for me to advertise that fact to them. The language of love is universal. If you feel kindly toward even a dog he will wag his tail and give you a look of recognition. Then I could tell those children there was [24] a God in heaven who felt towards them just as I did, only infinitely more. I will never forget the last meeting we had together, when I was to leave the city; some of these children said with tears in their eyes, “Who will love us now when you are gone?” One of the sweetest experiences of my life was when I knelt down with those children in that parting meeting and committed them to the Father of the fatherless and to that Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. “The entrance of thy words giveth light,” even to the “street Arabs” of New York City.

At that moment I rededicated my life to God and asked Him never to permit me to be a loveless being. I believe some day when my feet shall have the privilege of treading the streets of gold I shall have with me some of those children as fruits of that labor of love.

Medical missionaries are needed who have so much love for fallen humanity implanted in their hearts by the Spirit of God that the condition of the most loathsome and unlovely will move them to go about doing good even as did our blessed Master. [25]

You may not be able to bring to those who need your help genius or skill or wealth; but if the Lord has touched your heart, you can bring what is far better—compassion.

In the Battle Creek Sanitarium years ago when I was there, there was a good deal of backsliding. It wrung my soul. The thought came to me that I must pray more in secret. I thought of the fresh air shaft leading out from the basement, where no one ever visited. I went there to pray several times a day. That place saved my soul. I need it just as much to-day. I have temptations to-day I did not have then. There were some things that tempted me then that seem a joke to me now. I look back and wonder why they should have ever influenced my life. But I need just as much to be alone with God to-day, to plead as though my mortal life was at stake. So do you.

There is something that goes with experimental religion. I suppose there are some of you that occasionally pray in secret, and then there are other days there is no special incentive. We never pray for rain in rainy weather. We [26] never pray for cold in the winter; we have plenty of it, but perhaps on the Fourth of July you may think about it. Don’t neglect secret prayer. It is the soul of religion.

I want to tell you of one of my experiences the first year I had charge of the nervous department at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. I had a patient, a physician, who used to come in, and one day he said, “Doctor, how old are you? I never knew a man who was so full of information. You have a marvelous future before you.” In the afternoon a humble sort of patient came in and told me how that big doctor was ripping me up the back to fifteen or sixteen others of my patients. Since then nobody ever comes and flatters me but I think of that big doctor. That drove me to God.

When Joseph went down to Egypt there were no great attractions held out for him. When Daniel took the first steps toward Prime Minister, the lion’s den was on the road. He had a time table too, I think. When you see a great [27] providence painted on the sky the devil paints it there. God’s providences are always veiled. We accept them by faith. God says, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.” But as you go on you begin to see the beautiful picture the Lord paints for you. The devil said, “I will give you the world.” But the Cross is on Christ’s road.

Some years ago in Battle Creek a splendid girl I knew had a gift for music. She played on the violin. One day she came to me and said, “Dr. Paulson, I have a great providence; the Lord has been good to me.” She told how a good lady in Chicago had come to take her home with her; she was going to ride in an automobile in the park, and this woman was going to put her through the Chicago Conservatory of Music, and all that. I said to that girl, “That does not sound like the Lord’s providences. The Lord has that in store for you and a lot more too, but you cannot take such a short course to it. Stay right where you are, and when the Lord opens to you another step in His providence, it won’t be a desirable thing, but you will know it is right.” How [28] many young people I have known in the last ten or fifteen years, who have been switched off by the devil painting great things in the sky; they chased after them like children do after a rainbow, and they never found them. I explained the thing to the girl. She said, “Why is it you people never want us nurses to have anything?” I said, “It is because I do want you to have something that I am advising you as I am.” She went away sorrowful. She wanted that experience badly, and she went and got it.

Years afterwards I was attending a western camp-meeting, when a lady came to me, and said, “Dr. Paulson, you are interested in the poor; please give me a quarter to help a poor woman up here in a hotel to get her trunk. The hotel people have taken her trunk to be sure they will get something for the room rent, and I am raising some money to help her.” I said, “What is the girl’s name?” And I found out that was our nurse. She had gone through—I have not time to tell you—the winding path.

What she had in mind was all right, but she could not be on a throne in Egypt without [29] paying the price, taking the necessary discipline, going through the necessary hardship, being tested and tried. She expected to jump right from where she was, a dreamer of dreams, right up to the throne of Egypt. The devil does things that way, and as I said, he does not deliver the goods.

One of the greatest experiences of my life was when I was placed in a position where I was compelled to do something I wasn’t prepared to do and by being compelled to do something I developed a greater gift. I asked the Lord to help me do the thing right. I have tried to do the same thing for others, to thrust them out to do things. Many times it is easier to do it myself than to hunt up somebody to do it. Many a mother is wearing herself out because she doesn’t want the trouble of laying burdens on the children and seeing that they do them right. [30]

Chapter 3—Turning Toward Chicago

During all those early years in Battle creek, Dr. Kellogg had been interested in helpful work for humanity in Chicago. He thought we ought not to be content to merely have a sort of sanitarium heaven up in Battle Creek, but we ought to be sharing some of our great opportunities with the poor in Chicago, and for some years a great work was carried on. By and by like all such work, it went through the early stage of enthusiasm and then there came a time when it began to wane and enthusiasm evaporated out of it. W. S. Sadler, who had charge of this work at that time, came up to Battle Creek to see about getting a lot of young people to come down and put new life into it. As Dr. Kellogg was in Europe that summer and I was practically acting superintendent, it became my duty to take some responsibility about the matter and I called the Board together and told them that I thought it was just the thing to do. Mr. Sadler said he did not want the [31] trained nurses; he thought most of them were too backslidden to love the needy people in Chicago; he wanted members of the new class of nurses who had been there only a few weeks, to come down to work in the homes of the people.

Unfortunately the Sanitarium Board did not see much light in it; they said some of the young people would probably go to the devil down in Chicago, but I thought it would do them good to get into direct contact with the needs of humanity. I was so determined on having these young people go down there that I would not listen to anything else. By and by one member of the Board said, “Dr. Paulson is pretty worn out; he needs a vacation. Suppose we arrange to let Dr. and Mrs. Paulson go down with these young people.” We left the next day; left our little cottage we had just rented at Lake Goguac, and brought with us forty of these young people, to bury ourselves in the heart of Chicago’s most needy district.

The proposition was that we should be self-supporting, so we had to rustle for everything except our room rent. A large building on the [32] corner of Twentieth and Wabash had already been leased and was being used as a headquarters for our work.

I got the students together before we left Rattle Creek, and told them, “Now we have to support ourselves after we arrive there,” and we only accepted those who felt a call from God in their hearts. I had never been in Chicago over night before. Brother Sadler was there, but of course, he could not support forty young people. None of them were nurses, but I said to them after I arrived in Chicago, “Maybe some of you could nurse some cases. The Lord will help you to find the right kind of jobs.” We appointed one of our number, Mrs. Allison, who had been sent with us from Battle Creek, to help look after the class, to take care of the money we could earn, and we threw all our money into her lap. I suppose that would pass for socialism, but of their own accord, the class voted to have, as far as their earnings were concerned, “all things in common,” and truly we can say that the same sweet spirit that prompted the early disciples to this decision, hovered over this class in a wonderful measure. [33]

Whenever a group of people anywhere get the spirit in their hearts that these young people had, it will work satisfactorily as long as that spirit abides in the soul. When that vanishes, then the plan of saving everything in common also vanishes. That is something some of the social reformers have not taken into consideration.

I told the folks to spend a day thinking about getting work, and praying about it, and the next day we called them together and there were fifteen of those girls said they would like to nurse. Then I said we would have to pray for fifteen jobs. You can believe what I am telling you or not, but there are forty people alive who know what I am saying to be true. The next thirty-six hours there were just fifteen calls came in over the telephone for just that kind of nurses; they did not want a trained nurse. For instance, an old woman had broken her leg and her son could not stay home to take care of her, etc. I placed those girls out and they earned enough to support all the rest of us if we had not done anything. It seemed to me it was a divine certificate [34] that we were on the right track, and that it pays to launch out into the deep.

Then the class was asked to seek God for wisdom to lead them into the various channels such as the Life Boat mission work, holding cottage meetings, selling the Life Boat magazine, doing gospel work in the jails, Workingmen’s Home, etc., where they would be able to do and receive the most good, with, of course, the understanding that as they acquired an experience in one line they would take up other lines, so as to get an all-round experience while there. We spent an hour every morning holding an experience meeting and giving instruction on methods of work. These were precious occasions.

A few months later we were hard up for a stenographer. I have observed that most stenographers want to be well paid, and of course, we had no money to hire an expensive stenographer, so I said to Brother Sadler one day, “Suppose we ask the Lord to send us a stenographer?” So we made it our business to pray for a stenographer. A couple of days after that, a poor, [35] shabby-looking English fellow edged his way into my office and said:

“Are you Dr. Paulson?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do anything for a poor fellow?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

“I want a job.”

“What can you do?”

“I am a stenographer, sir.”

I am bound to say I did not expect my prayer for a stenographer to be answered in just that kind of a package, and when that fellow shambled into my office in ragged clothes—a typical looking bum, it was hard for me to think he came in answer to my prayer. I did not know what to say, but replied:

“I have been praying for a stenographer.”

He said, “I have been praying for a job.”

Without stopping to think, I said a wonderfully sensible thing then: I said, “I think you and I ought to thank the Lord we met.”

He said, “All right, sir.”

I got down and thanked the Lord that this young fellow who could do stenographic work [36] had come, and he thanked the Lord he had found a job.

I took him to Brother Sadler to try him out, and he eyed him up and down suspiciously and took him downstairs. By and by he came back and said:

“Say, if that fellow can write out what I have just given him, he is a wonder.” Pretty soon he came back again and said, “Upon my word, here it is, every word just as I gave it.”

I said, “You know you and I prayed for a stenographer. You didn’t expect the Lord to send a second rate or third rate stenographer when He answered our prayers, did you?”

And Brother Sadler said, “Well, that’s so.”

The main thing in a stenographer is to be able to take things down and transcribe them; it is not a question of being on dress parade. He was a queer freak; he would get sore-headed sometimes, and one time I remember he did not like to take down my talk so he sat back there when I was giving an important talk and did not take it down at all. I went to him afterwards and said: [37]

“Say, man, why didn’t you take that down?”

“Well,” he said, “I can write it out.”

“I wish you would.”

The next morning he came and handed me fourteen pages of typewritten matter, and for the life of me I could hardly tell but what it was verbatim. Yet he hardly had sense enough to do other simple things that a child could do. He stayed with us a couple of years and was a perfect God-send to us, and worked for his board and room and a dollar a week for spending money.

The question is often raised as to whether it really pays to labor for people who are in the slums of wickedness and sin. A good many people say to me, “Don’t you get taken in real often?” Yes, and no. Once in a while some poor fellow that we do our best to get on his feet goes back, gives up everything and we naturally feel that our effort is lost. And may be it is so far as he is concerned but we have the satisfaction of knowing that at least we have tried to do our duty. I would rather have the spirit that would lift up a poor fallen fellow creature and get “taken in” once in a while than to live selfishly [38] for myself and never do any of this work for those who need it.

If we have sown the genuine gospel seed in tears, in the day of Judgment we shall find that not so much of it has been wasted as we may have imagined; for the gospel seed is immortal, and, like money, may pass through the hands of many before it actually comes to the one whom God intends it shall reach. For does not God say definitely, “My word... shall not return unto me void”? That which, from a human standpoint, may seem like a dismal failure, when viewed from God’s standpoint, who can watch it through its numerous windings down to the end of time, is a signal triumph.

Doing rescue work in a city like Chicago is like searching for pond lilies in a marsh. There is an infinite number of reeds and rushes for each lily, and it requires diligent effort to find the lilies. Undoubtedly, thousands of the inhabitants in our large cities have as effectually closed their own probation as the tribes in the land of Canaan had when the children of Israel came to take possession of it. Yet there are jewels hidden [39] in all this moral rubbish. God’s providential hand has been seen in so many different ways that it is clear that our work for perishing humanity is ordered of God. Oh, that our lives might become so filled with the sweetness of Christ that those who still have within them a desire for a better life may be led to us to be pointed to the same unfailing Source of life that has been imparted to us.

Not a word of criticism or fault-finding was heard among the class of forty young people who came from Battle Creek with Mrs. Paulson and me, but the great thought uppermost in every mind was, How can I best improve my heaven-sent opportunities? Every morning Brother Sadler gave instruction on methods of work, particular stress being laid not so much on how to bring men to Christ as on how to bring Christ to men. The Spirit of God opened up the great truth that from God’s standpoint Christ and humanity have changed places, He being accounted sinful when He knew no sin, we being accounted just while we are ungodly. As a deeper significance of this wonderful truth dawned [40] upon the minds and hearts of some of these workers who had attempted to labor in God’s cause for years without receiving it, tears of joy trickled down their cheeks, and an intense longing was born in their hearts to give this message to even the least of Christ’s brethren.

I learned more fully at that time than I ever knew before, that people whose lives are given up to self-sacrificing labor for others, experience the reflex influence of it in their own lives. My work in Chicago brought me much in contact with earth’s downcast. I have struggled with morphine cases; I have knelt down alongside their bed and asked God to pity those poor sufferers, and I have seen those persons go off quietly to sleep, and I have had them tell me afterwards, “Doctor, that was a most wonderful experience.” But I want to impress on you the thought that it is not necessary for us to come into some extreme crisis in order to pray. You do not use the telephone merely when your house gets on fire; so the time to pray is before you get in trouble. [41]

Chapter 4—Results of Faith Applied to Hopeless Cases

One night I was in the Life Boat mission that we maintained on State street in Chicago. A man in the audience was so drunken that he kept on jumping up trying to say something, and this tended to break up the meeting. I took him by the arm and persuaded him to accompany me upstairs. I tried to impress upon him the importance of becoming delivered from the liquor habit. He said something about being a drunkard for forty years and that it was no use. I felt impressed that the Lord could do something for the poor fellow that I could not. In spite of his objection I succeeded in getting him down on his knees and I earnestly prayed the Lord to deliver this poor man, and told him he must pray. He said he couldn’t, he didn’t know how. I told him just to ask the Lord to deliver him from the liquor habit and finally he blurted out these very words: [42]

“Lord, If you can do anything for a poor broken-down bum like me, I wish you would. Amen.”

That did not sound like a very remarkable prayer to me, but evidently God saw a bigger prayer in the poor man’s soul for he arose from his knees practically sober.

I took him down again to the mission meeting and intended to see him when it was over but he slipped out unobserved. Six weeks later he came back well dressed and clothed and in his right mind. He wanted to see “the doctor with whiskers,” but I was not there that night. When opportunity came to testify he rose and said that six weeks previous he had come into the mission a drunken outcast; his wife had left him in sheer despair, his employer had discharged him, his tools had been pawned for drink, but the doctor took him up stairs and got him down on his knees to pray and something happened to him: he went out of the mission with a new power in his life.

He hunted up his wife and told her that if she would come back and live with him he would [43] give her no further trouble. He told his employer that if he would help him to get his tools he could keep sober now, and he said from that hour he had no appetite for whisky. In other words, he had gotten some pollen from another world and it had fertilized his soul. That represents what every man needs who is a victim of some enslaving habit. He does not need merely talk, he needs a new impulse, and that from a higher source.

I knew Dick Lane who stole as early as he could remember. He stole from his mother on her deathbed, he stole while over in the State prison. He worked in the kitchen and a farmer came in to sell chickens to them. While he was selling the chickens, Dick Lane wiggled one out of sight and into the oven, and one of the prisoners who saw him do it told the Warden. The farmer insisted that he had brought in twelve chickens, yet there were only eleven to be paid for; but Dick Lane was sharp enough to know something was up and he slipped it out of the oven and into the ash pile and by the time the Warden got around, [44] the chicken wasn’t in the oven. Dick said, “You wouldn’t think that of me, would you?” So the other prisoner got a reprimand for accusing him falsely.

Dick was lazy. He lay for fourteen days in a dark dungeon with only bread and water every day, and when he had eaten the bread, he would wet his fingers and feel around to see if he could find an extra crumb. But he did that rather than work in the stone quarry.

One night he went into a mission in Chicago and got something. After that he worked for a dollar a day cleaning windows in the Record-Herald building, and that is no snap. Dick Lane was usually on hand at the Life Boat mission and told his story to men who came in. Before his death he had risen until he was in charge of a department in the Record-Herald building.

Can the Lord save crooks? Certainly. Dick Lane said that plenty of times he wanted to be honest, but when he saw money, he couldn’t help taking it. After his conversion he had the chance to steal unlimitedly but he didn’t do it. [45]

One day in our Chicago medical missionary work a policeman brought to us a man who had been ten days in the gutter and was apparently at the point of death. However, physiological remedies and careful nursing soon wrought a marvelous transformation. I then learned from him that he had stood up in one of the Chicago missions again and again and asked for prayers, and yet had always gone back to drink. I assured him that God was not only willing but anxious to deliver him from his bondage; that he must be manufacturing the chains for his own slavery.

I soon discovered that he had an abnormal appetite for mustard, pepper, fiery spices, condiments, juicy beefsteaks, and tea and coffee, all of which produce a thirst that water cannot satisfy, and really were constantly arousing the awful craving for liquor which was sweeping him from his feet in spite of the prayers of the mission workers, just as certainly as a hot stove would produce blisters on the one who would persist in laying his hands on it.

I advised him to go to our Workingmen’s Home and eat rice, well cooked grains, juicy [46] fruits, refreshing vegetables and nourishing dairy products, and abandon those artificial, thirst-producing foods. He did not seem to appreciate the importance of my advice, but promised, nevertheless, to carry out my suggestions.

For a few days everything went well. He had absolutely no desire for liquor. Then he visited friends on the North side who invited him to dine with them. The meal consisted of pork chops and all those other wretched things that are really the devil’s toboggan slide to the saloon door for all those who have inherited the liquor appetite. He told me afterward that before he had finished the meal the craving for liquor so overpowered him that he would if necessary have walked into the mouth of hell for it to quench his thirst.

He went to the nearest saloon. Then he was ten days in the gutter. The officers of the law again brought him to us. He was so dropsical that his skin had burst in several places, and the fluid was oozing out. To all appearances, he had only a few hours to live; but God, in answer to our prayers, blessed the simple remedies [47] we administered, and in a short time he was practically restored.

Then he told me he had discovered the difference between eating for strength and eating for drunkenness ( Ecclesiastes 10:17), and henceforth would carry out my dietetic advice to the letter.

One of our workers was visiting in one of the toughest places in Chicago. It was in a back alley where a family was living which had five or six children. The father was sick, I presume with tuberculosis, and the frail mother tried to support the family by taking in washings. The worker volunteered to take home with her for a few days the oldest girl, a child of seven or eight years, so as to lighten the burden to that extent. The little girl loved her new friend devotedly; and soon the worker discovered to her amazement that her own hair had become infected with vermin. That worker did not say, “Oh, well, I am cleanly, and of good habits and have a good reputation, what difference does it make if I do harbor a few lice in my hair?” No, indeed! She went after those invaders in dead earnest, and [48] did not rest until she knew that her head was delivered from the last one of them.

You say she showed good sense. Certainly; but I want to remind you that a few sins inside the head are a thousand times worse than a few loathsome bugs on the outside. God will not transplant sin into the next world any more than a sensible housekeeper would want to buy second hand furniture and put in into her own house if she knew it was infected with bedbugs. Sin is a horrible, loathsome thing. It cost the death of God’s own Son to furnish the antitoxin necessary to destroy it. God will never take you or me into heaven unless we give Him a chance to save us from known sin down here. Ask God to make you hate sin as much as you hate bedbugs and other vermin; then He will have a chance to help you get rid of it.

As a physician, I desire to see people delivered from headache, intercostal neuralgia, gastric ulcers, neuritis, rheumatism, and all those other physical torments. But I ten times more desire to see them cured of their sins. If I did not, I might better be a horse doctor; for when [49] we reach the end of the journey we shall realize that to be saved from sin is the most important experience that could possibly come to us in this life.

But sin is a comfortable thing to have. If you talk to a gambler and a poor outcast girl they will say, “I am all right, look out for yourself.” The person isn’t sensitive. The man who isn’t soaked with sin is sensitive to the progress of it.

Possibly there are some sins that you have been clinging to all this while, that over and over again God has put his finger on, saying, “My child, let Me help you get saved from them;” and perhaps you have said, “Oh, nearly everybody does those things! I prefer to compromise with them and put them under tribute.” Then remember that they will become a snare to you. There is no more sense in your clinging to pet sins because other people do, than there would be in your keeping bedbugs in your bedroom because you knew some of your neighbors who had them.

In the dark corners of our large cities we see the natural results of selling ourselves for [50] naught. Our cities are a perfect cesspool. They are the place into which everything drains. I was never before so much impressed with the absolute necessity of the gospel to break the bondage of sin as when seeking the lost jewels amid all the moral rubbish found in Chicago in those early days, and on the other hand I learned as never before and saw it illustrated by many shining examples that whomsoever the Son sets free is free indeed.

I remember an Irishman who was converted at the Life Boat mission. He prayed and struggled to be delivered from booze, but said his civilization broke down whenever he passed a saloon. He was finally delivered from the appetite and the Lord set him free.

When we see a man who was a terror to his family, with a spirit in him that no prison discipline has been able to subdue, change about and become a meek and peaceful follower of the lowly Nazarene; his children, who before were whipped if they did not steal just so much each day, now clothed and fed; the wife, who before sat in indescribable want and misery, now happy and [51] well,—then we feel assured that some one has been “lifted from the miry clay” and has been set free by the Son of God. To reach these classes, one must go where they are and work for them whole-heartedly.

Once a man had fallen through the ice, and some people were trying to help him out by thrusting a plank at him. It soon became icy so that each time he tried to take hold of it his hand slipped off. Finally he gasped, “For God’s sake give me the warm end of the plank!” And when they thrust him the other end of the plank his hands clung to it and his life was saved. Perhaps you and I are constantly holding out to people the frozen end of the plank. If so, may God help us to reach them the warm end.

I would rather the Master would come and find me hunting for pearls in the moral swamps of our large cities than to find me indifferent to their dangerous condition. I remember several years ago there was a woman drowning in Lake Michigan while two hundred men and boys stood on the wharf any one of whom could have rescued her. One stole her pocketbook and all were [52] criticising the life savers who were trying to reach the spot, but not one of those two hundred attempted to pull her out of the water. I don’t wish to be lined up with that crowd in the Judgment.

At our training school on Wabash Avenue I remember an interesting case of a dressmaker who needed rescuing. As she was returning to her home one evening she was suddenly captured by three men, forcibly dragged into a saloon and compelled to swallow some whisky. They did not, however, have opportunity to carry out their evil designs for she succeeded in tearing herself away from them and reaching our training school building, where she fell exhausted on the steps. She was taken into the ward and kept there until her friends could be notified of her whereabouts. The next day she went home, finished some work she had on hand and came back and pled with the matron of the ward to be allowed to remain there for a time. She said, “I have been so impressed with what I have seen here that it seems if I am turned out I shall be eternally lost.” She remained a week and was converted. She [53] had been raised in a Christian family, but felt that she had never experienced a sound conversion until she came here.

There was one little boy in Chicago who did not know who his parents were. That boy was sleeping on the sidewalk and was so dirty you could not tell what he looked like. He and a little girl had been following a woman who seemed to have charge of them. One of our patients ran across him and got the child and brought him home. Some one said, “Oh, that is one of Hulda’s kids.” Hulda was the degenerate woman who was dragging them down to ruin. The boy was placed in a good home and now he is a bright, beautiful young man.

On hearing the singing in the mission one night, a man and woman turned aside. They were going to a cheap theatre, but she heard them singing of Jesus and she said, “I am going in.” The man said, “You are a fool. That is a mission.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, I am going in. You can come along if you like.” [54]

So they came in. By and by when the call came to come up front, she said, “I am going forward.” He said, “You have gone stark crazy.”

They were both crooks, but she was converted to Christ that night. She came and saw me from time to time. She said, “I will never give up praying for my husband.” And one night about six years afterward he came in and gave his heart to God. To-day that woman is an earnest missionary. She has brought I suppose at least five hundred people to Christ.

At the World’s Fair in St. Louis, I stepped into a mission where a man was talking to the people and telling how he had been beaten on the head with a brick in Chicago and he had later rented a room of this same woman. She had rooms to rent and always asked the Lord to send people she could help. So she prayed for this roomer and he was converted and became a splendid mission worker and ran a mission on the North side in Chicago.

I could talk to you by the hour of the people helped by this woman; and it all started when she [55] turned aside to hear the song in the mission. It doesn’t pay to rush ahead so fast. God had a message for her in the burning bush.

I remember a young man who had been with Lord Wolseley in his famous military expedition into Egypt. Afterwards he became so cursed by the drink evil that when he finally dropped into our Life Boat mission in Chicago he had been drinking steadily for eight days. During that time he had not had his clothes off nor had he sat down to eat a meal.

The strains of the sweet gospel music were wafted into the street through the open door and reached his benumbed brain. Someone invited him in. He thought it would be a chance to at least sit down in a chair and rest.

He accepted the invitation to give his heart to God. The Spirit of God impressed him that he must also give up tobacco, to which he was as much a slave as to liquor. This poor degraded wanderer said, “Yes, Lord, if you will help me I will give it up.” Then he began to pray and a new peace and assurance came into his life. [56]

As he walked out of the mission he threw his pipe and tobacco into the gutter, saying, “That is where you belong.”

He later became a faithful missionary nurse, led many other men to the foot of the Cross, and to-day is a conscientious Christian man, loved and respected by all who know him.

It means something to be a soul-winner. It takes courage to straighten up your own life so the Lord can answer your prayers for others.

When I was converted I had to get something fixed up with an old lady who lived next to us. We had some words and as she was a woman of action as well as words she jabbed a pitchfork into my ankle, and then I said some more things; and it left a bad spirit. When I was converted I had to fix things up with her. I couldn’t seek the Lord when I knew I had had a row with the Irish woman. I had a lot of other things to do; I had to see a boy whose eyes I had blackened in school.

These things have to be done before the Lord can answer our prayers and I hope the [57] Lord will save me from ever taking any position that shall result in leading a human soul away from God.

The question is whether there is such a thing as answer to prayer. You know we are living in a very skeptical age, in a very material age. Men are willing to believe in a wireless telegraphy that they can neither see nor hear, they are perfectly willing to believe in the X-ray that can look into their bones and tell that story but are not as ready to believe that God can answer prayer, which is just as real.

I heard Detective Burns tell his wonderful story of finding crooks and he gave as the secret of his success that God was on his side instead of on the side of the crook. In every case sooner or later God compelled the crook to advertise the fact that he was a crook and helped him to catch him. I have thought about that a great deal and believe he had gotten hold of something I sometimes fear some preachers have not grasped any too well.

We had a preacher out here at our sanitarium a while ago whom I asked how he happened [58] to come out here. He said, “Well, my work is so wearing, and particularly praying the pastoral prayer is what broke me up.” I could not quite sympathize with the good brother. The trouble with him was that his pastoral prayer had become formal, and I should think that would become a wearisome thing.

I early had an introduction to this question of prayer. When I was a boy eight years old I lost my jackknife, which was a more serious matter for me than it would have been to lose an automobile now, even if I had one. I asked the Lord to help me find my jackknife and He did and so I got a start as a mere youngster in reference to prayer. In Nebraska in a campmeeting, they asked me to talk to the children and I asked how many of them prayed. Nearly all held up their hands. Then I asked how many expected to get answers to their prayers and then only about half as many held up their hands. That set me to thinking a great deal. Isn’t that the way with most grown-up people who profess to be Christians?

I have traveled far and near, have mingled in a confidential way with thousands of people, [59] and I believe there are very few people who have at all gotten out of prayer what they might. They say prayers to God but they don’t pray to God. He seems too far off. Those of you who have just stood on the outer edge of that thing I want you to know there is something more for you. [60]

Chapter 5—A Time of Testing and Other Experiences

I will skip over some of our many interesting experiences. After a while we opened up the Branch sanitarium on the South side, Chicago, which had been closed for some time, and Mrs. Paulson and I took care of the patients there. We did not have very good facilities nor opportunities for medical work, but the place was full all the time and people stayed there and they got well; and the Lord helped us to do a good work in connection with our many lines of mission work in Chicago. But I saw circumstances were against us. What we needed to do was to establish a sanitarium work out in the country. Meanwhile the Battle Creek sanitarium burned and so they stopped helping us in any way financially. Up to that time they had helped us and co-operated with us. But they notified us after the fire that they could give us no more help. “You can close up everything in Chicago, [61] or carry it on, just as you like,” was the word that came to us. I elected to carry some of it on.

From a human standpoint at that time the Chicago work had a sorry outlook. Some of our best workers naturally went to Battle Creek and they were of course needed there. Our gentlemen nurses had worked themselves nearly to death and they went home for vacations. Our folks had been turning away patients every day on account of lack of room. If there ever was a time when the Chicago work needed the Lord’s tender mercy it was then. My only comfort was in the fact that the Lord knew all about it.

We had many perplexities. From a human standpoint our outlook was almost disheartening, but then there were things that showed up on the other side of the question. A poor woman who spoke eight languages came in. She could talk with almost everybody on earth, but she had never learned to talk with God. She had had several surgical operations that were complete failures and she was in despair. Somebody directed her to our missionary dispensary and told her that we were honest. Dr. Colloran examined [62] her, and she was brought to the sanitarium; she had another surgical operation and directly afterward was converted. We had a number of similar indications that the Lord was helping in spite of the discouraging circumstances.

In the spring of 1903 I was asked to leave the Chicago work for a three months’ trip through Europe in the interest of the medical missionary cause. I somehow felt in my bones that when I would come back I should be able to accomplish more for Chicago. If I had had any other view, nothing else,—no board or committee on earth, could have made me believe that I should leave it for a single night. I had always wanted to go to Europe, but when brought face to face with the opportunity my attachment for the work in sin-cursed Chicago far overwhelmed it. But I went.

I saw and learned many things while in Europe, but I think the best thing I saw was up in Norway. I was called up there to see a patient and there was a treatment room. One of our nurses had gone back to Norway and instructed [63] her brother how to give treatments. The way up to his treatment room on the second floor was through an alley. I walked up there, and I remember now his sitz bath was just an ordinary barrel that had been sawed down. His full bath tub was a box he had built and calked so it would not leak; and for his Russian or Turkish bath he had simply some cloth nailed on frame and stuck together, with another on top that the patients stuck their heads up through; then he had some alcohol under there and steam; and then he had his own brawny husky hands and a great big heart back of it all.

I met there the priest of that town, the schoolmaster, and the leading druggist, and asked them, “What are you doing here?” “Well,” they said, “The doctors could not do anything for us and this fellow is curing us.”

He was a fine, splendid man; he would not have been a better man if he had had an elaborate outfit. His outfit was cheap but he was not. I would rather have excellent men and a cheap outfit than to have an expensive outfit and cheap men. I have seen some elaborate outfits but [64] something about the workers impressed me as cheap. Let us have first of all, mighty workers and then they will do mighty things with humble apparatus. The inside history of the building-up of any enterprise is largely written in prose, not in poetry. There is a great deal of God’s work that does not have a halo over it unless you have it in your soul.

When I see people planning and devising and scheming how they are going to do great things for God, and ask, “Have you talked to God about it?” and they say, “Oh, no, it is plain enough on the face of it that it ought to be done,” I feel sorry for them. There is such a thing as knowing the mind of God; and I am not so sure but that is a truth that needs to be emphasized more to-day than all the others put together. You can teach young people the message and how to give people the right kind of diet and all that, but they shrink from acquiring an experience that enables them to know the mind of God; and shrinking from that, their enterprise must be written in failure, even though they may have an expensive outfit. [65]

Chapter 6—The Story of Hinsdale

When I returned from Europe it became more and more apparent to us that the heart of a great city is not a very favorable place for a sanitarium effort, so we looked up various openings in the vicinity of the City where we might establish headquarters for a sanitarium work. One or two seemed quite favorable but they ultimately passed beyond our reach.

I made it a special matter of prayer and kept looking for a favorable location. One day Mr. C. B. Kimbell, a wealthy man who lived in Hinsdale and who had been helped wonderfully healthwise in our Chicago sanitarium, came to me and said, “Doctor, you ought to start a sanitarium in Hinsdale. That is a beautiful town; I would like to see a sanitarium out there. There is a piece of property out there that is just the thing for a sanitarium.” So he brought Mrs. Paulson and me out one day and drove around here with us. He pointed out a magnificent [66] piece of property, just on the edge of the village, comprising ten acres, having a brook running through it, entirely wooded with fruit trees, berry bushes, shrubbery, etc., with two houses, independent water plant, sewerage, etc., and said: “This is just what you ought to have for a sanitarium.” I had no idea at the time that that was a prophetic wish. Weeds covered everything on these grounds, but in spite of the neglected condition I could see this was an excellent location.

Later on, the Lord moved on the heart of Mr. Kimbell to buy this property, and he came to me and said, “Dr. Paulson, I tell you what I will do: I will buy this ground and deed it to you people and you can pay for it in twenty yearly installments without any interest.” I saw the hand of Providence in that thing, so I said, “That is a go.”

I knew it just as well as I knew, after attending a convention in Des Moines some years ago, that the Life Boat magazine was going to be a “go.” I went home and ordered 25,000 copies printed, and they thought me crazy. A [67] few weeks later, I ordered them to print 50,000 copies and had to agree to pay for them myself before it could be done. We had to print a second edition. A few months later, we printed an edition of 155,000. I had the same feeling in my bones about this Hinsdale business.

I know it is worth while to put the best you have into the dough. If you have a little piece of yeast it does no good while up on the shelf, but if you put it in the bread it grows and pretty soon the whole thing is leavened. I don’t know how many of you understand about bread making, but I do. I used to have to make it for my mother. I have friends who have five times the talent I have, but they never get it into the dough. They are too busy, and say, “Oh yes, Paulson, you have the gift for such things, I don’t want to do it.” Their leaven is on the shelf and never gets into the dough. Put some in and in a little while you have ten times more than you had. It doesn’t grow on the shelf. That is a secret I want to impress upon you, that what you give away is what you keep. Don’t set a price of so much per square yard. Give it [68] away and it will come back one hundred fold. Don’t forget that.

I then began to look for someone to come out here to establish a sanitarium work. Mrs. Paulson and I wanted to stay by the work in Chicago. But it came to be spring and Mrs. Paulson said to me, “We will have to go out ourselves.” You remember there was a man in the Bible—Elisha—who sent his staff by his servant to place on the sick child’s face, but Elisha had to go himself before the child was restored. There are some things you have to do yourself. You can not delegate them to anyone else. So Mrs. Paulson and I came out here.

You may imagine, with no financial help coming from the Battle Creek sanitarium after the fire and with our little medical work we were carrying on in Chicago, and our small means being used up in rescue work we were doing, etc., that we did not have any money; and we knew no one to whom we could look for any. But we felt impressed it was the thing to do so we moved out here March 4, 1904, without any money in sight to ship our few household goods. [69]

We did not move out here for our health. I had to borrow money to ship our goods out, but I had the sweet conviction in my soul that I was launching out in obedience to a divine providence and I have not any doubt that I will live to see it done.

We moved into a little house on the grounds—the tramps had carried away the doors—and came out here to start a sanitarium. It was a great joke to my friends; they thought I was a lunatic. They said, “There is Dr. Paulson moving out to a rich residence town to start a sanitarium without money enough to take his bed along.” They had infallible proof that I was a lunatic; but, by the way, several of those same friends have been around here since and wanted jobs. The institution is here. Why? I knew God wanted this sort of thing near Chicago, and I had the willing heart and God helped us to do it. Much has been accomplished; not what might have been accomplished if we had been closer to the Lord, but it has not been an absolute failure all these years. Something told me it was the thing to do. [70]

No one had lived on these grounds for seven years so the weeds and underbrush had grown up to the lower branches of the trees. Parts of the grounds were a perfect jungle. Mrs. Paulson and I knelt down on that hillside and asked the Lord to send us a hundred dollars to help clear up the grounds. Two days later a business man whom I had seen but twice and whose name I did not know, walked into my brother’s office in Chicago and said, “Doesn’t the Doctor need some money out in Hinsdale?” He said, “Yes, he does need money, he always needs money.” The man pulled out a hundred dollars, handed them to my brother, and walked away. My brother brought this money out to me. I said, “That is quick returns; I rang up ‘Central’ for that day before yesterday,” and I took that as a sort of omen that there was going to be something happening out in Hinsdale. It was to me an indication, an earmark, that I was on the right track.

Shortly afterward an old lady I knew in a general way, who belonged to our church in Chicago, sent for me. She said, “I have just [71] got $2,500 in on a loan and can just as well let you have that for a while, and will lend it to you.” I gave her my note for that. My stock was beginning to go up in the market, but I had a good many other difficulties in the way.

I ran up against one particular obstacle I could not surmount. Then it came to me that on these premises we ought to do something especially for the sick poor if this sanitarium work got under way. So I told the Lord that if He would help me to surmount that special obstacle I would see to it that the poor of the earth were blessed here; and that very day that obstacle gave way and I was able to go on. When our Board was finally organized I told them, “Unless you are going to help me do something for the poor here there is no use to go on, for I am going to do something for them. Let my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth when I cease to be a missionary to earth’s sorrowing and distressed multitudes. We are going to act in Hinsdale what we preached in Chicago. Those who sit in darkness will see a great light and the poor shall have the gospel [72] acted to them as well as preached to them. There shall be one spot left on this selfish earth where a man cannot be so poor but what there is a helping hand extended to him. We shall herald it far and wide and shall fill this whole ten-acre lot with the sick of earth and minister to them the healing forces of nature.”

On my bended knees I promised God that if he would help me to build this sanitarium, I would make it a blessing to the sick poor and I shall do so, as surely as there is a God in heaven.

Mr. Kimbell was the first president of our Organization. He said, “I am interested in the poor, I also am interested in the rich. Why not let us start to do something for the people first of all who can afford to pay, and then when we get under way we can establish a work for the sick poor.” I agreed to that. The establishment of the Good Samaritan Inn, to which I shall allude later, is the fulfillment of my vow.

We issued bonds on the grounds here, but the problem was to sell the bonds. Some of you know what kind of a proposition I had in selling bonds in a work that was not started at all except in anticipation. [73]

I knew a gentleman nurse who was traveling with a wealthy old gentleman who had been up at Battle Creek, and he gave me a tip that the old gentleman might buy some of our bonds if he was approached right. So I went in to Chicago, took dinner with him, and told him what we were going to do here and that I wanted him to buy $5,000 of my bonds. He listened to me patiently, and then said, “Oh, you folks are really a pack of grafters. I have been in Battle Creek and they charged me seventy-five dollars a week and I didn’t get much benefit either. I don’t want any of my money in your work.” He said it good-naturedly enough, but you know even if you apply a mustard plaster good-naturedly it will still raise blisters, and his remarks were beginning to have the same effect on me. I felt impressed to say to him, “When you get over on the other shore you will wish you had some of your money in my kind of business, for I am going to do some work for God out in Hinsdale.” He got up from the table and when he got off five or six steps he turned and said to me, “Say, I rather like the looks of your face, and [74] when you have to have five thousand dollars, let me know.” I did and I got five thousand dollars all right enough. Then we were ready to begin business so we began to break ground for a small building.

Mr. Kimbell said, “Now you folks start the sanitarium work in a small way, and when you get that under way I will help you to build a hundred-thousand-dollar building higher up on the hill. I think there is a good deal more sense in spending my money in building a sanitarium than investing it as Carnegie does in building libraries.”

We organized the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Benevolent Association on a charitable, nondividend, non-profit-sharing basis, in such a way that no one could ever get anything out of it except his mere salary; the constituency or membership being made up of those who come here and have been connected with the work for a year, provided they are over twenty-one years old. They lose their membership when they disconnect permanently. These members elect the Board, so all who are connected with the work [75] really have a voice in its management and a personal responsibility for its welfare. So we started in with a good deal of enthusiasm in the fall of 1904. We broke ground and built during the winter.

Mr. Kimbell went out to Glendale, Cal., to spend the winter, and while there was suddenly stricken down and died after a few days’ illness. His plans about our grounds of course remained but that was all the help we received from him. I felt as though my last friend on earth, financially speaking, was dead. There was no one else I could look to, to take hold and help us. I naturally could not look to the Battle Creek sanitarium people, and my church people had a sanitarium in Moline which they were struggling to pay the debt on.

We thought we had money enough to build what is now the first wing containing seventeen bedrooms, but as usual the expenses exceeded our calculations and when we reached the roof, our money gave out. The workmen were clamoring for pay and I knew no one to whom I could appeal for the necessary thousand dollars to finish the roof. [76]

So I gathered together our few workers and we prayed for a thousand dollars. The last one to take part was my nephew Carl Clough, who was at that time about nine or ten years old. I will never forget how he prayed, “Lord, send some money to the sanitarium.” As I walked up over the hill following that season of prayer, the conviction came to me that if I had drifted so far away that the Lord couldn’t hear my prayer, He would hear the boy’s prayer and answer. A few days later I received a letter from a young man out in Kansas who said, “I hear you are trying to start a sanitarium at Hinsdale. I have just sold my farm and I have $1,150 that I can just as well let you have for a time as not.” That money put the roof on the building.

A little later we needed more money before we were actually ready to take in patients, but just then a good woman up in Stevens Point, Wis., loaned us a few hundred dollars which helped to tide us over.

Our first patient came before the front steps were built. She had to be carried up from the depot on a stretcher, but she was gloriously restored; [77] went home to be a gymnasium teacher in her home town. Somehow, like the first hundred dollars that we received in answer to prayer, I took her restoration as an omen for good—as a sort of first-fruits of a great army of invalids that was to follow, and so it has proven to be.

The Hinsdale sanitarium building was dedicated on September 20, 1905. Judge Orrin N. Carter, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois, gave the principal dedicatory address. The best people of the town came to bid us Godspeed. Within three weeks every room was filled. [78]

Chapter 7—Keeping Time with God’s Clocks

It was very evident that we needed more room, so we laid plans for a substantial addition, the wing containing our gymnasium, surgical department, etc. We did not have a dollar ahead but persuaded a mason to put in the foundation on three years’ time. If he had known how beggarly poor we were he would have shown good judgment in hesitating to do so. But we knew it was easier to build after having a foundation than without one. I will not take time to tell you the many interesting experiences we had in securing the necessary ten thousand dollars to put up that wing. When completed, we had then forty guest rooms. That very summer we had fifty-six people here. Beds were put up in my office and Mrs. Paulson’s office, and we had several people on our waiting list begging to be admitted. We prayed earnestly for God to show us whether we should in our poverty attempt [79] another enlargement, or build some cottages to provide for the overflow.

We discovered that there were four patients here who were willing to each build a cottage on our grounds with their own money, living for a time in their own cottage, boarding with us and taking treatment until we could earn the cottages back again. A simple problem you see, but it proved a God-send to us at that juncture, and since our greater enlargements these cottages have served a useful purpose for rooming some of our helpers.

In the Spring of 1908 a man in Chicago who had let us have a couple thousand dollars sent word to us that he had decided to build a house for himself and was coming out on a certain day to get the money. We were not prepared to pay it back to him and so a group of us got together in my office and prayed to the Lord to change his mind and convince the man he did not need the money at all. And sure enough, when he came out here, after a few minutes conversation, he decided that he wouldn’t build his house, and left the money with us. [80]

In the fall of 1908 the financial panic came. You can imagine what that meant to us. There were some folks who had let us have money subject to demand and now they wanted their money. We did not know what we were going to do. We had a special season of prayer and Mr. H. E. Hoyt, our business manager, felt impressed to go up to Wisconsin and see a woman who had already let us have a few hundred dollars. When he got up there he found the woman down with nervous prostration and her husband was intoxicated, so she was not disposed to let him in the house at all. But he talked with her and said:

“Well, if you can’t do anything for me financially I still believe the Lord sent me here—perhaps I am to do something for your husband.” She said, “Oh, I have lost all hope. You can’t do anything for him, he has been this way for fifteen years.”

By and by the man staggered in and Mr. Hoyt introduced himself, saying:

“I am Mr. Hoyt from Hinsdale,” and he replied, “Oh yes, you have quite a wad of my wife’s money down there.” [81]

After a bit Mr. Hoyt got this man down on his knees and prayed with him and the man himself prayed. Then he said, “Now make my wife promise she will read the Bible and pray with me every day,” which of course she was glad to do.

Nine months passed away before Mr. Hoyt heard from them again; then this woman wrote that her husband had not drunk any liquor since he was there but he had now gone to New York to settle up the estate of a brother of his who had died in the slums under very disgraceful conditions. This brother had been a sort of black sheep in the family. In the letter she said, “I just wish that Van (that is her husband) and I were out of this nasty world and the little we have were in the Hinsdale sanitarium, which has tried to do us good.”

Mr. Hoyt wrote at once to her husband in New York to find out if there was anything he could do for him. I graduated in New York City and knew the place where he was staying was in a cheap part of the city and I thought we had better go down there. So we got our family [82] together down in the gymnasium and Mr. Hoyt told this story and said: “I feel we ought to pray.” We had a season of prayer, and Mr. Hoyt and I left that afternoon for New York on the Twentieth Century Limited. We went to the address and asked a cheap looking woman, who came to the door, for Mr. _________, and she said, “He is not here.” I said to her, “Go up and tell Mr. _________ that Dr. Paulson from Chicago is here to see him.” By and by she came back and said, “All right, he is ready for you up on the third floor.” There we found the man whom they had induced to become half intoxicated and a bright lawyer trying to lead him to make some kind of a settlement in behalf of half a dozen distant relatives. Ten minutes later he probably would have been gone. We got there just on time. God’s clocks always keep time, you must remember.

Our friend sat down and told us his experience the best he could. He could not find out how much property there was. But there was a will leaving everything to him—the man’s brother, and making him executor of the property. [83] Mr. Hoyt went to work and helped him to get things started properly in the probate court, and they found in that man’s safe fifty thousand dollars and some other valuables. A few weeks later he sent for Mr. Hoyt to come up to Wisconsin, and he and his wife each made a will leaving all their property to the surviving member, and at their death to go to the Hinsdale sanitarium.

A few weeks later she wrote to us that her husband was sick nigh unto death. Mr. Hoyt and I went up there and found him in a desperate condition. Way up in that northern town we could do nothing for him so brought him here and did everything we could, but in three days he died—a Christian man. I had the privilege of kneeling beside him in prayer and I firmly believe he had given his soul to the great Life-Giver. That was in December, 1908.

We received thirty thousand at once on the annuity plan and the rest was deposited in one of the Chicago banks to safeguard her until her death. Then we let the contract for this main part of the building, and finished this new part. [84] Of course it required twice as much as we received on this annuity basis, but Providence gave us enough courage so that we felt clear to go on with the contract; and in the fall of 1909 this splendid addition was completed.

I want to emphasize again the importance of prayer and of following the guiding hand of Providence in all your work for God.

Once I had a very sick patient under my care and did not know whether he would live or die. I was just going to a class at seven o’clock in the evening, but felt that I must go to this patient and find out whether he was a Christian or not. I met his wife and asked if he was a Christian. She said, “No, and that is just what I wish somebody would do,—talk to him about it.” I asked him if he had ever given his heart to God and he said, “No.” I tried to show him that God was ready to forgive him, in fact, had already forgiven him and he did not know it. I prayed with him and when I finished praying he said “Amen” in a way that I knew he meant it and felt it. That night that man died. Now [85] if I had smothered that impression as I have smothered other impressions, I would have been remorseful ever after.

I tell you it is a solemn thing to live. Things are not running loose in this world. I believe that God is leading in such matters. The plans will be carried out, but you and I here must watch for opportunities. When there come to us opportunities to minister to others, if we neglect them we meet with a greater loss than those who need our ministry, and it makes no difference who it is, the drunkard, the outcast woman, the orphan child, the poor or the suffering. Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Grain that is not reaped when it is ripe falls off and is lost. So opportunities, when they are not eagerly grasped, speedily vanish, and neither prayers, tears, nor fasting can bring them back.

I feel as though I cannot work a day without prayer for Divine guidance and that power that keeps one’s heart. His power will guide you if you will let it. The grandest thing in this [86] world is a surrendered life. A man may have ever so correct ideas but they are not worth a snap if he depends upon those alone. To be divinely led is the best thing in all the world.

There are many people who regard their religion much as the traveler at sea regards his life preserver—as a handy thing to have in case the ship should go down. The majority of people would rather go out and pick wild flowers than go to a prayer meeting. They take religion just as they do medicine, not because they relish it, but because they suppose they need it.

Beyond question many professing Christian people miss the real thing. They try to keep their religion and their daily life in separate compartments, and as a consequence they do not get, by a long way, what is coming to them in this life. They live miserable, narrow, contracted lives, when they might be living large, noble lives that would seem almost charmed to those with whom they come in contact. [87]

Chapter 8—Founding a Home for the Fatherless

Way back in the old Chicago days we carried on an extensive rescue work for girls. The Lord had wonderfully blessed this effort, but we found that we were leaving the fish too near the water; so even before we moved our sanitarium work out to Hinsdale we had rented a little cottage out in West Hinsdale as a Rescue Home. But it was not properly equipped. We could not persuade the owners to make the necessary sanitary improvements. It was also nearly two miles away from our sanitarium work.

We began to appeal to charitable people to help us do something better. Little by little money came in in various ways until we had a thousand dollars in our treasury. But one day when I was down to the Rescue Home I found three girls and two or three babies besides Mrs. Swanson, the matron, all occupying one little bedroom. The need of something better impressed me so strongly that I came back and told [88] our people, “We will build a Rescue Home—the best in the State of Illinois, and we will do it now.” We paid our thousand dollars for a piece of land near the sanitarium. That took all the money we had.

Then we let the contract for a four-story building containing thirty rooms and agreed to meet the bills every thirty days. Something told me we would get the money. You remember we had this extensive enlargement of the sanitarium on our hands at the same time, but we went to work. Our sanitarium family lifted to the breaking point. We raised nine hundred dollars in one evening from our own family, and then God put it in the hearts of other people to help us.

Happening to go up to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, I was invited to give a talk on Sabbath afternoon, where I told something of what we were trying to do. Some of the patients helped generously, and so did some of the doctors and others. The next day after the meeting I felt impressed to go up the street and visit the mother of one of the lady physicians. When I [89] rapped on the door, she came and said, “I know what you came for—to get twenty-five dollars from me.” I said, “Yes, but how did you happen to know?” “Well,” she said, “I attended your meeting yesterday afternoon and I promised the Lord that if he sent you to my house I would give you twenty-five dollars.” That was the only private residence I visited.

A very poor woman gave me twenty-five dollars. The next person who saw her name said, “Doctor, you ought to go and return that money. That woman can’t afford to give twenty-five dollars to the Rescue Home.” So I went and saw this woman again, and she said, “You don’t need to let anybody worry you about that, Dr. Paulson, that wasn’t my money at all. Someone let me have that to give to some worthy cause, and I never found anything that just appealed to me till I heard you tell about the Rescue Home project.” To make a long story short I brought back one thousand and twenty-five dollars with me.

Then a sick woman wrote me from St. Louis to come over and see her. I replied that I was [90] too busy, she would have to come to me. She wrote back that she was too sick to come, but if I would come over she would give me a hundred dollars for the Rescue Home. I went; could do nothing for her medically, but had a word of prayer at her bedside and she wrote me a check for two hundred dollars. A very worldly contractor who drank heavily gave me four hundred dollars. He said he believed in that kind of religion.

It was remarkable how in various ways God raised up people to help. Dr. Frank Gunsaulus, the great pulpit orator of Chicago, came out and gave a magnificent lecture in the auditorium of the Hinsdale Club house at a mass meeting, entirely in the interest of the Rescue Home. The invitation to this meeting was signed by the president of the Village Board, president of the Woman’s Club, president of the Civic League, and each of the pastors in town. We raised one thousand eight hundred dollars that night, eight men giving one hundred dollars a piece, among them such men as John C. Fetzer, Mr. Butler of the Butler Paper Company, ex-Congressman [91] Childs, and Mr. Beidler and others. All told, forty different people gave each one hundred dollars for the Rescue Home building. Widows and orphans sent in their little mites, and finally different people each undertook the expense of furnishing a room. There were more people who wanted to furnish rooms than we had rooms to furnish, and the building was dedicated free from debt.

It is not a home for degenerate girls and their babies, but rather for those who have been more sinned against than have been sinners. Some of them came from homes that would astonish you, as far as good opportunities are concerned—but something was missing: the mother had not had time to help her daughter, but she had plenty of time later to have her heart broken over her girl. We have taken the girls in and helped them over this dark hour in their experience, found work for them as domestics, found good homes for their babies when they could not keep them themselves, and if for any reason they lost their jobs they would come back until we found them work again. Of every one hundred [92] girls that go through the Home we know that eighty-seven or ninety are making good.

We have not merely been kind to these girls; we have brought the gospel of Christ to them. Eight girls were baptized in the Home last year (1913) and many others had deep spiritual awakenings.

This Home has absolutely no income except the little that some of the girls can pay, yet it never gets behind but a trifle, and rarely has much of anything ahead. When they run short somebody prays and God puts it in the heart of someone to answer those prayers. Just the other day the superintendent bought a sewing machine for the Home. The Company sold it for half price and promised to wait until the money could be raised. Our people prayed, and a few days later a stranger stopping at the sanitarium who had heard about the sewing machine wanted to have an opportunity to pay for it.

Several years ago when we were maintaining a Branch of the Home on the South side in Chicago the matron needed coal. She told me she ought to have a whole car load as that was [93] the cheapest way to buy it, but that would cost one hundred dollars. I told her to pray. She said, “Pray for coal?” I said, “Yes, why not? Don’t you suppose the Lord knows the coal bin is empty?” She and her workers prayed, and I prayed. A few days later I received a letter from an old lady down in Illinois written in a tremulous hand—just three lines. I had never heard from her before, nor since. She said, “I felt impressed you needed a hundred dollars for your work in Chicago, so I am enclosing it herewith.” When I took that letter and the hundred dollars in to the workers in Chicago, tears came in their eyes. They knew their prayer had been specially answered.

The trouble with some folks is, their prayers are so general that if they were answered they would never know it, and if they were not answered they would never miss it. The Lord doesn’t always answer our prayers directly. He sometimes has a special purpose in the delay. At other times He gives us something else that is better for us; but God hears every sincere prayer offered in the name of Christ. [94]

Chapter 9—Trusted a Bank That Never Fails

About the time we were making our last enlargement of the sanitarium and building the Rescue Home, we felt the time had come to definitely establish our work for the sick poor, the Good Samaritan Inn. So we purchased the property across the street. God put it in the hearts of some to help us and we began to take in the sick. We had some very striking experiences in the way of restoration, but strangely enough I could not get hold of any money to put in a heating plant. I presented its needs to several and prayed earnestly about it, but fall came, the house was cold, and the patients had to be moved over to the sanitarium. That is a chapter in our experience I have never been able to quite fully understand. Perhaps I was backslidden, perhaps we lacked the necessary faith, perhaps after all we were not as well prepared to care for the sick poor as we thought we were. It actually took us a couple of years more before we were [95] again able to open our Good Samaritan Inn for the sick poor. When we did, a good woman gave us four hundred dollars without any solicitation, to make the necessary repairs. And now we are planning an extensive enlargement.

One night a stranger who happened to be here, sent for me after I had gone home and wanted me to tell him about the Good Samaritan Inn, which I did. He wrote me a check for one hundred dollars. Next one of our patients, without my having mentioned the matter to her, sent me one hundred dollars for the same purpose, and another good woman gave me a hundred dollars. If God wants us to do it He will make it possible. If He doesn’t want it done we don’t want to do it. When we are trying to spell out God’s principles we may always expect to meet God’s providences, for the manna follows the Pillar of Cloud.

Coming back again to the time when we were completing the main building of the sanitarium, I will give you a glimpse of a few other of our many interesting experiences. When we came to [96] pay the last bills on this building, Mr. Hoyt came to me and said, “Don’t you suppose you can go to Dr. Pearsons (the millionaire philanthropist whose home was in Hinsdale) and borrow five thousand dollars?” “Well, you know Dr. Pearsons is hard to approach,” but I went to see him and he let me have five thousand. By and by we needed another five thousand, and Mr. Hoyt asked me to try to borrow five thousand dollars more from him. By that time he was a patient in our sanitarium; he spent practically the last two years of his life here. When I asked him for the money he said, “The trouble with you, Paulson, is that you keep the house too warm. If you didn’t waste so much that way you wouldn’t need to borrow money.”

He let me have the five thousand, but he wanted it all back again April first. I hoped the old man would forget about it. This was during the holidays, and we paid our bills and thus slipped through another crisis.

Two weeks before April first he came along and said, “Doctor, have you got those ten thousand dollars for me?”

“No, I hoped you would forget about that.” [97]

“I want that money to give to Governor Deneen for one of the colleges he is interested in.” And then he said, “Do you know where to go for the money?”

I said, “No, I do not.” I saw the old man was in earnest and wanted that money. He said: “I would not have let you have that if I had thought you could not get it.”

I said promptly, “I can get it.” He said, “Where can you get it?”

I said, “I’ll look to the Lord for it.”

The old man appeared as though he wished I had a little more satisfactory place to look, but said nothing further. I can assure you I prayed about that thing. The first of April was on Thursday, and by Monday, when we got up to the twenty-eighth I did not know where to get any of that money. Some of you know it is not easy to pick up money when you really need it. I was very much concerned about it. On Tuesday morning, a lady who had been here a few days and with whom I had not talked at all, who was just here visiting some friends, said to me after patients’ morning worship: [98]

“I want to see you, Dr. Paulson.” We stepped into my office and then she said, “Just while we were singing in here at morning worship a thought came to me. I am receiving five thousand dollars this morning, and it came to me that perhaps you could make good use of it.”

I said, “I have been praying the Lord to send me ten thousand dollars. I have to pay that amount to Dr. Pearsons on Thursday.” She said, “I’m sorry. I can’t let you have more than five.”

I sent for my business manager and we fixed up a note for her then and there. I said to our business manager, “That is strange; I have prayed for ten thousand; where is the other five?” He said, “That may come from another source.” A few hours later Dr. Pearsons knocked on the manager’s door and said:

“Say, if you folks can dig up five thousand I can tell you where to get the other five.”

“We already have the five thousand.” “Good,” he said. The old Doctor had gone down to the bank and said, “Why don’t you cater a little to those folks up there? Suppose [99] you lend them five thousand and show them your good will?” They agreed to that, so Dr. Pearsons said to go down and get our five thousand dollars at the bank.

It was only a simple experience, but life is largely made up of simple things. Most of us have only a very few really wonderful or great experiences, so it is important to see God’s hand in the ordinary every-day incidents and affairs.

All these experiences and many others like them have helped confirm my faith in this thing, that the Bible when it said, “Ask, and ye shall receive” is not a mistake. It does say if we turn away our ears from hearing the law our prayers are an abomination (Proverbs 28:9). But I believe when one is trying to do the right thing Providence is on the side of that man, as Detective Burns maintained was the great secret of his success. I have seen that principle work out again and again in my dealings with patients. [100]

Chapter 10—Prosperity and Revivals

Here is an important truth that I hope none of you will overlook: If Providence helped us to establish this institution so that we might care for sick people, why shouldn’t the Lord help the sick people get well here? And I have seen this thing happen in a special manner over and over again. For instance, a woman was operated on here a couple of years ago. The surgeon believed that she would die before she left the operating room. The case was so absolutely hopeless that it was beyond all human hope that she could possibly live. I told her husband it was an absolutely hopeless case. I told the nurse that there were no prospects that she could live over night. The surgical operation revealed conditions that no one had suspected and the situation was so desperate that humanly speaking there was no chance for life at all. But the nurses prayed and Mrs. Paulson and I prayed, and God heard our prayers and she was restored to health. [101]

A year and a half ago a good earnest woman was dying here in this sanitarium from pernicious anemia. The laboratory test showed that her blood was almost as thin as water. I had telegraphed her husband to come, and when he arrived, told him that there was no hope and that his wife could not live beyond forty-eight hours. Mrs. Paulson whispered in her ear that her end was near and asked if there was anything she wanted to say. She feebly responded, “Pray.” Mrs. Paulson sent for me. We knelt down at her bedside and humbly and earnestly committed this dying woman to God’s restoring power for recovery if it was His will. From that hour she began to improve and in three months’ time went home a comparatively well woman. I had a letter from her husband who is a railroad man, saying that his wife had gained fifty pounds in weight and was as well as she ever was.

Once we discovered that new patients were not coming in as rapidly as the old ones went away. We felt impressed, as we had often done before, to ask God to fill the vacant rooms or show us why they were not filled. [102]

Some of us met Friday night for special prayer. I spoke of it at the meeting of heads of departments on Sabbath morning, and presented it in connection with the Sabbath service to the entire family.

At our church officers’ meeting Sunday night we learned that some of our workers were not paying tithe. I became deeply exercised over the matter. The more I sought God the more I was impressed that we would have no signal answer to our prayers without a definite reformation.

Monday morning at workers’ worship called attention to the fact that it was after Christ had cleansed the temple that the sick came in and He healed them. (Matthew 21:12-14).

Before we shall see the sick crowd into our sanitariums and receive special manifestations of healing by Christ, we must permit Him to again cleanse our temples.

On Tuesday morning the entire sanitarium family gathered with their Bibles and notebooks and we began some special studies which were continued till Friday morning. [103]

We read very carefully and prayerfully the experience of Achan who stole the spoils from the inhabitants of Jericho which had been devoted to the Lord. (Read Joshua six.) Jericho was the first of the cities of Canaan to be taken and God had said that was to be His tenth or the first fruits, so Achan stole from God’s treasury for his own benefit. Because of the sin of Achan all Israel became weak as water and were smitten by the enemy. (Joshua 7:5.)

“If the presence of one Achan was sufficient to weaken the whole camp of Israel, can we be surprised at the little success which attends our efforts when every church and almost every family has its Achan?” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, p. 157.

There is no use in lying on our face and asking God in a special manner to bless our institution while we have Achans in the camp. God says to us, “Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Take away the accursed thing from among you.” Joshua 7:10, 13.

It yet remains to be seen what God can do for an institution without a single Achan in it.

On the other hand, every time there has apparently been unanswered prayer in our midst [104] for the sick, any Achans in our camp should consider these words: “If when Achan yielded to temptation he had been asked if he wished to bring defeat and death into the camp of Israel, he would have answered, ‘No, no; is thy servant a dog that he should do this great wickedness?’” Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 4, p. 492.

The time has come for every Achan in our hearts to be stoned. And those who do not see the importance of giving to the Lord an honest tithe should read Malachi 3:8, 9. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me… in tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.”

Every worker who has taken a position in this institution is engaged in the same sacred work that Korah, Dathan and Abiram were in. The same devil that blinded their eyes will endeavor to make it seem an equally “small thing” to us; in other words, to cause us to forget the sacredness of the work that we are in.

The mighty power of God was present in these studies. On Friday night we had a “solemn assembly.” As far as I could discern every [105] worker cheerfully took his stand on this question.

Within a week our men’s patronage had doubled and we had also reached a high-water mark of spiritual results. A prominent patient definitely took his stand for God. Half a dozen others were seeking for light. Others were being converted, and the institution seemed charged with a special power from on high. We saw most phenomenal cases of physical improvement. It gave us a foretaste of what God can do when all the workers turn their hearts definitely toward Him.

This stirred the wrath of the dragon and we began to have trials and difficulties we had never anticipated. But even these served to drive us to our Source of strength.

Later on a physician from the southern part of the State brought his wife for a critical surgical operation. A few days afterward she went into a serious collapse. We did everything we could, but it was evident the woman must die. The doctor stood by the opposite side of the bed from me with tears running down his face, saying [106] he had given up all hope; there was absolutely nothing more could be done. I felt impressed to say, “Yes, there is one thing more can be done in the Hinsdale sanitarium. We can pray.” I felt he knew nothing about prayer, but I did not believe that would hinder my prayers being heard. I knelt down and asked God to save the poor woman’s life if it was His will. She began to revive from that very moment, and in a few weeks went home a well woman.

One winter during our week of prayer a very prominent woman was operated on in our institution by Dr. Franklin H. Martin, the eminent Chicago surgeon who has done most of our work. The case proved much more desperate than was expected and she nearly died on the operating table. She was revived, but the next morning went into a total collapse. Mrs. Paulson and I were hastily summoned to her bedside. To all human appearances, the case was utterly hopeless. My heart ached for this splendid business woman whom I had every reason to know had not made her peace with God. In the agony of my soul, while the nurses worked over her, I [107] knelt by her bedside and reached up for God’s healing power to be manifested in her behalf. A few hours later an eminent expert came out from the Presbyterian hospital at the request of her family physician who was present at the operation. After sizing up the situation he said, “Everything is done that can be done, but it makes no difference what you do, she will be dead by morning.”

Several days later she told Mrs. Paulson, “I know God heard Dr. Paulson’s prayer and saved my life. I want you to stay here in my room and tell the Lord that I know He heard the prayer in my behalf.” Some weeks later this woman stood up in our workers’ prayer meeting and gave a ringing testimony and told us that she had dedicated her life fully to the Master’s work.

As the years rolled on I have seen many such experiences that have strengthened my faith that there is such a thing as answers to prayer. When I am facing a question like some of those poor sick patients I am glad that I can deal directly with the great man-Maker. When [108] my watch was broken the other day, I sent it to a watch-maker, not to some faker who would simply declare there was no such thing as a broken watch, or who would undertake to give it some absent treatment and do nothing for it. I am so glad that I can recommend the sick to go to the great man-Maker and man-Repairer and that I can intelligently co-operate with Him. Remember that while the farmer cannot grow corn—God alone can do that—he can cultivate corn. And God does not expect to do man’s part any more than He expects man to do God’s part. It is this beautiful blending of the human and the Divine that lends significance to the human part of life and gives us courage and faith that we can depend implicitly upon the divine part. God does not hear us because we are good, He hears us because we are needy, and for Christ’s sake who alone was good.

It is with great hesitation that I tell some of these interesting experiences for the simple reason that I know there are some people who are bound to regard them with considerable skepticism, and perhaps treat them altogether lightly. There is also a still greater danger that a group [109] of experiences of this kind shall focus the attention of a still larger group of people on the instrument instead of the Hand that merely condescended to use the instrument. Nevertheless, I have felt that there were some to whom some of these incidents might prove to be a real inspiration and encouragement, and it is for their sakes and theirs alone that I have presented a few of the many interesting items that Providence has given us for our encouragement in the building of these various Hinsdale enterprises.

There is scarcely a word in the English language that has been so warped from its true meaning as the word “Faith.” Much of the so-called faith of to-day is in reality nothing short of presumption, consequently God can only ignore it. Instead of being some peculiar tension or emotion of the mind, true faith is simply a recognition of things as they actually are. The individual who becomes best acquainted with God will necessarily manifest most faith in Him, He will learn the consistent manner in which God deals with His children. This will preserve him from asking unreasonable things, which is presumption. [110]

Chapter 11—The Anchor That Held Through Deep Trouble

On February 14 (1916) I was prostrated with an unusually severe attack of fever. During the long weary weeks that followed I had abundant opportunity to learn new lessons of trust and faith under trying circumstances.

As I prayed earnestly unto the Lord, his Holy Spirit would from time to time bring to my remembrance some verse from the Bible that would be meat in due season to my poor, starving, storm-tossed soul.

Some of these verses I had not seen much in when I read them in full health and strength in days gone by, but the important thing after all was that they had been lodged somewhere in my mind; which shows the importance of reading the Bible even when we don’t feel any great need of it. We may be storing up provisions for some future need. [111]

When the fever was at its height and the days were weary and the long nights dreary, then this verse came to me with priceless assurance: “But he knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:10.

Through all the ages God has never discovered anything better than trouble and affliction to bum the dross out of the soul. That is why His children have always had such big doses of it. God was fitting them for heaven.

The wicked will have most of their trouble when it is too late to do them any good. That is why God says for us not to envy the wicked (Proverbs 24:19), “which have their portion in this life.” Psalm 17:14.

I know some of you will say, “But my trouble came from evil men and not from the Lord.” If you will permit Him, God will watch the fire they kindled and see to it that it only burns up the dross within you. “The wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.” Psalm 76:10.

Joseph’s wicked brethren sold him into slavery, but he let God watch the fire, and when he [112] was the biggest man in Egypt he could say what is always true, “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.” Genesis 50:20.

When we are in deep trouble we always want to get rid of it, but God only knows when we have had enough. I wanted to get rid of my fever, I wanted to get well, but then and there came to my mind the Master’s prayer when he was in deep trouble, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Luke 22:42. I had a precious experience when I was able to pray that prayer from my heart. So will you. Luke says when Christ prayed that prayer, an angel came and strengthened him. (Verse 43). I verily believe one came to strengthen me. They will come to strengthen you.

When I was desperately sick the thought came to me to have my wife write to a spiritually-minded friend hundreds of miles away to pray for me. Then the enemy suggested the doubt, What good would that do? It was then that Paul’s example came to my mind when he wrote to the far-away churches in Rome to earnestly [113] pray for him. (Romans 15:30). And later when he lay in a dark prison cell he wrote this to his brethren, “For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer.” Philippians 1:19. Then I sent word to still others to pray for me.

I am glad that I can to-day put my fingers on Psalm 119:75 and say from my heart: “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” [114]

Chapter 12—Sparks from a Live Wire

The people who are doing the most for others are those who are finding sweet and precious things in the Bible.

If a man falls down seven times seven, and has a disposition to get up again, he will be saved in the kingdom of God.

The self-sufficient worker may seem to be moving the world, but it is the humble, praying worker that moves heaven.

Circumstances can only bring out of us what is already in us. You cannot draw water from a well when there is no water in it.

Begin each day with prayer, and do not let a day pass without doing some active soul-saving work, whether you feel like it or not.

God is in the saving business. He desires to carry every one of us through, but He cannot save us against our wills.

The best way to help a careless and indifferent [115] sinner is for you to be neither careless nor indifferent in dealing with him.

Trouble is an effectual remedy, and when everything else fails sometimes the Lord has to apply this remedy in order to save us.

Our Father looks after His children, and being infinite He can look after the smallest things as well as the greatest things connected with our lives.

We can never do a great work unless we put into it a part of our lives. Extract of soul must be mingled with every work that is to go into eternity.

If God has put into your soul a desire to work for humanity, remember He will help you to carry out this desire, for God never trifles with a man.

The very difficulties which we daily encounter, if patiently borne, will help us to become so well qualified, so well trained, that we will be better able to work for the Master.

If God can make a beautiful flower out of a handful of black earth, He can take our useless lives and so transform them that they shall [116] become beautiful and helpful. It is the same process exactly.

If we can only learn that every circumstance which arises, God permits for our good, then life will become more settled. We can live a day at a time, and strive to make someone better for our having lived that day.

Suppose you should go to a person who has jaundice and say, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for looking so yellow.” That would be a cruel thing to do. But haven’t you seen people treat those who had spiritual jaundice in just that way?

The hands of a clock are always in sight—the wheels are seen but seldom. Each is a part of the clock. Some of us are brought face to face with the public; others work silently and in comparative seclusion; but all alike are a part of God’s plan, and each has his part to perform in keeping the work going.

Let no one forget that just as certainly as God has a place for us in the next world, He has a work for us in this world; and in many instances we do not have to leave home in order to get a chance to do it. [117]

Jacob, when viewed under the microscope, is a rascal and a grafter, but when viewed through the telescope, he is a man that can look into heaven, prevail with God, and a father to great nations. Are you viewing your associates through a microscope or through a telescope?

In spite of the law of gravitation, the trees, by the law of growth, are enabled to carry barrels of water scores of feet above the surface of the earth. So the Christian inspired by the divine power within him, is enabled in spite of depressing influences daily to elevate his thoughts and ambitions heavenward.

A young man said to Phillips Brooks in his latter years, “How I wish I had lived in your time, so that I might have had a chance to do some heroic thing.” And the old man answered with something of the fire of his youth, “Young man, you are living in my time and in God’s time. There never was such a chance to do heroic things as now.”

When Peter was working for a cause rather than for humanity, he cut off the servant’s ear, thus making it necessary for Christ to follow [118] after him, and heal the difficulty which he had created. If we work for humanity from any other motive than that of pure love, we shall fill the minds of people so full of prejudice that we shall virtually be repeating Peter’s work, thus making it necessary for Christ to raise up others to follow us to heal the wounds which we have made; and even then, there are scars that must necessarily remain.

Every live man with a gift must divide it with others, or pay the penalty of having it shrink away and finally shrivel up altogether. Hoarding a talent is a greater curse to its possessor than hoarding money. It is what we give away that we really keep. The knowledge that we have some one else to teach is a stimulant to our own gift, and furnishes us a constant incentive for treasuring up live facts and valuable items which we otherwise would give only a passing notice and which would soon pass from our memory.