He was a preacher at the turn of the century. His name was Washington Gladden, and he was as well known in that day as Billy Graham is known in ours. He grew up in a very Christian community, and he had learned well that a person needed to find peace with God and experience the new birth. But that experience seemed to elude him.

He went to every revival meeting that came along and listened intently to the preachers and followed their instructions. He went to prayer meeting every week and listened with interest to all the testimonies that were shared, and he tried to lay hold of that experience that so many other people seemed to have found. But night after night in his early life, he would go to bed in the attic room of his father's farmhouse having sought but not found. And certainly he didn't have the kind of feelings that seemed to be present in all the people who were giving their testimonies.

His soul continued to be troubled, and his mind continued to be distressed. Then he met a clear-minded preacher who had the sense to tell him that the faith of a Christian is not a matter of feeling; it's a matter of faith. It's a matter of making a decision, submitting the will and trusting Christ to make the difference. If you've done that, said that clear-headed preacher, you don't have to experience the raptures and the ecstasies that these other people experience. If you're walking as Jesus walked, you can trust him to show you the way.

Washington Gladden began to do that, to walk in Jesus' way, and he became the most noted preacher in the latter twenty years of the previous century and the first ten years of this century. More than any other person, he brought the application of the gospel to the social issues of the day and shaped the church. It is no wonder that Gladden could write the hymn we'll sing for a closing hymn after a while:

"O Master, let me walk with thee

In lowly paths of service free

Tell me thy secret, help me bear

The strain of toil, the fret of care."

He had found the door in loving service to his neighbor.