Pentecostal Possibilities or "The Story of My Life"
by Milton Lorenzo (M. L.) Haney
CHAPTER 61
The Fifteenth Year
In the overturnings of the past, the record of the first half of the fifteenth year is missing. There were thirteen meetings held in the latter half of the year, including nine camp meetings. Eight of the latter were held in South Kansas, viz.: at Kingman, Wichita, Andover, Cunningham, Norich, Douglass, Goddard, and Southeast Wichita. Every one of these was a triumph. By this time the holiness movement had reached a wonderful impetus, and, like the movement elsewhere at that date, the "swing of conquest" was in it. If there were not a sufficient number of soldiers in the vicinity to carry the battle, squads were sure to come from a distance and fill up the ranks. It did not require a great preacher or leader to secure victory; he had victory when he began. A class of wide awake live souls, filled with God can have victory, more or less, on any field where God may send them. Of these camps we may not be able to write in full, but we found precious brethren in them all, and the Lord failed not to save wherever we went.
More young people were fully saved in Kingman, than you will sometimes find in ten churches. The M. E. Church at that time had the most wonderful body of real Holy Ghost young people I have any memory of ever meeting. One young man had an exceedingly hard battle to reach salvation. One difficulty in the case was that he had been seeking a long time. Such persons are harder to push into the fountain than new beginners. Again and again he had been at the altar, but darkness clung to his soul. Going out to a house for dinner one day he accompanied me. My whole heart was interested in him, and I attempted to force him out of his ruts. So I forbade attention to anything else and drew him to absolute yielding to God. We came to where we were to part and I stopped him and drew a line before him and across his path, saying, "From the moment you cross that mark to all eternity you are to be the Lord's man, whatever may come, or not come! This step settles it, that you are from the time it is taken, to be forever, and ever, and ever the Lord's in the strength of His grace!" It seemed about the biggest thing he ever did to take that step. I stayed till I nearly missed my dinner, to get him over that mark in the dust. He came at last to a point of desperation and took it! I immediately ran on to dinner.
I was sitting on the platform before service opened and saw him come onto the ground and knew he was saved when he was rods away. His face was all aglow with glory, and at the first opening he told the people how God saved him as he stepped over that line in the dust. Grace White was living at Kingman, and the first time I saw her a little distance off, not knowing who she was, I was impressed that God had called her to Africa. On being introduced to her afterwards, I said, "My sister, has the Lord ever said anything to you about going to Africa?" She seemed shocked at my question and wondered why I should ask it; but conceded that He had. Her father had gone security for an unworthy man, and it had involved him badly. He was broken in health and could never pay it. She and her sister Anna resolved to prepare themselves for teaching school, and determined to teach till they had paid the debt, and it was now only partially paid. Kate, a younger sister, was now nearly grown, and coming to their aid, and Grace was hesitating about Africa till her father was released. Children thus reverencing and loving their father, have a record before God. I have not space for all that passed between us relating to it, but she planned that I see her father and open the subject.
While tea was preparing at his home, he and I were left alone. Being frail, he was lying on his couch, when I told him my conversation with Grace. He heard me through, and rose and paced the room. When I looked up the tears were tracing his cheeks and he began to praise God aloud, saying, "I told Him when He sanctified my soul that there were my three girls and He should have them forever! If He wants Grace for Africa, that's all right!" I told Grace the result of the interview, and she wept with joy! So it was planned that she meet me at a third camp, as I was in Conference with Bishop Taylor as to helpers for Africa. At the second camp I wrote her a fearful letter setting forth the horrors of the African Missions, suggesting as the last point, that she would probably die in a jungle there, and never see her friends after she left them, adding these words, "Now, Grace after reading this letter, if your heart does not cave in, I will report you to the Bishop." When we met she asked with emphasis: "Brother Haney, what did you mean about my heart caving in?" I responded, "Why, Grace I so piled up the horrors of the African Missions, that I did not know after you had read the letter, whether you could endure the thought of going or not." To this she replied in apparent astonishment: "Why, Brother Haney did you think I would hesitate to die in Africa for Jesus?" I said, "Grace, I will report you to the Bishop."
Meeting the Bishop at the Decatur Camp shortly after, I said, "Bishop, I have a girl in South Kansas who would go with you to Africa." He said, "Brother Haney, is she first class?" "Yes," I answered, "she is first class!" She met the Bishop at Wichita, and it was arranged that she go in a few weeks to Western Africa. When the Bishop met her at the Cape, he asked her if she were willing to go out to Barracka, where he had established a mission. A year before he had settled a brother there, who, after a few months, was visited by an old heathen with an armed force and had fled for his life! He told her all about it and asked her if she was willing to take that mission alone! She answered "Bishop, I have not come to Africa to make my own appointments, but to go where I am sent." He went with her and remained a few days till she was settled, and she gave, I think, seven years to that mission. In due time his Satanic Majesty stirred the old heathen to come down and drive her from her post. He came with his armed comrades and ordered her to leave without delay. She had got a smattering of his language so she could converse with him, and came out of her house into the open heavens and met him face to face. Referring to his treatment of her predecessor, she assured him that she was going to remain there, and die right there on that ground if need be! He quailed before her, and sneaked off to never trouble her again. Her sister Anna came afterwards, but broke down and was compelled to return. The last letter Grace wrote me she said she had adopted six boys, and "Some of them were the sweetest little Christians." One of these she named William Taylor and another Milton Haney, so I have a namesake in Africa! I was led to pray for Grace by name, each day through these years, but there came a time when I felt strangely every time I prayed. I kept on, though I could not consciously take hold of God for her. When one day I took up a paper and saw that Grace had been in heaven ever since that strange feeling came over me in prayer!
The Nationals that year had another glorious camp in Decatur, Ills., and I had the joy to be with them. We were shut in together with the National men in our lodgings on the ground, and my soul will never forget the richness and blessedness of that fellowship. The National camps in Illinois, except Des Plaines, I think, were all held under the auspices of the State Association, which did a great work in its day, and, as an association ought not to have dissolved. People from a wide territory were affected by the National camps in the West, and many will rejoice in heaven as the result of this meeting at Decatur. If our Decatur churches with their pastors had heartily taken hold with these camps, it would have increased the glory of Methodism in that city to the end of time.
At the camp near Douglass, Kansas, we had an exhibit of the grace of God not often seen. My old friend, Rev. Stephen Brink, was pastor that year at Douglass, and in his charge there was a brother whose flesh was ossified. This seemed to be true of nearly the whole exterior of his body. His limbs were perfectly rigid, so of his arms and hands. He could but slightly raise his head, perhaps a half-inch, but had the use of his voice and could talk on salvation freely. His teeth were nearly closed, but his faithful wife kept him alive by feeding him soups with a spoon. He lay on his back, and could in no wise change his position, nor could it be changed. He had suffered unspeakably and was still suffering, yet the people would keep saying they never had seen so happy a man. His face was radiant with God-light, and his loving soul would keep pouring out praises to the Lord from that encasement of stone! Brother Brink, his pastor, determined to bring him to camp meeting, and his stone elbows were so wide that they had to cut the door casing to get his body out of his house, and brought him to camp in a carriage fixed for the purpose and drawn by men. So, on coming, I found him on a couch near the altar, so located that he could hear and take part in the services. His triumphant testimony to full salvation was a wonderful power, and God was so seen in his face, and spirit, that I believe many were saved by coming in contact with him. A doubt, as to the truth and Divinity of our holy religion, would seem impossible in the presence of such a character.
At the camp southeast of Wichita, where God had some beautiful saints, there was an educated mute lady who came to me inquiring how to be saved. While the altar service was proceeding she asked me what she must do. I wrote as concisely as I could as to the two steps each sinner under the Gospel had to take. After a time I asked: "Do you now give up all sin, and yield yourself to God to be His obedient child forever?" She paused for a moment, and then said quickly, "I do!" (I was writing on the back of an envelope.) I asked again: "Do you herewith and now receive Jesus Christ as your present Almighty Saviour from all your past sin?" She paused, intently looking at these words, and then quickly wrote "I do." I wrote, "Praise the Lord! and you keep looking right at Jesus," and turned to others. Soon somebody touched me and looking round a brother handed me a note, saying "the lady you were talking to wants you to read it." It read, "Dear brother, may I, tell the people what the Lord has done for my soul?" I answered yes, and she rose with a shining face and a glad heart to tell how wonderfully God had forgiven her sins and filled her soul with peace and gladness. A friend of hers interpreted as she talked on her fingers, and the rest of us did the shouting! It is a great injustice to God, and to our unsaved brethren, when He has saved us from sin and hell, to refuse to confess it to both, God and man. I find the following note signed in my old note book:
"All things considered, the fifteenth evangelistic year has been the best of these years, and the summer campaign just closed the best of my whole life. Glory to the Father, Glory to the Son, and Glory to the Holy Ghost.
"Elliott, Kansas, Nov. 20, 1890. M. L. HANEY."