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to the pulpit, repeated his text, and immediately began a long string of dismal anecdotes which related the tragic results of sinners hardening their hearts. Each tragedy had happened within the preacher's own knowledge.

He said that while he was holding a meeting in McMinnville, Tennessee, a beautiful girl had felt impelled by the spirit of God to come forward and join the church. But she had said to her mother, "No, Mother, not right now; just wait till after the Country Club dance, and then I'll give my soul to Jesus. Just one more dance."

"Brothers and sisters, just one week from that night I buried that poor girl in the McMinnville cemetery, and the mother was the most heartbroken woman I have ever seen. She cried over her daughter's grave, 'Oh, if Lucille hadn't waited—if she hadn't hardened her heart!'

"Brother Northcutt, I remember I was holding a revival in Lonoke, Arkansas, and the most brilliant member of the Lonoke bar, a young man, in the best of health, felt the influence of the Holy Spirit moving him to come to the altar and give his life to God, but he put it off, hardened his heart. I begged him to go. He said, "No, Brother Blackman, I'm going to make the race for the Arkansas legislature, and a man can't be a Christian and get elected in Arkansas. Just wait. After this race is over I pledge you I'll come up here and give my life to God.'

"My friends, he never did come. Just three months after that night, I happened to be in Lonoke again, and I was called to the bedside of a dying man. It was that young lawyer. He was a drunkard, dying of delirium tremens. As I held his head in my arms, with his last gasp he moaned, 'Oh, Brother Blackman, if I had only listened to your warning!'—He had hardened his heart."

For some hour and a half the minister rehearsed an endless succession of tragedies, all, he averred, from his direct personal experience.

In reality Reverence Blackman had culled these stories from "Gunther's Handbook for Ministers," but this fact