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    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 another enlargement, or build some cottages to provide for the overflow.FF 78.1

    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.FF 79.1

    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.FF 79.2

    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:FF 80.1

    “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.”FF 80.2

    By and by the man staggered in and Mr. Hoyt introduced himself, saying:FF 80.3

    “I am Mr. Hoyt from Hinsdale,” and he replied, “Oh yes, you have quite a wad of my wife’s money down there.”FF 80.4

    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.FF 81.1

    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.”FF 81.2

    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 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.FF 81.3

    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. 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.FF 82.1

    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.FF 83.1

    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. 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.FF 83.2

    *****

    I want to emphasize again the importance of prayer and of following the guiding hand of Providence in all your work for God.FF 84.1

    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 if I had smothered that impression as I have smothered other impressions, I would have been remorseful ever after.FF 84.2

    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.”FF 85.1

    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.FF 85.2

    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 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.FF 85.3

    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.FF 86.1

    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.FF 86.2

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