INTRODUCTION.

Ir gives me pleasure to introduce this book to Mr. Hammond's friends in this country and Great Britain. Those who know and love him will enjoy reading its pages, and will no doubt be reminded of scenes somewhat similar which they have witnessed in their own localities. Those who are strangers to him can but be benefited as they read of the power of the Holy Spirit resting upon the gatherings of God's people.

Jonathan Edwards, more than one hundred years ago, said: "The best way to promote revivals of religion is to tell of them in other places." Surely, then, the heart-stirring descriptions of these harvest scenes, which Mr. Headley has given us in this book, must lead many of its readers to feel the importance of offering more earnestly the prayer commanded by our Saviour, "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest."

My first personal acquaintance with Mr. Hammond was in St. Louis, where I was then a pastor, and

where he held a series of Union Services for nine weeks, in the winter and spring of 1874.

A brief description of those remarkable meetings will be found in this book from the pen of Rev. Dr. J. H. Brooks, who, with the other pastors of the city, took an active part in the work. Never before or since has there been a work of such depth and widespread magnitude in St. Louis.

It was stated at one of the Elders' meetings at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, a few weeks after Mr. Hammond's departure for Galveston, that to that time upward of five thousand, as the direct result of God's blessing on the Union Services, had been examined by the different pastors and received into the churches. This may be an exaggeration, but it is certain that vast numbers were received by the churches.

Similar results have followed this evangelist's labors in other cities and other lands. Yet we have heard Mr. Hammond say that he feels he is but ONE AMONG MANY reapers in these fields, where so many sheaves have been gathered in.

Those who are seeking to win souls to Christ can but learn lessons fraught with rich instructions from this evangelist's remarkable career. As soon as Mr. Hammond was converted, more than thirty-five years ago, he began to "do the work of an evangelist."

Young ministers will do well to study this book.

It will help them to labor more directly for the salvation of souls. During Mr. Hammond's closing service in St. Louis, at which it was stated about four thousand were present from nine in the morning till one P.M., nearly all of the pastors of the city made farewell addresses. These were published in a volume of considerable size, giving a full account of the meetings. From this we quote the words of C. L. Goodell, D.D. :

"There are no festivals, my friends, like the Christian's. We are compassed about by a great cloud of witnesses to the truth as it is in Jesus.' There are no joys like the Christian's joys. There are no hopes like the Christian's hopes. There is no salvation like that salvation

which comes alone from the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember that when the great council met at Nice in 325, the head of the Church and of the State, Emperor Constantine, was present, and a great many petitions had been sent to him, this bishop asking for this preferment, and another asking for another. And there was a great roll of those petitions, all pertaining to self-interest, all in the line of worldliness and promotion, all in the line of peculiar tenets and contested issues not vital, not Christ-like. When in his regal robes he swept into that council, all these petitions were piled up before him in a heap, in the centre of a great hall. Then Constantine touched a match to them, and saw them burn up together. As the smoke rose up to heaven as an incense, the Spirit of God came down, and there was such a baptism as had never been known before in the early church. They were led to grand principles and to the settlement of great difficulties,

"Now, when Brother Hammond came here we took our differences, we took our selfishness, our worldliness, and laid them in a pile together and burned them ; and as the smoke went up to God, His Spirit fell upon us. Now, my friends, and brother clergymen and laymen, we will never rake in the ashes again.”

My own words, at the time reported in the same book, still express my feelings.

"I have been most deeply interested in this series of Union Services. Never before have all my energies and all the powers of my heart been so aroused, so called out and so concentrated upon one work as they have been during these last nine weeks. I have been in perfect accord with my brother Hammond; I have loved him as a friend and as a brother; I have admired not only the energy and tact, and his way of putting things, but the transcendent ability which God has given him to preach the everlasting Gospel. I have never listened to more effective preaching than I have heard from the lips of this brother. He makes his point; he presents the truth, illustrates it, and enforces it; and that is what I call able preaching.

"He has won to Christ hundreds and thousands of people in this city, and I call that effective ministry. We greatly honor him, not simply because he has method, piety, energy and shrewdness, but because God has put within him vast resources, which make him equal to any occasion in this line to which God calls him; and I am glad to stand on this platform and say these words now. He goes from us, and the prayers of this mighty city go with him-the good wishes not only of Christians, but of those who are not Christians go with him. I bless God that I have seen this

day in this city—a day which I scarcely dared hope for, the like unto which I have never seen before, and I fear I will never see again in this world."

This book, so well prepared by the distinguished author, and so well put forth by the well-known publishers, as a record of some of the wonderful labors and successes of this honored servant of the Lord, I most heartily commend to all lovers of Christ, with the prayer and in the hope that it will prove helpful to thousands of reapers in the harvestfield. A. H. BURLINGHAM.

NEW YORK, November, 1884.