# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1860_S224
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

224 Church Chronicle.

Pastor Baptist Noel, Broek, O'Neile, in the company of several other gentlemen not
in holy orders. Toward 1 o'clock Mr. Broek stepped forward and announced the purpose
of the gathering in a few words. Baptist Noel then delivered an address to this
strange audience, and did so with as much eloquence as wisdom and love. In it he
set side by side the experiences and the lot of the unchaste woman and of the
virtuous one, from the beginning to the end of life, and proclaimed, in forceful
and at the same time loving words, to these unhappy creatures the Jesus who was
not afraid to defile himself by calling the publicans and the sinful women to
himself. He then read them several letters from penitent women and girls, testifying
to the happiness they had enjoyed since their conversion, and closed at last with
good counsel, exhortations, and instructions for those who wished to return to the
right path.

Messrs. Broek, O'Neile, and others then offered fervent prayers to God, and the
impression which all this made on the assembly was so great that many hid their
faces in their handkerchiefs, wept and sobbed, and more than one of the women
present had to be carried fainting from the hall. It was announced to the penitents
at the same time that they could find admission in the London Reformatory, or in
Trinity Home, or in new institutions. They were given addresses, and tracts and
cards printed with suitable Bible verses were distributed among them. At 3 o'clock
in the morning the gathering broke up, and several of these women were lodged that
same night in an asylum. The rest, of their own accord and without any appeal
having been made to them, got up a collection on the spot for the poor.

On February 21 the second nocturnal gathering of the kind was held in the same
place and under the same circumstances. About two hundred invited guests had come.
Again, as the first time, refreshments were served, addresses were given, and
prayers were spoken. During one of the addresses a moving incident occurred. The
speaker, Mr. Baptist Noel, had reminded his hearers of a nocturnal gathering once
held at Philippi in Macedonia, at which the apostle Paul brought about the
conversion of the jailer. He had preached with emphasis on the necessity of
conversion, and had cited several cases of poor fallen women who, through the
grace of God, had been rescued from their state of degradation and had become
useful, indeed even respected, members of society. The gathering listened
attentively, without, however, betraying any especially lively impressions. But
when at last the speaker added that, since the first meeting, a mother had sent
him a photograph of her daughter with the request that he see whether this lost
child might not be found among those invited to the St. James's Hall Restoration,
a deep emotion took hold of the whole assembly; a general sobbing broke out and
faces were wet with tears; it seemed as though each of these unfortunate women
was asking herself whether it might not be her own mother who was spoken of.

An eyewitness reports that, when after another address by the Rev. Vickersteth —
well remembered by the writer, too, from the unforgettable days of the founding
of the Evangelical Alliance — a prayer was spoken, the whole assembly prayed along
just as devoutly as one could see only in a church. All faces were covered with
hands, and more than one knee bent before the throne of grace. The prayer was
fervent; the words and the tone of the worthy clergyman were those of a man who
sees before him sin and misery in one of their most terrible forms.

At this second gathering the invited guests were informed, just as at the first,
that those who wished could be received into special asylums. The result of these
invitations was that for the assembly of February 8 there had been twenty-two
applications for admission, while that of the second consisted of twenty-three.
Two of those received after the first are said already to have returned to their
families.

Despite its strangeness, the work of charity of the St. James's Hall Restoration
has aroused the liveliest sympathy among all English Christians, and has become
the object of many special prayers in London and other places in the country. A
subscription, got up between the two gatherings for the benefit of this work, has
already brought in more than 12,000 guilders.