FOOTPRINTS OF FAITH

David Paulson

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 Preface
We are sending forth this little volume, not as a
literary production nor as a treatise on the subject
of faith, because it is neither. But we are sending it
forth because it is so full of vital Christianity that it
has in it the power to change and transform the
lives of those who, when reading it, will allow the
Spirit of God to work on their hearts.

Those who knew the author and came under the

spell of his remarkable life of faith and prayer will
again be inspired as they read this book. Those
who never met this man of God, however little or
much they may have accomplished in life, as they
trace the footprints of this man of faith they will
find in their own hearts a longing for a deeper
spiritual experience and more power, more faith in
God.

The author of this book was born of Danish

parents on October twenty-seven, 1868, on a farm
near Raymond, Wisconsin. When he was but six
years of age his parents moved to Clay County,
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South Dakota, and settled on a farm twenty miles
from the town of Vermilion. It was here that he
“grew up on the Western plains,” as he often
expressed it when speaking of his early life. It was
here that when facing death’s door at the age of
seventeen he gave his life unreservedly to his
Saviour; and from that time on he drew men and
women to Christ.

The reader can follow him through his school

days at Battle Creek, Mich., in New York City, and
later in the heart of the slums of Chicago, always
helping the unfortunate and neglected masses and
training medical missionaries. The three
institutions at Hinsdale near Chicago, namely: The
Hinsdale Sanitarium, the Good Samaritan Inn, and
the Life Boat Rescue Home, also the Life Boat
magazine of which he was editor, all stand to-day
as monuments of his later life of faith.

Born with a weak body, and working as he did

untiringly, never sparing himself, resulted in a
complete collapse at the early age of forty-eight
when he finished his work and went to his rest,

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October 15, 1916, to await the call of the Life-
Giver.

His companion, Dr. Mary Paulson, who was his

efficient co-worker and counsellor in all he
undertook, was left to continue the work, with the
assistance of his brother, N. W. Paulson, a younger
brother, Julius Paulson, who had connected with
the work only a few months previous to the
Doctor’s death, and a large company of more than
one hundred faithful workers.

We have culled from the author’s files and

notes of his talks, his own account of the various
experiences which he had, and have endeavored
toput them in chronological order, although
somewhat fragmentary, placing with each some of
the great lessons which he learned and life-giving
principles which he enunciated. This is not a
connected biography but rather a collection of
footprints from his great life of faith. So we send
this little volume forth, praying that God may in
some way hide the imperfections and use it to lead
many souls to our Lord and Master.

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Publishers.

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 Chapter 1

A Pony and a Dying Promise

Some of you have prayed for some special
thing and your prayer was apparently not
answered, so you felt discouraged. When I was a
mere lad my father hired me out to herd cattle on
the Western plains. Other boys had ponies, but my
father could not afford to buy me one, so I had to
stub my bare feet; and I had a sorry time of it.

I asked the Lord to send me a pony, and every

time I saw someone drive down the road with a
pony, I thought, “Here is God answering my
prayer”; but each time I was grievously
disappointed. It was many years later before I
found out why the Lord did not send me a pony: I
have had to do much hard work in my life which
required sound muscle. The muscles in my limbs
are almost as hard as wood, and I developed them
chasing after the cattle barefooted. If the Lord had
answered my prayer, the pony would have gotten
the muscle and I would not. The Lord looked ahead
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and knew it was not best for me to have my prayer
answered. But I did not make the mistake some
folks have made; I kept right on praying for other
things, which the Lord has given me.

The reason some of you have not had your

prayers answered is because you are praying for
ponies. Moses must have had a terrible
disappointment when he had to herd sheep for
years and years. He never would have planned it
that way, but finally he saw in it a burning bush,
yes, a great mission for his life. It put character into
him, it made him the leader of a great nation. So
the Lord can take the most grievous
disappointment in your life and show you the
burning bush in it.

***

When I was seventeen years old, an epidemic

of virulent diphtheria invaded our neighborhood.
An older brother died of it after a few days’ illness.
I contracted the disease, and directly was at death’s
door. I heard them say there was no chance of my

7
living more than a few hours. I had had the
religious experience of the average young people
of our church that I knew, yet I might as well have
tried to make a plank reach across the Atlantic
Ocean as to have made the faith I had in Christ tide
me over to the next world. In other words,
somehow I had missed the real thing.

In the agony of my soul I promised the Lord

that if He would raise me up I would unreservedly
dedicate my life to Him. And He answered my
prayer. I took God in as my partner, and all that has
come into my life that has been sweet, and all I
have been able to do, has come and has been done
as a result of that sickness.

I then appreciated the necessity for some sort of

an education. I had grown up on the Western plains
with practically no educational advantages. I could
not have told the difference between a noun and a
verb if I had met them on the street.

A couple of years rolled by, and by almost

herculean efforts I secured enough money to carry

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me through one year in Battle Creek College.
When that year was over, I knew I had only
scratched the surface of an education.

I decided to go to work for the Battle Creek

Sanitarium during the summer vacation, with the
hope that they might permit me to continue to work
for them for my expenses while going to school the
next year.

I rose early in the morning and carried hot

water to the patients’ rooms. I washed tinware in
the kitchen during the day, then ran calls in the
evening until ten o’clock. I beat carpets, scrubbed
floors, washed windows, tacked down carpets, and
did a hundred and one other things that a boy
naturally dislikes to do. The physical strain of that
program nearly cost me my life, but the Lord
helped me to win the good will of the managers,
and when practically all other applications for
student help were refused, mine was accepted.
Meanwhile at the College the good Lord was using
the teachers to satisfy an insatiable thirst for
knowledge that He had planted in my soul.

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 Time rolled on, and I was promoted to be night
watchman for the latter half of the night. That gave
me a little chance to study between the regular
rounds while I was on duty. At the same time, it
was extremely difficult, in a great institution, to get
enough sleep early in the night to keep one’s
nerves in the right tone.

The small salary I received in the summer time

enabled me to get my clothing; what I earned at the
sanitarium during the school year practically
covered my other expenses. Finally after three
years I was graduated.

That promise on my deathbed brought me to

the Battle Creek College for a preparation; it
brought me to the Sanitarium; it brought me to the
Ann Arbor medical college; it brought me to a life
of toil in sin-cursed Chicago; it brought me to the
disheartening task of building up a sanitarium at
Hinsdale in “troublous times.” It has enabled me to
bear with joy the scoff and scorn of others who saw
no light in my program.

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 I got that secret when I was looking into an
open grave. I have been living on borrowed time
ever since. I have not had a day of real sound
health from that day till now, but I have been trying
to work for the Lord. I never had a day when I
didn’t have plenty to do.

I am here carrying out that promise, but

incidentally, I have had the time of my life doing it.
I would recommend to others who are sick to give
themselves to the Lord to be used of Him.

The experience that God gives us to-day, be it

light or dark, is worth a great deal more to us than
if He repeated for us the brightest experience we
ever had; for that is dead and gone, and would be
only a second-hand thing. God is so wonderful an
educator that He can teach us equally well in the
dark or in the light. To-day from a trying
experience we may learn something that will so
wonderfully impress us that some time in the future
it will be worth more to us than any other we have
yet known in our lives. Sometimes it seems as if

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God were showering blessings over us, and at other
times it appears as if He were not doing much for
us. But it takes all these varied experiences to make
us all-round workers.

Sometimes we may appear to be floating on the

top wave of success, and at other times our faith
will be severely tested, and we may seem to be lost
in the depths of despair; but these experiences all
serve as spiritual gymnastics to develop the right
kind of spiritual muscle and sinew.

While working my way through school, how I

envied the boys and girls who did not have to work
their way through! But now I feel sorry for some of
them--and why? Because in order to get my
education I was compelled to learn the trick of
studying and working at the same time. Most
students, when they begin to work, cease to study,
and when they begin to study again, stop work. I
learned to do both at the same time, and this habit
has been of priceless value to me, as it enables me
to do about the same amount of study each year as
I did when I went to college, and that without

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slighting any of the ordinary duties that life has
brought to me.

Let me say to those who are compelled to

“work their finger nails off” in order to secure an
education, instead of murmuring at your lot, thank
the Lord for the opportunity. The man who does
not learn to study and work at the same time, will,
within a few years after he has begun his life work,
have forgotten nine-tenths of what he learned, and
so will soon be left far behind in life’s struggle.

How many discouraged persons are ready to

say, “If only I knew how to study, or at least were
able to recall what I have studied, I would feel
encouraged; but my mind is like a sieve. I fear I
shall never amount to anything.” The fact that you
believe that you have a poor memory is no
evidence that such is really the case. The best way
for you to test the matter for yourself is to consider
a few questions: Did your house ever burn down?
Have you any difficulty in remembering all about
that? Was your brother or your sister killed in an
accident? If so, have you forgotten all the shocking

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details? Do you remember the tragedy that
occurred in your community? Or do you have to
stop and review such things every few days, for
fear you may forget all about them? You may say,
“Oh, but that is different.” No, it is not different; it
requires the same kind of memory to recall such
things as is needed to remember what you see and
read and hear. The only difference is that such
events make a vivid impression on your mind,
while you have failed to learn the valuable secret of
making what you regard as “ordinary” things
impress you in a similar manner.

When we get down to the root of the matter,

there is nothing really ordinary in the world. Every
act of our lives is full of realities. Every
opportunity we have of looking into a book ought
to change us for time and for eternity. The great
secret of remembering what is studied is the ability
to concentrate the mind fully upon it, thus shutting
out everything else for the time being. Then a
definite, ineffaceable picture of what is read is
made on the mind; and in proportion as we
appreciate the importance of what we are studying,

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to exactly that extent will it become easy to
concentrate the mind upon it. We should never read
nor study anything that is not worth focusing our
attention upon almost as intently as if our very life
were at stake. Has not God bidden us study to show
ourselves approved unto Him, as workmen who
need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word
of truth? You can study even the truth, and get so
muddled and confused an idea of it that it will
seem tame and uninteresting to those to whom you
try to tell it; or you can so study it that it will fall
from your lips clear-cut and beautifully expressed,
fascinating to all who hear. The thought of having
God’s approving smile upon us moment by
moment in our study ought to be a sufficient
incentive to thoroughly concentrate our attention
upon it, so that as vivid a picture may be made
upon the mind as would be made by a burning
house.

Dedicate your life fully and completely to the

Master. Don’t wait for an attack of diphtheria or a
glimpse of an open grave to lead you to do so. Not
until you have thus dedicated yourself do things

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begin to come your way in a manner that makes
life full of agreeable surprises at every turn of the
road.

When I went to Battle Creek I was given the

job of washing dishes in the kitchen. Then later I
was told I was needed on the call force. During all
that time I felt I was not working altogether for the
Battle Creek Sanitarium, I was working for the
Lord. So I thought if the Lord gave me some extra
time in the evening I could do so much more work
for Him. I thought the more sick people I could
see, the more work I could do for the Lord. I
literally ran calls. The other boys said, “Paulson
likes to work, let him do it,” so I ran most of the
calls. I had the time of my life working for the
Lord while they were getting along the easiest way.
When Mrs. Hall, the matron, was gone away, the
boys did not work. I kept working. They said,
“Paulson, why do you work?” I said, “I am not
working for Mrs. Hall, I am working for the Lord.”
I kept on working for the Lord, and if the Lord
didn’t want me to do a certain thing, I didn’t do it.
Do you think I was put out of the institution? No. I

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stayed there until I was acting superintendent while
the superintendent was in Europe.

***

Every time we violate a principle we betray our

Lord. Our personal influence does not amount to
much unless measured by principle. Those who,
like Daniel, “purpose in their hearts” to do right,
will pass through both fire and water rather than
sacrifice principle.

If we live by principle, steering straight ahead,

sometimes we shall suit other people and
sometimes we shall not; but we shall always be
sure of pleasing God. Many of those who point the
finger of scorn at a man of principle possess in
their hearts a secret admiration for him and a desire
to be like him. If we have a divine purpose in our
hearts, no matter where we may be found, or under
what circumstances we may be placed, that
purpose will remain steadfast with us.

It is our privilege to have the Spirit of God

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unfold to us simple, definite principles, which we
may incorporate so thoroughly into our life’s
experience, that, like a master key, they will serve
to unlock our most troublesome perplexities.

The person whose Christian experience is one

of impulse only, cannot expect to be a source of
strength to others; because while one day he may
utter some great truth or do some noble deed, the
next day he will likely do some inconsistent thing
which will cause others to lose faith in him
altogether.

Do not ask permission to carry out your

principles. Leave those with whom you associate to
take it for granted that you are true to principle.
They will never think to question, for instance,
whether you are honest or not. If we serve God
from principle, He will make even our enemies to
be at peace with us.

If you are situated where you are called on to

do something which you cannot conscientiously
perform, do not arbitrarily substitute some other

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course of action, but in a quiet manner withdraw
from the arrangement, rather than compromise
principle.

When a man is continually looking longingly

back to various idols from which he has parted in
order to live by principle, he is in a dangerous
position. The moment he backslides, even a little,
he will at once embrace the idol that is nearest and
dearest to him.

Those who weave the magnificent tapestries

produced in Oriental countries work under the
goods, and see only the rough threads hanging
down beneath; but they have in mind a definite
pattern of the beautiful figure that is being wrought
out on the top. Often in our daily work, seeing only
the loose threads, we seem to have abundant reason
for discouragement; but if we work from principle,
we may be sure that a Divine Hand has marked out
for us a glorious pattern which will abide through
all eternity.

An unsightly block of marble may have been

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used merely as a doorstep; but by and by a sculptor
finds it and begins to chip off its rough comers and
edges. Where others saw nothing but a rough,
undesirable stone he sees the form of an angel.
Every blow brings out more fully his ideal. So
from the standpoint of sight and feeling, we may be
only rough stones; but the various trying
experiences through which God allows us to pass
will, if we submit to them as does the block to the
chisel, serve as blows to bring out the figure of the
divine where before appeared only unformed
material.

An eaves trough made of ordinary lumber may

carry off as much water, provided it is so hung as
to catch the drops, as one made of silver. So
although, from a human standpoint, we may not
seem to be very promising, if we are willing to be
placed of God, where the droppings of the latter
rain can fall into us, we shall be happy ourselves,
and a blessing and help to others.

Years before I left the Battle Creek Sanitarium

I learned as a personal experience that if a man

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bows before his Creator he never needs to bow
before his fellow men. The Lord will see to it that
he has standing room. He will never need to beg
his fellow men for elbow room.

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 Chapter 2

An Overruling Providence
The opportunity came for me to study medicine
at Ann Arbor, Mich. The Lord raised up some folks
to lend me some money and Providence opened up
splendid opportunities for me, in fact, some of the
best that were obtainable in those days. Some of
them I know came directly in answer to my
prayers,--and why not? I had no selfish purpose in
wanting to become a medical man; I desired to do
somebody some good with it.

It is easy for us to recognize an overruling

providence in the large events of life, those that
clearly and visibly affect our destiny; but why do
we not see it also in the smaller things? Life does
not consist of haphazard and chance circumstances;
but God has a definite plan for each one of us,
which is just as complete as if we had been the
only ones that lived on the earth. The attention of
God has been specially directed to the careful
arrangement of all details and all heaven is at our
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disposal, if necessary, to assist us not only in
finding our work, but in performing it.

Sometimes the dense fogs of human

discouragement envelop us to such an extent that
our natural eyes cannot discern the glorious
possibilities that God is holding out to the youth in
this generation, who are to see the culmination of
all things, and who may repeat in their earthly
career the very life that Christ lived as He walked
among men. But let us remember that even in the
darkest moments of our experience, the same
power that controls and upholds the universe is
directing our lives.

One who has fully grasped the thought that

every circumstance that comes into his life is
permitted by the hand of divine love, will begin to
enjoy some of the sweets of heaven while still on
this earth.

***

I went to Bellevue Hospital, New York, to

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complete my medical course and to secure greater
opportunities in real medical missionary work.
While there, I lived in the mission home of Dr.
Dowknott, a man of great faith who was at that
time conducting a splendid medical missionary
work in the slums of New York City.

I had a small rear room with very poor

furniture, and I soon discovered I had a lonesome
feeling. A man came and asked me if I did not
want to go to the mission. I said “Yes,” and he took
me into some poverty-stricken places where there
was nothing to eat and no comforts in life, and then
to the mission. He gave me a glimpse of the
world’s need.

When I went back to my room that night, the

wall paper which hung down from the ceiling in
one corner looked like a beautiful scroll such as
you see on Christmas cards, and the old furniture
had been transformed into sixteenth century
antique furniture, such as you pay a high price for
these days. The room was the same as when I left,
but I had been transformed. I had seen the needs of

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the world.

I had not been there long when the Doctor

announced to me that I was to lead the mission
meeting the next Tuesday night. I began to make
excuses,--said I could not do it. He said, “Tut, tut,
man, you are to lead that meeting.” I did it.

One of my first experiences comes to my mind.

A man came to me and wished to be shown the
way to God. I read him text after text,
demonstrating the plan of salvation, as I thought, in
a very conclusive way. Everything was arranged
under appropriate heads: there was a firstly, a
secondly, thirdly, and fourthly, and so on. When I
was through, the man said, “Is not there a shorter
way?” I was obliged to answer that I knew of none.
“Well,” he said, “then I can’t be saved; this is too
much for me.” When I went back to my room that
night I asked the Lord to show me a shorter way if
there was one, and He did so. All there is for the
sinner to do is to come; God will do the rest. The
promise is, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and

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“Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.
”

I was invited to take charge of a Sunday school

class of boys who bore every evidence of being
more interested in the candy they so vigorously
tried to snatch from one another than in the
peaceful gospel of Christ; but I breathed a prayer to
God that I might be filled with the Spirit of the
Master that I might love the unlovely, and that I
might make the gospel so interesting that the boys
would forget to pull each other’s hair or to crawl
under the seats. Instead of the fond mother’s
embrace and tender sympathy that was bestowed
upon us, these children have the blows of a
drunken father and the curses of an equally fallen
mother. Talk to these children of love; it has no
meaning; it can only be conveyed in one way, and
that is to love them.

A boy whom they could not control in the other

classes was given to me. He tried my patience to
the uttermost and almost broke up the class, so I
dismissed him. The next Sunday he was not there,

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but my heart yearned for him. I had read the words,
“Those whom we push off may be the ones whom
Christ is especially seeking to save.” So I went and
hunted up this boy and told him that I loved him
and asked him to forgive me and come back and
we would get along all right. That boy was
changed, and I hope to spend an eternity of bliss
with him.

I asked permission of the superintendent of the

mission to let me have the mission room every
Sunday afternoon that I might put something into
the lives of those children. In they came,-- those
dirty, ragged, undisciplined street Arabs. I told
them about a God of love who, like as a father
pities his children, pitied them (Ps. 103:13); but it
made absolutely no impression on them. On the
contrary, I thought they resented it. They had been
kicked and cuffed and mistreated by their parents
and they did not want to hear anything about a God
in heaven who would treat them the same way.

The thought came to me, I myself must love

these youngsters. It was easy to feel sorry for them,

27
but to love a dirty, rough street urchin whose hair
was full of vermin--how could I do it? I asked God
to put his love into my heart for them and He
answered my prayer, and then I found it was
unnecessary for me to advertise that fact to them.
The language of love is universal. If you feel
kindly toward even a dog he will wag his tail and
give you a look of recognition. Then I could tell
those children there was a God in heaven who felt
towards them just as I did, only infinitely more. I
will never forget the last meeting we had together,
when I was to leave the city; some of these
children said with tears in their eyes, “Who will
love us now when you are gone?” One of the
sweetest experiences of my life was when I knelt
down with those children in that parting meeting
and committed them to the Father of the fatherless
and to that Friend that sticketh closer than a
brother. “The entrance of thy words giveth light,”
even to the “street Arabs” of New York City.

At that moment I rededicated my life to God

and asked Him never to permit me to be a loveless
being. I believe some day when my feet shall have

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the privilege of treading the streets of gold I shall
have with me some of those children as fruits of
that labor of love.

Medical missionaries are needed who have so

much love for fallen humanity implanted in their
hearts by the Spirit of God that the condition of the
most loathsome and unlovely will move them to go
about doing good even as did our blessed Master.

You may not be able to bring to those who

need your help genius or skill or wealth; but if the
Lord has touched your heart, you can bring what is
far better--compassion.

***

In the Battle Creek Sanitarium years ago when

I was there, there was a good deal of backsliding. It
wrung my soul. The thought came to me that I
must pray more in secret. I thought of the fresh air
shaft leading out from the basement, where no one
ever visited. I went there to pray several times a
day. That place saved my soul. I need it just as

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much to-day. I have temptations to-day I did not
have then. There were some things that tempted me
then that seem a joke to me now. I look back and
wonder why they should have ever influenced my
life. But I need just as much to be alone with God
to-day, to plead as though my mortal life was at
stake. So do you.

There is something that goes with experimental

religion. I suppose there are some of you that
occasionally pray in secret, and then there are other
days there is no special incentive. We never pray
for rain in rainy weather. We never pray for cold in
the winter; we have plenty of it, but perhaps on the
Fourth of July you may think about it. Don’t
neglect secret prayer. It is the soul of religion.

***

I want to tell you of one of my experiences the

first year I had charge of the nervous department at
the Battle Creek Sanitarium. I had a patient, a
physician, who used to come in, and one day he
said, “Doctor, how old are you? I never knew a

30
man who was so full of information. You have a
marvelous future before you.” In the afternoon a
humble sort of patient came in and told me how
that big doctor was ripping me up the back to
fifteen or sixteen others of my patients. Since then
nobody ever comes and flatters me but I think of
that big doctor. That drove me to God.

***

When Joseph went down to Egypt there were

no great attractions held out for him. When Daniel
took the first steps toward Prime Minister, the
lion’s den was on the road. He had a time table too,
I think. When you see a great providence painted
on the sky the devil paints it there. God’s
providences are always veiled. We accept them by
faith. God says, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is
the way, which leadeth unto life.” But as you go on
you begin to see the beautiful picture the Lord
paints for you. The devil said, “I will give you the
world.” But the Cross is on Christ’s road.

Some years ago in Battle Creek a splendid girl I

31
knew had a gift for music. She played on the
violin. One day she came to me and said, “Dr.
Paulson, I have a great providence; the Lord has
been good to me.” She told how a good lady in
Chicago had come to take her home with her; she
was going to ride in an automobile in the park, and
this woman was going to put her through the
Chicago Conservatory of Music, and all that. I said
to that girl, “That does not sound like the Lord’s
providences. The Lord has that in store for you and
a lot more too, but you cannot take such a short
course to it. Stay right where you are, and when the
Lord opens to you another step in His providence,
it won’t be a desirable thing, but you will know it
is right.” How many young people I have known in
the last ten or fifteen years, who have been
switched off by the devil painting great things in
the sky; they chased after them like children do
after a rainbow, and they never found them. I
explained the thing to the girl. She said, “Why is it
you people never want us nurses to have
anything?” I said, “It is because I do want you to
have something that I am advising you as I am.”
She went away sorrowful. She wanted that

32
experience badly, and she went and got it.

Years afterwards I was attending a western

camp-meeting, when a lady came to me, and said,
“Dr. Paulson, you are interested in the poor; please
give me a quarter to help a poor woman up here in
a hotel to get her trunk. The hotel people have
taken her trunk to be sure they will get something
for the room rent, and I am raising some money to
help her.” I said, “What is the girl’s name?” And I
found out that was our nurse. She had gone
through--I have not time to tell you--the winding
path.

What she had in mind was all right, but she

could not be on a throne in Egypt without paying
the price, taking the necessary discipline, going
through the necessary hardship, being tested and
tried. She expected to jump right from where she
was, a dreamer of dreams, right up to the throne of
Egypt. The devil does things that way, and as I
said, he does not deliver the goods.

One of the greatest experiences of my life was

33
when I was placed in a position where I was
compelled to do something I wasn’t prepared to do
and by being compelled to do something I
developed a greater gift. I asked the Lord to help
me do the thing right. I have tried to do the same
thing for others, to thrust them out to do things.
Many times it is easier to do it myself than to hunt
up somebody to do it. Many a mother is wearing
herself out because she doesn’t want the trouble of
laying burdens on the children and seeing that they
do them right.

34
 Chapter 3

Turning Toward Chicago

During all those early years in Battle creek, Dr.
Kellogg had been interested in helpful work for
humanity in Chicago. He thought we ought not to
be content to merely have a sort of sanitarium
heaven up in Battle Creek, but we ought to be
sharing some of our great opportunities with the
poor in Chicago, and for some years a great work
was carried on. By and by like all such work, it
went through the early stage of enthusiasm and
then there came a time when it began to wane and
enthusiasm evaporated out of it. W. S. Sadler, who
had charge of this work at that time, came up to
Battle Creek to see about getting a lot of young
people to come down and put new life into it. As
Dr. Kellogg was in Europe that summer and I was
practically acting superintendent, it became my
duty to take some responsibility about the matter
and I called the Board together and told them that I
thought it was just the thing to do. Mr. Sadler said
he did not want the trained nurses; he thought most
35
of them were too backslidden to love the needy
people in Chicago; he wanted members of the new
class of nurses who had been there only a few
weeks, to come down to work in the homes of the
people.

Unfortunately the Sanitarium Board did not see

much light in it; they said some of the young
people would probably go to the devil down in
Chicago, but I thought it would do them good to
get into direct contact with the needs of humanity. I
was so determined on having these young people
go down there that I would not listen to anything
else. By and by one member of the Board said,
“Dr. Paulson is pretty worn out; he needs a
vacation. Suppose we arrange to let Dr. and Mrs.
Paulson go down with these young people.” We
left the next day; left our little cottage we had just
rented at Lake Goguac, and brought with us forty
of these young people, to bury ourselves in the
heart of Chicago’s most needy district.

The proposition was that we should be self-

supporting, so we had to rustle for everything

36
except our room rent. A large building on the
corner of Twentieth and Wabash had already been
leased and was being used as a headquarters for our
work.

I got the students together before we left Rattle

Creek, and told them, “Now we have to support
ourselves after we arrive there,” and we only
accepted those who felt a call from God in their
hearts. I had never been in Chicago over night
before. Brother Sadler was there, but of course, he
could not support forty young people. None of
them were nurses, but I said to them after I arrived
in Chicago, “Maybe some of you could nurse some
cases. The Lord will help you to find the right kind
of jobs.” We appointed one of our number, Mrs.
Allison, who had been sent with us from Battle
Creek, to help look after the class, to take care of
the money we could earn, and we threw all our
money into her lap. I suppose that would pass for
socialism, but of their own accord, the class voted
to have, as far as their earnings were concerned,
“all things in common,” and truly we can say that
the same sweet spirit that prompted the early

37
disciples to this decision, hovered over this class in
a wonderful measure.

Whenever a group of people anywhere get the

spirit in their hearts that these young people had, it
will work satisfactorily as long as that spirit abides
in the soul. When that vanishes, then the plan of
saving everything in common also vanishes. That
is something some of the social reformers have not
taken into consideration.

I told the folks to spend a day thinking about

getting work, and praying about it, and the next day
we called them together and there were fifteen of
those girls said they would like to nurse. Then I
said we would have to pray for fifteen jobs. You
can believe what I am telling you or not, but there
are forty people alive who know what I am saying
to be true. The next thirty-six hours there were just
fifteen calls came in over the telephone for just that
kind of nurses; they did not want a trained nurse.
For instance, an old woman had broken her leg and
her son could not stay home to take care of her, etc.
I placed those girls out and they earned enough to

38
support all the rest of us if we had not done
anything. It seemed to me it was a divine certificate
that we were on the right track, and that it pays to
launch out into the deep.

Then the class was asked to seek God for

wisdom to lead them into the various channels such
as the Life Boat mission work, holding cottage
meetings, selling the Life Boat magazine, doing
gospel work in the jails, Workingmen’s Home, etc.,
where they would be able to do and receive the
most good, with, of course, the understanding that
as they acquired an experience in one line they
would take up other lines, so as to get an all-round
experience while there. We spent an hour every
morning holding an experience meeting and giving
instruction on methods of work. These were
precious occasions.

A few months later we were hard up for a

stenographer. I have observed that most
stenographers want to be well paid, and of course,
we had no money to hire an expensive
stenographer, so I said to Brother Sadler one day,

39
“Suppose we ask the Lord to send us a
stenographer?” So we made it our business to pray
for a stenographer. A couple of days after that, a
poor, shabby-looking English fellow edged his way
into my office and said:

“Are you Dr. Paulson?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do anything for a poor fellow?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

“I want a job.”

“What can you do?”

“I am a stenographer, sir.”

I am bound to say I did not expect my prayer

for a stenographer to be answered in just that kind
of a package, and when that fellow shambled into
my office in ragged clothes--a typical looking bum,
it was hard for me to think he came in answer to

40
my prayer. I did not know what to say, but replied:

“I have been praying for a stenographer.”

He said, “I have been praying for a job.”

Without stopping to think, I said a wonderfully

sensible thing then: I said, “I think you and I ought
to thank the Lord we met.”

He said, “All right, sir.”

I got down and thanked the Lord that this

young fellow who could do stenographic work had
come, and he thanked the Lord he had found a job.

I took him to Brother Sadler to try him out, and

he eyed him up and down suspiciously and took
him downstairs. By and by he came back and said:

“Say, if that fellow can write out what I have

just given him, he is a wonder.” Pretty soon he
came back again and said, “Upon my word, here it
is, every word just as I gave it.”

41
 I said, “You know you and I prayed for a
stenographer. You didn’t expect the Lord to send a
second rate or third rate stenographer when He
answered our prayers, did you?”

And Brother Sadler said, “Well, that’s so.”

The main thing in a stenographer is to be able

to take things down and transcribe them; it is not a
question of being on dress parade. He was a queer
freak; he would get sore-headed sometimes, and
one time I remember he did not like to take down
my talk so he sat back there when I was giving an
important talk and did not take it down at all. I
went to him afterwards and said:

“Say, man, why didn’t you take that down?”

“Well,” he said, “I can write it out.”

“I wish you would.”

The next morning he came and handed me

42
fourteen pages of typewritten matter, and for the
life of me I could hardly tell but what it was
verbatim. Yet he hardly had sense enough to do
other simple things that a child could do. He stayed
with us a couple of years and was a perfect God
send to us, and worked for his board and room and
a dollar a week for spending money.

The question is often raised as to whether it

really pays to labor for people who are in the slums
of wickedness and sin. A good many people say to
me, “Don’t you get taken in real often?” Yes, and
no. Once in a while some poor fellow that we do
our best to get on his feet goes back, gives up
everything and we naturally feel that our effort is
lost. And may be it is so far as he is concerned but
we have the satisfaction of knowing that at least we
have tried to do our duty. I would rather have the
spirit that would lift up a poor fallen fellow
creature and get “taken in” once in a while than to
live selfishly for myself and never do any of this
work for those who need it.

If we have sown the genuine gospel seed in

43
tears, in the day of Judgment we shall find that not
so much of it has been wasted as we may have
imagined; for the gospel seed is immortal, and, like
money, may pass through the hands of many before
it actually comes to the one whom God intends it
shall reach. For does not God say definitely, “My
word... shall not return unto me void”? That which,
from a human standpoint, may seem like a dismal
failure, when viewed from God’s standpoint, who
can watch it through its numerous windings down
to the end of time, is a signal triumph.

Doing rescue work in a city like Chicago is like

searching for pond lilies in a marsh. There is an
infinite number of reeds and rushes for each lily,
and it requires diligent effort to find the lilies.
Undoubtedly, thousands of the inhabitants in our
large cities have as effectually closed their own
probation as the tribes in the land of Canaan had
when the children of Israel came to take possession
of it. Yet there are jewels hidden in all this moral
rubbish. God’s providential hand has been seen in
so many different ways that it is clear that our work
for perishing humanity is ordered of God. Oh, that

44
our lives might become so filled with the sweetness
of Christ that those who still have within them a
desire for a better life may be led to us to be
pointed to the same unfailing Source of life that has
been imparted to us.

Not a word of criticism or fault-finding was

heard among the class of forty young people who
came from Battle Creek with Mrs. Paulson and me,
but the great thought uppermost in every mind was,
How can I best improve my heaven-sent
opportunities? Every morning Brother Sadler gave
instruction on methods of work, particular stress
being laid not so much on how to bring men to
Christ as on how to bring Christ to men. The Spirit
of God opened up the great truth that from God’s
standpoint Christ and humanity have changed
places, He being accounted sinful when He knew
no sin, we being accounted just while we are
ungodly. As a deeper significance of this
wonderful truth dawned upon the minds and hearts
of some of these workers who had attempted to
labor in God’s cause for years without receiving it,
tears of joy trickled down their cheeks, and an

45
intense longing was born in their hearts to give this
message to even the least of Christ’s brethren.

I learned more fully at that time than I ever

knew before, that people whose lives are given up
to self-sacrificing labor for others, experience the
reflex influence of it in their own lives. My work in
Chicago brought me much in contact with earth’s
downcast. I have struggled with morphine cases; I
have knelt down alongside their bed and asked God
to pity those poor sufferers, and I have seen those
persons go off quietly to sleep, and I have had them
tell me afterwards, “Doctor, that was a most
wonderful experience.” But I want to impress on
you the thought that it is not necessary for us to
come into some extreme crisis in order to pray.
You do not use the telephone merely when your
house gets on fire; so the time to pray is before you
get in trouble.

46
 Chapter 4

Results of Faith Applied to

Hopeless Cases
One night I was in the Life Boat mission that
we maintained on State street in Chicago. A man in
the audience was so drunken that he kept on
jumping up trying to say something, and this
tended to break up the meeting. I took him by the
arm and persuaded him to accompany me upstairs.
I tried to impress upon him the importance of
becoming delivered from the liquor habit. He said
something about being a drunkard for forty years
and that it was no use. I felt impressed that the
Lord could do something for the poor fellow that I
could not. In spite of his objection I succeeded in
getting him down on his knees and I earnestly
prayed the Lord to deliver this poor man, and told
him he must pray. He said he couldn’t, he didn’t
know how. I told him just to ask the Lord to deliver
him from the liquor habit and finally he blurted out
these very words:

47
 “Lord, If you can do anything for a poor
broken-down bum like me, I wish you would.
Amen.”

That did not sound like a very remarkable

prayer to me, but evidently God saw a bigger
prayer in the poor man’s soul for he arose from his
knees practically sober.

I took him down again to the mission meeting

and intended to see him when it was over but he
slipped out unobserved. Six weeks later he came
back well dressed and clothed and in his right
mind. He wanted to see “the doctor with whiskers,”
but I was not there that night. When opportunity
came to testify he rose and said that six weeks
previous he had come into the mission a drunken
outcast; his wife had left him in sheer despair, his
employer had discharged him, his tools had been
pawned for drink, but the doctor took him up stairs
and got him down on his knees to pray and
something happened to him: he went out of the
mission with a new power in his life.

48
 He hunted up his wife and told her that if she
would come back and live with him he would give
her no further trouble. He told his employer that if
he would help him to get his tools he could keep
sober now, and he said from that hour he had no
appetite for whisky. In other words, he had gotten
some pollen from another world and it had
fertilized his soul. That represents what every man
needs who is a victim of some enslaving habit. He
does not need merely talk, he needs a new impulse,
and that from a higher source.

***

I knew Dick Lane who stole as early as he

could remember. He stole from his mother on her
deathbed, he stole while over in the State prison.
He worked in the kitchen and a farmer came in to
sell chickens to them. While he was selling the
chickens, Dick Lane wiggled one out of sight and
into the oven, and one of the prisoners who saw
him do it told the Warden. The farmer insisted that
he had brought in twelve chickens, yet there were

49
only eleven to be paid for; but Dick Lane was
sharp enough to know something was up and he
slipped it out of the oven and into the ash pile and
by the time the Warden got around, the chicken
wasn’t in the oven. Dick said, “You wouldn’t think
that of me, would you?” So the other prisoner got a
reprimand for accusing him falsely.

Dick was lazy. He lay for fourteen days in a

dark dungeon with only bread and water every day,
and when he had eaten the bread, he would wet his
fingers and feel around to see if he could find an
extra crumb. But he did that rather than work in the
stone quarry.

One night he went into a mission in Chicago

and got something. After that he worked for a
dollar a day cleaning windows in the Record-
Herald building, and that is no snap. Dick Lane
was usually on hand at the Life Boat mission and
told his story to men who came in. Before his death
he had risen until he was in charge of a department
in the Record-Herald building.

50
 Can the Lord save crooks? Certainly. Dick
Lane said that plenty of times he wanted to be
honest, but when he saw money, he couldn’t help
taking it. After his conversion he had the chance to
steal unlimitedly but he didn’t do it.

***

One day in our Chicago medical missionary

work a policeman brought to us a man who had
been ten days in the gutter and was apparently at
the point of death. However, physiological
remedies and careful nursing soon wrought a
marvelous transformation. I then learned from him
that he had stood up in one of the Chicago missions
again and again and asked for prayers, and yet had
always gone back to drink. I assured him that God
was not only willing but anxious to deliver him
from his bondage; that he must be manufacturing
the chains for his own slavery.

I soon discovered that he had an abnormal

appetite for mustard, pepper, fiery spices,
condiments, juicy beefsteaks, and tea and coffee,

51
all of which produce a thirst that water cannot
satisfy, and really were constantly arousing the
awful craving for liquor which was sweeping him
from his feet in spite of the prayers of the mission
workers, just as certainly as a hot stove would
produce blisters on the one who would persist in
laying his hands on it.

I advised him to go to our Workingmen’s

Home and eat rice, well cooked grains, juicy fruits,
refreshing vegetables and nourishing dairy
products, and abandon those artificial, thirst-
producing foods. He did not seem to appreciate the
importance of my advice, but promised,
nevertheless, to carry out my suggestions.

For a few days everything went well. He had

absolutely no desire for liquor. Then he visited
friends on the North side who invited him to dine
with them. The meal consisted of pork chops and
all those other wretched things that are really the
devil’s toboggan slide to the saloon door for all
those who have inherited the liquor appetite. He
told me afterward that before he had finished the

52
meal the craving for liquor so overpowered him
that he would if necessary have walked into the
mouth of hell for it to quench his thirst.

He went to the nearest saloon. Then he was ten

days in the gutter. The officers of the law again
brought him to us. He was so dropsical that his skin
had burst in several places, and the fluid was
oozing out. To all appearances, he had only a few
hours to live; but God, in answer to our prayers,
blessed the simple remedies we administered, and
in a short time he was practically restored.

Then he told me he had discovered the

difference between eating for strength and eating
for drunkenness (Eccl. 10:17), and henceforth
would carry out my dietetic advice to the letter.

***

One of our workers was visiting in one of the

toughest places in Chicago. It was in a back alley
where a family was living which had five or six
children. The father was sick, I presume with

53
tuberculosis, and the frail mother tried to support
the family by taking in washings. The worker
volunteered to take home with her for a few days
the oldest girl, a child of seven or eight years, so as
to lighten the burden to that extent. The little girl
loved her new friend devotedly; and soon the
worker discovered to her amazement that her own
hair had become infected with vermin. That worker
did not say, “Oh, well, I am cleanly, and of good
habits and have a good reputation, what difference
does it make if I do harbor a few lice in my hair?”
No, indeed! She went after those invaders in dead
earnest, and did not rest until she knew that her
head was delivered from the last one of them.

You say she showed good sense. Certainly; but

I want to remind you that a few sins inside the head
are a thousand times worse than a few loathsome
bugs on the outside. God will not transplant sin
into the next world any more than a sensible
housekeeper would want to buy second hand
furniture and put in into her own house if she knew
it was infected with bedbugs. Sin is a horrible,
loathsome thing. It cost the death of God’s own

54
Son to furnish the antitoxin necessary to destroy it.
God will never take you or me into heaven unless
we give Him a chance to save us from known sin
down here. Ask God to make you hate sin as much
as you hate bedbugs and other vermin; then He will
have a chance to help you get rid of it.

As a physician, I desire to see people delivered

from headache, intercostal neuralgia, gastric ulcers,
neuritis, rheumatism, and all those other physical
torments. But I ten times more desire to see them
cured of their sins. If I did not, I might better be a
horse doctor; for when we reach the end of the
journey we shall realize that to be saved from sin is
the most important experience that could possibly
come to us in this life.

But sin is a comfortable thing to have. If you

talk to a gambler and a poor outcast girl they will
say, “I am all right, look out for yourself.” The
person isn’t sensitive. The man who isn’t soaked
with sin is sensitive to the progress of it.

Possibly there are some sins that you have been

55
clinging to all this while, that over and over again
God has put his finger on, saying, “My child, let
Me help you get saved from them;” and perhaps
you have said, “Oh, nearly everybody does those
things! I prefer to compromise with them and put
them under tribute.” Then remember that they will
become a snare to you. There is no more sense in
your clinging to pet sins because other people do,
than there would be in your keeping bedbugs in
your bedroom because you knew some of your
neighbors who had them.

In the dark corners of our large cities we see

the natural results of selling ourselves for naught.
Our cities are a perfect cesspool. They are the place
into which everything drains. I was never before so
much impressed with the absolute necessity of the
gospel to break the bondage of sin as when seeking
the lost jewels amid all the moral rubbish found in
Chicago in those early days, and on the other hand
I learned as never before and saw it illustrated by
many shining examples that whomsoever the Son
sets free is free indeed.

56
 I remember an Irishman who was converted at
the Life Boat mission. He prayed and struggled to
be delivered from booze, but said his civilization
broke down whenever he passed a saloon. He was
finally delivered from the appetite and the Lord set
him free.

When we see a man who was a terror to his

family, with a spirit in him that no prison discipline
has been able to subdue, change about and become
a meek and peaceful follower of the lowly
Nazarene; his children, who before were whipped
if they did not steal just so much each day, now
clothed and fed; the wife, who before sat in
indescribable want and misery, now happy and
well,--then we feel assured that some one has been
“lifted from the miry clay” and has been set free by
the Son of God. To reach these classes, one must
go where they are and work for them whole-
heartedly.

Once a man had fallen through the ice, and

some people were trying to help him out by
thrusting a plank at him. It soon became icy so that

57
each time he tried to take hold of it his hand
slipped off. Finally he gasped, “For God’s sake
give me the warm end of the plank!” And when
they thrust him the other end of the plank his hands
clung to it and his life was saved. Perhaps you and
I are constantly holding out to people the frozen
end of the plank. If so, may God help us to reach
them the warm end.

I would rather the Master would come and find

me hunting for pearls in the moral swamps of our
large cities than to find me indifferent to their
dangerous condition. I remember several years ago
there was a woman drowning in Lake Michigan
while two hundred men and boys stood on the
wharf any one of whom could have rescued her.
One stole her pocketbook and all were criticising
the life savers who were trying to reach the spot,
but not one of those two hundred attempted to pull
her out of the water. I don’t wish to be lined up
with that crowd in the Judgment.

***

58
 At our training school on Wabash Avenue I
remember an interesting case of a dressmaker who
needed rescuing. As she was returning to her home
one evening she was suddenly captured by three
men, forcibly dragged into a saloon and compelled
to swallow some whisky. They did not, however,
have opportunity to carry out their evil designs for
she succeeded in tearing herself away from them
and reaching our training school building, where
she fell exhausted on the steps. She was taken into
the ward and kept there until her friends could be
notified of her whereabouts. The next day she went
home, finished some work she had on hand and
came back and pled with the matron of the ward to
be allowed to remain there for a time. She said, “I
have been so impressed with what I have seen here
that it seems if I am turned out I shall be eternally
lost.” She remained a week and was converted. She
had been raised in a Christian family, but felt that
she had never experienced a sound conversion until
she came here.

There was one little boy in Chicago who did

not know who his parents were. That boy was

59
sleeping on the sidewalk and was so dirty you
could not tell what he looked like. He and a little
girl had been following a woman who seemed to
have charge of them. One of our patients ran across
him and got the child and brought him home. Some
one said, “Oh, that is one of Hulda’s kids.” Hulda
was the degenerate woman who was dragging them
down to ruin. The boy was placed in a good home
and now he is a bright, beautiful young man.

***

On hearing the singing in the mission one

night, a man and woman turned aside. They were
going to a cheap theatre, but she heard them
singing of Jesus and she said, “I am going in.” The
man said, “You are a fool. That is a mission.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, I am going in.

You can come along if you like.”

So they came in. By and by when the call came

to come up front, she said, “I am going forward.”
He said, “You have gone stark crazy.”

60
 They were both crooks, but she was converted
to Christ that night. She came and saw me from
time to time. She said, “I will never give up
praying for my husband.” And one night about six
years afterward he came in and gave his heart to
God. To-day that woman is an earnest missionary.
She has brought I suppose at least five hundred
people to Christ.

At the World’s Fair in St. Louis, I stepped into

a mission where a man was talking to the people
and telling how he had been beaten on the head
with a brick in Chicago and he had later rented a
room of this same woman. She had rooms to rent
and always asked the Lord to send people she
could help. So she prayed for this roomer and he
was converted and became a splendid mission
worker and ran a mission on the North side in
Chicago.

I could talk to you by the hour of the people

helped by this woman; and it all started when she
turned aside to hear the song in the mission. It

61
doesn’t pay to rush ahead so fast. God had a
message for her in the burning bush.

***

I remember a young man who had been with

Lord Wolseley in his famous military expedition
into Egypt. Afterwards he became so cursed by the
drink evil that when he finally dropped into our
Life Boat mission in Chicago he had been drinking
steadily for eight days. During that time he had not
had his clothes off nor had he sat down to eat a
meal.

The strains of the sweet gospel music were

wafted into the street through the open door and
reached his benumbed brain. Someone invited him
in. He thought it would be a chance to at least sit
down in a chair and rest.

He accepted the invitation to give his heart to

God. The Spirit of God impressed him that he must
also give up tobacco, to which he was as much a
slave as to liquor. This poor degraded wanderer

62
said, “Yes, Lord, if you will help me I will give it
up.” Then he began to pray and a new peace and
assurance came into his life.

As he walked out of the mission he threw his

pipe and tobacco into the gutter, saying, “That is
where you belong.”

He later became a faithful missionary nurse, led

many other men to the foot of the Cross, and to-day
is a conscientious Christian man, loved and
respected by all who know him.

***

It means something to be a soul-winner. It takes

courage to straighten up your own life so the Lord
can answer your prayers for others.

When I was converted I had to get something

fixed up with an old lady who lived next to us. We
had some words and as she was a woman of action
as well as words she jabbed a pitchfork into my
ankle, and then I said some more things; and it left

63
a bad spirit. When I was converted I had to fix
things up with her. I couldn’t seek the Lord when I
knew I had had a row with the Irish woman. I had a
lot of other things to do; I had to see a boy whose
eyes I had blackened in school.

These things have to be done before the Lord

can answer our prayers and I hope the Lord will
save me from ever taking any position that shall
result in leading a human soul away from God.

The question is whether there is such a thing as

answer to prayer. You know we are living in a very
skeptical age, in a very material age. Men are
willing to believe in a wireless telegraphy that they
can neither see nor hear, they are perfectly willing
to believe in the X-ray that can look into their
bones and tell that story but are not as ready to
believe that God can answer prayer, which is just
as real.

I heard Detective Burns tell his wonderful story

of finding crooks and he gave as the secret of his
success that God was on his side instead of on the

64
side of the crook. In every case sooner or later God
compelled the crook to advertise the fact that he
was a crook and helped him to catch him. I have
thought about that a great deal and believe he had
gotten hold of something I sometimes fear some
preachers have not grasped any too well.

We had a preacher out here at our sanitarium a

while ago whom I asked how he happened to come
out here. He said, “Well, my work is so wearing,
and particularly praying the pastoral prayer is what
broke me up.” I could not quite sympathize with
the good brother. The trouble with him was that his
pastoral prayer had become formal, and I should
think that would become a wearisome thing.

I early had an introduction to this question of

prayer. When I was a boy eight years old I lost my
jackknife, which was a more serious matter for me
than it would have been to lose an automobile now,
even if I had one. I asked the Lord to help me find
my jackknife and He did and so I got a start as a
mere youngster in reference to prayer. In Nebraska
in a campmeeting, they asked me to talk to the

65
children and I asked how many of them prayed.
Nearly all held up their hands. Then I asked how
many expected to get answers to their prayers and
then only about half as many held up their hands.
That set me to thinking a great deal. Isn’t that the
way with most grown-up people who profess to be
Christians?

I have traveled far and near, have mingled in a

confidential way with thousands of people, and I
believe there are very few people who have at all
gotten out of prayer what they might. They say
prayers to God but they don’t pray to God. He
seems too far off. Those of you who have just
stood on the outer edge of that thing I want you to
know there is something more for you.

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 Chapter 5

A Time of Testing and

Other Experiences
I will skip over some of our many interesting
experiences. After a while we opened up the
Branch sanitarium on the South side, Chicago,
which had been closed for some time, and Mrs.
Paulson and I took care of the patients there. We
did not have very good facilities nor opportunities
for medical work, but the place was full all the time
and people stayed there and they got well; and the
Lord helped us to do a good work in connection
with our many lines of mission work in Chicago.
But I saw circumstances were against us. What we
needed to do was to establish a sanitarium work out
in the country. Meanwhile the Battle Creek
sanitarium burned and so they stopped helping us
in any way financially. Up to that time they had
helped us and co-operated with us. But they
notified us after the fire that they could give us no
more help. “You can close up everything in

67
Chicago, or carry it on, just as you like,” was the
word that came to us. I elected to carry some of it
on.

From a human standpoint at that time the

Chicago work had a sorry outlook. Some of our
best workers naturally went to Battle Creek and
they were of course needed there. Our gentlemen
nurses had worked themselves nearly to death and
they went home for vacations. Our folks had been
turning away patients every day on account of lack
of room. If there ever was a time when the Chicago
work needed the Lord’s tender mercy it was then.
My only comfort was in the fact that the Lord
knew all about it.

We had many perplexities. From a human

standpoint our outlook was almost disheartening,
but then there were things that showed up on the
other side of the question. A poor woman who
spoke eight languages came in. She could talk with
almost everybody on earth, but she had never
learned to talk with God. She had had several
surgical operations that were complete failures and

68
she was in despair. Somebody directed her to our
missionary dispensary and told her that we were
honest. Dr. Colloran examined her, and she was
brought to the sanitarium; she had another surgical
operation and directly afterward was converted.
We had a number of similar indications that the
Lord was helping in spite of the discouraging
circumstances.

***

In the spring of 1903 I was asked to leave the

Chicago work for a three months’ trip through
Europe in the interest of the medical missionary
cause. I somehow felt in my bones that when I
would come back I should be able to accomplish
more for Chicago. If I had had any other view,
nothing else, --no board or committee on earth,
could have made me believe that I should leave it
for a single night. I had always wanted to go to
Europe, but when brought face to face with the
opportunity my attachment for the work in sin-
cursed Chicago far overwhelmed it. But I went.

69
 I saw and learned many things while in Europe,
but I think the best thing I saw was up in Norway. I
was called up there to see a patient and there was a
treatment room. One of our nurses had gone back
to Norway and instructed her brother how to give
treatments. The way up to his treatment room on
the second floor was through an alley. I walked up
there, and I remember now his sitz bath was just an
ordinary barrel that had been sawed down. His full
bath tub was a box he had built and calked so it
would not leak; and for his Russian or Turkish bath
he had simply some cloth nailed on frame and
stuck together, with another on top that the patients
stuck their heads up through; then he had some
alcohol under there and steam; and then he had his
own brawny husky hands and a great big heart
back of it all.

I met there the priest of that town, the

schoolmaster, and the leading druggist, and asked
them, “What are you doing here?” “Well,” they
said, “The doctors could not do anything for us and
this fellow is curing us.”

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 He was a fine, splendid man; he would not
have been a better man if he had had an elaborate
outfit. His outfit was cheap but he was not. I would
rather have excellent men and a cheap outfit than to
have an expensive outfit and cheap men. I have
seen some elaborate outfits but something about
the workers impressed me as cheap. Let us have
first of all, mighty workers and then they will do
mighty things with humble apparatus. The inside
history of the building-up of any enterprise is
largely written in prose, not in poetry. There is a
great deal of God’s work that does not have a halo
over it unless you have it in your soul.

When I see people planning and devising and

scheming how they are going to do great things for
God, and ask, “Have you talked to God about it?”
and they say, “Oh, no, it is plain enough on the
face of it that it ought to be done,” I feel sorry for
them. There is such a thing as knowing the mind of
God; and I am not so sure but that is a truth that
needs to be emphasized more to-day than all the
others put together. You can teach young people
the message and how to give people the right kind

71
of diet and all that, but they shrink from acquiring
an experience that enables them to know the mind
of God; and shrinking from that, their enterprise
must be written in failure, even though they may
have an expensive outfit.

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 Chapter 6

The Story of Hinsdale

When I returned from Europe it became more
and more apparent to us that the heart of a great
city is not a very favorable place for a sanitarium
effort, so we looked up various openings in the
vicinity of the City where we might establish
headquarters for a sanitarium work. One or two
seemed quite favorable but they ultimately passed
beyond our reach.

I made it a special matter of prayer and kept

looking for a favorable location. One day Mr. C. B.
Kimbell, a wealthy man who lived in Hinsdale and
who had been helped wonderfully healthwise in
our Chicago sanitarium, came to me and said,
“Doctor, you ought to start a sanitarium in
Hinsdale. That is a beautiful town; I would like to
see a sanitarium out there. There is a piece of
property out there that is just the thing for a
sanitarium.” So he brought Mrs. Paulson and me
out one day and drove around here with us. He
73
pointed out a magnificent piece of property, just on
the edge of the village, comprising ten acres,
having a brook running through it, entirely wooded
with fruit trees, berry bushes, shrubbery, etc., with
two houses, independent water plant, sewerage,
etc., and said: “This is just what you ought to have
for a sanitarium.” I had no idea at the time that that
was a prophetic wish. Weeds covered everything
on these grounds, but in spite of the neglected
condition I could see this was an excellent location.

Later on, the Lord moved on the heart of Mr.

Kimbell to buy this property, and he came to me
and said, “Dr. Paulson, I tell you what I will do: I
will buy this ground and deed it to you people and
you can pay for it in twenty yearly installments
without any interest.” I saw the hand of Providence
in that thing, so I said, “That is a go.”

I knew it just as well as I knew, after attending

a convention in Des Moines some years ago, that
the Life Boat magazine was going to be a “go.” I
went home and ordered 25,000 copies printed, and
they thought me crazy. A few weeks later, I

74
ordered them to print 50,000 copies and had to
agree to pay for them myself before it could be
done. We had to print a second edition. A few
months later, we printed an edition of 155,000. I
had the same feeling in my bones about this
Hinsdale business.

I know it is worth while to put the best you

have into the dough. If you have a little piece of
yeast it does no good while up on the shelf, but if
you put it in the bread it grows and pretty soon the
whole thing is leavened. I don’t know how many of
you understand about bread making, but I do. I
used to have to make it for my mother. I have
friends who have five times the talent I have, but
they never get it into the dough. They are too busy,
and say, “Oh yes, Paulson, you have the gift for
such things, I don’t want to do it.” Their leaven is
on the shelf and never gets into the dough. Put
some in and in a little while you have ten times
more than you had. It doesn’t grow on the shelf.
That is a secret I want to impress upon you, that
what you give away is what you keep. Don’t set a
price of so much per square yard. Give it away and

75
it will come back one hundred fold. Don’t forget
that.

I then began to look for someone to come out

here to establish a sanitarium work. Mrs. Paulson
and I wanted to stay by the work in Chicago. But it
came to be spring and Mrs. Paulson said to me,
“We will have to go out ourselves.” You remember
there was a man in the Bible--Elisha--who sent his
staff by his servant to place on the sick child’s face,
but Elisha had to go himself before the child was
restored. There are some things you have to do
yourself. You can not delegate them to anyone
else. So Mrs. Paulson and I came out here.

You may imagine, with no financial help

coming from the Battle Creek sanitarium after the
fire and with our little medical work we were
carrying on in Chicago, and our small means being
used up in rescue work we were doing, etc., that we
did not have any money; and we knew no one to
whom we could look for any. But we felt
impressed it was the thing to do so we moved out
here March 4, 1904, without any money in sight to

76
ship our few household goods.

We did not move out here for our health. I had

to borrow money to ship our goods out, but I had
the sweet conviction in my soul that I was
launching out in obedience to a divine providence
and I have not any doubt that I will live to see it
done.

We moved into a little house on the grounds--

the tramps had carried away the doors--and came
out here to start a sanitarium. It was a great joke to
my friends; they thought I was a lunatic. They said,
“There is Dr. Paulson moving out to a rich
residence town to start a sanitarium without money
enough to take his bed along.” They had infallible
proof that I was a lunatic; but, by the way, several
of those same friends have been around here since
and wanted jobs. The institution is here. Why? I
knew God wanted this sort of thing near Chicago,
and I had the willing heart and God helped us to do
it. Much has been accomplished; not what might
have been accomplished if we had been closer to
the Lord, but it has not been an absolute failure all

77
these years. Something told me it was the thing to
do.

No one had lived on these grounds for seven

years so the weeds and underbrush had grown up to
the lower branches of the trees. Parts of the
grounds were a perfect jungle. Mrs. Paulson and I
knelt down on that hillside and asked the Lord to
send us a hundred dollars to help clear up the
grounds. Two days later a business man whom I
had seen but twice and whose name I did not know,
walked into my brother’s office in Chicago and
said, “Doesn’t the Doctor need some money out in
Hinsdale?” He said, “Yes, he does need money, he
always needs money.” The man pulled out a
hundred dollars, handed them to my brother, and
walked away. My brother brought this money out
to me. I said, “That is quick returns; I rang up
‘Central’ for that day before yesterday,” and I took
that as a sort of omen that there was going to be
something happening out in Hinsdale. It was to me
an indication, an earmark, that I was on the right
track.

78
 Shortly afterward an old lady I knew in a
general way, who belonged to our church in
Chicago, sent for me. She said, “I have just got
$2,500 in on a loan and can just as well let you
have that for a while, and will lend it to you.” I
gave her my note for that. My stock was beginning
to go up in the market, but I had a good many other
difficulties in the way.

I ran up against one particular obstacle I could

not surmount. Then it came to me that on these
premises we ought to do something especially for
the sick poor if this sanitarium work got under
way. So I told the Lord that if He would help me to
surmount that special obstacle I would see to it that
the poor of the earth were blessed here; and that
very day that obstacle gave way and I was able to
go on. When our Board was finally organized I told
them, “Unless you are going to help me do
something for the poor here there is no use to go
on, for I am going to do something for them. Let
my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth when I cease to be
a missionary to earth’s sorrowing and distressed

79
multitudes. We are going to act in Hinsdale what
we preached in Chicago. Those who sit in darkness
will see a great light and the poor shall have the
gospel acted to them as well as preached to them.
There shall be one spot left on this selfish earth
where a man cannot be so poor but what there is a
helping hand extended to him. We shall herald it
far and wide and shall fill this whole ten-acre lot
with the sick of earth and minister to them the
healing forces of nature.”

On my bended knees I promised God that if he

would help me to build this sanitarium, I would
make it a blessing to the sick poor and I shall do so,
as surely as there is a God in heaven.

Mr. Kimbell was the first president of our

Organization. He said, “I am interested in the poor,
I also am interested in the rich. Why not let us start
to do something for the people first of all who can
afford to pay, and then when we get under way we
can establish a work for the sick poor.” I agreed to
that. The establishment of the Good Samaritan Inn,
to which I shall allude later, is the fulfillment of my

80
vow.

We issued bonds on the grounds here, but the

problem was to sell the bonds. Some of you know
what kind of a proposition I had in selling bonds in
a work that was not started at all except in
anticipation.

I knew a gentleman nurse who was traveling

with a wealthy old gentleman who had been up at
Battle Creek, and he gave me a tip that the old
gentleman might buy some of our bonds if he was
approached right. So I went in to Chicago, took
dinner with him, and told him what we were going
to do here and that I wanted him to buy $5,000 of
my bonds. He listened to me patiently, and then
said, “Oh, you folks are really a pack of grafters. I
have been in Battle Creek and they charged me
seventy-five dollars a week and I didn’t get much
benefit either. I don’t want any of my money in
your work.” He said it good-naturedly enough, but
you know even if you apply a mustard plaster
good-naturedly it will still raise blisters, and his
remarks were beginning to have the same effect on

81
me. I felt impressed to say to him, “When you get
over on the other shore you will wish you had
some of your money in my kind of business, for I
am going to do some work for God out in
Hinsdale.” He got up from the table and when he
got off five or six steps he turned and said to me,
“Say, I rather like the looks of your face, and when
you have to have five thousand dollars, let me
know.” I did and I got five thousand dollars all
right enough. Then we were ready to begin
business so we began to break ground for a small
building.

Mr. Kimbell said, “Now you folks start the

sanitarium work in a small way, and when you get
that under way I will help you to build a hundred-
thousand-dollar building higher up on the hill. I
think there is a good deal more sense in spending
my money in building a sanitarium than investing
it as Carnegie does in building libraries.”

We organized the Hinsdale Sanitarium and

Benevolent Association on a charitable,
nondividend, non-profit-sharing basis, in such a

82
way that no one could ever get anything out of it
except his mere salary; the constituency or
membership being made up of those who come
here and have been connected with the work for a
year, provided they are over twenty-one years old.
They lose their membership when they disconnect
permanently. These members elect the Board, so
all who are connected with the work really have a
voice in its management and a personal
responsibility for its welfare. So we started in with
a good deal of enthusiasm in the fall of 1904. We
broke ground and built during the winter.

Mr. Kimbell went out to Glendale, Cal., to

spend the winter, and while there was suddenly
stricken down and died after a few days’ illness.
His plans about our grounds of course remained
but that was all the help we received from him. I
felt as though my last friend on earth, financially
speaking, was dead. There was no one else I could
look to, to take hold and help us. I naturally could
not look to the Battle Creek sanitarium people, and
my church people had a sanitarium in Moline
which they were struggling to pay the debt on.

83
 We thought we had money enough to build
what is now the first wing containing seventeen
bedrooms, but as usual the expenses exceeded our
calculations and when we reached the roof, our
money gave out. The workmen were clamoring for
pay and I knew no one to whom I could appeal for
the necessary thousand dollars to finish the roof.

So I gathered together our few workers and we

prayed for a thousand dollars. The last one to take
part was my nephew Carl Clough, who was at that
time about nine or ten years old. I will never forget
how he prayed, “Lord, send some money to the
sanitarium.” As I walked up over the hill following
that season of prayer, the conviction came to me
that if I had drifted so far away that the Lord
couldn’t hear my prayer, He would hear the boy’s
prayer and answer. A few days later I received a
letter from a young man out in Kansas who said, “I
hear you are trying to start a sanitarium at
Hinsdale. I have just sold my farm and I have
$1,150 that I can just as well let you have for a
time as not.” That money put the roof on the

84
building.

A little later we needed more money before we

were actually ready to take in patients, but just then
a good woman up in Stevens Point, Wis., loaned us
a few hundred dollars which helped to tide us over.

Our first patient came before the front steps

were built. She had to be carried up from the depot
on a stretcher, but she was gloriously restored;
went home to be a gymnasium teacher in her home
town. Somehow, like the first hundred dollars that
we received in answer to prayer, I took her
restoration as an omen for good--as a sort of first-
fruits of a great army of invalids that was to follow,
and so it has proven to be.

The Hinsdale sanitarium building was

dedicated on September 20,1905. Judge Orrin N.
Carter, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of
Illinois, gave the principal dedicatory address. The
best people of the town came to bid us Godspeed.
Within three weeks every room was filled.

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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

86
attempt another enlargement, or build some
cottages to provide for the overflow.

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.

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

87
wouldn’t build his house, and left the money with
us.

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:

“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.”

88
 By and by the man staggered in and Mr. Hoyt
introduced himself, saying:

“I am Mr. Hoyt from Hinsdale,” and he replied,

“Oh yes, you have quite a wad of my wife’s money
down there.”

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.

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.”

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 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.

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 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.

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

91
December, 1908.

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.

***

I want to emphasize again the importance of

prayer and of following the guiding hand of
Providence in all your work for God.

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

92
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.

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

93
have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

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.

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.

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

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they suppose they need it.

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.

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 Chapter 8

Founding a Home for

the Fatherless
Way back in the old Chicago days we carried
on an extensive rescue work for girls. The Lord
had wonderfully blessed this effort, but we found
that we were leaving the fish too near the water; so
even before we moved our sanitarium work out to
Hinsdale we had rented a little cottage out in West
Hinsdale as a Rescue Home. But it was not
properly equipped. We could not persuade the
owners to make the necessary sanitary
improvements. It was also nearly two miles away
from our sanitarium work.

We began to appeal to charitable people to help

us do something better. Little by little money came
in in various ways until we had a thousand dollars
in our treasury. But one day when I was down to
the Rescue Home I found three girls and two or
three babies besides Mrs. Swanson, the matron, all

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occupying one little bedroom. The need of
something better impressed me so strongly that I
came back and told our people, “We will build a
Rescue Home--the best in the State of Illinois, and
we will do it now.” We paid our thousand dollars
for a piece of land near the sanitarium. That took
all the money we had.

Then we let the contract for a four-story

building containing thirty rooms and agreed to
meet the bills every thirty days. Something told me
we would get the money. You remember we had
this extensive enlargement of the sanitarium on our
hands at the same time, but we went to work. Our
sanitarium family lifted to the breaking point. We
raised nine hundred dollars in one evening from
our own family, and then God put it in the hearts of
other people to help us.

Happening to go up to the Battle Creek

Sanitarium, I was invited to give a talk on Sabbath
afternoon, where I told something of what we were
trying to do. Some of the patients helped
generously, and so did some of the doctors and

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others. The next day after the meeting I felt
impressed to go up the street and visit the mother
of one of the lady physicians. When I rapped on the
door, she came and said, “I know what you came
for--to get twenty-five dollars from me.” I said,
“Yes, but how did you happen to know?” “Well,”
she said, “I attended your meeting yesterday
afternoon and I promised the Lord that if he sent
you to my house I would give you twenty-five
dollars.” That was the only private residence I
visited.

A very poor woman gave me twenty-five

dollars. The next person who saw her name said,
“Doctor, you ought to go and return that money.
That woman can’t afford to give twenty-five
dollars to the Rescue Home.” So I went and saw
this woman again, and she said, “You don’t need to
let anybody worry you about that, Dr. Paulson, that
wasn’t my money at all. Someone let me have that
to give to some worthy cause, and I never found
anything that just appealed to me till I heard you
tell about the Rescue Home project.” To make a
long story short I brought back one thousand and

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twenty-five dollars with me.

Then a sick woman wrote me from St. Louis to

come over and see her. I replied that I was too
busy, she would have to come to me. She wrote
back that she was too sick to come, but if I would
come over she would give me a hundred dollars for
the Rescue Home. I went; could do nothing for her
medically, but had a word of prayer at her bedside
and she wrote me a check for two hundred dollars.
A very worldly contractor who drank heavily gave
me four hundred dollars. He said he believed in
that kind of religion.

It was remarkable how in various ways God

raised up people to help. Dr. Frank Gunsaulus, the
great pulpit orator of Chicago, came out and gave a
magnificent lecture in the auditorium of the
Hinsdale Club house at a mass meeting, entirely in
the interest of the Rescue Home. The invitation to
this meeting was signed by the president of the
Village Board, president of the Woman’s Club,
president of the Civic League, and each of the
pastors in town. We raised one thousand eight

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hundred dollars that night, eight men giving one
hundred dollars a piece, among them such men as
John C. Fetzer, Mr. Butler of the Butler Paper
Company, ex-Congressman Childs, and Mr.
Beidler and others. All told, forty different people
gave each one hundred dollars for the Rescue
Home building. Widows and orphans sent in their
little mites, and finally different people each
undertook the expense of furnishing a room. There
were more people who wanted to furnish rooms
than we had rooms to furnish, and the building was
dedicated free from debt.

It is not a home for degenerate girls and their

babies, but rather for those who have been more
sinned against than have been sinners. Some of
them came from homes that would astonish you, as
far as good opportunities are concerned--but
something was missing: the mother had not had
time to help her daughter, but she had plenty of
time later to have her heart broken over her girl.
We have taken the girls in and helped them over
this dark hour in their experience, found work for
them as domestics, found good homes for their

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babies when they could not keep them themselves,
and if for any reason they lost their jobs they would
come back until we found them work again. Of
every one hundred girls that go through the Home
we know that eighty-seven or ninety are making
good.

We have not merely been kind to these girls;

we have brought the gospel of Christ to them.
Eight girls were baptized in the Home last year
(1913) and many others had deep spiritual
awakenings.

This Home has absolutely no income except the

little that some of the girls can pay, yet it never
gets behind but a trifle, and rarely has much of
anything ahead. When they run short somebody
prays and God puts it in the heart of someone to
answer those prayers. Just the other day the
superintendent bought a sewing machine for the
Home. The Company sold it for half price and
promised to wait until the money could be raised.
Our people prayed, and a few days later a stranger
stopping at the sanitarium who had heard about the

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sewing machine wanted to have an opportunity to
pay for it.

Several years ago when we were maintaining a

Branch of the Home on the South side in Chicago
the matron needed coal. She told me she ought to
have a whole car load as that was the cheapest way
to buy it, but that would cost one hundred dollars. I
told her to pray. She said, “Pray for coal?” I said,
“Yes, why not? Don’t you suppose the Lord knows
the coal bin is empty?” She and her workers
prayed, and I prayed. A few days later I received a
letter from an old lady down in Illinois written in a
tremulous hand--just three lines. I had never heard
from her before, nor since. She said, “I felt
impressed you needed a hundred dollars for your
work in Chicago, so I am enclosing it herewith.”
When I took that letter and the hundred dollars in
to the workers in Chicago, tears came in their eyes.
They knew their prayer had been specially
answered.

The trouble with some folks is, their prayers are

so general that if they were answered they would

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never know it, and if they were not answered they
would never miss it. The Lord doesn’t always
answer our prayers directly. He sometimes has a
special purpose in the delay. At other times He
gives us something else that is better for us; but
God hears every sincere prayer offered in the name
of Christ.

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 Chapter 9

Trusted a Bank That

Never Fails
About the time we were making our last
enlargement of the sanitarium and building the
Rescue Home, we felt the time had come to
definitely establish our work for the sick poor, the
Good Samaritan Inn. So we purchased the property
across the street. God put it in the hearts of some to
help us and we began to take in the sick. We had
some very striking experiences in the way of
restoration, but strangely enough I could not get
hold of any money to put in a heating plant. I
presented its needs to several and prayed earnestly
about it, but fall came, the house was cold, and the
patients had to be moved over to the sanitarium.
That is a chapter in our experience I have never
been able to quite fully understand. Perhaps I was
backslidden, perhaps we lacked the necessary faith,
perhaps after all we were not as well prepared to
care for the sick poor as we thought we were. It

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actually took us a couple of years more before we
were again able to open our Good Samaritan Inn
for the sick poor. When we did, a good woman
gave us four hundred dollars without any
solicitation, to make the necessary repairs. And
now we are planning an extensive enlargement.

One night a stranger who happened to be here,

sent for me after I had gone home and wanted me
to tell him about the Good Samaritan Inn, which I
did. He wrote me a check for one hundred dollars.
Next one of our patients, without my having
mentioned the matter to her, sent me one hundred
dollars for the same purpose, and another good
woman gave me a hundred dollars. If God wants us
to do it He will make it possible. If He doesn’t
want it done we don’t want to do it. When we are
trying to spell out God’s principles we may always
expect to meet God’s providences, for the manna
follows the Pillar of Cloud.

***

Coming back again to the time when we were

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completing the main building of the sanitarium, I
will give you a glimpse of a few other of our many
interesting experiences. When we came to pay the
last bills on this building, Mr. Hoyt came to me and
said, “Don’t you suppose you can go to Dr.
Pearsons (the millionaire philanthropist whose
home was in Hinsdale) and borrow five thousand
dollars?” “Well, you know Dr. Pearsons is hard to
approach,” but I went to see him and he let me
have five thousand. By and by we needed another
five thousand, and Mr. Hoyt asked me to try to
borrow five thousand dollars more from him. By
that time he was a patient in our sanitarium; he
spent practically the last two years of his life here.
When I asked him for the money he said, “The
trouble with you, Paulson, is that you keep the
house too warm. If you didn’t waste so much that
way you wouldn’t need to borrow money.”

He let me have the five thousand, but he

wanted it all back again April first. I hoped the old
man would forget about it. This was during the
holidays, and we paid our bills and thus slipped
through another crisis.

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 Two weeks before April first he came along
and said, “Doctor, have you got those ten thousand
dollars for me?”

“No, I hoped you would forget about that.”

“I want that money to give to Governor Deneen

for one of the colleges he is interested in.” And
then he said, “Do you know where to go for the
money?”

I said, “No, I do not.” I saw the old man was in

earnest and wanted that money. He said: “I would
not have let you have that if I had thought you
could not get it.”

I said promptly, “I can get it.” He said, “Where

can you get it?”

I said, “I’ll look to the Lord for it.”

The old man appeared as though he wished I

had a little more satisfactory place to look, but said

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nothing further. I can assure you I prayed about
that thing. The first of April was on Thursday, and
by Monday, when we got up to the twenty-eighth I
did not know where to get any of that money.
Some of you know it is not easy to pick up money
when you really need it. I was very much
concerned about it. On Tuesday morning, a lady
who had been here a few days and with whom I
had not talked at all, who was just here visiting
some friends, said to me after patients’ morning
worship:

“I want to see you, Dr. Paulson.” We stepped

into my office and then she said, “Just while we
were singing in here at morning worship a thought
came to me. I am receiving five thousand dollars
this morning, and it came to me that perhaps you
could make good use of it.”

I said, “I have been praying the Lord to send

me ten thousand dollars. I have to pay that amount
to Dr. Pearsons on Thursday.” She said, “I’m sorry.
I can’t let you have more than five.”

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 I sent for my business manager and we fixed up
a note for her then and there. I said to our business
manager, “That is strange; I have prayed for ten
thousand; where is the other five?” He said, “That
may come from another source.” A few hours later
Dr. Pearsons knocked on the manager’s door and
said:

“Say, if you folks can dig up five thousand I

can tell you where to get the other five.”

“We already have the five thousand.” “Good,”

he said. The old Doctor had gone down to the bank
and said, “Why don’t you cater a little to those
folks up there? Suppose you lend them five
thousand and show them your good will?” They
agreed to that, so Dr. Pearsons said to go down and
get our five thousand dollars at the bank.

It was only a simple experience, but life is

largely made up of simple things. Most of us have
only a very few really wonderful or great
experiences, so it is important to see God’s hand in
the ordinary every-day incidents and affairs.

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 All these experiences and many others like
them have helped confirm my faith in this thing,
that the Bible when it said, “Ask, and ye shall
receive.” is not a mistake. It does say if we turn
away our ears from hearing the law our prayers are
an abomination. (Prov. 28:9.) But I believe when
one is trying to do the right thing Providence is on
the side of that man, as Detective Burns maintained
was the great secret of his success. I have seen that
principle work out again and again in my dealings
with patients.

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 Chapter 10

Prosperity and Revivals

Here is an important truth that I hope none of
you will overlook: If Providence helped us to
establish this institution so that we might care for
sick people, why shouldn’t the Lord help the sick
people get well here? And I have seen this thing
happen in a special manner over and over again.
For instance, a woman was operated on here a
couple of years ago. The surgeon believed that she
would die before she left the operating room. The
case was so absolutely hopeless that it was beyond
all human hope that she could possibly live. I told
her husband it was an absolutely hopeless case. I
told the nurse that there were no prospects that she
could live over night. The surgical operation
revealed conditions that no one had suspected and
the situation was so desperate that humanly
speaking there was no chance for life at all. But the
nurses prayed and Mrs. Paulson and I prayed, and
God heard our prayers and she was restored to
health.
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 A year and a half ago a good earnest woman
was dying here in this sanitarium from pernicious
anemia. The laboratory test showed that her blood
was almost as thin as water. I had telegraphed her
husband to come, and when he arrived, told him
that there was no hope and that his wife could not
live beyond forty-eight hours. Mrs. Paulson
whispered in her ear that her end was near and
asked if there was anything she wanted to say. She
feebly responded, “Pray.” Mrs. Paulson sent for
me. We knelt down at her bedside and humbly and
earnestly committed this dying woman to God’s
restoring power for recovery if it was His will.
From that hour she began to improve and in three
months’ time went home a comparatively well
woman. I had a letter from her husband who is a
railroad man, saying that his wife had gained fifty
pounds in weight and was as well as she ever was.

***

Once we discovered that new patients were not

coming in as rapidly as the old ones went away.

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We felt impressed, as we had often done before, to
ask God to fill the vacant rooms or show us why
they were not filled. Some of us met Friday night
for special prayer. I spoke of it at the meeting of
heads of departments on Sabbath morning, and
presented it in connection with the Sabbath service
to the entire family.

At our church officers’ meeting Sunday night

we learned that some of our workers were not
paying tithe. I became deeply exercised over the
matter. The more I sought God the more I was
impressed that we would have no signal answer to
our prayers without a definite reformation.

Monday morning at workers’ worship called

attention to the fact that it was after Christ had
cleansed the temple that the sick came in and He
healed them. (Matt. 21:12-14)

Before we shall see the sick crowd into our

sanitariums and receive special manifestations of
healing by Christ, we must permit Him to again
cleanse our temples.

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 On Tuesday morning the entire sanitarium
family gathered with their Bibles and notebooks
and we began some special studies which were
continued till Friday morning.

We read very carefully and prayerfully the

experience of Achan who stole the spoils from the
inhabitants of Jericho which had been devoted to
the Lord. (Read Joshua six.) Jericho was the first of
the cities of Canaan to be taken and God had said
that was to be His tenth or the first fruits, so Achan
stole from God’s treasury for his own benefit.
Because of the sin of Achan all Israel became weak
as water and were smitten by the enemy. (Joshua
7:5)

“If the presence of one Achan was sufficient to

weaken the whole camp of Israel, can we be
surprised at the little success which attends our
efforts when every church and almost every family
has its Achan?” Test. Vol. 5, p. 157.

There is no use in lying on our face and asking

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God in a special manner to bless our institution
while we have Achans in the camp. God says to us,
“Wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? Take
away the accursed thing from among you.” (Josh.
7:10,13)

It yet remains to be seen what God can do for

an institution without a single Achan in it.

On the other hand, every time there has

apparently been unanswered prayer in our midst for
the sick, any Achans in our camp should consider
these words: “If when Achan yielded to temptation
he had been asked if he wished to bring defeat and
death into the camp of Israel, he would have
answered, ‘No, no; is thy servant a dog that he
should do this great wickedness?’” Test. Vol. 4; p.
492.

The time has come for every Achan in our

hearts to be stoned. And those who do not see the
importance of giving to the Lord an honest tithe
should read Mal. 3:8, 9. “Will a man rob God? Yet
ye have robbed me . . . in tithes and offerings. Ye

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are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me,
even this whole nation.”

Every worker who has taken a position in this

institution is engaged in the same sacred work that
Korah, Dathan and Abiram were in. The same
devil that blinded their eyes will endeavor to make
it seem an equally “small thing” to us; in other
words, to cause us to forget the sacredness of the
work that we are in.

The mighty power of God was present in these

studies. On Friday night we had a “solemn
assembly.” As far as I could discern every worker
cheerfully took his stand on this question.

Within a week our men’s patronage had

doubled and we had also reached a high-water
mark of spiritual results. A prominent patient
definitely took his stand for God. Half a dozen
others were seeking for light. Others were being
converted, and the institution seemed charged with
a special power from on high. We saw most
phenomenal cases of physical improvement. It

116
gave us a foretaste of what God can do when all the
workers turn their hearts definitely toward Him.

This stirred the wrath of the dragon and we

began to have trials and difficulties we had never
anticipated. But even these served to drive us to
our Source of strength.

Later on a physician from the southern part of

the State brought his wife for a critical surgical
operation. A few days afterward she went into a
serious collapse. We did everything we could, but
it was evident the woman must die. The doctor
stood by the opposite side of the bed from me with
tears running down his face, saying he had given
up all hope; there was absolutely nothing more
could be done. I felt impressed to say, “Yes, there
is one thing more can be done in the Hinsdale
sanitarium. We can pray.” I felt he knew nothing
about prayer, but I did not believe that would
hinder my prayers being heard. I knelt down and
asked God to save the poor woman’s life if it was
His will. She began to revive from that very
moment, and in a few weeks went home a well

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woman.

One winter during our week of prayer a very

prominent woman was operated on in our
institution by Dr. Franklin H. Martin, the eminent
Chicago surgeon who has done most of our work.
The case proved much more desperate than was
expected and she nearly died on the operating
table. She was revived, but the next morning went
into a total collapse. Mrs. Paulson and I were
hastily summoned to her bedside. To all human
appearances, the case was utterly hopeless. My
heart ached for this splendid business woman
whom I had every reason to know had not made
her peace with God. In the agony of my soul, while
the nurses worked over her, I knelt by her bedside
and reached up for God’s healing power to be
manifested in her behalf. A few hours later an
eminent expert came out from the Presbyterian
hospital at the request of her family physician who
was present at the operation. After sizing up the
situation he said, “Everything is done that can be
done, but it makes no difference what you do, she
will be dead by morning.”

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 Several days later she told Mrs. Paulson, “I
know God heard Dr. Paulson’s prayer and saved
my life. I want you to stay here in my room and tell
the Lord that I know He heard the prayer in my
behalf.” Some weeks later this woman stood up in
our workers’ prayer meeting and gave a ringing
testimony and told us that she had dedicated her
life fully to the Master’s work.

As the years rolled on I have seen many such

experiences that have strengthened my faith that
there is such a thing as answers to prayer. When I
am facing a question like some of those poor sick
patients I am glad that I can deal directly with the
great man-Maker. When my watch was broken the
other day, I sent it to a watch-maker, not to some
faker who would simply declare there was no such
thing as a broken watch, or who would undertake
to give it some absent treatment and do nothing for
it. I am so glad that I can recommend the sick to go
to the great man-Maker and man-Repairer and that
I can intelligently co-operate with Him. Remember
that while the farmer cannot grow corn--God alone

119
can do that--he can cultivate corn. And God does
not expect to do man’s part any more than He
expects man to do God’s part. It is this beautiful
blending of the human and the Divine that lends
significance to the human part of life and gives us
courage and faith that we can depend implicitly
upon the divine part. God does not hear us because
we are good, He hears us because we are needy,
and for Christ’s sake who alone was good.

It is with great hesitation that I tell some of

these interesting experiences for the simple reason
that I know there are some people who are bound
to regard them with considerable skepticism, and
perhaps treat them altogether lightly. There is also
a still greater danger that a group of experiences of
this kind shall focus the attention of a still larger
group of people on the instrument instead of the
Hand that merely condescended to use the
instrument. Nevertheless, I have felt that there were
some to whom some of these incidents might prove
to be a real inspiration and encouragement, and it is
for their sakes and theirs alone that I have
presented a few of the many interesting items that

120
Providence has given us for our encouragement in
the building of these various Hinsdale enterprises.

There is scarcely a word in the English

language that has been so warped from its true
meaning as the word “Faith.” Much of the so-
called faith of to-day is in reality nothing short of
presumption, consequently God can only ignore it.
Instead of being some peculiar tension or emotion
of the mind, true faith is simply a recognition of
things as they actually are. The individual who
becomes best acquainted with God will necessarily
manifest most faith in Him, He will learn the
consistent manner in which God deals with His
children. This will preserve him from asking
unreasonable things, which is presumption.

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 Chapter 11

The Anchor That Held

Through Deep Trouble
On February 14 (1916) I was prostrated with an
unusually severe attack of fever. During the long
weary weeks that followed I had abundant
opportunity to learn new lessons of trust and faith
under trying circumstances.

As I prayed earnestly unto the Lord, his Holy

Spirit would from time to time bring to my
remembrance some verse from the Bible that
would be meat in due season to my poor, starving,
storm-tossed soul.

Some of these verses I had not seen much in

when I read them in full health and strength in days
gone by, but the important thing after all was that
they had been lodged somewhere in my mind;
which shows the importance of reading the Bible
even when we don’t feel any great need of it. We

122
may be storing up provisions for some future need.

When the fever was at its height and the days

were weary and the long nights dreary, then this
verse came to me with priceless assurance: “But he
knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried
me, I shall come forth as gold.” (Job. 23:10)

Through all the ages God has never discovered

anything better than trouble and affliction to bum
the dross out of the soul. That is why His children
have always had such big doses of it. God was
fitting them for heaven.

The wicked will have most of their trouble

when it is too late to do them any good. That is
why God says for us not to envy the wicked (Prov.
24:19), “which have their portion in this life.” (Ps.
17:14)

I know some of you will say, “But my trouble

came from evil men and not from the Lord.” If you
will permit Him, God will watch the fire they
kindled and see to it that it only burns up the dross

123
within you. “The wrath of man shall praise thee:
the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.” (Ps.
76:10)

Joseph’s wicked brethren sold him into slavery,

but he let God watch the fire, and when he was the
biggest man in Egypt he could say what is always
true, “Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it
unto good.” (Gen. 50:20)

When we are in deep trouble we always want to

get rid of it, but God only knows when we have
had enough. I wanted to get rid of my fever, I
wanted to get well, but then and there came to my
mind the Master’s prayer when he was in deep
trouble, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup
from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be
done.” (Luke 22:42) I had a precious experience
when I was able to pray that prayer from my heart.
So will you. Luke says when Christ prayed that
prayer, an angel came and strengthened him.
(Verse 43) I verily believe one came to strengthen
me. They will come to strengthen you.

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 When I was desperately sick the thought came
to me to have my wife write to a spiritually-minded
friend hundreds of miles away to pray for me. Then
the enemy suggested the doubt, What good would
that do? It was then that Paul’s example came to
my mind when he wrote to the far-away churches
in Rome to earnestly pray for him. (Rom. 15:30)
And later when he lay in a dark prison cell he
wrote this to his brethren, “For I know that this
shall turn to my salvation through your prayer.”
Phil. 1:19. Then I sent word to still others to pray
for me.

I am glad that I can to-day put my fingers on

Ps. 119:75 and say from my heart: “I know, O
Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in
faithfulness hast afflicted me.”

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 Chapter 12

Sparks from a Live Wire

The people who are doing the most for others
are those who are finding sweet and precious
things in the Bible.

If a man falls down seven times seven, and has

a disposition to get up again, he will be saved in
the kingdom of God.

The self-sufficient worker may seem to be

moving the world, but it is the humble, praying
worker that moves heaven.

Circumstances can only bring out of us what is

already in us. You cannot draw water from a well
when there is no water in it.

Begin each day with prayer, and do not let a

day pass without doing some active soul-saving
work, whether you feel like it or not.

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 God is in the saving business. He desires to
carry every one of us through, but He cannot save
us against our wills.

The best way to help a careless and indifferent

sinner is for you to be neither careless nor
indifferent in dealing with him.

Trouble is an effectual remedy, and when

everything else fails sometimes the Lord has to
apply this remedy in order to save us.

Our Father looks after His children, and being

infinite He can look after the smallest things as
well as the greatest things connected with our lives.

We can never do a great work unless we put

into it a part of our lives. Extract of soul must be
mingled with every work that is to go into eternity.

If God has put into your soul a desire to work

for humanity, remember He will help you to carry
out this desire, for God never trifles with a man.

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 The very difficulties which we daily encounter,
if patiently borne, will help us to become so well
qualified, so well trained, that we will be better
able to work for the Master.

If God can make a beautiful flower out of a

handful of black earth, He can take our useless
lives and so transform them that they shall become
beautiful and helpful. It is the same process
exactly.

If we can only learn that every circumstance

which arises, God permits for our good, then life
will become more settled. We can live a day at a
time, and strive to make someone better for our
having lived that day.

Suppose you should go to a person who has

jaundice and say, “You ought to be ashamed of
yourself for looking so yellow.” That would be a
cruel thing to do. But haven’t you seen people treat
those who had spiritual jaundice in just that way?

The hands of a clock are always in sight--the

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wheels are seen but seldom. Each is a part of the
clock. Some of us are brought face to face with the
public; others work silently and in comparative
seclusion; but all alike are a part of God’s plan, and
each has his part to perform in keeping the work
going.

Let no one forget that just as certainly as God

has a place for us in the next world, He has a work
for us in this world; and in many instances we do
not have to leave home in order to get a chance to
do it.

Jacob, when viewed under the microscope, is a

rascal and a grafter, but when viewed through the
telescope, he is a man that can look into heaven,
prevail with God, and a father to great nations. Are
you viewing your associates through a microscope
or through a telescope?

In spite of the law of gravitation, the trees, by

the law of growth, are enabled to carry barrels of
water scores of feet above the surface of the earth.
So the Christian inspired by the divine power

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within him, is enabled in spite of depressing
influences daily to elevate his thoughts and
ambitions heavenward.

A young man said to Phillips Brooks in his

latter years, “How I wish I had lived in your time,
so that I might have had a chance to do some
heroic thing.” And the old man answered with
something of the fire of his youth, “Young man,
you are living in my time and in God’s time. There
never was such a chance to do heroic things as
now.”

When Peter was working for a cause rather

than for humanity, he cut off the servant’s ear, thus
making it necessary for Christ to follow after him,
and heal the difficulty which he had created. If we
work for humanity from any other motive than that
of pure love, we shall fill the minds of people so
full of prejudice that we shall virtually be repeating
Peter’s work, thus making it necessary for Christ to
raise up others to follow us to heal the wounds
which we have made; and even then, there are
scars that must necessarily remain.

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 Every live man with a gift must divide it with
others, or pay the penalty of having it shrink away
and finally shrivel up altogether. Hoarding a talent
is a greater curse to its possessor than hoarding
money. It is what we give away that we really
keep. The knowledge that we have some one else
to teach is a stimulant to our own gift, and
furnishes us a constant incentive for treasuring up
live facts and valuable items which we otherwise
would give only a passing notice and which would
soon pass from our memory.

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