How Moody was Encouraged.

I remember a few years ago I got discouraged, and could not see much fruit of my work; and one morning, as I was in my study, cast down, one of my Sabbath-school teachers came in and wanted to know what I was discouraged about, and I told him because I could see no result from my work; and speaking about Noah, he said: “By the way, did you ever study up the character of Noah?” I felt that I knew all about that, and told him that I was familiar with it, and he said, “Now, if you never studied that carefully, you ought to do it, for I cannot tell you what a blessing it has been to me.”

When he went out I took down my Bible and commenced to read about Noah, and the thought came stealing over me, “Here is a man that toiled and worked a hundred years and didn’t get discouraged; if he did, the Holy Ghost didn’t put it on record,” and the clouds lifted, and I got up and said, if the Lord wants me to work without any fruit I will work on. I went down to the noon prayer-meeting, and when I saw the people coming to pray I said to myself, “Noah worked a hundred years and he never saw a prayer-meeting outside of his own family.”

Pretty soon a man got up right across the aisle where I was sitting, and said he had come from a little town where there had been a hundred uniting with the Church of God the year before. And I thought to myself, “What if Noah had heard that! He preached so many, many years, and didn’t get a convert, yet he was not discouraged.” Then a man got up right behind me, and he trembled as he said, “I am lost.

I want you to pray for my soul.” And I said, “What if Noah had heard that! He worked a hundred and twenty years, and never had a man come to him and say that; and yet he didn’t get discouraged.” And I made up my mind then, that, God helping me, I would never get discouraged.

I would do the best I could, and leave the result with God, and it has been a wonderful help to me.