IV.  REVIVAL IN ANSWER TO PRAYER

      Naturally we were very happy that Dr. Sung could come. A young Chinese returned student and I had been praying for fifty days for revival.  In fact, Yu Mong-ling had been in Ohio Wesleyan with John Sung, and was now principal of our model school connected with Nanchang Academy.  The year before, 1930, he and I had prayed thirty mornings at six o'clock, and nothing happened.

      I had an idea that if we prayed thirty days we could have a revival.  When I was a young preacher in California, Bishop Edwin Hughes had told us about a preacher who didn't want to go back to his church, but the bishop told him, “You pray thirty days, every morning, for revival in your church, and at the end of thirty days, if you still want to leave, I'll move you.” Well, the preacher prayed, twenty, twenty-five, twenty-nine mornings, and thought, “Tomorrow I can write to the bishop and he will move me.” But the thirtieth day, as he was praying in his church, the people came from all directions, afoot, on horseback, and in buggies.  They came into the church and wept and confessed their sins, got right with God and with each other, and they had a revival.  Of course, the preacher stayed.  For this reason, I thought thirty days was the time needed.  But in 1930 nothing happened, so when down-river church leaders invited me to speak at a district conference, I did not suggest praying when I came back, because we had prayed without results.