Had Been in the Habit of Spending Many of My Sundays with Him]

But while I forgot, I was not forgotten. God had begun a work in me, the
continuation and completion of which waited on my willingness to
cooperate, and the most powerful force in the world, that of believing
and persistent prayer, was being released in my behalf. My mother was a
woman of remarkable Christian character, with rare qualities of mind and
heart, knowledge and love of the Scriptures, and a deep and genuine
prayer life. Notwithstanding my lack of sympathy with her in the things
most fundamental, she had confidence that the tide would turn with me.
Her confidence, however, was not based on me. She knew the Lord and
understood that it was not the sheep that went out after the Shepherd
who was lost until it found Him. So she kept a well-worn path to the
place of prayer.

She was wise and said little to me on the subject, but I knew her life
and what it was for which she was most deeply solicitous. She had taught
me from the Bible as a boy, and many a cold winter night, though weary
with a day filled with household cares, she had come to my room and
"tucked me in" with prayer.

My attitude toward Christianity in the winter following my second
fishing trip on the Newfoundland Banks was different from that of the
year before. Then I had been a skeptic, as I assumed, and declined
responsibility for what to me was unknown and seemed to be unknowable.
But, in the meantime, something had happened that had lifted this whole
question with me from the realm of speculation to that of experience.
The Pilot's response to my signal might, for the time, be ignored, but
it could not be forgotten.