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Called By God
One Saturday evening a friend handed Mary an announcement for a lecture to be
given the following night. After the friend left, Mary held the paper in her hand and
repeatedly read the bold-type headline: Will This Generation Pass Away Before We
Witness the Second Coming of Christ? The question had never occurred to her
before, but now she was intrigued by it.
The lecture was scheduled in a theater in a section of the city unfamiliar to Miss
Walsh. In order to be sure of arriving there on time the following evening, she set out
right then, on Saturday night, to find the place. Consequently, on Sunday evening she
arrived on time and located a seat near the front.
Mary supposed she would be hearing a chautauqua. (An educational presentation. Often
lectures and entertainment were combined in a series, modeled after summer schools established
at Chautauqua, N.Y.) lecture. When the speaker entered carrying “a little black book,”
as she described it later, and knelt at center-stage to ask for God’s blessing, she was
amazed. She had never seen a chautauqua lecturer pray.
The “little black book” turned out to be a Bible, to Mary’s disappointment, for that
was a book that she conscientiously avoided. Her upbringing as a Roman Catholic had
left her afraid of the Scriptures. She had been taught that the study of the Bible was
especially dangerous for lay people. A friend who had brought a Bible to Miss Walsh’s
apartment had been asked, kindly but firmly, to remove that little black book and never
bring it again.
Mary remained in the theater, though, and soon the lecturer was making sense to
her. He spoke of current events and historical data with which Mary was familiar, for
she possessed a bright mind and read widely. Then he showed in the Bible clear predictions of the very events that he had cited from history and current events. Young Miss
Walsh thought, “Nobody can predict the future like that! Yet there it is, all laid out
centuries beforehand.” She left the theater that night convinced that the lecturer’s little
black book contained, not heresy, but the very words of God.
Being a woman of action, Mary ventured out the very next morning as soon as the
shops were open to buy a little black book of her own. She found a copy of the Douay
Version of the Bible and began to read as eagerly as a thirsty traveler welcomes a large
dipper of water.
Thursday night found Mary at the theater for the second lecture. A typical evangelist
might not have been able to penetrate Mary Walsh’s prejudice against the Bible, but
God in His love had brought her into contact with the right preacher to reach her.
Professor C. T. Everson evinced sound scholarship. He was fluent and articulate; she
said, admiringly, that he had a “liquid tongue.” Even with no electronic projection, his
melodious voice carried to all parts of the theater. Mary Walsh respected Professor
Everson as a competent, professional person.
Still, there was more. In Professor Everson, scholarship was paired with commitment to
Christ. His main purpose was not to trace fulfilled prophecy, but to portray the Son of God
vividly and believably. He drew appealing verbal pictures of “that meek and lowly Galilean.”

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