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» Pastor William Fetler 127
there, not sorry because every rose had gone, because ’He had not
had His share, because His work had been evidently in vain, all the
watering and caring for them. "What is left for me?" He said. "Why,
don’t you see? For me are left the thorns." And then they went and
made a crown of thorns for Jesus boy, when He was thirty-three and
a half years old; and because of that crown of thorns we shall one
day have a crown of roses. Now, I want my young men from Phil-
adelphia to sing that great composition. I am sorry they cannot
sing it as well as I would like them to. These men, most of them,
could not differentiate between a Chinese character and a musical note
when they came to our school. The only thing they knew, many
of them, was to drink and play cards and smoke tobacco, and gamble
and fight each other and live in sin.
The Russian Choir
My friends, the page has been dark, but no page is so dark that it
cannot be made whiter than snow in the precious blood of Jesus
Christ. Now these men have come from the Russian villages, from
those peasant villages, have had no schooling till they came here,
and so they will not sing as well as I wish they would. Not one of
these students could even write and read properly the Russian lan-
guage. I do not think five of them could distinguish among ten
words an adjective from a verb or a noun. Those things were hidden
from them; and now when we go around and when these men sing,
it is not so much the voice, it is the heart. When I went back to
Russia from Spurgeon’s college to take up the missionary work, and
I went round from place to place holding meetings, I had to be my
own Moody, but bless your heart, I didn’t know what I should do
for Sankey. I had no Sankey with me, and as for my own gift in
that direction, why I haven’t any. My musical gift was so great in
my boyhood that my music teacher used to comfort me with,
"Fetler, shut up. You spoil everybody else’s singing." It was
a hard thing for me to shut up, I can tell you. But when I came
to Russia to evangelize the people, and held large meetings, I found
the people looked up to me, and said: "We want to hear some
singing." And so I looked this way and that way, but I didn’t see
either Sankey or Rodeheaver, and so I had to get my hymn book
and do some of it myself. Of course, I always had to make a little
bit of an introduction before I sang and preached. I don’t know if
I ever really preached a sermon all my life. My preaching has been
just something on the line of testimony, just telling something the
Lord has done for me. But then I said to these people, "If you want
me to sing something, I will. I cannot sing like a nightingale, but
even if I cannot do that, I can sing like a raven anyhow." I have
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