Dining Table's Two Extra Plates: One Minute Testimonials

In a recent address of Bishop Hughes, he spoke of a deacon in a certain Congregational church in Boston, who many years ago said to himself, “I cannot speak in prayer meeting, I cannot do many other things in Christian service, but I can put two extra plates on my dinner table every Sunday and invite two young men who are away from home to break bread with me.” He went along doing that for more than thirty years. He became acquainted with a great company of young men who were attending that church, and many of them became Christians through his personal influence.

When he died he was to be buried in Andover, thirty miles distant, and because he was a well-known merchant, a special train was chartered to convey the funeral party. It was made known that any of his friends among the young men who had become Christians through his influence would be welcomed in a special car set aside for them. And a hundred and fifty of them came and packed that car from end to end in honor of the memory of the man who had preached to them the gospel of the extra dinner plate.