The Actress Who Became an Evangelist

Mrs. Edith L. Peake, the evangelist, who has been speaking to crowded houses during the past week, last night at the United Presbyterian church gave personal testimony as to the truth of the Gospel. If the subject were worthy of a text, she said, she would choose II Corinthians v:17: 'Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.' In telling the story of her life she had two objects in view: first, to testify to the grace and infinite patience of God, and second, to warn humanity to avoid the rocks on which her own life had so nearly been wrecked.

Mrs. Peake told how she had become an infidel from an omnivorous passion for books from her earliest years, and a lack of direction as to what to read. When but a child she had read everything she could lay her hands on, and one day awoke to a realization that the old Bible, which had been the stay of her dead mother, was no more to her than any book, and Christ to her was merely a life among lives. By a sudden turn of the wheel of fortune she found herself thrown upon her own resources, and was induced by a friend to take up the profession of acting. In this way she fell in with a Christian woman at San Francisco, and was finally induced to attend the Moody and Sankey meetings fourteen years ago. The great evangelist seemed not to affect her, but by the simple closing of a door in an anteroom one evening there flashed into her brain a verse learned in childhood, 'They that were ready went into the marriage, and the door was shut.' This verse, Mrs. Peake said, kept resounding in her head like the booming of a bell, and she was finally led to acknowledge God, and that the Bible was the word of God. Having been convinced of the truth of Christianity, she was forced to give up her profession as an actress, as the two were incompatible. She became a preacher, as she says, through God's own choice, and none other. She feels that she has been called to the ministry, and will continue to preach as long as she has the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

During the discourse, which was given for the most part in the conversational tone, but which at times became very animated and oratorical, Mrs. Peake touched upon the awfulness of infidelity, which she termed an intellectual depravity. 'People talk of the drunkard, the murderer and the harlot,' she said, 'but I tell you that in comparison with the infidel they are whiter than the driven snow, for the infidel shakes his puny fist in the face of the Almighty and proclaims that God himself is a liar.' She referred to Ingersoll as a man possessed of a gift of oratory received from God but devoted to the service of the devil, and a tongue tipped with the venom of the pit.