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us dependent upon God. (6 ) The sh u t door is th e place of pri vate prayer. (7) When you pray, plead His prom ises. (8 ) When prayer is answered, praise. His name. (9 ) Be a pupil in the school of prayer. Mr. Spurgeon, the g reat London preacher, was asked if he still believed in the efficacy of prayer. “Why I could not more doubt th e efficacy of p ray er th an I could disbe- LESSON lieve th e law of ILLUSTRATIONS g rav itation ,” s a i d W. H. P ik e Mr. Spurgeon. “The one is as much a fact as th e other, constantly verified every day of my life. Look a t my Orphanage. To keep it going entails an annual expenditure of about fifty thousand dollars. Only about seven thousand is provided for by th e endow ment. The rem aining comes to me regu larly in answer to prayer. I do n o t know where I shall get it from day to day. I ask God for it, and He sends it. Mr. Mueller of B ristol does th e same on a far larg er scale, and his experience is the sam e.” D irect P ra y e r.' Dr. Jam es H am ilton tells of a m in ister who was called to pray fo r a dying boy. A fter a reveren t introduction he began quoting th e first verse of th e ; 126th Psalm “When th e Lord tu rn ed th e captivity of Zion, etc.,” when the agonized m other exclaimed, “Eh, mon, yer aye drawn ou t for th e Jews, bu t its our own b airn th a t’s dying.” If P eter had prayed th is way, the w ater would have been over his head before he fin ished his introduction. Continue in P rayer. The native Christians in a small west A frican village had no privacy for p ray er in th e ir huts, so every Christian
used to make off into th e bush, away behind his hut, to have a tim e of prayer w ith God. B ehind every C h ristian ’s h u t a little trac k became plainly visible where they w ent to and fro from th e ir places of prayer. If it ever happened th a t th e track was ra th e r overgrown for w ant of use, ano ther Christian would come and say, “B rother, th ere is something th e m atter w ith your trac k .” We fear many a C hristian today has something the m a tte r w ith his track. Two H undred Miles of P ray er. The story is told of a telegraph oper ato r in Zanesville, O., who was con^ verted while asking prayers for himself in a church. This was told in a meet ing in Cincinnati. A young telegraph operator living a t C incinnati doubted th e facts and called up th e Zanesville operator and related th e incident and asked if it was tru e. The answer came back, “ Yes, it is tru e and I am the m an.” And th en came the words fol lowing, “Believe on th e Lord Jesus Christ and thou sh alt be saved.” The C incinnati operator w ired back “ P ray for me.” Both bowed in prayer two hund red miles apart. In a little while the Zanesville operator received the message, “Everything clear, my life is given to God.” God answers prayer. P ersonal R equests ys. D ivine Will. Lord Bollingbroke once asked Lady Ham ilton how she reconciled prayer to God for p articu lar blessing w ith abso lu te resolutions to th e Divine will. “Very easily,” she promptly answered. “ J u s t as if I were to offer a petition to a monarch of whose wisdom and kind ness I had th e highest opinion. In such a case my language would be, ‘I wish you would bestow on me such and such a favor, bu t Your Majesty knows b etter th a n I, how far it would be agreeable to you, or rig h t in itself to g ran t my desire.’ ” The ideal prayer is a com bination of childlike im pprtunity and resignation of sanctified old age.
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