110 The Fundamentals schemes, but here are visible fruits. Think of this story! Not back in apostolic times, but in this busy, crowding, material istic, twentieth century! Prayer is the mightiest power in our hands today. Is it not a great sin that we do not use this talent of all talents? What blessings we are withholding from ourselves, the Church, and missions by not praying! If, like Pastor Goss- ner, we could learn to “ring the prayer bell rather than the beggar’s bell,” we might have his success—one hundred mis sionaries put into the field who gathered thirty thousand con verts before his death at sixty-three—and be worthy of his epitaph; “He prayed mission stations into being and mis sionaries into faith; he prayed to open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands.” But prayer is a costly exercise, and this possibly is why so few people dare pray really in earnest. If you pray earnestly a year for China, you will feel you ought to go. If your Church prays earnestly a year for China, she will double her missionary offering. I f at the family altar a father and mother plead earnestly for India or Africa, God will ask a son or daughter of them /for far-away service. If we pledge the price we can claim the power. * * * The picture of my boyhood was that of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders; but the picture for boy and girl, for man and woman, for minister and missionary today, is Christ bearing the world upon His heart. The world with Atlas’ shoulder under it we know is a myth, but the world with Christ’s heart under it is the mightiest reality of the ages.
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