76 The Fundamentals carnal disciple, the unbelieving soul, this fact, that there is nothing that man could do, makes prayer seem almost a folly, perhaps a farce, a waste of breath. But to those who best know God, man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, and human helplessness becomes not a reason for the silence of despair, but the argument for praying in faith. Invariably those whose faith in prayer is supernaturally strong are those who have most proved that God has wrought, by their conscious com pulsory cessation of all their own efforts as vain and hopeless. George Muller set out to prove to a half-believing Church and an unbelieving world that God does directly answer prayer; and to do this he purposely abstained from all the ordinary and otherwise legitimate methods of appeal, or of active effort to secure the housing, clothing and feeding of thousands of orphans. Hudson Taylor undertook to put missionaries into Inland China by dependence solely upon God, asking no collections and even refusing them in con nection with public meetings, lest such meetings should be construed as appeals for help. He and his co-workers ac customed themselves to lay all wants before the Lord, and to expect the answer, and answer always came and still comes. The study of missionary history reveals the fact that, at the very times when, in utter despair of any help but God’s there has been believing prayer, the interposition of God has been most conspicuously seen—how could it be most conspic uous except amid such conditions? Every church ought to be a prayer circle; but this will not be so long as we wait for the whole Church, as a body, to move together. The mass of professing Christians have too little hold on God to enter heartily into such holy agreement. To all who yearn for a revival of the prayer-spirit we suggest that in every congregation a prayer circle be formed, without regard to numbers. Let any pastor unite with himself any man or woman in whom he discerns marks of peculiar spiritual
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