THE KING’S BUSINESS
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“Let us pray here, for if the Lord hear not our prayer, and save us, we are all dead men.” He then prayed, “Twine about the hill, O Lord, and cast the lap of thy cloak over puir old Saunders and these puir things.” Before he had done speaking a mist rose up about the hill, and wrapped the devoted little band about like the very cloak of the Lord he had prayed for. In vain their enemies sought to find them, and, while they were wearying themselves in the effort, an order came which sent them on an errand«in a different direction. When the Protestants in Rochelle were besieged by the French king and in peril of starvation, God sent into the bay a shoal of fishes to feed them, such as were never before seen in that harbor. GOD’S HAND. To an attentive eye, the world is constantly coming to new crises which can be safely turned only as God’s own power interposes; and praying souls who watch the signs of the times both seek the divine deliverance and mark the footsteps of God’s own angel. Our own country Jias been the theatre of these marvellous inter positions repeatedly, from the time when a flight of paroquets turned Columbus to the San Salvador group until now. Sometimes these answers to prayer are on a colossal scale,' both as to the territory they cover and the time through which they ex tend. For example: S. H. Willey, D. D., one of the pioneer Home mis sionaries on our western coast, has, in his “Thirty Years in California,” shown us on what hinges turn the destinies of whole States and na tions. Before the gold of California was known there were many adventurers from the United States and Europe already there, drawn by advantages of the climate and regarding it as a
amphitheatre and goaded! forward, to torture the'prisoners. But, wonderful to relate, instead of attacking and de stroying these Jews, they turned mad ly upon the guards and spectators, killed many of them and ' drove the- rest in terror from the corridors! Ptolemy was so impressed with this exhibition of power of the God of the Jews that he released the prisoners, and like Ahasuerus, permitted them to destroy their foes. The Waldenses are the Israel of the Alps, who, in their mountain fast nesses, for centuries, guarded the ark of primitive faith and worship; while the terrors of the Vatican confronted them—that summit terror which was “an Olympus for its false Gods, a Sinai for its thunders, and a Calvary for its blood.” Read the story of the siege of La Balsille, their mountain fortress. Hemmed in by the French and Sardinian army through the sum mer, gaunt famine stared them in the face; the foe guarded every out let of the valley, and . their ungath ered crops lay ip the fields. In mid winter, driven by gnawings of hun ger to visit the abandoned harvest fields, beneath the deep snows they found God had kept the grain un hurt, and part of it was gathered in good condition a year and a half after it was sown! In the spring after, a merciless cannonade broke down the breastworks behind which they hid, and the helpless band cried to the Lord. At once He who holds the winds in his fist and rides in the clouds as a chariot, rolled over them a cloak of fog so dense that in the midst of their foes they escaped un seen ! EFFECTIVE PRAYER. A company of Covenanters had been pursued by their persecutors until their strength was exhausted. Reaching a hill which separated them from their pursuers, their leader said,
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