THE KING’S BUSINESS
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ply one example from thousands of the way in which God remembers His praying people, even in the turn ing of the scale of national history and destiny, and no philosophy can account for such cases which denies a Divine Providence ruling in human affairs. WONDROUS FORCE. The Power of Prayer is the per petual sign of the Supernatural. Without doubt much of the benefit and, blessing received by prayerful souls might be accounted for by nat ural and secondary causes. But in hundreds of other instances we must either ' deny the facts or admit a supernatural factor. They can no more be accounted for without a divine interposition than the deliver ance of the three holy children from the furnace or Daniel from the den. Jonathan Edwards may be taken as an example of thousands. From the age of ten years, his prayers were astonishing both for the faith they exhibited and the results they secured. With thé intellect of a cherub and the heart of a seraph, we can neither distrust his self-knowledge nor his absolute candor. His communion with God was so rapt and rapturous, that the extraordinary view of the glory of the Son of God, his pure, sweet love and grace, would over come him so that for an hour he would be flooded with tears, weeping aloud. Prayer- brought him such power as Peter at Pentecost scarcely illustrates more wonderfully. For in stance, his sermon at Enfield on “Sin ners in the hands of an angry God,” which, delivered without a gesture, nevertheless produced such effect that the audience leaped to their feet and clasped the pillars of the meeting house, lest they should slide into per dition. A TRUMPET CALL. That one man, in the midst of an
golden gate to Pacific and Asiatic commerce. They saw that, for the development of its resources, Califor nia ought to be cut loose from Mex ico, and attached to some more pro gressive nation. Most of them fa vored a British protectorate and there was a British fleet hovering near by waiting for a pretext to take posses sion, and the United States was also waiting to have ground for similar action. When the war with Mexico began, the news, slowly moving, reached the commanders of the American and British forces at the same time, and both at once started for the harbor. , Commodore Sloat hoisted the Stars and Stripes only a week before Admiral Seymour ar rived. In the same month of July, 1846, 260 Mormons sailed from New York and reached San Francisco well sup plied with all that could furnish a Mormon colony, but found the Amer ican flag floating over the harbor. The colonists, who hoped to have set tled on the coast; bitterly disap pointed, sent messengers to meet Brigham Young, who was advancing overland, and the result was that he stopped at Salt Lake. By such a trifling circumstance was that column of 15,000 Mormons prevented from making the Golden Gate their har bor. On the same day, Feb. 2, 1848, on which the treaty was signed by which Mexico ceded California to the United States, gold was found. Had the discovery been one day ear lier, the signature would probably never have been put to that docu ment. California as narrowly es caped being a slave State. While the settlers were'mostly miners, they adopted a State constitution with an article prohibiting slavery. Soon after came that large migration from the Southern States that would have de termined its future for slavery, had they not come too late. This is sim
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