^ I was reading, recently, an account by Bishop Boyd Vincent
^ J. R. Harris, Memoranda Sacra, 113. A. Murray, The Ministry of Intercession, 59.
22 THE PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN
of a wonderful revival of religion throughout the whole American continent. It began with a humble lay missionary in New York, who started, in one of their central churches, a prayer-meeting for business men. For a time he was all alone ; then half a dozen slowly dropped in. Then others came, and the church was full. And other churches in the city were full. Then others in the State of New York. Then right across the American continent this prayer wave rolled. There were no revivalists or revival machinery, no preaching, no attempt to arouse interest and keep it up. And what was the result ? The greatest religious upheaval since the days of Whitefield, and an enormous number of converts.^
3. Why is a righteous man's prayer of much force ?
(1) It is in harmony with the will of God. — Is it not a fact that when the strenuous will-forces of a good man coincide with the mighty will-forces of an all-powerful God, much solid achieve- ment must assuredly follow ? We have only to be right with God and to pray with all our might, in order to be as well assured that prayer accomplishes much as that some of the unseen gases in the air build up very solid tons of timber in a growing forest. Logic shows that such prayer should accomplish much, and practice proves that it does.
Since God's will is the ultimate cause of all motion in the material world, we can affect that motion only by co-operating with His will. By our bodily actions we continually thus co-operate with God. And is it a 'priori absurd to suppose that God may also have ordained that our wills should under certain circumstances so co-operate with His will as to affect the regula- tion of the material world ? We are not asked to believe that by our wills, expressed in prayers, we can reverse or change all the laws of nature and make the universe work at random, but that it is part of the laws of nature, the higher laws of nature, that our prayers should sometimes, like our actions, influence the material world by co-operating with God. Thus, we are not told to pray against God's laws, hut according to God's laivs, and then we are asked to believe that the prayers of our spirits in accordance with God's laws may be as effectual as the actions of our bodies. .
^ He offers up a true, prevailing prayer, who, while he prays, keeps his eye ever fixed upon the one great Sacrifice, while he offers up that of his own will, submitted, slain, or if not slain, at
^ G. H. R. Garcia, Memoir, 208.
JAMES V. i6 23
least bound and captive, — a will which, through submission, has become one with the will of God. Yes, I would say also that there are eminent sacrifices which God is too merciful to demand of all His children, but to which He invites His chosen servants, sacrifices which, but for the strength which God gives, would be impossible, but which, when offered up through His eternal Spirit, even with strong crying and tears, He never fails to bless, to make them fruitful, and to multiply them exceedingly through accepted and ansiuered prayers.^
■[j Marconi's discovery of wireless telegraphy has already gone beyond the experimental stage, and while we yet speak of it with wonder, all civilized nations accept it as a certainty. We know that he is able to speak wireless telegraph messages from Great Britain or from America across three thousand miles of ocean. Many are beginning to discuss the possibility that his discovery may yet supersede all cables, telephones, and ordinary telegraph by wire. And yet, though this is the greatest wonder for a hundred years, it is, like most of the other wonders, very simple. His instruments set in motion certain waves in that ether which pervades and surrounds our globe. These waves, like the ripples in a pond when a stone is cast into it, spread in every direction, and when they reach any receiver, far or near, tuned to take them, they give their message to it. A receiver not tuned to the proper pitch, however, is useless ; the subtle ether waves pass it by to give their message elsewhere. Thus a hundred messages may reach a tuned receiver with absolute certainty, while one wrongly tuned misses them all.^
(2) It is a "prayer of faith. — Doubt weakens the force of prayer as naturally as doubt weakens the power of physical action, and far more effectually. Let a man ask in faith, says St. James, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord. An availing prayer must come from the very heart of the utterer, wrung by a sense of right and need ; the suppliant must feel that in some way, and that the best way, God will answer his prayer.
^ Coillard, the missionary of the Zambesi, in a letter to his mother, says : It was at Marausa that I fell ill, in conse- quence of the extreme heat and fatigue. My poor wife, who had scarcely recovered herself, had a time of terrible anxiety. Our