The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-12-28

OF Sydenham, and Cooper, and Harvey, and
Rush depended upon the fact that they knew
how to pray as well as to prescribe. don't
want physician who sees no God in human
anatomy to doctor my broken bones. II God
made US (and l think no did, and il the
Bible Is true land ! am rather disposed to
think it Isl, then it is not strange that prayer
does traverse natural cause; ay, that 10 In
PRODUCES new cause. When God made the
law, he did not make II so strong he could
not break it II God made our bodies, when
they are broken he Is the one to mend them;
and 1t is reasonable that we should call him In
to do it. If my furnace In the cellar breaks
down, there is no one so competent to
repair it as the manufacturer. II my watch
stops, there Is no one so competent to set it
going as the one who made it II the body
is disordered, call In the Maker of 1t. It Is
not all, as these physicists tell us, a matter
of ventilation or poisoned air, Of cleanliness
or dirt, of nutritious diet or poor fare. !
have known people to get well in rooms
wherein windows had been six weeks down,
tight fhut, and ! have known them to die
! right under patent ventilators. I have
known children sickly who every day had
their bath, and / have known children robust,
the washing Of whose faces would make their
features unacceptable.
God did not make the law and then run
away from it. What is law of naturei It
Is only Gods usual way Of doing things
But he has said that if his children ask him
TO do thing, and he can consistently do it,
he will do it. Go on with your pills, and
plasters and nostrums, and elixirs, and your
catholicon, but remember that the mightiest
agency in your recovery is prayer. Prayer
to God brought the kings cure, the lump of
figs being the God directed human instru-
mentality.
Iwould have you also see-for it is another
lesson of the subject-that our prayer must
also be accompanied by means 1t is an out
rage to ask God to do thing while we SIT
INDECENT The prayer, to be acceptable,
must come not only from the heart, but from
the hands. We must work while we pray,
devotion and work going together. Luther
came to Melancthon's bedside and prayed for
his recovery, and insisted, at the same time,
that he should take some warm soup, the
soup bein!; just as important as the prayer.
In the time of the great plague that came to
York, OF England, the priests prayed all
night and all day for the removal Of the
plague, but did not think of clearing out the
dead Gogs and cats that lay in the cutters,
causing the sickness. We must use means as
well as supplications. If a man has ''even-
ing prayers" asking for health, and then sits
down to a full supper of indigestibles
at II o'clock at night, his prayer
is a mockery. A farmer has no right to
pray for the safety Of his family when he
knows there is no cover on the cistern. The
Christian man, reckless about his health,
ought not to expect the same answer to his
prayer as the Christian man expects who re-
tires regularly at 10 o'clock at night, and
takes his morning bath with the appendix of
Turkish towel Paul said to the passengers
of the Alexandrian corn ship that they should
get safe ashore, but he told them they must
use means, and that was: "Stick to the old
shipI" God is not weak, needing our help,
but God is strong, and asks US to cooperate
with him that we may be strong, too. Pray
by all means, but don't forget the fig poul-
tice.
THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER ILLUSTRATED.
That God answers prayers offered in the
right spirit, seconded by our own effort, is
the first and the last lesson of this text, and
it is lesson that this age needs to learn. If
all communication between earth and heaven
is cut off, let us know it. If all the Chris
tian prayers that are going up toward God
never TedCu uliIl, Iucl, say, leu SiloDCo
the lips of the afflicted world, and the nations
smother their groans and die quietly. God
does answer prayer. The text shows it.
You say: II don't believe the Bible; think
that those things were merely condolences,
which are often brought as answers to
prayer" Do you say thatl Was it mere
happen so that Elijah prayed for rain just
as the rain was going to come anyhow Did
Hooe = ok% ba
time when all the lions happened to have
lockjawa Did Jesus pray at the grave Of
Lazarus just at the time when Lazarus was
going to dress himself and come out anyhowa
Did Jesus lose his place in his sermon, and
make a mistake, when he said: ASK, and it
shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto your
And, lest some were so stupid they could not
understand it, he goes on: "For every one
that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
fndeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be
opened"
But some one persists in saying: 81 don't
believe anything of the Bible" Then ap-
peal to your own instincts. Prayer in GER
tain circumstances is as natural to man as
the throbbing in the pulse, as the respiration
of the lungs. Put company of men-Idon'
care how bad they are-in some imminent
peril, and they will cry out: ''God have
mercy on usp challenge that these men
who don't believe in prayer charter steamer,
go out in the Narrows, swing out 800 or
900 miles to sea, and then heave to and wait
for cyclone. And after the cyclone comes
and the vessel has gone under ten times, when
they did not expect it would rise again, and
the bulwarks have been knocked in, and the
masts are gone-if they do not pray viii
surrender my theory. Do you tell me that
this instinct which God has put in us, he put
there just to mock US for his own cruel
amusement If God implanted that instinct
in the human heart it was because in his
own heart there was something responsive.
To prove that God does hear prayer, 1 put
on the witness stand Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Micah, John, Paul, Peter
and King Hezekiah. Tell me, ye ancient
battle fields, We Oriental rhreshing floors, ye
Judean corn fields, ye Galilean fishing
smacks, is God deaf and dumb and blind be-
fore all human petitionl That God answers
prayer, l bring the ten millions facts of
Christendom to prove. There has never
paper enough come out Of the paper mills to
write the story. Has not many a mother
prayed back her bad boy from the ends of
the earth-from Canton, from Madras, from
Constantinople- be knelt beside her In
the old homestead Have there not been des-
peradoes and renegades who have looked into
the door of prayer meeting to laugh and
scott at it, who have been drawn by the
power of prayer, until they ran to the altar
crying out for mercy2 Did not the black
smith in Lyons, N. Y, pray to God until
there came great awakening that shook the
community2
STORY OF HOW PRAYERS WERE ANSWERED
In my parish in Philadelphia one night at
meeting | asked young man to go into a
room at the side of the church and talk upon
the theme Of religion. He grew violently
angry, and shook his fists at me. We re-
solved to pray for that young man, and we
prayed that he might yield his soul to God.
And when, next night at the meeting, the
side door was flung open, he was the first to
step in. Prayer had captured him. had a
classmate in college, whose uncle, DIR. John
Scudder, of India, wrote to him, saying, 81
will pray for you every day until such day,
and then will give my attention to some
other subject" The last day of these prayers,
when they had all gathered up before the
throne OF God, my classmate surrendered his
soul to Jesus This is no second hand story
saw the letter, and knew the young man.
But why should go so fara 1 have had
in my own experience. and | have had in
the history Of my own family, the evidence
that God answers prayer Ny mother, with
three Christian women, assembled week after
week and prayed for their children; they
kept up that prayer meeting Of four persons
year after year. The world knew nothing of
it. God answered all those prayers. All the
group came in; the eleven sons and daughters
Of my mother came in, myself the last.
Sickness came to my household-hopeless
sickness, as it seemed to many. At 8 o'clock
on Saturday afternoon the invalid was car
ried to the steamer for Savannah AT III