The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1892-06-01

favors that were ever given and though
she attended church she never liked to
hear any story of pathos, and as to re-
Egious emotion of any kind she thought
it positively vulgar Wines, cards, the
aters. rounds of costly gayety were to her
the highest satisfaction. One day a neigh
Dor sent in visiting card, and this lady
came down the stairs in tears and told the
whole story of how she had not slept for
several nights, and she feared she was go
ing to lose her soul and she wondered il
some one would not come around and pray
with her.
From that time her entire demeanor was
changed, and though she was not called
upon TO sacrifice any Of her amenities Of
life, she cODsecrated her beauty. her social
position, her family, her all TO God and the
church and usefulness. Everybody said
in regard to her, Have you noticed the
change. and what in the world caused it?''
and no one could make satisfactory expla-
nation. In the course Of two years, though
there was no general awakening in that
church, many such isolated cases of such
unexpected and unaccountab BILE conversions
took place The very people whom no one
thought would be affected by such consid-
erations were converted
TIE POWER OF PRAYER
The pastor and the officers of the church
were on the lookout for the solution of this
religious phenomenon. Where is it,"
they said. "and who is il and what Is il -
At last the discovery was made and all
was explained. A poor old Christian wom-
an standing in the vestibule of the church
one Sunday morning, trying to get her
breath again before she went upstairs to
the gallery, heard the inquiry and told the
secret. For years she had been in the
habit Of concentrating all her prayers for
particular persons in that church. She
would see some man or some woman pres
ent and though she might not know the
persons name, she would pray for that
person until he or she was converted to
God. All her prayers were for that one
person-just that one. She waited and
waited for communion days to see when
the candidates for membership stood up
whether her prayers had been effectual
1t turned out that these marvellous in
stances of conversion were the result Of
that old woman's prayers as she sat in the
gallery Sabbath by Sabbath. bent and
wizened and poor and unnoticed. little
cloud Of consecrated humanity lowering
in the galleries That was the secret place
of the thunder. There is some hidden, I'M
known, mysterious source of almost all
the moral and religious power demon
strated. Not one out of a million-not one
out of ten million prayers ever strikes a
human ear On public occasions a minis
ter of religion voices the supplications of
an assemblage, but the prayers of all the
congregation are in silence. There is not
a second in a century when prayers are not
ascending, but myriads Of them are not
even as loud as a whisper, for God hears a
thought as plainly as a vocalization. That
perpetual-is the secret place Of thunder.
In the winter of 1875 we were worshiping
in the Brooklyn Academy Of Musicin thein-
teTregnum Of churches. We had the usual
great audiences, but Twas oppressed beyond
measure by the fact that conversions were
not more numerous One Tuesday invited
TO my house five old, consecrated Christian
men-all of them gone now, except Father
Pearson, and he, in blindness and old age,
waiting for the Masters call to come up
higher. These old men came, not knowing
why invited them. / took them to the
top room of my house. / said to them: II
have called you here for special prayer. l
am in an agony for a great turning TO God
of the people We have vast multitudes in
attendance and they are attentive and re-
spectful, but l cannot see that they are
saved. Let US kneel down and each one
pray ana not Aei1Ne TINS room until
all assured that the blessing will come and
has come" 1t was a most intense CRYING
unto God / said, Brethren, let this meet
ing be a secret, - and they said it would be.
That Tuesday night special service ended.
On the following Friday night occurred
the usual prayer meeting. No one knew
of what had occurred on Tuesday night,
but the meeting was unusually thronged.
Men accustomed to pray in public in great
eomposure broke down under emotion.
The people were in tears There were sobs
and silences and solemnities of such I'M
usual power that the worshipers looked
into each others faces as much as TO say,
"What does all this mean?" And when
the following Sabbath came, although we
were in secular place, over four hundred
arose for prayers and religious awaken
ing took place that made that winter mem
orable for time and for eternity There
may be in this building many who were
brought TO God during that great ingath-
ering, but few Of them know that the up
per room in my house on Quincy street.
where those five old Christian men poured
out their souls before God was the secret
place of thunder.
SCIENCE CANNOT APPROACH IT.
The day Will come-God hasten it-when
people will find out the velocity, the males
~, the multipotence Of prayer. We brag
about our limited express trains, which
put Us down a thousand miles away in
twenty-four hours, but here is something
by which in a moment we may confront
people five thousand miles away We
brag about our telephones, but here is
something that beats the telephone in ut
terance and reply, for God says, Before
they call, will hear" We brag about
the phonograph, in which a man can speak
and his words and the tones Of his voice
can be kept for ages, and by the turning of
a crank the words may come forth upon
the ears Of another century, but prayer al
lows US TO speak words into the ears Of
everlasting remembrance, and on the other
side of all the eternities they will be heard.
On, ye who are wasting your breath, and
wasting your brains, and wasting your
nerves, and wasting your lungs, wishing
for this good and that good for the church
and the world, why do you not go into the
secret place of thunder?
But" says some one, chat is a beauti-
full theory, yet it does not work in my
case, for ] am in cloud Of trouble, or a
cloud cf sickness, or a cloud Of persecution,
or a cloud Of poverty, or cloud of bereave-
ment, or a cloud of perplexity." How glad
am that you told me that That is ex-
actly the place TO which my text refers
1t was from a cloud that God answered
Israel the cloud over the chasm cut
through the Red sea, the cloud that was