The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-06-04

was thiS?" His father and mother had
said nothing to him about his souls
welfare
On another aisle of the same church
sat an old rniser. He paid his pew rent,
but was hard on the poor, and had no
interest IN any philanthropy. Piles OF
money! And people said, "What strug-
gle he will have when he quits this life
to part with his bonds and mortgages. :"
One day he wrote to his minister:
please to call Immediately. have C
matter of great Importance about which
want to see you" When the pastor
came in the man could not speak for
emotion, but after awhile he gathered
self control enough to say, ST have lived
for this world too long. want to know
if you think l can be saved, and. if so,
I wish you would tell me how. Upon
his soul the light soon dawned, and the
old miser, not only revolutionized in
heart but in life, began to scatter bene-
factions, and toward all the great chart
ties of the day he became cheerful and
'bonntiful almoner. What was the cause
of this change? everybody asked, and no
one was capable of giving an Intelligent
answer.
In another part of the church sat,
Sabbath by Sabbath, a beautiful and
talented woman, who was great So
ciety leader. She went to church be-
cause that was respectable thing to
do, and in the neighborhood where she
lived it was hardly respectable not to
go. Worldly was she to the last degree,
and all her family worldly. She had at
her house the finest germans that were
ever danced, and the costliest favors
that were ever given, and though she
attended church she never liked to hear
any story of pathos, and as to religious
emotion Of any kind, she thought it
positively vulgar. Wines, cards, thea
ters, rounds of costly gayety were to
her the highest satisfaction.
One day a neighbor 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 going to
lose her soul, and she wondered If 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 consecrated
her beauty, her social p position. her fam
lily, her all to God and the church and
usefulness. Everybody said in regard
to her, s'Have you noticed the change,
and what in the world caused it?'' and
no one could make satisf factory 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 unaccounsable
conversions took place. The very PEG
pie whom no one thought would be af-
fected by such considerations were con-
verified The pastor and the Off GERS of
the church were On the lookout for the
solution of this religious phenomenon.
where is it?7 they said, land who is it
and what is tip" AT Last the discovery
was made and all was explained A
DOOR old Christian woman standing in
the Vestibple of the church one Sunday
morning, trying to get her breath again
before she went UP stairs to the gallery,
heard the inquiry and told the secret.
y
of concentrating all her prayers for par
ticufar persons in that church. She
would see some man or some woman
present, and, though she might not
know the peTson' name, she would pray
for that person until he or she was con-
verted to God. ALI her prayers were
for that one peGson,-just that one. She
waited and waited for communion DAYS
to see when the candidates for member
ship stood up whether her prayers had
been eGectual. It turned out that these
marvellous instances 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.
A little cloud of consecrated humanity
lowering in the galleries. That was
the secret place of the thunder. There
is some hidden, unknown, mysterious
source of almost all the moral and reii-
gious power demonstrated. Not one
out of a nillion-not one out of ten nil-
j1ion-rayers ever strike human ear.
On publie occasions minister of reli-
gion voices the suppaieations of an as
SeAibld3G, put lie prayers OF all Inc
congregation are In silence. There is
not a second in century when prayers
are not ascending, but n1yriads of them
are not even as loud as a whisper, for
God hears thought as plainly as
lvocalization- That silence,of supplica-
tion-henispheric and perpetual-is the
secret place of thunder.
In the winter of 1878 we were wor-
Shipping in the Brooklyn Academy of
Music in the interregnum of churches.
We had the usual great audiences, but
was oppressed beyondsmaasure by the
fact that conversions were not more nu-
merous, One Tuesday invited to my
house five old, consecrabed Christian
men-all of them gene now, except
Father Pearson, and he, in blindness
and old age, waiting for the Masters
caA to come up higher.
These old men came, not knowing
why I had invited them. I took them
to the top room of my house. said to
them: 81 have called you here for spe-
eial prayer. am in an agony for
great turning to god of the people. We
bava W ct 1111l 4it1Ides in attendance anJ