Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-06-04

was not called upon to sacrifice any OF
her amenities of life, she conse-
Grated her beauty, her social position,
her family, her all to God and
the church and usefulness. Every body
said in regard TO her: Have you no.
ticed the change, and what in the
world caused it?" and no one coulo
make satisfactory explanation. In the
course of two years. though there was
no general awakening in that church,
many such isolated cases of such uneX-
pected and unaccountable conversions
took place. The very people whom nc
one thought would be effected by such
considerations were converted. The
| pastor and the officers of the church
, were on the lookout for the solution Oh
this religious phenomenon. "Where is
it?' they said, land who is it, and
what is it ?'' At last the discovery was
made and all was explained. A poor
old christian woman in the vestibule
of the church one Sunday morning,
trying to get her breath again before
she went upstairs to the gallery, heard
| the enquiry and told the secret. For
years she had been in the habit of con-
! centratipg all her prayers for partic-
ular PERSONS in that church. She
would see some man or some woman
present, and, though she might not
know the PERSONS name she would
pray for that person until he
or she was converted 20 God. All her
prayers were for that one person-just
that one. She waited and waited for
| communion days to see when the can
didates 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 I'M
, noticed. A 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 occa-
sions a minister of religion voices the
applications of an assemblage, but the
prayers of all the congregation are in
silence. There is not q second in a
century when prayers are not ascend
ing, but myriads of them are not even
as loud as a whisper, for God hears u
thought as plainly as a vocalization.
That silence of supplication-hemi-
spheric and perpetual-is the secret
place of thunder.
In the winter of 1875, we were wor-
Shipping in the Brooklyn Academy of
Music in the interregnum of churches.
We had the usual great audiences, but
/ was oppressed beyond measure by
the fact that conversions were not more
numerous. One Tuesday, invited to
my house five old, consecrated Christ
ian 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 l had in
vited them. / took them tc the top
room of my house. / said TO them:
81 have called you here for special
prayer. am in an agony for great
turning to God of the people. We have
vast multitudes in attendance and they
are attentive and respectful, but l can
not see that they are saved Let us
lneel down and each one pray and not
leave this room until we are all assured
that the blessing will come and has
come" 1t was most intense crying
unto God. / said: Brethren, let this
meeting be secret" and they said it
would be. That Tuesday night spe-
cial service ended. On the fol-
lowing 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 prny in
public in great composure broke down
under emotion. The people were in
tears. There were sobs and silences
and solemnities of such unusual 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 a relig-
icus awakening took place that made
that winter memorable for time and
for eternity. There may be in this
building many who were brought to
God during that great ingathering, but
few of them know that in the upper
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.
But" says some one, that is a
beautiful theory, yet it does not work
in my case, for / am in cloud of
trouble or cloud of sickness or n
cloud OF persecution or cloud of pow
erty or a cloud of bereavement or a
cloud of perplexity." How glad / am
that you told me that That is exactly
the place to which my text refers. 1t
was from cloud that God answered
Israel-the cloud over the chasm cut
through the Red seattle cloud that
was light to the Israelites and dark
ness to the Egyptians. IL was from
cloud, a tremendous cloud, that God
made reply. 1t was cloud that was
the secret place of thunder. So Won