Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-11-24

OCHb oANNNO Uhu odAis itO YOU SEC liidJ
scar on my arm?" l said, Yes. You
must have had an awful wound there
some time" He said: Eyes, it nearly
cost me my life. | was in mine in
England 600 feet under ground and
three miles from the shaft of the mine
and rock fell on me, and my fellow
laborer pried off the rock, and / was
bleeding to death, and he took newS-
paper from around his luncheon and
bound it around my wound and then
helped me over the three miles under
ground TO the shaft, where | was lifted
to the top, and when that newspaper
was taken off my wound read on it
something that saved my soul, and it
was one of your sermons. Good night, I"
he said as he passed on. leaving me
transfXed with grateful emotion.
And who knows but the words now
speak, blessed of God, may reach some
wounded soul deep down in the black
mine of sin, and that these words may
| be blessed TO the staunching OK che
wound and the eternal life of the soul?
Settle this matter instantly, positively
and forever. Stay the last IF" Bury
! deep the last If" How to do it?
Fling body, mind and soul in prayer
as earnest as that of Moses in the text.
| Can you doubt the earnestness of this
prayer or the text? 1t is so heavy with
emotion that it breaks down in the
middle. u was so earnest that the
translators In the modern copies of the
bible were obliged to put a mark, a
straight line, a dash for an omission
that will never be filed lp.
Such an abrupt pause, such
sudden swapping off of the sentence.
You cannot parse my text. 1t is an
offense to grammatical construction.
But that dash PIT in by the typesetters
is nightly suggestive. IF thou Wit
forgive their sin" then comes the DASH
-; land if not, blot me, pray thee,
out of thy book" Some of the most
earnest prayers ever uttered could not
be parsed and were poor specimens Of
language. They halted, they broke
down, they passed into sobs or groans
or silences. God cares nothing for the
syntax of prayers, nothing for the rhe-
y
prayers! If they were piled up they
would reach TO the rainbow that
arches the throne of God. A deep sigh
may mean more than whole liturgy.
Out of the one hundred and
sixteen thousand words of the
English language there may not
be word enough expressive
hA gA,,1 Tho
prayers | have ever heard have been
prayers that broke down with emotion;
the young man for the first time rising
in a prayer meeting ana saying, so
Lord jesus and then sitting down.
burying the face in the handkerchief;
the pcnitent in TIE inquiry room kneel-
ing and saying, God help me-" and
getting no further; the broken prayer
that started 3 great revival in my
church in Philadelphia. \ prayer may
have in style the gracefulness of an
Addison, and the sublimity of Mil
ton, and the epigrammatic force of an
Emerson, and yet be n failure, having
a horizontal power but no perpendicu-
lar power, horizontal power reaching
the ear of man, but no perpendicular
power reaching the ear of God.
There is only one kind of prayer in
which YOU need to put the IF, )" and
that is the prayer for temporal bless
ings. Pray for riches and they may
engulf us, or for fame and it may be-
witch us. or for worldly success of any
sort and it mag destroy us. Better say
IF it be best, IF can make proper
use of it, IF Thou seest need IT." A
wife, praying for the recovery of her
husband from illness, stamped her foot
and said with frightful emphasis,
81 will not have him die; God shall
not take him" Her prayer was
answered, but a few years after,
the community was shocked by the
fact that he had in a moment of anger
slain her. A mother, praying for
sons recovery from illness, told the
Lord he had no right to take him, and
the boy recovered, but plunged into all
denominations and died a renegade.
Better in all such prayers and all pray
ers pertaining to our temporal welf9re,
put an 'If," saying, eff it be Thy
Will! But praying Ter spiritual good
and the salvation of our soul we need
never insert an eff" Our spiritual
welfare is sure to be for the bcct, and
away with the Ifs"
Abraham's prayer for the rescue of
Sodom was a grand prayer in some re-
spects, but there were six "Ifs III it,
or 'peradventures," which mean the
same thing. "Peradventure there may
be fifty righteous in the city perad
venture forty-fve, perad venture
forty, peradventure thirty, perad
venture twenty. peradventure ten"
Those six peradventures, those six
Ifs" killed the prayer and
Sodom went down and went un-
der. Nearly all the prayers that
were answered had no IFS in
them. The prayer of Elijah that
changed dry weather to wet weather
The prayer that changed Hezckiah !
from a sick man to well man. The |
prayer that halted sun and moon with