Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1901-01-07

bOie over a white tafeta transpa
already wrought. We are rejoicing
to-day, over the great and wide work
accomplished by Mr.. Moody, but in
earlier years a deeper, if not wider
work was wrought through the mighty
evangelism of Charles G. Finney, who,
however, attributes his great success
to the prayers of two men, n of
whom was confined to his oom by
sickness. Read the chapter in his
Autobiography" called Revival at
Rome, N. Y" The chapter is simply
a history of prayer. He says "the
town was full of prayer. Go where
you would, you heard the voice of
prayer. Pass along the street, and if
two or three men happen to be to-
gether, they were praying. Wherever
they met they prayed. Those were the
days when stalwart men fell before
truth, through answers to prayer,
when leading merchants, lawyers, and
physicians were brought under con-
vietion and humbled themselves at the
cross of Christ. Time and again, in
many places, the spirit of prayer was
| such that strangers coming into the
city were overwhelmed, as were the
multitudes in Jerusalem at the great
Pentecostal outpouring. To-day we
are entering into the labor Of praying
men and women of sixty years ago.
Prayer would o end, and with it
| Christian faith in Gods word, if men
did not cling to the divine promise
that if we ask in faith, in accordance
with His will, we shall have the petit
lions we desire Of Him. When the
one hundred and twenty diciples pray
ed for the Holy spirit who had been
promised, He came as a converting
power over the multitudes. as well as
a sanctifying power over themselves.
when Martin Luther wrestled with
| God for help in the time of great dan
ger to the cause of Reformation, and
when he rose up from his knees with
shining countenance, crying out we
have overcome soon came the edlct
of federation from Charles the Fifth,
the Emperor, but it came from the
Lord. in whose hand is the heart OF
| every king. The victories which an
| gels celebrate are won in the silence
| and darkness, where the soul of an
Elijah, a Paul, a Luther, a Mary Lyon,
or some other humber believer, lifts
it's clasped hands in pleading faith to
| Him who nswers prayer.
There is inexpressible need of a
high tide of spiritual life to sweep
through u land at the present time.
We are summoned away from cere-
| monials and machineries and organi-
cations, and from all externalities,
and brought face to face with God.
Not by external power, but by my
spirit saith the Lord One of the
chief dangers of modern Christianity
is undue reliance on machinery.
Church machinery may be only a To-
connective without steam. No matter
how fine the workmanship of the en-
CINE, no matter if a hundred arts have
lavished their skill to perfect and
adorn the mechanism, if the vaporous
breath of steam is not there, it is a
useless contrivance. Trusting in sec
ularities is not trusting in the Lord.
Power does not flow from the levels
OF the world, but from the heights,
where God dwells. The despised
things of this world with God back of
them and in them, have wrought the
miracles of history; the rod of Moses.
David's Sling Eliiah's solitary cry,
Johns lone voice in the wilderness,
| Paul's simple story of the resurrection,
the early missionaries who preached
Christ in dens of robbers, the simple
faith of the Albigensian church nest
led amid the snowy Alps, these are
| all emblems of that might of weakness
| which Milton called irresistible be-
cause God was in it. Whitefeld
preaching by the hedge-rows was
mightier than all England's machinery
of secclesiasticism. The path of vic
tory for each one of us and for the
church evermore, is the path along
which under the standard of the Cross
and with silver trumpets silent, march
the invisible and invincible batta,ions
of the Holy Ghost.
g. What of the outlook? 80, Thou
that nearest prayer, unto Thee shall
all flesh come" We are now SOL
EMMY compelled to confront the work
Of a new century. We need, first of
all, a new vision and revelation, both
of our opportunity and u RESPONSE
bility. Christ is the light of the world,
but so is His church. The highest
privilege of a believer is to receive,
reflect, and transmit the glory of God
as revealed in Christ through the COS
pei. Practically that glory will never
shine in the hearts of men unless it
comes to them through believers, as
mirrors or transmitters of Gods grace.
| With this new century we confront a
now crisis in missions, and the ques-
ton is, who is to meet it, and how is
it sto be met? At least four factors
combine to constitute this, a new and
critical emergency in missions, quite
beyond any previous one in import
ance and appeal: Those factors are
the vast unoccupied area, the entire
in~adequacy of the army of occupation,
the lack of a proper standard of Civ
ing. and the lack Of a proper spirit of
prayer on the part OF the church at