The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1902-06-18
A Little Sermon.

Tennyson was but clothing in the purple
and fine linen OF poetry q naked eternal
truth when he sang:
More things are wrought by prayer than
this world dreams Of,
For so the whole round earth 10
every way
Bound cdS, b geld chains about the feet of
Never yet has the traveller found 4 peo-
pie who did not pray. Races have been
found without raiment; whole nations
have been found without houses; countries
have been found without manufactures;
never without prayers. Where you find
human features, human passions and hu-
man speech, there you find human prayers.
Meaningless, even to their utterers, such
prayers often are, yet universal. 1t could
not be otherwise, for prayer is within rs
at once the chasm dividing from the brute
creation below, the link uniting to the
divinity above.
The necessity for prayer is in US, is IL
not also in God as We are part Of Him
SELF. created in His image! We read that
the prayers OF the saints come up TO God
az sweet smelling incense" Is there not
then 4 sense in which. our prayers are as
necessary to Gods love rs are those pray
crs necessary to our own spiritual breath
of life! The Scripture lesson gives US an
instance Of both OF these necessities. Jesus
took His disciples with Him when He went
apart to pray. The three little dearer
and who lived nearer to Him than the rest
Ne took further into the garden Of His
sorrow that last sad night, as If He longed
for their companionship and their pray
ers. also 70 go with Him up to His Father.
Sadly and lovingly He rebuked them:
Gould ye not wstch with Me one hour!"
L.. L. ..l 49, nata
bewildered eyes and did not understand.
His longing for their sympathy AID pray.
ers that night, even as we look now with
world.dimmed vision and caly halfway
call our thoughts from other things when
We enter into the holy OF holies to pray,
nor dream from what high privilege We arc
selfshut, by this indifference. For only
by prayer and communion with the most
high God, that night, could even those be-
loved ones approach unto the knowledge
of the great weight OF sin and sorrow that
lay upon their Saviour's heart, the weight
OF the sin OF the world and His own bear
ing of it. And that night Peter, James
and John were privileged to share some
what OF His burden for the sin OF the world,
and they were so sound asleep that even
Christ's own gentle awaking and warning,
twice repeated, reused them not to their
privileges.
We to-day are privileged to share some
what in Christ's agony for souls, and yet
how few, comparatively, do. We do not
talk with God CROUCH to know His wishes
for Us, nor to know what He is feeling and
thinking for His world. We only come to
Him when we feel great need for His
help. Andrew Murray says:
The child who only wants to know the
love of the father when he has something
to ask, will be disappointed. But he who
let's God be Father always and in every
thing, who would fain live his whole life in
the Fathers presence and love, who allows
God in all the greatness OF His love to be
a father to him. Oh! he will experience
most gloriously that life in Gods infinite
fatherliness and continual answers to pray.
er are inseparable."
But the disciples had need Of prayer
that night for the:r own strengthening.
Temptation was coming upon them swift
and sure. Jesus warned them OF it. Had
they been praying they would also have
been watching. The Christian who spends
much time in talking with God is not the
one easily betrayed into denying his Lord
before company Of scofers. Jesus has
set us here on this earth for a little while
with the order: "Tarry We here, and watch
with Me."-New York Mail and Express.