The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-30
os ANGELES. CAL, June 2s.-In thIs |


 A secret to life of real achievement and usefulness Is to live up to our priv ileges by laying hold of the divine prom ises in good faith and expecting large things. The next is John fl, ', And they filled them up to the brim."
 If there is any passage ip the Bible which teaches us to expect big things from God 1t is the sentence which I have chosen fro my text. When Jesus com manded the servants at the wedding of Cana of Galilee to fill up the water pots they did not go grumbling around say ing: "Oh, what is the use? What the guests need Is wine, not water. Besides, Jesus is not asking up to i'll one water pot, but six of them. Why, those six water pots will hold 1S5 gallons. Think down to the well to get that waterl Think of all the fun and tho music and the songs we will lose while we arc gone!' No, those young men spake not thus. They obeyed orders. If they had known what was about to occur they would have said. If Christ can change the water into wine, then the more water we have the mora wine we shall have !" So they took their buckets and started off for the well. They kept emptying the water into the water pots until the water ran over the tops of the water pots. And they filled them up to the brim." They did big things for God and they got big things May we today learn to have "a brimful faith" May we expect God to bless us nightly in every department of life and in our youth and middle age and old age and make great preparations for the coming spiritual blessings.
 Let us, in the first place, have brim- full faith in reference 10 our prayers. Let LIS learn that prayer to God is not nar- row ledge of rock upon the side of a mighty precipice where we must stand trembling and pleading for eternal life or else our feet will slip and we will tum- ble into tho bottomless pit. But prayer is the broad invitation God gives to his children to come and talk with Him and ask what they will, and He will grant their requests if 1t Is best for them 70 be granted. Prayer is promissory note that God puts Into our hands, and we arc encouraged to fill 1t out liberaly' Prayer is the hold we have on the power that is capable of recreating ourselves and recreating our dear ones and lowering the bars so that we can enter into great helds of usefulness. Prayer is the most vital spiritual power we have on earth. With it we can catch the ear of the Lord God Almighty. and He will listen to your peti- tions and grant them If 1t Is best Tor us and for those for whom we pray. What says the Bible? Is there any limitation to the petitions we are to make to Godf Nay All things will be granted for our best welfare if these petitions are made in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Ask. and It shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and 1t shall be opened unto you" But, though this sweeping invita- ton Is given to make our prayers as pig as heaven itself. some of the most mis- erable and eontemptible and insignificant things in the world are those we ask Tn the circumscribed and limited petitions which we make to God through the gate way of prayer
 Narrow Ideas.
 In our ideas of prayer we are just as narrow boundarled as are the ideas or some men Sorn away back In the coun- try who have ngver seen a steam en- zine who have never learned to read newspaper and who have never been to a village of larger population than 200 in- habitants You go to such man and say. MY friend, how would you like to go to New York and see the greatest metropolis of the new world?' He an swers, No, I don't want to go. why, some of the men down at the village store tell me that the buildings there are twenty times higher than my barn. Why, would be afraid to go there for fear they would fall down and crack my skull open. And they say the street cars run so fast that they kill people there every day And they say there are lot of thieves and murderers there. No New York for me. l prefer to live here In my quiet diggings, where l am not in danger of being killed every step take But I say: My friend, you are not go- ing to keep your children here in tho baclwoods There are no schools or churches here You have a poor, miser- able shack of a house, with no carpets on the floors and no pictures upon the walls Are you going to let your children grow up as ignorant as you are?' Well, an swers the old backwoodsman, T do not know that book learning does man any good The children have enough to eat. They have enough clothes to wear. They have a room in which to sleep. What is the good of stockings and under clothes? They do not help a man to Keep any warmer. And then a little dirt does not hurt anybody. l have lived for nigh on to fifty years in these here woods with out learning how to read or write and l guess the children are no better than their father Is. If l had to do as I have done guess they can do the same" You see that man is an animal, a simple ani- mal The great wide world, with It's mu- sic and books and knowledge and joys and hopes, Is utterly beyond his visual range. His largest horizon Is cabbage patch Beyond that cabbage patch he cannot see Such is the circumscribed horizon of some of us in our prayers. We can never get beyond the mere animal pe- titions of the lower, grosser ideas of prayer.
 Foolish Prayers.
 Instead of starting with a great sweep of holy desires to benefit all mankind through prayer, instead of filling up six great water pots with petitions for God 8 honor and glory, we come to God with q little thimble filled with our selfish de sires, and we call that prayer Thus some of us go on year in and year out making a lot of miserable little selfish petitions and call those petitions prayer. Not for years have we broadened the scope of our spiritual horizon. Not for years have we made one prayer big enough to obllterate self and take in God s glory and honor. The way some of us make poor, puny. silly. selfish prayers Is enough to make the angels in heaven laugh were 1t not for the fact that those prayers are so tragic.
 Oh, that you and l could grow big enough in divine grace to make the prayer which Paul made when in the epistle to the Romans he wrote, "I have great heav- mess and continual sorrow in my heart, for l could wish that myself were ac- cursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh" That means in plain English; 70 God, save my people; save the Jews, the men of my own race l would die for them. l would even forfeit my own hope of salvation if by that means they might be won for Christ" Do we ever make such prayer at that? Do we make our prayers so big that in their desires they win girdle the