Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1910-01-13
ASK AND YE SHALL RESERVE"
A Few Little Incidents Which go 10 Show
That 0ld-FaShiOned Faith Isn't Dead Yet

was two hundred ton of coal between
me and Gods fresh air. Two hundred
ton, and nobody knew | was back of it.
squeezed up on shelving bit of rock in
the chamber of the colliery, no bigger
than hand-csr for space. Il caught
me all at once as l was working with
me pick, and 1 was held down by the
drift up to the armpits. And two hun.
dred ton of coal between me and air,
can you think of it, mate, without get.
ting loose POINTED in your head?"
He laughed, laughed happily, anC
Jauntily, this miner who had just beer
hauled out OF the nearest approach tc
the bottomless pit that this earth car
show, a Pennsylvania coal-mine.
For nine hours he and death had beer
working mates, hundreds of feet below
ground, at the Gilberton Colliery Of the
Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron
Company, and when he had finally been
hauled up to life again, and asked wha;
he had done to sustain the spark of vi
tally during those hours of utter hope
lessness in the black, sitting silence, he
he had laughed.
What did do down there? l PRAYED
to God, same as any man would. And
1t worked out all right, didn't it? What
made them know 1 was caught down
there? What made them dig in the
right place after me? What made me
keep breath in me body for nine hours?
Can you tell me that? I'll tell yer. "
He stopped, both brawny, dirty, cal
loused hands clenched on his bare breast.
It's something in here that asks. That
know. And there's something around
that listens. And I'm thinking it's
God"
Other people have thought so too.
We hear lots about faith and the power
of prayer today. Dramas are written
Of 1t, and succeed, in spite of their load
Of psychic phenomena and therapeutic
suggestion; literature is loaded down
with it; the churches have been swept
by wave of something, they know not
what And the words of the Irish
miner out of the Gllberton Colliery hit
the truth as surely, as unerrinly as any
fisherman of Gallilee centuries ago.
There has been no change.
Faith is a mighty strange thing.
Sometimes when it believes most. it
questions its own power; sometimes it
hardly believes at all. Again, in mo-
ments of great excitement, there leans
to the lips of men message to the God
they believe in, SO desperate SO fervent
That the answer has seemed to flash
forth in miracle, leaving even the man
who asked, amazed and marveling.
Coincidence, remarks the skepti-
cal Possibly, but when a man stands
up IN field, and defies God, and is
promptly struck by a bolt out of the
clear sky, it starts memories of Ajax.
and divers other gentlemen who ap-
preached too near the throne of the uni
verse in scoffing mood, with various
results.
So, without special comment, thew
tell this story out in South Dakota. of a
well-to-do, genial, popular farmer near
Fargo. When there is a drought out
there, the wheat-fields scorch and die.
and the price of bread goes I'D in the
city. One day there came a wave of
blasting heat, and this man prayed
prayed as he never had done since he
was q child, for rain.
No rain fell. Suddenly the cord of
tension broke, and standing upright in
his wheat-fields, with ruin and death
around him, he lifted his arms I'D to the
blue vault above him, and cursed God.
cursed as the wife of Job begged her
husband to do, as she stood over the
bowed figure of Gods Friend" rend-
ing her garments, and shrieking for him
to curse God and die, for the ruin He
had wrought
Then, suddenly, there came a bolt
of lightning, and the man who had lost
faith had his answer.
They tell yet. out in Fargo, how. for
over an hour, there was zone of "elec-
trical peril'' around the stricken body
through which no living beng might
pass unscathed. The rain fell in tor
rents, and out in the drenched, deserted
field of swaying, wind-lashed wheat
there lay the body, face up, staring at
the heavens that in some mysterious.
inexplicable way, had seemed to re-
spond to his outcry.
There's lumber company down in
Oklahoma which positively refuses to
employ men addicted to the praying
habit. And there's a reason. The sal
airy of the minister down in Bokhama
does not amount to much. So the lum-
Der company counted him among its
laborers-the Rev. Charles Ford. Six
months ago last September, the minis
ter gave up his position at the mill. as
the holiness cause frightened up bit.
and asked the company for some back
wages he said were due, and withdrew