Answers to Prayer
As MIGHT be anticipated, this century of missions bears no mark of the wonder-work of God more conspicuous than the multiplied and marvellous answers to prayer.
Every conspicuous step and stage of progress is directly traceable to prevailing, believing, expectant supplication. When Jonathan Edwards blew his trumpet blast, calling all believers to united prayer for a new and world-wide Pentecost, Northampton in England echoed the clarion peal of the New England Northampton, and the monthly concert of prayer, established thirty-seven years later, was the beginning of a stated monthly season of such united, organized pleading with God for a lost world.
Carey was the Moses and Joshua of the new movement, both in one; and nothing marked him so conspicuously as the rod of God in his hand — the power of humble, believing supplication. Had Carey not known how to pray, the missionary century had not yet dawned, or had waited for some other praying soul to roll back the curtain of the long night. God has compelled his saints to seek Him at the throne of grace, so that every new advance might be so plainly due to His power that even the unbeliever might be constrained to confess: “Surely this is the finger of God!”
He meant that the century of missions should be to the Church at home as important as to the distant fields of missions abroad; and, in fact, the heart must have a strong pulse if the life currents of blood are to be driven to the fingers’ ends. And so no age, since the Apostolic, has been so peculiar for the revival of prayer. Every new Pentecost has had its preparatory period of supplication — of waiting for enduement; and sometimes the time of tarrying has been lengthened from ‘’ten days” to as many weeks, months, or even years; but never has there been an outpouring of the Divine Spirit from God without a previous outpouring of the human spirit toward God. To vindicate this statement would require us to trace the whole history of missions, for the field of such display of divine power covers the ages. Yet every missionary biography, from those of Eliot and Edwards, Brainerd and Carey, down to Livingstone and Burns, Hudson Taylor and John E. Clough, tells the same story: prayer has been the preparation for every new triumph, and the secret of all success; and so, if greater triumphs and successes lie before us, more fervent and faithful praying must be their forerunner and herald!
If this be so, we must fix this fact in mind by repetition, sound it out as with God’s own trump, write it as in letters of light, on the very firmament of missions — that the New Acts of the Apostles opened with prevailing prayer, and in each new chapter records its new triumphs.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the fallow soil began to be sown with those seeds of missionary enterprise which came to the surface a half century later. We repeat what has been said, that Carey’s movements were only the germinating of what Edwards, and others like him, had planted. When in 1784, at that Northamptonshire Baptist Association, John Sutcliff, of Olney, reported, recommending a stated monthly meeting to bewail the low state of missions, and to implore God for a general revival of pure piety, and a world-wide outpouring of power from on high, the first Monday of each month was the time designated, and John Ryland, Jr., drew up the plan. Soon after, Sutcliff republished Edward’s appeal, thus acknowledging that this nevf advance was the result of seed sown as early as 1747, and wholly due to prayer, which was now formally recognized as the one hope alike of the Church and the world.
Three years later, Carey was ordained at Moulton, and five years after that came the compact at Kettering, which was the Magna Charta of modern missions; and the Baptist Missionary Society was born, now mother of so large a family of societies. That small but famous ‘’fund” of thirteen pounds and one half-crown, laid by that little band of twelve on the altar that so sanctified and magnified the gift, was, by God’s decree, the small offering it was, and from His poor, because He meant to show that it was not by might or by power, not by numbers or by wealth, but by His Spirit, that this work is to be carried on.
Those who, like Sydney Smith, sneered at the ‘’consecrated cobblers” and “apostates” from the humblest callings of life, who with a hundred halfcrowns would attempt world-wide missions — were blind to the open mystery of God’s dealings, who always chooses the base and weak and despised nothings to bring to naught the great and strong and mighty somethings; and who deliberately chooses and uses the few and the poor, the lowly and the obscure, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of man, and that no flesh should glory in His presence. Had that first roll of subscribers held twelve hundred distinguished names, with some prince of royal blood as patron, and had that sum been thirteen thousand pounds to start with, missions might have waited another century for their real beginning.
Those who knew, and at first opposed, Carey, came to feel that he was a man of prayer and that the God of Prayer was back of him. It was prayer that found expression in the monthly concert, that baptized with power Carey’s “Inquiry,” that made that map at Moulton luminous with divine light and vocal with a world’s mute appeal; it was prayer that led to that sermon in Nottingham and that gathering in Widow Wallis’ parlour at Kettering, and to Carey’s offer of himself in 1793.
God saw that the Church would never take up, or be fit to take up, this Apostolic work without a revival of Apostolic faith in divine power and in the prayer that alone commands that power. Reliance on human patronage, and the kindred confidence in numbers and riches, are fatal hindrances to missions. When Carey preached his now immortal sermon, whose divine quality was found in its unction, he said: ‘^ Saviour, Thy greatest things have had smallest beginnings.” It was to him a great encouragement that when God called Abraham he was alone. (Isa. 1. I.) And this same truth of insignificant beginning was illustrated in Widow Wallis’ house on October 2d, 1792.
Upon this one form of signs and wonders our minds have need, therefore, to linger, as bees upon a bloom, for the nectaries of our Christian life are here to be found: we refer to these Aiisivers to Prayer.
God has taken infinite care to fasten in the minds of believers the power of supplication in the name of Christ to work supernatural results. In the Word of God there are at least ten very marked lessons on prayer; and these lessons are progressive — they advance from the simplest rudiments, in a distinct order or series, in which each step must be taken on the way to the next — each lesson learned, if the succeeding one is to be understood. For instance, if we combine the gospel narratives and observe the development of the doctrine, we shall find that we are successively taught the nature of prayer as asking of God; then the negative and positive conditions of acceptable, prevailing prayer, such as a frame of forgiveness, of faith in God’s promise, of importunate earnestness, of devout expectancy, of mutual agreement in the Spirit, of accordance with the will of God, etc. The climax of all these lessons is reached in that expressly new lesson taught by our Lord, as to asking in His Name; that is, by virtue of our identity with Him. When prayer is offered in another’s name, that other becomes the real suppliant, whoever presents the request. And so our Lord teaches us that from the time when our oneness with Him is recognized and realized as based upon our membership in His body, we may ask in His name, by His power, in His stead; so that the petition becomes the petition of Him in whose name it is offered, as Esther’s writing, when signed and sealed in the name of King Ahasuerus, became his decree.*
Behold these lessons gathered up and woven into the fabric of one superb metaphorical representation in the Apocalypse. In the eighth chapter, the visions of the seer of Patmos open with a solemn and mysterious half-hour of silence in heaven. Before the first of the seven trumpets sounds, the seven angels stand silent before God, as though waiting a signal. And the half-hour of silence seems wholly given to this revelation of the power of prayer.
The Angel of Intercession comes and stands at the altar, holding in his hands a golden censer. Unto him is given much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar, before the throne; and the mingled smoke of the incense and prayers of saints ascend like a sweet savour before God out of the censer. Then the Angel takes the censer, fills it with the fire of the altar, and casts it upon the earth; and astounding results follow — thunderpeals, lightning flashes, voices, and earthquake convulsions.
This parable in action might still have remained an inscrutable mystery but for a divine key that is in the lock, which opens to us its meaning. We
* Compare John xvi. 23-27, Esther viii. 8.
are here twice told that it concerns the prayer’s of saints,’’ And with this key we may open the doors of this great truth. Laying aside the figurative forms of expression, which are like bronze gates, sculptured with allegorical figures — what readest thou?
Prayers of saints, offered in holy agreement, ascend like vapours, which blend and mingle in pure white clouds. The great Intercessor at the Throne presents them before God, made acceptable by His own infinite merit, and thus they prevail. The power of God is put at the disposal of praying souls; and upon the earth wonderful changes, convulsions, upheavings, revolutions take place. Pra5^er has gone to heaven, found acceptance, and returned in answers of almighty power, as moisture goes up in vapour and returns in rain. Supplication, when it is according to scriptural conditions, commands divine interposition.
Here, then, we have a vision of Prayer as a power in the universe of God. There is a half-hour silence; no word is spoken. But the silence has a voice. It tells an unbelieving Church that whenever great moral and spiritual reformations and transformations, evolutions and revolutions, are witnessed, somebody has been praying, though only God may trace the links between the prayers and the answers.
The whole story of missions is the historic interpretation of that Apocalyptic vision: it is the story of answered prayer. If we would trace organized mission effort back not to its birth but to its conception, we must go farther than Widow Wallis’ parlour at Kettering, or even the cobbler’s shop at Hackleton, or Edward’s appeal in 1747. Nearly twenty years before that trumpet-call to prayer, another great movement had started at Oxford, where John and Charles Wesley, and Morgan and Kirkham, Ingham, Broughton, Hervey and George Whitefield were studying and praying to promote holiness and usefulness. At the end of six years this little company numbered but sixteen. But such were some of the preparations God was making for the birth-hour of modern missions. Upon these few men at Oxford there came suddenly a blessing from on high, which not only changed the whole tenor of their lives, but became the mould of a revived Church and the matrix of modern missions.
If the history of all that prayer has wrought, in the century now closing, could be written and read, it would be as startling as the opening of the books in the last great day. The number is legion, of the movements for human weal whose secret source, unknown to the people, has been in prevailing prayer.
The repeal of the ‘’ Contagious Diseases “Act in Britain was a triumph of prayer. Against the advocates of this repeal almost the whole strength of the two houses of Parliament was massed, but throughout the kingdom disciples were giving themselves to supplication. A few men undertook to maintain a stand against the whole nation, and two or three godly women took their stand beside them, hooted at by an insulting rabble and pelted by the daily press with merciless ridicule as the ‘’howling sisterhood!” But prayer prevailed and the abhorrent measure was abolished by unanimous vote.
Those who in England and America have watched the slow steps by which the way was prepared for the abolition of slavery well know that in that great contest between human rights and the might of organized selfishness and sordidness. Prayer turned the scale. There were some godly women, for example, who met at stated times in Boston to claim from God the freedom of the slave; and, when the wild waves of riot surged against the very doors of their little place of prayer, they remained on their knees and were heard to say: *’ Lord, the foes of God and of the slave molest us indeed, but they cannot make tis afraid.’’ And so the praying saints kept praying, until the fires of God came down and burned the fetters from four millions of manacled hands.
That famous cartoon of the death of St. Genevieve depicts the triumph of Roman valour with its pomp and pageantry of arms, side by side with a humble deathbed around which praying saints are gathered. But it suggests how much mightier is the power that goes with a few supplicating believers than all the boasted might of armies.
Read the New Acts of the Apostles; linger over the scenes at Hilo and Tahiti, New Zealand and the Fiji isles; pierce to the church of the cavern in the Vaudois vales; follow the Huguenots in exile; study the personal life of Edwards and Brainerd, and Mills and Carey and Judson and Johnson; track to their closets and retreats in the forests and caves, God’s praying ones, and you shall know how God’s Pentecosts are but the rewarding ’ ‘openly” of those who have learned how to get hold on Him ‘’ in secret.”
The Church, when it is once more a praying Church, w411 boldly claim of God that He shall stretch forth His hand as the only way to give boldness in preaching His word. When it is God’s ‘’work” we are doing it is our right and privilege not only to ask, but to “command” Him. (Isa. xlv. ii.) Faith not only offers a request, but issues a fiat — and says, it shall be so. Prayer, says Coleridge, is
“An affirmation and an act,
That bids eternal truth be fact!”
The promise makes prayer bold, for God’s word cannot fail. Fulfilment is as certain as past events are fixed, and the future becomes a present to such faith. There is a new era of missions yet to be ushered in when the disciples of Christ learn to ask in Jesus’ name, by the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God, and with a confidence that counts things that are not as though they are.
Missionary history has exemplified that superbly grand lesson, that prayer, when it prevails, has about it a boldness, a holy audacity, which reminds us of the prophet whose plea was — ‘”’’Do not disgrace the Throne of Thy Glory!’’ When a saint understands that prayer has three intercessors — the interceding Spirit within, the interceding suppliant, and the interceding Christ before the Throne — he feels himself but the channel through whom a current passes, whose source is the Holy Spirit in his heart, whose final outpour is through our great High Priest into the bosom of the Father; and he loses sight of himself in the thought of the divine stream, and its spring and its ocean. How can he but be bold? Prayer becomes no more mere lame and timid asking — it is claiming and laying hold of blessing. Nay, it is waiting for and welcoming the blessing, as a returning stream from the heart of God, pouring back into and through the heart of the supplicant. While he calls, God answers — there is converse, intercourse, intercommunication: prayer is not only speaking to God, but hearing Him speak in return. As a Japanese convert said, it is like the old-fashioned well, where one bucket comes down while another goes up — only in this case it is the full bucket that descends! Such prayer a true missionary has to learn, and it is such prayer that brings him the conscious presence promised by his Master, with its outcome of divine wisdom and strength. It is such prayer that brings to our aid that consummate preacher, the Holy Spirit, whose divine oratory convinces and persuades — who has the power of revelation, demonstration, illumination — who can flash instant light into the darkest mind and command life to the dead.
What gracious blessings have come to heathen souls in answer to prayer! The Rev. Grifflth John, of Hankow, records a whole Saturday spent in prayer for a baptism of the Spirit of God. The following morning he preached on the subject, and at the close of the service proposed a meeting for an hour a day, during the ensuing week, for special anointing from above. From fifty to seventy of his converts met day by day, and mingled a confession of their sins with supplication for the holy outpouring. The impulse which the native Church then received has never yet spent its force. The mission in China, begun in 1847 by William Burns, has now increased until it has five separate centres, with thousands of converts, with native preachers and pastors and schools and medical missions. Its converts have stood firm against persecution, and the abundant blessing has been reverently traced to the monthly prayer-meeting for China held in the room at Edinburgh.
For some years the writer has been gathering and putting on record authentic and striking answers to prayer. A few of them, which have carried unspeakable blessing to his own heart, he now places on record in these pages:
Charles G. Finney, in his ‘’ Revival Lectures “(page 112), tells of a pious man in Western New York sick with consumption. He was poor, and had been sick for years. An unconverted merchant was very kind to him, and the only return he could make was to pray for his salvation. By-and-by, to the astonishment of everybody, that merchant was converted, and a great revival followed. This poor man lingered several years. After his death his widow put his diary into Mr. Finney’s hands. From this it appeared that, being acquainted with about thirty ministers and churches, he set apart certain hours in the day and week to pray for each of them, and also for different missionary stations. His diary contained entries like the following:” To-day I have been enabled to offer what I call the prayer of faith for the outpouring of the
Spirit on the Church.” Thus he had gone
over a great number of churches. Of the missionary stations he mentions particularly the mission at Cey-Ion. Not long after the dates mentioned, mighty revivals had commenced and swept over that region, nearly in the exact order of Jus praying; and in due time news came even from Ceylon of a revival there! Thus this man, too feeble in body to leave his house, was yet useful to the world and the Church. Standing between God and the desolations of the Church, and pouring out his heart in believing prayer, as a prince he had power with God and prevailed.
The following incident was related at Northfield by the Rev. J. Hudson Taylor: A station in the China Inland Mission was peculiarly blessed of God. Inquirers were more numerous and more easily turned from dumb idols to serve the living God than at other stations. This difference was a theme of conversation and wonder. After a time Mr. Taylor returned to England, and at a certain place was warmly greeted by a stranger, who showed great interest in his mission work. This stranger was so particular and intelligent in his questions concerning one missionary and the locality in which he laboured, seemed so well acquainted with his helpers, inquirers, and the difficulties of that particular station, that Mr. Taylor’s curiosity was aroused to find out the reason of this intimate knowledge. To his great satisfaction, he now learned that this stranger and the successful missionary had covenanted together as co-workers. The missionary kept his home brother informed of all the phases of his labour. He gave him the names of inquirers, stations, hopeful characters and difficulties, and all these the home worker was wont to spread out before God in prevailing prayer.
In the recently published memoir of Adolph Saphir,* there is put on record one of the countless instances of divine administration of missions, which we cite because of the many-sided lesson taught.
It is the story of how the mission for the Jews was
* Memoir Adolph Saphir, D.D., by Rev. G. Carlyle, M.A., p. 37 et seq.
established in Pesth, Hllng•ay Prayer is the key to every new mystery in this series of marvels. First, the father of this movement was Mr. R. Wodrow, of Glasgow, whose private diary shows whole days of fasting and prayer on behalf of Israel. The next step was the appointment of a deputation, in 1838, consisting of those four remarkable men, Doctors Keith and Black, with Andrew Bonar and Mc-Cheyne, to visit lands where the Jews dwelt, and select fields for missions to this neglected people. The intolerance of the Austrian government seemed to shut the door to any work within its dominions, and so, notwithstanding the large Jewish population there resident, Hungary was not embraced in the plan of visitation. But God did not propose that this land should be longer passed by; and He, by mysterious links, joined the plan of the deputation to His own purposes for Hungary.
Dr. Black slipped from his camel’s back as they were crossing from Egypt to Palestine, and the seemingly trifling accident proved sufficiently serious to change the homeward route of Dr. Black and Dr. Keith, by way of the Danube. As they passed through Pesth, they made some inquiries as to the Jews there to be found, little knowing what unseen Hand was leading” the blind by a way that they knew not.”
The Archduchess Maria Dorothea, then residing in the Prince Palatine’s palace, had some years previously been led, by a death in her family, to seek solace in the Bible, where ^’she met Jesus.” She was, by the imperial law, forced to bring up her children in the Roman Catholic Church; but as she had found the truth, she taught them, with much prayer, the way of faith, and, in her solitude, yearned and besought of God that a Christian friend and counsellor might be sent to her. In a window of her boudoir, which overlooked the city with its hundred thousand people, day by day, for seven years, she had poured out her soul in prayer to God for some one to carry the true gospel to those around her; at times, in agony, stretching out imploring hands to God for at least one messenger of the cross to come to Hungary.
The year of 1840 came, with Drs. Keith’s and Black’s providential visit to Pesth, and Dr. Keith’s almost fatal illness there — and just at this time the archduchess was strongly and strangely impressed that a stranger was about to arrive who would bring a peculiar blessing to the Hungarians she loved. There was one fortnight particularly, when, night after night, she awoke at the same hour, with a vivid sense that something was about to take place which was to bring her relief. And when at last she heard that Dr. Keith was in town dangeroUvSly ill of cholera, she said to herself, ‘’ This is what was to happen to me.” And from that hour her sleep was no longer broken. She went to the bedside of the prostrate stranger, and with her own hands ministered to his wants; and, as he became better, told him of her longings and prayers, acquainted him with the state of the Hungarian Jews, and assured him that if the Church of Scotland would plant a mission in Pesth, she would throw about it all possible guards. And so it came to pass that in the very field which the deputation purposely left out of all their scheme, God brought about, by link upon link of His inscrutable providence, the famous mission associated with the name of “Rabbi Duncan,” and which was the means of giving, to the Church of Christ, Adolph Saphir.*
Thus came the Protestant gospel into Buda- Pesth: and by what a series of divine leadings! A man’s prayer in Glasgow, a woman’s prayer in Hungary, a seeming accident on desert sand, a change of route, an almost fatal illness, a visit of an archduchess — who shall dare to doubt that the Hungarian mission
* Bonar’s “Mission of Inquiry to the Jews.”
was a tree of God’s planting! who can wonder that as the first missionaries went to this new field they “felt wafted along by the breath of prayer, and had, from the very beginning, a mysterious expectation of success!”
No recent development of missionary zeal is more startling than the sudden and rapid uprising of the educated young nieii on both sides of the Atlantic, to which has been given the title of the ‘^ Modern Crusade.”
From the inception of this movement, as having been strangely interlinked with it, the writer can testify that, from first to last, its sole secret is prayer. More than twenty-five years ago, a missionary, after seventeen years of work on the foreign field, lay on his deathbed. Suddenly arousing himself, with great emphasis, he said:” I have a testimony to give, and would best give it now. Tell the Christian young men in America that the responsibility of saving the world rests on them; not on the old men, but on the young. It is past time for holding back and waiting for providences. I used to think that a missionary ought to husband his strength; but this is a crisis in the world’s history, and one man by keeping back may keep back others. Reason is profitable to direct, but the man that rushes to duty is faithful. There are times when rashness is the rule and caution the exception. I look upon the Church as a military company: an army of conquest, not of occupation.”
Whatever may be thought of this advice, one thing is plain: the heart of a dying missionary is singularly on fire with a passionate zeal for souls; and the dying eyes become gifted with the vision of a seer, who beholds the greatness of the crisis, and would trumpet forth a blast, calling young men to the duty of the hour.
While that dying missionary was leaving behind his last legacy in a message to young men, there was at Princeton, New Jersey, another missionary, returned after thirty years’ service in India, who was gathering in his own house, from time to time, a few younger brethren, to urge on them the same deep conviction — that on them God had laid the burden of beginning a new missionary crusade. He put before them the map of the world, pressed the need of an organized movement among young men to enter the regions beyond; and, while he left them to consider and confer, he withdrew into a neighbouring room to pray. To those prayers we may trace a movement so mighty that already it enrolls on its missionary covenant more than eight thousand young men and women and twice as many in the mighty current of its influence.
In 1886, at Mt. Hermon, Massachusetts, a few hundred students met, at Mr. Moody’s invitation, for a few weeks of Bible study and prayer. While there the young men, whose hearts had begun to burn at Princeton, sought to kindle fires on other altars; and the number who chose the foreign field rose from twenty-three to a hundred. Then, after much prayer, a tour of the colleges was undertaken, that two of their number might bring the facts of the world’s need to the minds of fellow-students not represented at that gathering. And now, both in Britain and America, the universities and colleges and theological schools are becoming fountains of missions. And the end is not yet — the movement grows rather than loses in volume and momentum, and it looks like one of the great developments of the latter days.*
Prayer — Coincidences.
There are remarkable coincidences in missionary history which show a divine hand, as surely as the release of Peter at the very hour when disciples were
* The second “Student Volunteers’ Convention,” held in Detroit, Michigan, in February, 1894, had the largest body of accredited delegates, ever gathered in any missionary conference.
ANSWERS TO PR A VEk. 367
met at the house of Mary, mother of Mark, praying for him. Let one or two examples suffice to prove and to illustrate this.
At the precise time in missions to Tahiti, when the labours of fourteen years seemed wholly in vain — when the tireless toil, faithful witness and unsparing self-denial of the early missionaries seemed like blows of a feather against a wall of adamant — when as yet not a single convert had rewarded all this long labour, and abominable idolatry and desolating warfare seemed to reign — one of the clearest signs and greatest wonders of God’s power was seen in the South Seas. The directors of the London Missionary Society seriously proposed abandoning this fruitless field. But there were a few who felt that this was the very hour when God was about to rebuke unbelief and reward faith in His promise and fidelity to duty. Dr. Haweis backed up his solemn remonstrance against the withdrawal of missionaries from the field by another donation of two hundred pounds; and Matthew Wilks, the pastor of John Williams, said: “I will sell my clothes from my back rather than give up this work.” And, instead of abandoning the mission, it was urged that a special season of united prayer be appointed that the Lord of the Harvest would give fruit from this long seed-sowing. The proposal prevailed; letters of hope and encouragement were sent to the disheartened toilers at Tahiti; and the friends of missions, confessing the unbelief that had made God’s mighty works impossible, implored God to make bare His arm.
Now mark the coincidence. Two vessels started, unknown to each other, from opposite ports — one from Tahiti bound for London, the other from the Thames bound for Tahiti, and crossed each other’s track in mid-ocean. That from the South Seas bore the letters from the missionaries, announcing a work of God so mighty that idolatry was entirely overthrown; and the same ship bore also the very idols which a converted people had surrendered to the missionaries. That other vessel from London carried to the missionaries the letters of encouragement that bade them hold on to God and gave pledges of increased prayerfulness and more earnest support. Here was not only an answer to prayer, of the most wonderful sort, but the promise was literally fulfilled: ‘* Before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking I will hear.”
The great outpouring at Ongole is another proof of a prayer-answering God. In 1853, at Albany, New York, the American Baptist Missionary Union was considering whether the fruitless field among the Telugus should not be given up. Here, again, a few of God’s prophets foresaw that if faith could but triumph in this dark hour, a great harvest might yet come even to this desert of Southern India. And the “Lone Star” mission was not abandoned but reinforced; and Dr. S. F. Smith ventured, in a singularly prophetic poem, to predict that the time would come when that Lone Star would outshine all other missions. A bolder prophecy was never uttered by any uninspired seer. Twenty-five years passed by and then God sent a famine among that people, and the promised blessing seemed farther off than ever.
In fact, that famine was, like John the Baptist, a forerunner that prepared the way of the Lord. Dr. Clough had in the interval joined the faithful Jewett — and, being a civil engineer by training, he undertook to complete the Buckingham canal, in order to get work and wages for starving thousands. These great gatherings of gangs of workmen gave opportunity for the simple telling of the gospel story. The great text, John iii. 16, was again, as at Tahiti, sixty-three years before, the “Little Gospel” from which God’s love was made known; and, in that very field which had been so nearly abandoned as both fruitless and hopeless, God gave the largest and longest succession of harvests ever yet known
ANSWERS TO PR A YER, 36d
to the missions of the Christian Church. These two examples are enough to prove to any candid mind that God is still working signs in answer to prayer.
And, let it be added, that, twelve years before this grand effusion of the Spirit, and when the prospect was darkest, a humble missionary, with his wife and three converted natives, on the first day of the year, climbed the high hill overlooking Ongole, and there, looking down on that large town and fifty surrounding villages sunk in idol worship, knelt, and each in turn asked of God that He would send a missionary there, and make that centre of heathenism a centre of gospel light. For twelve years God delayed the answer, and then the blessing came, just where it had been besought, only far more abundantly than it had been expected, and it has not yet ceased. In 1869, when there were as yet but 143 members, special prayer was made for an addition that year of 500 converts, and 573 wxre baptized; and in some twelve years more the Church numbered 2,000. Now it is the largest in the world!
In 1872, in December, the Church Missionary Society appointed a day for intercession, with special reference to the increase of missionary force — and that day was spent in prayer offered distinctly and definitely for more men. It was immediately followed by offers of service beyond any other period of the Society’s history. In the five years following it sent out 112 men, whereas, in the preceding five, it had sent but 51.
In 1880, this same noble society called for very special intercession for more money — as eight years before, for more men. Within a few months, ;£’135,ooo were offered to wipe off all deficit, and ;^ 1 5 0,000 more, specially contributed for extension, as well as other special gifts whereby substantial advance was made upon the ordinary income. Again, in 1884, men were sorely needed, and it was asked of- God that the very flowers of society might be transplanted to heathen climes. A day was appointed to pray for this result. The previous evening Secretary Wigram was summoned to Cambridge to “see a number of graduates and undergraduates who desired to dedicate themselves to the Lord’s work abroad.” More than one hundred university men met him, and the next day he went back to the prayer-meeting to illustrate to his colleagues the old promise: “Before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking I will hear.”
The Two Legions.
Ancient tradition has handed down two most interesting relics about the devout soldiers of the Roman army. The story of the Theban Legion, in the third century, may be coloured by fancy, but has, doubtless, a foundation of fact. Twice, it is said, they were decimated by the Emperor Maximian because they would not obey, when ordered to march against their fellow-Christians in Gaul. But no threats nor executions could turn the fixed hearts of the legion. The survivors still held their ground after their fellows had been slain; and Maurice, their leader, respectfully but firmly declared to the Emperor, in behalf of his fellow-soldiers, that, whilst ready to yield implicit obedience in all matters consistent with conscience, death was preferable to the violation of duty to God. And when the Emperor ordered his soldiers to destroy the whole band, they quietly laid down their arms and accepted martyrdom.
The other story is that of the Thundering Legion under Marcus Aurelius. When the Roman hosts were surrounded by barbarian hordes, and the peril was great, these Christian soldiers, mighty in prayer, knelt on the very battle-field and sought from God and obtained deliverance by His hand from the dangers that threatened the forces of the empire.
Whether there ever was a Theban Legion and a
Thundering Legion in the days of the Silver Eagle matters little; but the Missionary Army has had both from the beginning. Men and women who would not be drawn or driven from their duty to Christ and lost souls, though the fever, the famine, the sword decimated their ranks, have dared the prison cell, starvation, persecution and death itself rather than abandon their witness to Christ. And the strength of missions has ever been that the Captain of our salvation has always had His Praying Legion; who in the crises of the conflict, took no account of the number or might of foes, but prevailed with God in prayer. It is the central glory of missionary history that it has produced more intrepid and self-sacrificing soldiers of the cross, and more great intercessors like Moses, Samuel, Daniel and Elijah, than any other form even of Church life. Surely between these facts there must be some divine link of connection. A work that develops such courage and constancy, on the one side, and such faith and prayer, on the other, must, in this very fact, bear the peculiar stamp and seal of the King himself.
Thus, by “many infallible proofs,” missionary history vindicates its rightful claim as a continuation of the Acts of the Apostles, in the signs and wonders God has wrought. And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of all the marvels of Providence and Grace which make the whole growth of modern missions a Burning Bush aflame with the glory of the presence of God!
On the long guns of the African Moors these words are often found engraven: ‘’ For the Holy War if God will.” When will disciples learn that they are God’s soldiers, and that every power and faculty is to be devoted as a weapon to His holy warfare? What new signs and wonders would be wrought if, in response to the bugle blast of our great Captain, the whole Church would march to the battle-field! All that God has yet shown of His mighty power would be but a small part of His ways. Men would begin to see Omnipotence baring its resistless arm, and the thunder of His power would shake earth and heaven!