Page:Cyclopedia of illustrations for public speakers, containing facts, incidents, stories, experiences, anecdotes, selections, etc., for illustrative purposes, with cross-references; (IA cyclopediaofillu00scotrich).pdf/579



to the shore. He opened his eyes, saw his opportunity and was saved. Prayer and deeds must go hand in hand.

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Governor William E. Russell, of Massachusetts, who died at the age of thirty-nine, but had in that short life been mayor of his city and governor of his State, and had gained national fame, early began to think and act right. As a school-boy, when boating with five companions, his craft was over-*turned and he swam a mile to shore. Asked by his mother about his struggle to reach land, he said, "I thought of you, prayed to God, and kept my arms and legs in stroke." (Text.)

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Prayer and Guides—See.

PRAYER AND THE BODY

In the shadow, unseen, keeping watch above his own, is the genius of the inventor. The earth gives iron, the sheep give their wool, the soil gives the dyes, the steel gives the shuttles, the spinner gives his fingers, but Arkwright and Jenner explain the warm cloth against the snow and chill of winter. Nature is a loom, the days and the nights are shuttles, the sunbeams tint the texture, forests and mines, herds and flocks furnish the threads, and the cloth of purple and gold is brilliant with towns and cities—but God is the weaver of the web. And if man with higher laws can set aside lower ones, if man with an X-ray can make the body transparent, think you that the great God by His influence upon man's intellect and imagination can not start influences spiritual that will soon manifest themselves through man's body upon forces that are physical? If man were spirit, and spirit alone, prayer could not be answered in a physical realm, because there would be no point of connection between a spiritual being and a physical universe. But man's body is the medium of communication, and the God of spirit moving upon the spirit of man acts through the body of inventor, scientist, surgeon, sower, reaper, nurse, teacher, states-*man, and plays upon these delicate strings called the forces of nature and so answers prayer.—

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PRAYER ANSWERED

A penitentiary convict had been converted, and was released from prison in Chicago. He found it impossible to get work. He woke in the night, and arose and prayed for help. He prayed till daylight, crying in agony, "Oh, God give a poor fellow a chance!" Then he drest and went out again to hunt work. Presently he heard a cry and saw a runaway horse coming down toward him. He snatched up a cracker-box and smashed it on the horse's face. Then he seized the bridle and stopt him, tho he was dragged some distance; and in the crowd gathering about him was the father of the children in the carriage, and he was the man God sent to "give the poor fellow a chance."—, "Sermons in Illustration."

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Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. How many of us really expect an answer to our prayers? How many of us wait for God as they who wait on the morning? Yet it is this expectant attitude of the soul resting upon the divine promise that triumphs over hindrances. There is an example of this in the life of Charles Kingsley. When a young man, he had become engaged to a beautiful girl to whom he had given his whole love. But her parents deemed him an unsuitable match, and they forbade absolutely all communication between the two young people for two years, which were to Kingsley the darkest and most terrible in his life. But in his diary he tells us that during that period he lived on one verse, Mark 11:24, "Therefore I say unto you what things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Before the two years were over, Kingsley's prayer was answered, and the girl became his wife.—, "The Religion of the Threshold," page 296.

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PRAYER, AVAILING

In the first parish where I labored lived a man who was not only agnostic in his attitude toward things religious, but even derided them, and was wont to chaff his wife on her devotion to her Church. The wife, however, went on her quiet but earnest way, living out her religion in the home. One morning very early the husband awoke and discovered his wife beside his bed absorbed in whispered prayer. Her pale, upturned face was fixt with intensity upon the Invisible, and her warm hand was resting upon his own, she supposing his to be asleep. As the husband's eyes opened on the unex