Introduction

My Creed leads me to think that prayer is
efficacious, and surely a day's asking God to
overrule all events for good is not lost. Still
there is a great feeling that when a man is
praying he's doing nothing, and this feeling
makes us give undue importance to work,
sometimes even to the hurrying over or even to
the neglect of prayer.

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of
flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of
old? Do not the eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth still to show Himself
strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him?
Oh that God would give me more practical faith in
Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is
waiting for Elijah to call on Him.—James Gilmour of
Mongolia

The more praying there is in the world the better the world will
be, the mightier the forces against evil everywhere. Prayer, in
one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It
purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil. Prayer is no
fitful, shortlived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and
unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear,
and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long
as God's heart is alive to holy things.

God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The
lips that uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt
them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God,
and God's heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of
those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age,
outlive a world.

That man is the most immortal who has done the most and
the best praying. They are God's heroes, God's saints, God's
servants, God's vicegerents. A man can pray better because of
the prayers of the past; a man can live holier because of the
prayers of the past, the man of many and acceptable prayers
has done the truest and greatest service to the incoming
generation. The prayers of God's saints strengthen the unborn
generation against the desolating waves of sin and evil. Woe
to the generation of sons who find their censers empty of the
rich incense of prayer; whose fathers have been too busy or
too unbelieving to pray, and perils inexpressible and
consequences untold are their unhappy heritage. Fortunate are
they whose fathers and mothers have left them a wealthy
patrimony of prayer.

The prayers of God's saints are the capital stock in heaven
by which Christ carries on His great work upon earth. The great
throes and mighty convulsions on earth are the results of these
prayers. Earth is changed, revolutionised, angels move on more
powerful, more rapid wing, and God's policy is shaped as the
prayers are more numerous, more efficient.