“You’re an awfully dear sister, Nellie. I’m glad you came home”; and she squeezed her sister’s hand tenderly.
“Thank you, lovey; I’m glad I came too, and you’re rather dear yourself, you know, Lou. I think we’ll come through somehow. Now shall we go into this picture-show?”
“I don’t believe I feel much like it, do you, Nellie?” said the little girl, hesitatingly and studying a picture on the bill-board outside the theatre. “Look! That’s one of those pictures with cabaret stuff in that daddy doesn’t like us to see. I don’t want to go in. Those girls in that picture make me think of her.”
“I’ll tell you what; let’s go home and get a good dinner for Carey and the rest, and perhaps we can think of a way to keep him home tonight and have a good time.”
So home they went, and got the dinner, and waited half an hour after the usual time; but no Carey appeared that night until long after the midnight hour had struck. When at last he came tiptoeing up the creaking stairs, trying not to arouse anybody in the house, his two sisters lay hand in hand listening and both praying, “O God, show us how to keep Carey away from that girl, and make him a good man.”
Carey slept late on Sunday morning, and came down cross, declining utterly to go to church. Cornelia and Louise went off alone sorrowfully. Carey had lounged off in the direction of the drug store, and the father had a nervous headache, and decided to nurse it up lest it keep him away from work on the morrow. Harry volunteered to stay home and get dinner.
The sermon was about prayer, very simple and interesting. Cornelia did not remember having listened to many sermons in her life. Somehow this one seemed unique, and struck right home to her need and experience. The preacher said that many people prayed and did not receive because they had failed to meet the conditions of answered prayer. Even Louise sat up and listened with earnest eyes and flushed cheeks. Here was something she felt would help the Copley family if they could only get hold of the secret of it. Mother prayed, and Mother had great faith in prayer; but none of the rest of them had ever specialized along those lines. Unless perhaps father did, quiet father with all his burdens and disappointments.
These thoughts flitted through the minds of the two daughters as they sat listening intently, reaching out for the help they needed. The preacher said that there were many promises in the Bible concerning prayer, but always with a condition. The first was faith. One must believe that God hears and will answer. The second was will-surrender. One must be ready to let God answer the prayer in His way, and to leave that way to Him, believing that He will do what is best. Then one must pray with a free heart, out of which hate and sin have been cast; and he quoted the verse: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
Louise cast a fleeting, questioning glance toward her sister. Did that mean that she must forgive that hateful, bold Dodd girl? But the speaker went on.
There were gifts for which one may ask with a definite assurance of receiving if one comes asking with all the heart, namely, the forgiveness of sin, the strength to resist temptation, the gift of the Holy Spirit. And one may always be sure that it is God’s will that other souls should be saved, and so we can pray always for others’ salvation, knowing that we are not asking amiss.