I have never known Persians refuse Christian prayers over their sick friends, and generally they join in with a heartfelt Amen to prayers which they have been able to understand. At one house where they were afraid of the medicine they entreated the missionary doctor to come daily to pray over the patient. The patient was one of five cases of typhoid fever in the house. The others were being treated by a Persian doctor, but this woman had very serious complications and seemed so unlikely to recover that he suggested their calling in a Christian doctor for her. For many days she lay quite unconscious, but every day the missionary walked a mile and a half to pray beside her, and every day the same entreaty was repeated, “You will come again to-morrow, won’t you?” And the prayers were answered, for at last signs of improvement appeared, and the poor woman was restored to health and strength again.
God has given us a wonderful privilege in allowing us to come freely to Him as our Father, and lay all our joys and sorrows, troubles and perplexities before Him.
“Oh! What peace we often forfeit,
Oh! What needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!”
And, if that is true of us, how much more true it is of the Muhammadans who do not know God as their Father, who do not know that God is love, who do not know that they may carry everything to God in prayer. When we think of the want of peace, the needless pain, the sin, the sorrow, the wretchedness in Muhammadan lands, and yet see the people so ready to pray, surely it is our plain and urgent duty to teach them how to pray, as our Lord has taught us, and to teach them to Whom they must pray—not to an unknowable, unloving Allah, but to a tender, pitying Father, Who so loved them that He gave His only begotten Son to die for their salvation.
CHAPTER VIII
FASTING AND PILGRIMAGES
One month in every year Muhammadans have to fast.