This theory is strongly confirmed by the testimonies found in this large correspondence. Lost children were restored after prayers were made for them in startlingly impressive manners. At Cape May a fisherman obeyed a wholly unexplainable impulse and put back to the marshes, feeling that he had "left something," but unable to remember what it was. There he heard the cry of the lost child, wading waist deep in the incoming tide. A merchant of Wilmington, Delaware, wrote that his child was taken by the grandparents when his wife died, and after the grandparents died the child was hidden by the relatives. The reason for the action was because of a difference of religious faith. He began one day a regular system of prayer for the recovery of his child. He went to a fishing camp in the woods of Maine in August and his child came into his log hut for a drink of water. She was with a party who camped near by in tents. Another stolen child was the little son of a doctor who prayed long and hard for the return of his little son. The sudden attack of chills felt by a passenger on a Hudson River boat at the pier caused the officers to call him on board from the wharf. The afflicted matron and his own child were in the same stateroom together.
One trustworthy officer of the church testified that his child had wandered away from the railroad station while he was asleep on the bench, and that he could not find her after an all-night search. He prayed at his family prayers, asking the Lord in sobs to protect and return his child. He said that an impression as strong as a voice insisted in his mind that he ought to search in some freight yards across the river. The yards were one mile from the station. He told his friends how he felt and insisted that he would go to the yards and search. There he found his starving child under an old fallen fence. He never could discover any satisfactory solution of the mystery of her presence in the railroad yards. She must have toddled the whole mile among vehicles in the night. He has firmly believed in guardian angels ever since that day.
There were numerous cases told of mental impressions made upon children away from home by the influence of a mother's prayer. To all of these incidents the skeptic will assert that, though there be millions of cases where men and women "happened to think" of the person praying at the moment the prayer was offered, it would not be conclusive proof that the thought was suggested by the prayer or in answer to it. But this suggestion presents other cases wherein it is far more difficult to disbelieve than it is to believe. The weight of evidence is almost overwhelmingly on the side of the Christian believer.
The belief that God will so adjust his providences as to bring to a person friends, weather, business, health, and domestic peace in answer to the prayer of some insistent friend is almost universal. General Garibaldi stated that he found that his belief in the efficacy of his mother's prayers in securing protection of his life when in danger was accepted by all his friends as a statement which at least might be realized. The common-sense view that where a theory cannot be subjected to proof either way it surely is wisest to believe in that view which has the strongest influence for good on the life and usefulness of the believer. What a man believeth, as well as what he thinketh, determines what he is. He who believes in the efficacy of his father's or mother's prayers lives a nobler life than the skeptic. The sincere trusting heart which believes that the Christ is the Son of God, and that man is under the oversight of a loving heavenly Father, is nearer the highest standard of human perfection than is the unstable and reckless man who claims that all things exist by chance.
The friend who sincerely prays for you is a friend who would sacrifice most for you in case of need. Two lovers, separated far and praying long for each other, is an exhibition of the truest, sweetest love. It is, also, the best test of God's disposition to heed the requests of his children. No prayer for another can be felt to be effective which is not inspired more or less by real love. The loving heart is a large part of a great previous character. He or she has an intercessory disposition—an intrinsic tendency toward doing good, and that, with a strong, clean mind, makes a true Christian. Such men are grateful to those who pray for them, and are impelled to pray for others. These are some of the reasons given by Christians why people ought always to pray.
Chapter VII
Forms of Prayer
IT appears that the extremest ritualist does not feel wholly bound to his prayer book. The people exercise great liberty in the choice of words or postures when they go to Christ in anxious prayer. Appropriate forms are reasonably sought for varying occasions, and some of the forms of prayer which are venerable for age and sublimity are reverenced and adopted because so often they best express the heart's sincere desire. The Lord's Prayer is recited with profit in a formal church service, but is seldom recited in time of extreme need. During the earthquake at San Francisco no one was known to have repeated the Lord's Prayer. Christ directed his disciples to pray "after that manner," and the spirit of that prayer, as well as the divine ideas or principles it contains, are applicable everywhere.
But the exact words in English are not adjustable to every occasion. Men in earnest ask for what they need in their own words and in their own way. The effectual and fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much because it is fervent and righteous. To be in every way right, and then to add the inspiration or fire or fervency, are conditions which only the righteous can fill. But, happily, the sinner is not required to be right in all things before his prayer is heard. The stately dignity and beautiful phraseology of the Catholic churches, the impressive forms of the old English ritual, or the simple appeal of the mission worker are all alike acceptable to God when they are the expression of real heart worship or of a call for relief in some actual need.