“Now see, mates,” continued Foster, “what I’ve got here—‘The Power of Prayer.’ See how it begins ‘Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.’ And you believe that, Tommy Tracks?”
“Yes,” was the reply; “I believe it; and more than that, I know it—I know that it’s true.”
“And how do you know it?”
“First and foremost, because the Bible says so; not those very words, indeed, but what means just the same: as, for instance, ‘The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.’ And, better still, I have it in our Saviour’s own words: ‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?’”
“Well, now, let me tell you, friend Bradly, that it’s all a delusion.”
“You’re at liberty, William, to tell me what you like; but I can tell you that it’s no such thing as a delusion, for I’ve proved it myself to be a blessed truth.”
“What! You mean to say that your own prayers have been answered?”
“I do mean to say so, William. There’s nothing like experience. I can tell you what I know myself. I’ve put the Lord to the proof over and over again, and he has never failed me. I’ve always had what I needed.”
“Hear him!” cried Foster, derisively. “Why, it isn’t a week ago that I heard him myself tell John Rowe that he’d like to build another cottage on the bit of land he bought last year, only he couldn’t afford it just at present. And now he says he has only to pray for a thing, and he can get whatever he likes.—Why didn’t you pray for the money to build the new cottage, Tommy?”
“Not so fast, William; a reasoning and scientific man like yourself ought to stick close to the truth. Now, I never said as I could get whatever I liked—though I might have said that too without being wrong; for when I’ve found out clearly what’s the Lord’s will, I can say with the old shepherd, ‘I can have what I please, because what pleases God pleases me.’ What I said was this: that I always got what I needed when I prayed for a thing.”