“Well, and where’s the difference?”
“A vast deal of difference, William. I never pray for any of this world’s good things without putting in, ‘if God sees it best for me to have it.’ And then I know that, if it is really good for me, I shall get it, and that’ll be what I need; and if he sees as I’m better without it, he’ll give me contentment and peace, and often something much better than what I asked for, and which I never expected, and that’ll be giving me in answer to prayer what I need.”
“Then it seems to me,” said the other, sneeringly, “that you may just as well let the prayer alone altogether, for you don’t really get what you would like, and you can’t be sure what it is you really want.”
“Nay, not so, William Foster; my Bible says, ‘Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’ I just go and do this, and over and over again I’ve got the thing I naturally liked; and it’s only been now and then, when God knew I should be better without the thing I fancied, that he kept it back. But then I always got something better for me instead, and the peace of God with it.”
“And you call that getting answers to prayer from a heavenly Father?” said Foster derisively.
“I do,” was Bradly’s reply. “My heavenly Father deals with me in the same way as I used to deal with my children when they was little, and for the same reason—because he loves me, and knows better than I do what’s good for me. When our Dick were a little thing, only just able to walk, he comes one evening close up to the table while I was shaving, and makes a snatch at my razor. I caught his little hand afore he could get hold; and says I, ‘No, Dick, you mustn’t have that; you’ll hurt yourself with it.’ Not that there was any harm in the razor itself, but it would have been harm to him, though he didn’t know it then. Well, Dick was just ready to cry; but he looks at me, and sees a smile on my face, and toddles off into the garden; and an hour after I went and took him a great blunt knife as he couldn’t hurt himself with, and he was soon as happy as a king, rooting about in the cabbage-bed with it. I did it because I loved him; and he came to understand that, after a bit. And that’s the way our heavenly Father deals with all his loving and obedient children.”
There was a little murmur of approval when Bradly ceased, which was very distasteful to Foster, who began to move off, growling out that, “it was no use arguing with a man who was quite behind the age, and couldn’t appreciate nor understand the difficulties and conclusions of deeper thinkers.”
“Just one word more, friends, on this subject,” said Bradly, not noticing his opponent’s last disparaging remarks. “William said, a little while ago, as it’s all fancy on my part when I gave him my own experience about answers to prayer. Well, if it’s fancy, it’s a very pleasant fancy, and a very profitable fancy too; and I should like him to tell me what his learned scientific authors, that he brags so much about, has to give me instead of it, if I take their word for it as it’s all fancy, and give over praying. Now, suppose I’m told as there’s a man living over at Sunnyside as is able and willing to give me everything I want, if I only ask him. I go to his door, and knock; but he don’t let me see him. I say through the keyhole, ‘I want a loaf of bread.’ He opens the door just so far as to make room for his hand, and there’s a loaf of bread in it for me. I go to him again, and tell him through the door as I wants some medicine to cure one of my children as is sick. The hand is put out with medicine in it, and the medicine makes a cure. I go again, and say I want a letter of recommendation for my son to get a place as porter on the railway. There’s no hand put out this time; but I hear a voice say, ‘Come every day for a week.’ So I go every day, and knock; and the last day the hand’s put out, and it gives me a letter to a gentleman, who puts my son into a situation twice as good as the one I asked for him. Now, suppose I’d gone on in this way for years, always getting what I asked for, or something better instead, do you think any one would ever persuade me as it were only fancy after all; that the friend I called on so often wasn’t my friend at all, that he’d never heard or listened to a word I said, and had never given me anything in all my life? Now, that’s just how the matter stands. It’s no use talking to a man as knows what effectual prayer is, about the constancy of the laws of nature, and such like. He knows better; he has put the Lord of nature and all its laws to the proof, and so may you too. I’ll just leave with you one text out of the Scripture as’ll weigh down a warehouseful of your sceptical and philosophical books; and it’s this: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’”
Not a word more was spoken on either side, and the party broke up.