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Prayer for the Devil—See [Readiness in Retort].

PRAYER IN SECRET

After I became interested in religion, in seeking a place for retirement for my secret devotions, I thought of a large closet out of the spare chamber. That closet was a place where my mother kept her blankets, comforters and various kinds of bed-clothes. It was large and without a window. When the door was shut it was total darkness; no eye but that of Him who “seeth in secret” could behold any one who there sought retirement from the world.

In that closet I erected my altar for secret prayer. It was my Bethel; and none but God can ever know the Bethel seasons I there enjoyed in communing with the Savior in that time of my first love, and until I left my home to prepare for the work of the gospel ministry. (Text.)—Asa Bullard, “Incidents in a Busy Life.”

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See [Service, Unseen].

PRAYER MEDIA

The ether is the medium not only of light, electric and other force-vibrations, but of thought-vibrations also. The two souls at the ends of the two thousand miles of distance are something like two wireless telegraphic stations. One sends up its cry for help, its prayer-vibration, into the ether; the whole celestial hemisphere quivers with that cry, that soul-vibration. The soul of the friend at this end of the line, being sympathetic, or keyed in unison, picks out of the ether its own; it hears and reads the cry of the beloved soul yonder, and sends back, through the ether, its answer of comforting thought and suggestion. Now, grant that that sort of thing is a fact in human experience, and we have what is very nearly a demonstration of the possibility and nature of prayer. If two human souls can hear and answer each other irrespective of space and time, then the human soul and the divine soul can do likewise. We have only to think God immanent in the universal ether, filling it as a soul fills the body, and our case is complete.—James H. Ecob.

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