was so impressed with the young clerk's efficiency and coolness that he offered him the place of assistant cashier in his own bank. The position was finally accepted, and led to his promotion, a few years after, to the presidency of the bank.

The experience of that prayer circle was more or less the general experience of the church members. The suggestions of a church service, the aid to an honest and industrious life, and the greater health of church members, generally confirm everywhere the fact that the Christian faith and habits are surely the most favorable for "the life that now is, as well as for the life which is to come."

In connection with this phase of our narrative there should be written a brief account of an experience which surprised even the most conservative minds. Appeals for subscriptions have been made rarely in the Temple. Such appeals have accomplished but little. The regular gifts of the many persons have steadily paid all expenses and provided enough over to finally pay off all debts.

But there were seasons when unusual sums were needed and when the money was furnished from some unexpected sources seemingly in direct answers to special prayer. On one occasion there was an especially large sum given into the treasury when it was imperatively needed and when no notice of the need had been given from the pulpit. On one Sunday morning the preacher could find no other satisfactory subject on which to build a sermon, and he talked with the people about the Bible-school lesson for that day. The subject included a description of how the Jews were required to select the best lamb of the flock for an offering to God. They did not hope that God would hear their prayers unless they gave their best to the Lord. The sermon closed with a sentence or two of application to our own times. The emphatic exhortation stated that offerings and prayers should go together, but the offering should precede the prayer. At the evening service some person sent to the pulpit a note, asking that the printed order of services "be changed so as, thereafter, to substitute the word 'offering' for the word 'collection.'" The minister, acting on the impulse of the moment, announced a change in the order of the services, and said that as the ancient custom of making an offering before asking the Lord for a gift or blessing was surely acceptable to God, an "offering" would be taken before the prayer, instead of after the prayer. No unusual sum came in that evening. The notes of the church were coming due ten days later. But those debts were not thought of by minister or ushers in any relation to that offering, though prayers were often made for the help of the Lord in the payment of the debt.

The following Sunday morning the collection was said to be the largest ever received by the ushers; while the fact was not mentioned from the pulpit, it was the subject of general comment among the people after service. At the evening service the offering was so great that one of the ushers related how he had to go out and empty the basket he was passing and come back to finish taking the offering. Nothing else had been done or said, and the church notes were paid as a matter of course. But the prayers made that day were made immediately before the offering was taken. The question was put to the audience twice to ascertain if anyone who made a special offering on that particular day had not been answered, and there was no exception in the mass of testimony to the efficiency of each prayer that day. The recitals of the marvels which followed that prayerful offering were too startling for general belief. The reports may have been exaggerated in the time of such general excitement, but the people had complied with the conditions, and God had answered clearly according to his promise. They had "brought the tithes into the storehouse," and the Lord had poured out the blessings as an infallible result. The letters which came to the officials of the church relating incidents concerning the effects of the prayers made that day were not filed then as they have been in later years, and the record here must depend wholly on the memory of two or three witnesses.

The following partial list of cases is very nearly correct. The cases of sudden and in some cases instantaneous recovery of the sick were related by hundreds of people. In one case a poor man whose only living child was insane put his money into the basket that morning and prayed for his child's recovery. Both he and she often declared that while being forcibly given a cold bath at the time that offering was made she felt "a loud report in her head like the report of a pistol," and her mind was found to be normal in all respects from that instant. The father went to the sanitarium that afternoon, as was his custom on the Sabbath, and his daughter met him at the door in her right mind.

A lady sold her best clothes and all her jewelry on Saturday and brought the whole of the proceeds and gave all as an offering as she prayed for her own healing. She suffered greatly from sciatic rheumatism, inherited from several generations. She fell on the front steps of the church, as they were helping her to the carriage, and arose to find the pain had permanently disappeared.

One old gentleman who was involved in a ruinous lawsuit over a lease of his little shop brought all the profits of the previous week and deposited them as he prayed for a legal and just victory. The next day or on the second day his goods were so badly damaged by the smoke and water, caused by a fire in the store next door, that the insurance company took the stock at his valuation and the landlord withdrew his suit.

Another case generally believed, but not fully confirmed, was of an Englishman who, not having money enough to pay his fare to Australia, deposited all that he did have into the offering and prayed for his passage. It was asserted and not contradicted that he found a one-hundred-dollar bill the next day in his wallet or in his bureau drawer, placed there by some friend whom he could not discover. Another related how she determined to risk all on one prayer, and gave all as she prayed. When the plumbers came to repair a leak the next week after the prayer they discovered a loose board in the floor under which her father had secretly hidden his money. The sum she found was much more than enough to pay off the overdue mortgage on her cottage.

There were probably fifty such cases reported in detail at the time. But a solemn sense of sacredness connected with those experiences pervaded the assemblies, and no notice of the cases was given from the pulpit. And yet a calm and careful examination of the results of that exercise of faith has often suggested a strong doubt whether that experience did not do more harm than good.

The direct and immediate results convinced the devout believers that when a true servant of God makes a sincere offering God will invariably accept the offering and answer in some manner his petition fully. But it seems impossible to find the line between the motives which may make an offering acceptable or unacceptable to God. The remarkable success of that day of offering led many to believe that they could drive a bargain with the Lord. Absurd as it seems, there were many earnest Christians who believed that they could invest a small sum in an offering and by asking for a large