reasoned that money can buy anything and assured himself that he could hire men to think for him if he should need them. Letters from his fiancée became a bore. She was too plain and too unsophisticated to adorn his future mansion. He could not think of marrying a woman of whom he would be ashamed in that fashionable group to which he would be attached. He finally broke the engagement, telling her that he had discovered that he did not love her enough sincerely to marry her. The lady became ill and was suddenly killed in an accident in the sanitarium. The young man would not work. He refused to help his father on the old place and bluntly refused to help his mother when she was about her household tasks alone. All was changed. He was no longer their son. The father felt the impression of mystery about the son's strange behavior and suggested to his wife that the boy showed symptoms of insanity. Not many months passed before the son left his home to take an easy position as a clerk in Boston. But he soon left that and went to sea in a steamer, where he acted as assistant to the steward. At Bordeaux, France, he made the acquaintance of two American young men whose wealthy parents supplied them with funds to travel, but evidently did so to keep the rascals away from home. Then his downward course became a reckless race.

A few years later the uncle heard or read that his nephew was sentenced to three months in the workhouse for drunkenness, and he changed his will, leaving all his estate to benevolent institutions. From that time the unrepentant prodigal disappeared from the knowledge or care of his old neighbors. Both his parents went down to the grave in bitter sorrow before his reform. The death of the mother was only a few weeks later than the death of the father.

The friend who reads this account of that young man's broken life may ask what this biographical sketch has to do with the subject of "unanswered prayer." It has much to do with it. Such experiences, which must have been seen in millions of cases, show a reasonable explanation why so many prayers for a view of heaven are denied. At almost every funeral the loved ones ask if the departed is still living and why God does not permit them to come back and tell us about their spirit life. "What are they doing in heaven?" is a question on the lips of millions.

But in the letters herein mentioned the records of unanswered prayers included many who prayed for visions of heaven or who wished to see the angels or the face of the Saviour. One brother prayed continually, "Oh, for one view of the holy city!" and another seemed never to leave out of his daily prayer, "Lord, open my eyes to see the faces of the dear ones hovering about me!" But our eyes are still holden. Our pleading hearts are unsatisfied. We are not permitted to see our future home nor catch more than a glimpse of the angels' wings. When, however, we seek an explanation of this divine arrangement, this separation of this life from the other, the faithful believer in God's wisdom and love can easily set up a reasonable theory concerning it. He will see that God has placed us on this earth to grow in knowledge, to get necessary spiritual discipline for his heavenly service. To obtain that training we must keep our attention on the duties of our daily tasks and do them well. We cannot reap rye with heaven in actual view. It is not consistent to think after the Apostle John saw the holy city at Patmos he could devote himself as readily to catching fish. When that California uncle showed his nephew all that luxury, beauty, and wealth, and told him that he would some day own it all, it was a foolish act—almost criminal. The young man's mental and moral development was stopped then and there. The young man lost far more than the estate could be worth. Suddenly acquired riches are ever harmful. Dissatisfaction with this life is a fatal sin. God commands us to be content and toil. He, therefore, does not himself do so destructive and discouraging an act as to show us heaven's glories and fill us with a suicidal anxiety to get out of this world at once and speedily to enter the other where there is no more pain or sorrow or dying. A prayer for a view of heaven seems, therefore, to be an unreasonable request. This conclusion satisfies many who have been denied communication with the departed dear ones, and they take up their toil, content to labor and to wait. God does not interfere with the healthful exercise of our free will by holding bribes before our eyes or by forcing our discipline by awful fears.

Chapter V
Great Prayers

MEN talk and write of "great prayers" as though such petitions could be weighed or measured. They appear to think that sacred feelings can find a standard of comparison. But even the rightfully esteemed Lord's Prayer presents no universal standard by which to measure our varying appeals. One old saint writes that he often gets out of patience when the Lord's Prayer is intoned or recited, as none of its paragraphs fitly or adequately expresses his "soul's sincere desire."

Prayer is necessarily as varying in its moods and objects as a kaleidoscope. Jesus said, "after this manner pray ye." And we must pray "after this manner." But person, time, place, hearers, sharers, emotions, ideas, desires, and needs all enter into the conditions of earnest prayer. To call on God in your own way, with your own motives and your own emotions and your own language, or without words, will be a clear fulfillment of the command to pray. The Lord understands every language and knows all that the heart would express if it could find an adequate form of speech.

The books, except the Bible, most frequently quoted in these letters include volumes by St. Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Whitfield, Spurgeon, Moody, Fosdick, Nicoll, Campbell, Whittle, and Finney. In the quotations the idea is ever present that there are great prayers. That place is given most frequently to the printed petitions of Spurgeon. But it is misleading to attempt to place a valuation on any of them. The most effective prayer recorded was the appeal of the Publican as he smote his breast; and Christ's long prayer at the Last Supper was the most comprehensive. But in the following circumstances, having trustworthy witnesses, no two of the marvelously effective petitions were alike —viz., the English boy's prayer for his blind sister's restoration to sight; Muller's prayer for a food supply for his orphanage; Doctor Cullis's appeal to God for his Consumptive Home; Doctor Kincaid's petition for protection for the converts of Ava; the Brooklyn child's prayer for her shipwrecked father; the groans of John Hall's praying, but starving, mother; the prayer of President Garfield's mother at the washtub when her boy was lost in the forest; the silent wish of Carey, the pioneer missionary; John Daniel Loest's prayer for money to pay his mortgage the next day; Spurgeon's prayer for his pastors' college in dire need; Moody's prayer for the establishment of a Bible school in Northfield; Luther's prayer for Melancthon; Halderman's prayer, in the Fulton Street daily prayer meeting, for the lost ship Leviathan; the petition of the mother of Doctor Talmage, asking that her son be made to decide at that moment to come home; Miss Lyon's prayer in the field