there was nothing for them but the workhouse. What to do I did not know. I made it a matter of prayer, but all that night it lay upon my heart a great burden. Next morning I came downstairs still wondering what to do. Amongst the letters on my table was one from a gentleman at Bowdon, enclosing, unasked, a cheque for £50. In those days £50 was an exceptionally large sum for us to receive, and I took the letter as a direct word from God that we should accept the care of the children. We did so, and I am glad to say every one of them turned out well.

But direct answers to prayer are not confined to mere gifts of money. Over and over again during these twenty-seven years of rescue work I have put individual cases before God and asked Him to deal with them, and it is just wonderful how He has subdued stubborn wills and changed hearts and lives.

Years ago there came to the Refuges the son of a man known to the Manchester police as "Mike the devil." Tom was as rough a customer as ever I saw, and for a time we had some trouble with him. But a great change came over him, and I have myself no doubt it was the result of personal pleading with God on his behalf. Tom is now an ordained minister of the Gospel in America. There is no end to the cases I could give of that kind. They all point to the same conclusion, that God does answer definite prayer. And to-day, after twenty-seven years of work, I praise Him for it.

VII

By the Rev.
R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D.

IT has sometimes seemed to me that God does not intend the faith in prayer to rest upon an induction of instances. The answers, however explicit, are not of the kind to bear down an aggressive criticism. Your Christian lives a life which is an unbroken chain of prayers offered and prayers answered; from his inward view the demonstration is overwhelming. But do you ask for the evidences, and do you propose to begin to pray if the facts are convincing, and to refuse the practice if they are not? Then you may find the evidences evanescent as an evening cloud, and the facts all susceptible of a simple rationalistic explanation. "Prayer," says an old Jewish mystic, "is the moment when heaven and earth kiss each other." It is futile as well as indelicate to disturb that rapturous meeting; and nothing can be brought away from such an intrusion, nothing of any value except the resolve to make trial for oneself of the "mystic sweet communion."

I confess, therefore, that I read examples of answers to prayer without any great interest, and refer to those I have experienced myself with the utmost diffidence. Nay, I say frankly beforehand, "If you are concerned to disprove my statement, and to show that what I take for the hand of God is merely the cold operation of natural law, I shall only smile. My own conviction will be unchanged. I do not make that great distinction between the hand of God and natural law, and I have no wish to induce you to pray by an accumulation of facts—to commend to you the mighty secret by showing that it would be profitable to you, a kind of Aladdin's lamp for fulfilling wayward desires. Natural law, the hand of God! Yes! I unquestioningly admit that the answers to prayer come generally along lines which we recognise as natural law, and would perhaps always be found along those lines if our knowledge of natural law were complete. Prayer is to me the quick and instant recognition that all law is God's will, and all nature is in God's hand, and that all our welfare lies in linking ourselves with His will and placing ourselves in His hand through all the operations of the world and life and time."

Yet I will mention a few "answers to prayer," striking enough to me. One Sunday morning a message came to me before the service from an agonised mother: "Pray for my child: the doctor has been and gives no hope." We prayed, the church prayed, with the mother's agony, and with the faith in a present Christ, mighty to save. Next day, I learned that the doctor who had given the message of despair in the morning had returned, after the service, and said at once, "A remarkable change has taken place." The child recovered and still lives.

On another occasion, I was summoned from my study to see a girl who was dying of acute peritonitis. I hurried away to the chamber of death. The doctor said that he could do nothing more. The mother stood there weeping. The girl had passed beyond the point of recognition. But as I entered the room, a conviction seized me that the sentence of death had not gone out against her. I proposed that we should kneel down and pray. I asked definitely that she should be restored. I left the home, and learned afterwards that she began to amend almost, at once, and entirely recovered; she is now quite strong and well, and doing her share of service for our Lord.

And on yet another occasion I was hastily called from my study to see an elderly man, who had always been delicate since I knew him; now he was prostrated with bronchitis, and the doctor did not think that he could live. It chanced that I had just been studying the passage which contains the prayer of Hezekiah and the promise made to him of fourteen additional years of life. I went to the sick man and told him that I had just been reading this, and asked if it might not be a ground for definite prayer. He assented, and we entreated our God for His mercy in the matter. The man was restored and is living still.

These are only typical instances of what I have frequently seen. Many times, no doubt, I have prayed for the recovery of the sick and the prayer has not been answered. And you, dear and skeptical reader, may say if you will that this is proof positive that the instances of answered prayers are mere coincidences. You may say it and, if you will, prove it, but you will not in the least alter my quiet conviction; for the answers were given to me. I do not know that even the subjects of these recoveries recognise the agency which was at work. To me all this is immaterial. The subjective evidence is all that was designed, and that is sufficient, and to the writer conclusive.

With reference to money for Christian work, I have laboured to induce my own church to adopt the simple view that we should ask not men, but in the first instance God, the owner of it all, for what we want. I am thankful to say that some of them now believe this, and bring our needs to Him very simply and trustfully. I could name many instances of the following kind: there is a threatened deficit in the funds of the mission, or an extension is needed and we have not the money. The sound of misgiving is heard; we have not the givers; the givers have given all they can. "Why not trust God?" I have urged. "Why not pray openly and unitedly—and believe?" The black cloud of debt has been dissipated, or the necessary extension has been made.

Oddly enough, some people have said to me, "Ah, yours is a rich church," as if to imply one can very safely ask God for money when one has the people at hand who can give it. But surely this is a question of degree. My church is not rich enough to give one-tenth of what it gives, if we did not first ask God for it. And there are churches which could give ten times what they do give, if only the plan were adopted of first asking God instead of going to the few wealthy people and trusting to them.

But this is a matter of statistics and a