PRAYER AND MISSIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER 
 
PRAYER AND MISSIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 Robert E. Speer 
 
 STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT; 
 125 EAST TWENTY-SEVENTH STREET 
 NEW YORK 
 
PRAYER AND MISSIONS. 
 
 Among the Jews there has been a 
 saying, “He prays not at all in whose 
 prayers there is no mention of the king¬ 
 dom of God,’^ but the veil which remain- 
 eth untaken away in the reading of the 
 Old Testament has hung like a pall over 
 the living experience of this truth as 
 well. And Jewish blindness finds its 
 parallel in the Church’s neglect of the 
 voice which for centuries has been 
 pleading, largely in vain, “Pray ye the 
 Lord of the harvest to thrust forth la¬ 
 borers into His harvest.” Eighteen long 
 centuries of waiting, during which His 
 kingdom has not come, are alike the evi¬ 
 dence and the result of the absence of 
 expressed desire that the King and His 
 kingdom should appear. Perhaps more 
 so now than for years, and yet very lit¬ 
 tle even to-day does the longing cry rise 
 up “Thy Kingdom Come,” not only as 
 an inner advent to hearts in Christen¬ 
 dom, but over all the world. If the 
 work of missions were purely a human 
 
4 
 
 enterprise, this neglect might be intel¬ 
 ligible. But in a supernatural cause, 
 resting on a supernatural charter, led 
 on by an omnipotent Leader, with all 
 His supernatural power pledged to its 
 support on the conditions of consecra¬ 
 tion and prayer on the part of its human 
 agents, a neglect of prayer is a denial of 
 the Lord’s leadership and a willful lim¬ 
 itation of success. For in all the mis¬ 
 sionary work of God, to take no wider 
 ground, if there be any wider ground, 
 all success and guidance are consequent 
 only upon prayer. 
 
 It was so in the history of the early 
 Church, whose development for years 
 was almost wholly a story of missionary 
 progress, with every step christened and 
 crowned by prayer. The first and the 
 last recorded apostolic acts after the 
 Ascension were prayers—the gathering 
 in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, and 
 John’s cry from Patmos, ^‘Even so, 
 come. Lord Jesus.The disciple® did 
 not first of all take up the pen to pre¬ 
 serve the memories of that priceless Life, 
 nor was the voice of the world’s great 
 
5 
 
 need that had brought that Life to earth 
 strong enough to call away their 
 thoughts. First of all they sought the 
 Lord’s feet in prayer, and in the still, 
 Pentecostal hour the first mighty flood 
 of missionary power rolled over the mis¬ 
 sionary band, manifesting its character, 
 its meaning and its might in the convert¬ 
 ed thousands of that day. And not only 
 did prayer secure the promised power, 
 but it converted and equipped the work¬ 
 ers in the mission cause. It was in the 
 days that they all continued with one ac¬ 
 cord in prayer and supplication, and 
 after direct request for guidance that 
 Matthias was chosen to fill the place of 
 him who was guide to them that took 
 Jesus. The seven deacons; Barnabas 
 and Saul, after their separation to for¬ 
 eign service by the Holy Ghost; the el¬ 
 ders chosen at the close of their first 
 missionary journey—none of these ven¬ 
 tured over the threshold of their work 
 without the preparation of prayer. And 
 it was in prayer that new departures 
 were taken. Cornelius at Caesarea, 
 and Simon Peter upon the house-top at 
 
6 
 
 Joppa, caught in prayer the commands 
 that opened the door of faith to the Gen¬ 
 tiles. Prayet formally marked the in¬ 
 ception of the first missionary tour, as 
 it had brought the impulse of his life 
 to the first great missionary, ^‘And it 
 came to pass that when I was come 
 again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed 
 in the temple, I was in a trance * * 
 
 and He said unto me, depart, for I will 
 send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” 
 And lastly it was to prayer that in time 
 of need those early workers invariably 
 resorted. Peter kneels down by the 
 death-bed of Dorcas, when he would 
 have the knowledge of the Gospel’s pow¬ 
 er, already declared at the beautiful gate 
 of the temple in Jerusalem, revealed at 
 Joppa, by a manifest resurrection from 
 the dead. Prayer, made without ceas¬ 
 ing of the Church unto God for him, 
 opens Herod’s dungeon doors and sets 
 the apostle free. The Philippian pris¬ 
 on shakes, the doors hang ajar, the 
 prisoners’ bonds burst asunder amid the 
 midnight prayers of Silas and Paul. And 
 on the last page of the record, Publius* 
 
7 
 
 * 
 
 father’s bloody flux departs in prayer. 
 With everything thus begun, continued 
 and ended in prayer; marking every 
 emergency, guiding every progressive 
 step, animating every act of wider obe¬ 
 dience, is it any wonder that when th2 
 flames of missionary zeal and success 
 sank away, it was because the fires of 
 prayer had died low on the altars of de¬ 
 votion? Is there any other reason than 
 this for the reiterated plea in the epistles 
 of Paul, that the churches he had found¬ 
 ed would labor together with him in 
 prayer for the prosperity of the Gospel 
 with them and with him and in all the 
 world? No. The first two things in 
 the early Church were prayer and mis¬ 
 sions, and the deepest alliance in the 
 early Church was between missions and 
 prayer. 
 
 And not only so, but whenever in sub¬ 
 sequent centuries the Church has caught 
 something of the spirit of those early 
 days it has been manifested in a new 
 devotion to missions and a revival 
 of prayer. It must necessarily be so, 
 for His spirit is a spirit of service and 
 
8 
 
 communion, of missions and prayer. 
 And communion without service is a 
 dream, and service without communion, 
 ashes. It is only, therefore, in accord¬ 
 ance with a very general truth that we 
 trace the foundation of our present mis¬ 
 sionary organizations to times of revival, 
 which were also times of awakened 
 prayer. Almost the first breathings of 
 the modern missionary period were in 
 1723, when Robert Millar, Presbyterian 
 minister in Paisley, published “The 
 History of the Propagation of Christian¬ 
 ity and the Overthrow of Paganism,” in 
 which he powerfully urged prayer as 
 the first of nine means for “the conver¬ 
 sion of the heathen world.” In Octo¬ 
 ber, 1744, after some of the famous 
 revivals of 1742, in the West country, a 
 band of nineteen united in what they 
 called, “a concert to promote more 
 abundant application to a duty that is 
 perpetually binding—prayer that our 
 God^s kingdom may come, joined with 
 praises.” In 1784, at a periodical meet¬ 
 ing of the Northamptonshire Association 
 of Baptist Ministers, on motion of John 
 
9 
 
 Sutcliff, a plan drawn up by John 
 Ryland, Jr., was addressed to the 
 churches, which urged, among, other 
 things, ‘‘Let the whole interest of the 
 Redeemer be affectionately remembered, 
 and the spread of the gospel to the most 
 distant parts of the habitable globe, be 
 the object of your most fervent re¬ 
 quests.” On this occasion Andrew Ful¬ 
 ler preached his first printed sermon on 
 “Working by Faith.” Two years after¬ 
 wards William Carey was baptized in 
 the Nen by the same John Ryland, and 
 ordained by Andrew Fuller to the min¬ 
 istry at Moulton village. It was out of 
 all this prayer and revival that Carey 
 and his little band of Baptist ministers 
 addressed themselves to the task of 
 evangelizing the world. Further still, 
 the London Missionary Society was 
 founded in 1795, for non-Baptist 
 churches, as the direct result of William 
 Carey^s work, itself also conceived by 
 Dr. Bogue and Mr. Stephens and found¬ 
 ed in prayer. Long before this, even 
 in 1732, as the result of four years’ 
 prayer, the first Moravian missionaries 
 
lO 
 
 went out from Herrnhut. And lastly, 
 in 1806, a year full of missionary im¬ 
 pulse in answer to prayer, came the fa¬ 
 mous prayer-meeting in the shadow of 
 Greylock, of which Dr. Griffin, a presi¬ 
 dent of Williams College, said: *‘I have 
 been in situations to know that from the 
 councils formed in that sacred conclave 
 or from the mind of Mills himself, arose 
 the American Board of Commissioners 
 for Foreign Missions, the American 
 Bible Society, and the African 
 School, under the care of the 
 Synod of New York and New Jersey, 
 besides all the impetus given to domes¬ 
 tic missions, to the Colonization Soci¬ 
 ety, and to the general cause of benevo¬ 
 lence in both hemispheres.” 
 
 And not only has prayer played the 
 supreme part in the formation of mis¬ 
 sionary agencies, but it has been at the 
 bottom of all revivals in missionary 
 work. The upheaval in the Training 
 School at Kyoto, Japan, March 16, 1883, 
 whose influence has, perhaps, shaped 
 the whole subsequent Christian devel¬ 
 opment of Japan, the outpoured floods 
 
II 
 
 in the Lone Star Mission among the 
 Telegus, the movement among the 
 Mahrattas in India on the first Monday 
 in January, 1833, the incidents of 1846 
 in Miss Fiske’s school at Oroomiah, the 
 work of Michaelis of the Gossner Soci¬ 
 ety in Java, and the revival wave that 
 swept over Turkey two years ago—all 
 these had no sufficient explanation save 
 that supplied by the power of definite 
 and believing prayer. 
 
 Aye, and we may go a step further 
 than this, and assert that through men 
 who knew how to pray has every new 
 departure and development of missions, 
 which has borne in any real sense the 
 marks of God’s leading, been effected. 
 First of all, the occupation of new fields. 
 It was the potency of prayer that de¬ 
 molished to dust the walls of Chinese 
 seclusion. The beginning of the great 
 work in Japan was traced to a little 
 room where the missionaries met every 
 day to pray. 101770, seven years after 
 the death of Frederick Bohmisch, the 
 first of the missionary triumvirate which 
 had gone to Greenland to uphold tJ^ 
 
12 
 
 hands of Egede, John Beck wrote ta 
 Matthew Stach, recalling the history of 
 their early life’s work. <‘We three it 
 was,” he says, ^‘who made that sol¬ 
 emn vow, one with another, wholly 
 to follow our Lord in this land. How 
 many times we besought Him, with 
 weeping, to grant us one soul of this na¬ 
 tion. But He stopped not at one. These 
 congregations which we have seen grow 
 up from the beginning, how far do they 
 exceed all our early prayers.” Allen 
 Gardiner transfigured the initial steps 
 of the work in Terra del Fuego with 
 prayer. There is a paper written by 
 him on his birthday, in which he says: 
 “I pray that Thou wouldst graciously 
 prepare a way for the entrance of Thy 
 servants among the poor heathen of 
 these islands, * * ♦ and should we 
 
 even languish and die here, I beseech 
 Thee to raise up others and to send forth 
 laborers into this harvest.” The trans¬ 
 lations of the Bible, which have gone on 
 their errand under His blessing, have 
 been made by men who knew how, to 
 bprrow Neesima’s phrase, to advance 
 
upon their knees. Of course it has 
 ever been through prayer that the mis¬ 
 sionaries have been secured, and it was 
 thither, consequently, that Bishop Pat- 
 teson resorted when he set apart George 
 Sarawia, praying that *‘he might be but 
 the first of a goodly band of Melanesian 
 clergymen to carry the gospel to their 
 people.^’ This was the only source of 
 missionary supply recognized by Christ 
 —^‘Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the 
 harvest to thrust forth laborers into His 
 harvest.” And seeking them in any 
 way which neglects the unceasing search 
 of prayer is not the Lord’s way. The 
 first woman ever sent from America as a 
 medical missionary declared her depart¬ 
 ure for the lightless lands to be the re¬ 
 sult of her early pastor’s prayers. The 
 day appointed by the Church Mission¬ 
 ary Society in 1885 to pray for 
 workers was anticipated, even the 
 evening ^ before the formal meet¬ 
 ing, by one hundred graduates of the 
 University Church, who dedicated them¬ 
 selves to the foreign missionary work, 
 and declared themselves ready to go 
 
14 
 
 when their studies were completed. Be¬ 
 fore they called He answered, and while 
 they were yet speaking He heard. God 
 alone knows how, replying to prayer. 
 He sent out the hundred workers asked 
 by the China Inland Mission in 1887. 
 David Temple and William Goodell went 
 out to the foreign field from a little 
 group of half a dozen who met for 
 prayer around an old tree stump at An¬ 
 dover, eighty years ago. And if a clearer 
 indication than these is needed of God’s 
 way of leading out His workers, it is 
 found in the words of Baton’s parents 
 to their son as he was deciding the ques¬ 
 tion of his duty to the heathen, “When 
 you were given to us, we laid you upon 
 the altar, our first born, to be consecra¬ 
 ted, if God saw fit, as a missionary of 
 the cross; and it has been our constant 
 prayer that you may be prepared, quali¬ 
 fied and led to this very decision.” If 
 the Church must resort chiefly to prayer 
 for the missionary workers, workers and 
 Church must labor together in prayer 
 for the desired conversions; and foreign 
 ij'ork as a rule has been least fruitful ia 
 
15 
 
 such results where the Church has least 
 lavished her prayers. Only the great 
 cloud of witnesses who have been famil¬ 
 iar with all the trials of God’s mission¬ 
 aries from the day Paul was cast out for 
 dead at Lystra to the sufferings caused 
 by the last Chinese riots, know how 
 many lives have been saved; how many 
 dangers have been avoided, how many 
 perils passed on the highway of prayer. 
 The deliverances of 1839 in the Turkish 
 Empire, and the preservation of faiih 
 among the fagots and flames of persecu¬ 
 tion at Uganda, were alike advantages 
 brought to the kingdom of God by 
 prayer. There is no other way than 
 this to fill the treasuries of mission 
 boards and supply the means for an im¬ 
 mensely widened work in the foreign 
 field. Nor is this merely a Christian truth 
 which no experience has ever proved. 
 Pastor Gossner sent out into the foreign 
 field 144 missionaries. Besides provid¬ 
 ing outfit and passage, he had never less 
 than twenty missionaries dependent di¬ 
 rectly upon him for support. How he 
 carried on this and hi?, other Christian 
 
i6 
 
 Work, a sentence from the funeral ad¬ 
 dress read over his grave will explain: 
 *^He prayed up the walls of a hospital 
 and the hearts of the nurses; he prayed 
 mission stations into being and mission¬ 
 aries into faith; he prayed open the 
 hearts of the rich, and gold from the 
 most distant lands/’ <‘When I sent 
 you without purse and scrip and shoes, 
 lacked ye anything? And they said. 
 Nothing.” It is the voice of Him to 
 whom belong the silver and the gold, 
 and the cattle on a thousand hills. 
 
 Another step in this connection we 
 are tracing needs to be taken. The first 
 thing in the life of the convert must be 
 prayer. The mission that is not a train¬ 
 ing school of prayer may accomplish 
 much in civilizing and enlightening, but 
 it will be little of a spiritual power in 
 its land. Nothing but the intimacy of 
 communion and the answering strength 
 involved in taking tuition under Him 
 who is to teach men to pray, will ever 
 hold the missionary convert in the midst 
 of overwhelming temptations, or make 
 him for God a man of spiritual power. 
 
17 
 
 Things were only, then, as in God’s wa^ 
 they must be, when in the revivals oi 
 1872, in Japan, students in the schools 
 of Japan, and in the colleges of prayer, 
 so besought God with tears in one of the 
 meetings at Yokohama, that He would 
 pour out His spirit on Japan as at Pen¬ 
 tecost, that captains of men-of-war, En¬ 
 glish and American, who were present, 
 remarked, ‘‘The prayers of these Japan¬ 
 ese take the hearts out of us,” and the 
 first Japanese congregation of eleven 
 converts sprang out of those prayers; 
 or when the prime minister of the 
 bloody queen of Madagascar, endeavor¬ 
 ing to enforce her terrible edicts against 
 the Christians, was confronted by his 
 own nephew’s declaration, “I am a 
 Christian, and if you will you may put 
 me to death, for I must pray.” Even 
 more clearly than her e can this alliance 
 of prayer and missions be traced in the 
 lives of individual missionaries. It may 
 not be possible to judge of outward 
 success; it is possible to know the meas¬ 
 ure of inward fidelity from the place 
 which prayer occupies in the missionary’s 
 
i8 
 
 life, and yet, I do desire to say, 
 gravely and earnestly,” says a mis¬ 
 sionary of the American Board: “that 
 my missionary life has been successful 
 so far as I have been prayerful, and non¬ 
 successful so far as in prayerfulness I 
 have been lax.” Foremost among these 
 prayer-souled men of missions stands 
 David Brainerd. In his diary he writes: 
 “God enabled me so to agonize in prayer 
 that I was quite wet with perspiration, 
 though in the shade and in the cool 
 wind. My soul was drawn out very 
 much from the world for multitudes of 
 souls. ’ ’ And in 1747 he left a dying injunc¬ 
 tion for his beloved Christian Indians, 
 that at the monthly missionary concert, 
 which the year before had been recom¬ 
 mended from Scotland, they should pray 
 for “the conversion of the world.” Such 
 a man was John Hunt, with his death¬ 
 bed cry: “Oh, let me pray for Fiji, 
 Lord, save Fiji;” and Adoniram Judson, 
 whose only testimony, after a long life 
 of deep experience was: “I never was 
 deeply interested in any object, I never 
 prayed sincerely and earnestly for 
 
I 
 
 19 
 
 anything but it came at some time— nc 
 matter how distant the day, somehow, 
 in some shape, probably the last I 
 should have devised—it came!” Dr. 
 Goodell’s appeal, ‘‘Let it be known, 
 too, that more, apparently, can be done 
 now by prayer than in any other way. 
 Whoever prays most, helps most,” was 
 only an expression of his own life. It 
 was by prayer that Paton was led into 
 the missionary service, by prayer he won 
 the hearts of degraded men, by prayer 
 he dug wells and found fresh water 
 where others found none or salt, by 
 prayer he checked the hand of the as 
 sassin, by prayer he locked the jaws of 
 violence; we maybe sure that it will be in 
 the hush of prayer that he will fall 
 asleep. From no other source than 
 this could Mackay ever have gained 
 strength for the life of unwearied, un¬ 
 measured usefulness he laid down at 
 Uganda. Regarding his prayer, his 
 companion, Ashe, says: “Mackay’s 
 prayer was very childlike, full of simple 
 trust and supplication. Very humble, 
 very meek, very childlike, he was on hi® 
 
20 
 
 knees before God.’’ How much David 
 Livingstone prayed may be inferred 
 from brief glimpses here and there in 
 his journals, into the holy place in his 
 life. He records on April 29, 1866, an 
 answer to some prayers of his for influ¬ 
 ence on the minds of the heathen. He 
 began different years of his diaries with 
 a prayer. Thus, Jan. i, 1868, <^Al¬ 
 mighty Father, forgive the sins of the 
 past year for thy Son’s sake. Help me 
 to be more profitable during this year. 
 If I am to die this year, prepare me for 
 it.” He wrote prayers on his birthdays, 
 too, as March 19, 1872, the next to the 
 last of his birthdays, *‘My Jesus, my 
 King, my Life, my All, I again dedicate 
 my whole self to thee. Accept me and 
 grant, oh, gracious Father, that ere this 
 year is gone, I may finish my task. In 
 Jesus’ name, I ask it. Amen. So let it 
 be. David Livingstone.” And on the 
 last birthday of all, '‘Let not Satan pre¬ 
 vail over me, oh! my good Lord Jesus.” 
 And when the worn and wasted figure 
 was found dead, it was in the attitude of 
 prayer. Even in that lonely hour he 
 
21 
 
 had knelt down by his bedside at flala 
 to commend, with one dying effort, the 
 world’s open sore to the Redeemer of 
 the oppressed and the Savior of the lost. 
 There are more martyrs than those who 
 have poured out their blood or burned 
 at the stake for Christ and His Church. 
 They too, are martyrs who have poured 
 out their lives in service and their souls 
 in the agony of prayer, that the Son of 
 God and His kingdom would come. 
 And as Sabbath by Sabbath a great 
 branch of the Church sings those glori¬ 
 ous words, ‘‘The noble army of martyrs, 
 praise Thee,” it is simply the confident 
 assertion that those who served Hinv 
 here in the ministry of toil and prayer 
 have taken up the ministry of praise in 
 the land where His servants shall serve 
 Him. 
 
 The connection between prayer and 
 missions has been traced thus over the 
 whole field of missionary conditions, 
 simply to show that every element in 
 the missionary problem of to-day de¬ 
 pends for its solution chiefly upon 
 prayer. The assertion has been 
 
22 
 
 frequently made in past years, that with 
 20,000 men, properly qualified and dis¬ 
 tributed, the world could be evangelized 
 in thirty years. And actually there is 
 need of an immediate undaunted effort 
 to secure 20,000 men. Neither, per¬ 
 haps, can the world be evangelized 
 without them, nor can they be secured 
 without effort. But it is hopeless to en¬ 
 deavor to obtain them, and they will be 
 worthless if obtained, unless the whole 
 effort be inspired and permeated with 
 prayer. ^‘Thrust Thou forth Thy labor¬ 
 ers into the harvest.^’ Or with the 
 world open and men offering, and treas¬ 
 uries depleted, the missionary agents of 
 the Church may sometimes feel that the 
 great need is a consecration of wealth to 
 the world-wide service of Christ; and 
 surely he does still plead that the tithes 
 be brought into the store-house and His 
 readiness to pour out a blessing tested 
 therewith, but money is not the great 
 need. The evangelization of the world 
 in this "generation depends first 0/ all 
 upon a revival of prayer. Deeper tnan 
 the need for men; deeper, far, than the 
 
23 
 
 need for money; aye, deep down at the 
 bottom of our spiritless life is the need 
 for the forgotten secret of prevailing, 
 world-wide prayer. Missions have pro¬ 
 gressed slowly abroad, because piety 
 and prayer have been shallow at home. 
 “When I shall see Christians all over 
 the world,said John Foster, “resolved 
 to prove what shall be the efficacy of 
 prayer for the conversion of the world, 
 I shall begin to think that the millennium 
 is at the door.” The condition and 
 consequence of such prayers as this is 
 a new out-pouring of the Holy Ghost. 
 Nothing short of His own suggestion will 
 prompt the necessary prayer to bring 
 Him back again in power. Nothing 
 short of His new out-pouring will ever 
 solve the missionary problems of our day. 
 The first call ever sent out for the an¬ 
 nual week of prayer, came first from the 
 mission field, and was designed to unite 
 the whole Christian world in earnest 
 prayer for the promised outpouring of 
 the Spirit upon all nations; and yet year 
 by year the idea has been practically ig¬ 
 nored, so that on one occasion the 
 
24 
 
 advance call contained no allusion to the 
 Holy Spirit at all. There has been in 
 our own day more than one unconscious 
 manifestation of the same spirit which 
 more than a century and a half ago, 
 when the King of Denmark issued a let¬ 
 ter ordering a petition for missions in 
 India and Denmark to be introduced 
 into the church prayers, quickly found 
 expression in hostility and disobedience. 
 
 Considering the fearful consequences 
 of it all, something like criminal negli¬ 
 gence has marked for years the attitude 
 of the Church toward the matchless pow* 
 erof prayer for the world. Shall it be so 
 longer or shall a change come over the 
 Church? It will not avail to pass reso¬ 
 lutions and form prayer alliances. For 
 generations great calls have been issued, 
 leagues have been proposed, emotions 
 have been aroused, and yet the days 
 continue evil; the kingdom of God 
 moves faster, but slowly stiU. and prayer 
 is an echo on men^s lips rather than a 
 passion from their hearts. But if fifty 
 men of our generation will enter the 
 holy place of prayer, and become^ 
 
T 
 
 25 
 
 henceforth, men whose hearts God hag 
 touched, with the prayer-passion, the 
 history of His Church will be changed. 
 
 By the wicked neglect of a life that 
 misses the first things in prayer, and 
 that never strains the heart strings of its 
 devotion over the world, shall we virtu¬ 
 ally beseech Him: ‘‘Let not Thy king¬ 
 dom come; stop Thou the Macedonian 
 cry; close Thou the doors of access to 
 the heathen; bind up the purse strings 
 of the Church and palsy the feet of mis¬ 
 sionaries upon the threshold; let the 
 world^s millions go on to death.” On 
 in lives that linger ceaselessly before 
 the Lord, shall we pour out our souls in 
 John Milton^s sublime prayer: “The 
 times and seasons pass along under Thy 
 feet and go and come at Thy bidding; 
 and as thou didst dignify our fathers’ 
 days with many revelations above all 
 their foregoing ages since Thou tookest 
 the flesh, so Thou canst vouchsafe to us, 
 the unworthy, as large a portion of Thy 
 Spirit as Thou pleasest; for whe shall 
 prejudice thy all-governing will? Seeing 
 the power of Thy grace is not passed 
 
20 
 
 away with- the primitive times, as bold 
 and faithless men imagine, but Thy 
 kingdom is now at hand, and Thou, 
 standing at the door, come forth out of 
 Thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the 
 kings of the earth, put on the visible 
 robes of Thy imperial majesty; take up 
 that unlimited sceptre which Thy Al¬ 
 mighty Father hath bequeathed Thee; 
 for now the voice of Thy Bride calls 
 Thee, and all creatures sigh to be re¬ 
 newed.’^ Of far greater service than 
 any array of learning or gifts of elo¬ 
 quence, more to be desired than gold 
 and fine gold, more to be sought than a 
 great name, or apparent opportunities 
 for large usefulness, of deeper signifi¬ 
 cance than high intellectual attainment, 
 or power of popular influence, is this 
 gift—may God give it to each one of 
 us!—the secret and sweetness of unceas¬ 
 ing, prevailing, triumphant prayer for 
 the coming of the kingdom of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
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