ANSWER TO PRAYER.
Our fathers
believed in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection
about the inflexibility of the laws of nature; because they had an idea that,
when the Creator of the world promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood
the laws of nature as well as they did. At any rate, the laws of nature were
His affair, and not theirs. They were men very apt as the Duke of Wellington
said, to “look their marching-orders,”-which being found to read, “Be careful
for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let
your requests be made known unto God,” they did it. “They looked unto Him and
were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.” One reads, in the Memoirs of
Dr. Hopkins, of Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of
singular genius and ability, who, being desirous of his freedom, that he might
be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to raise
the amount that he required, was counseled by Dr. Hopkins that it might be a shorter
way to seek his freedom from the Lord, by a day of solemn fasting and prayer.
The historical fact is, that, on the evening of a day so consecrated, his
master returned from church, called Newport to him, and presented him with his
freedom. Is it not possible that He who made the word may have established laws
for prayer as invariable as those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain?
Is it not as legitimate a subject of inquiry, when petitions are not answered,
which of these laws has been neglected?
Harriet Beecher Stowr.
