Russell H. Conwell - Health, Healing, and Faith: Effective Prayer

That prayers are answered nearly all the human race believe. But thesubject has been beclouded and often made ridiculous by inconsistentsuperstitions.

This book is a modest attempt to clear up some of the errors. Its recordis as accurate as impartial observation can make it. God is not bribed.Laziness cannot bargain with him. But the prayers of the righteous andof repentant sinners availeth much.

Desired ends are gained by prayer which cannot be gained by any othermethod. The daily experiences of devout persons establish that factconclusively. The reasons and the methods which produce the results seemhidden, and they often bewilder the investigator. God's thoughts are farabove our thoughts. But we can trust our daily experience far enough toretain our confidence in the potency of prayer. It is, therefore, aprofitable and comforting study.

RUSSELL H. CONWELL.

The fascinating history of events connected with the Baptist Temple,Philadelphia, through thirty-nine years must be recorded carefully toobtain the credence of those readers who live out of the locality. Itmay or may not be that the unusual demonstrations of power, seeminglydivine, were not incited or influenced by the special environment. Yetthe critical reader may reasonably inquire where these things occurredin order to determine the power of association on the form and effect ofprayer.

The Baptist Temple is a somewhat imposing building on the corner ofNorth Broad and Berks streets in Philadelphia. It is located almost atthe geographical center of Philadelphia, and eighteen squares north ofthe City Hall. The Temple is architecturally very plain, and thebeautiful stained-glass windows are about the only ornaments in thegreat hall save, of course, the pipes of the great organ. The church isone hundred and seven feet front, and is one hundred and fifty feet inlength. There is a deep gallery occupying three sides, with a chorusgallery, back of the pulpit, seating one hundred and fifty singers.There are three thousand and thirty-four opera chairs arranged in asemicircle, and every person in the congregation can see clearly theplatform and chorus, and each normal worshiper can be heard from thepulpit.

The building itself is a testimonial to the effectiveness of sincereprayer. The Temple and the halls in the lower story, as it now stands,are far beyond the dreams of that little company of earnest worshiperswho, in 1880, hesitatingly and embarrassed, began to build the smallchurch at the corner of Berks and Mervine streets. They had no wealthyor influential friends. They had but little money or property; theycould pray, and that they did do unceasingly. Any man who tries todescribe or explain fully how it came about that the Temple was builtbecomes bewildered in the complications, unless he covers the wholequestion by saying, "The Lord did it." In six years after the smallchurch was completed the Temple was begun on Broad Street.

For seven or eight years after its construction the Temple was aChristian Mecca to which pilgrims seemed to come from all parts of theearth to kneel there in prayer. One Good Friday night, which wasobserved quite generally as a season of fasting and prayer, the writerentered by the side door the Temple at two o'clock in the morning, andin the dim light of two small gas jets, always left burning, he sawscores of people scattered through the church. Why that church had sucha fascination for or preference with earnest seekers for theprayer-answering God none may explain. All were kneeling separately insilent prayer. As they passed in and out there were in the line, goingand coming, Chinamen, Europeans, Orientals, and Americans from distantstates. Different denominations, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, colored andwhite, were often represented among the individual worshipers. They alsocame any night in the week at any hour and prayed silently for a whileand then went silently out. The church was not locked, night or day, forfifteen years. People sought the place when they sought to find alocality which was especially near to the Lord. It may be that any placeis as near to God as any other; and many think it only a sentiment,superstitious and foolish, to esteem one place above another in mattersof effective prayer. But there does stand out the fact that, for somegood reason, our Saviour did choose to pray in special localities, andhis devout followers do now feel more deeply the soul's communion withGod in certain favorable places. Why the Baptist Temple had suchworship as a sentimental matter brings forward the facts that the gravesof the loved, the home of childhood, the trysting places, the oldfireplace, or the churches where sainted parents worshiped areinfluential because of the suggestions which come with sacred memories.That fact is a strong agency in the awakening of tender and sacredemotions. But the Baptist Temple was new and could lay claim to none ofthose associations. Men and women with no religious habits, and someseemingly without devout inclinations, testified decidedly that wheneverthey visited the building they felt that they had entered into anatmosphere of special spiritual and sacred power. One soldier of theEnglish army wrote an interesting letter in 1897, saying: "I do notrecall any such impression before. I went into the church alone out ofcuriosity to look at its architectural design. But the moment I enteredthe side aisle I felt an indescribable pressure which made me desire topray. I hurried out to the street to escape the solemn impression. Buttwice since then I have been in the auditorium and each time some powerseemed pressing me down to my knees." Whether that influence was the actof the Holy Ghost or not cannot be proven by any known formula of humanreasoning, and hence it remains, as most of such questions do, a matterof faith. Some believe it was a divine presence which made itself feltthere, and other good men do not believe the conditions were in any wayunusual or unnatural. So many persons with uncontrolled imaginations,and others with their mental faculties weakened or distorted, oftenreported the most improbable visions and absurd revelations. Suchcharacters, half insane or wholly deranged, testified in favor of Jesusto his face, and such have ever been present since in every genuinelyspiritual movement. They would do less harm, of course, if they shoulddeclaim against him. So it was, and is, at the Baptist Temple. Thoseinconsistent, deranged advocates of religion did often drive awaypermanently into the ranks of unbelievers the most sincereinvestigators. But a calm review of the testimonies concerning theoccurrences which followed so clearly the petitions they offered in theTemple seems overwhelmingly to establish the claim, now held by so manythousand people, that the results of the prayers were but a cause andnatural effect, as the prayers and results were infallibly related.