_PRAYER AND REVOLUTION_
JOHN iv. 43-54.
This miracle began in a prayer. The nobleman went unto Jesus "_and
besought Him_." In such apparently fragile things can mighty revolutions
be born! "Prayer," said Tennyson, "opens the sluice-gates between us and
the Infinite." It brings the frail wire into contact with the battery. It
links together man and God.
Prayer was corroborated by belief. "_The man believed the word that Jesus
spake unto him._" By our faith we cut the channels along which the healing
energy will flow. Faith "prepares the way of the Lord." Our faith is
purposed to be a fellow-laborer with grace, and, if faith be absent, grace
"can do no mighty works."
The healing begins with the faith. "_It was at the same hour in which ...
he himself believed._" These "coincidences" are inevitable happenings in
the realm of the Spirit. When we offer the believing prayer, God's mighty
energies begin to besiege the life for which the prayer is made. Mr.
Cornaby, the Methodist missionary, declares how conscious he is in
far-away China when someone is interceding for him in the home-land! The
power possesses him in vitalizing flood! Hudson Taylor's mother shuts
herself in a little room to pray, and eighty miles away her son is
converted.