"Our Bairn that's Deein."
The late Dr. James Hamilton had a capital illustration of how general prayers and "oblique sermons" fail to satisfy the soul in the emergencies of life. A Scotchman who had but one prayer was asked by his wife to pray by the bedside of their dying child. The good man struck out on the old track, and soon came to the usual petition for the Jews. As he went on with the time-honored quotation, "Lord, turn again the captivity of Zion," his wife broke in, saying: "Eh! mon, you're aye drawn out for the Jews; but it's our bairn that's deein!" Then clasping her hands, she cried: "Lord, help us, or give us back our darling if it be thy holy will; and if he is to be taken, oh, take him to thyself." That woman knew how to pray, which was more than her husband did. And in her prayer she honestly poured out her heart's needs before God. An "oblique sermon" is not a prayer. An audible meditation or a doctrinal dissertation is not a prayer. Telling the Lord a hundred things he knows better than we do is not prayer. If persons who lead in prayer had as vivid a conception of what they want, and as earnest a desire to get it, as this poor woman, there would not be so many complaints about long prayers as there are now. -Selected.