Prayer Must Not Replace Personal Labor
Prayer was never meant to be a substitute for labor, an easy way of throwing our responsibilities upon God. The old classic story of the teamster whose cart stuck in the mud, and who fell to crying to Hercules for help instead of using effort himself, and was told by the god he invoked to put his own shoulder to the wheel, shows that even a heathen mind could see that faith was never meant to exclude work. That is a good anecdote which they tell about Mr. Moody—and an authentic one too—in his earlier days in Chicago, when the noon-day prayer-meeting had been established, and he was a regular attendant. Bro. K., a man of wealth, rose one day and told the meeting of an opportunity which there was to do a certain good thing if only three or four hundred dollars could be raised for the purpose, and he urged those present to pray earnestly that it might be done. Mr. Moody was on his feet, with a sudden inspiration, saying, “Bro. K., I wouldn’t trouble the Lord with a little thing like that; I would do it myself.” The universal smile proved that every one took the point of his joke.—Congregationalist.