THE LESSON OF THE TELEPHONE.
By Editor
CALLING upon a business acquaintance the other day, he suddenly interrupted our conversation with these words, "Excuse me a moment," turned toward his desk and said—as if to a third person, though there was no third person in the room—"Well!" The person addressed, though quite invisible and inaudible to us, seemed to communicate intelligibly with our friend, who uttered requests and made promises and expressed gratitude to vacancy, in a way which would have led one a few years since to have deemed him insane. But he wasn't insane by any means. On the contrary, he was extra sensible and clear-headed. Attached to his desk there was a telephone, which communicated with his home. In the midst of his conversation he had heard a call which my ear did not detect. He had been talking with his father—acknowledging with gratitude the fulfillment of requests previously made, venturing upon new petitions, encouraged by that father's love, and in turn making such promises as were prompted by a filial heart. Isn't it a perfect parallel, we said, to prayer? The infidel taunts us with talking to vacancy when we pray. Sometimes the skeptical doubt rushes upon the Christian in the midst of his supplications. Is there an ear that listens and a voice that answers? Why not? If man, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, can communicate with his distant fellow-man; if, when he seems to be talking to vacancy, he is really pouring his requests into the ear of a friend; if his father, invisible and inaudible to the bystanders, still does hear and answer prayer—why is prayer such an absurdity as it is sometimes represented? Why may not divine ingenuity have established a spiritual telephone between earth and heaven so that when the Christian is seemingly talking to vacancy he is really talking to God? There are a good many people who believe that there is a God, but regard it the height of absurdity to think that he hears and answers prayer. We commend to such the lesson of the telephone. Why should God not be able to do on a large scale what man has done on a little scale? There are many who believe that he is—that the heavenly telephone antedates the earthly—that from the place of business, on the pressure of sudden emergency, they can just as surely, just as safely, just as speedily, reach a heavenly as an earthly father.