NOTWITHSTANDING the repeated declarations of God, there are many who are skeptical as to the efficacy of prayer. God, they say, is immutable. Prayer, in order to be efficacious, must produce a change in him, must lead him to do what he would not have done had prayer not been offered. The Bible affirms that God is influenced by the prayers of his children as truly as an earthly parent is influenced by the prayers of his children. This does in no way conflict with his immutability. Immutability and inactivity are not identical. God does to-day what he did not do yesterday. He is daily calling new objects into existence. Do these acts affect the unchangeableness of his character? By no means. As long as all his acts are performed on holy and wise principles, so long he is immutable. The influence of second causes or of instrumentalities in the material world is just as inconsistent with his immutability as is the efficacy of prayer. God maketh the corn to grow upon the mountains, but the instrumentality of man has something to do with its growth. God clothes the hills with corn through the instrumentality of man's toil, and so he bestows the blessings of a spiritual harvest through the instrumentality of prayer. In the material world he uniformly produces certain results when certain conditions have been performed by men. With a similar uniformity he produces certain results in the spiritual world when certain conditions have been performed by men. Nothing is done from caprice. There is no change in the principles of action. Prayer, then, is efficacious. It is power, not with nature, but with nature's God. It is an instrumentality mightier than that which drives the steam-ship against wind and tide—swifter than the electric current. It enables a soul to beat back the engulphing waves of guilt, to send, in one instant, a message to the presence-chamber of God. The most interesting chapter in the history of the world (excepting that which records the labors and sufferings of Christ) is that relating to prayer. It cannot be written (except very imperfectly) by the historian of earth. It is written in heaven, to be read by the redeemed. There it will be seen that a mother's prayers reached her wayward son when far away from her in the ends of the earth. There it will be seen that a sister's prayers reached her brother in his lonely room in the crowded city, and led him to open his neglected Bible, and to weep over that loss of innocence, and that departure from God which he thought, when he left the pure influence of his beloved home, could never take place. There it will be seen that a powerful revival of religion, which caused joy in heaven, and sent the Gospel to the four quarters of the globe, was owing to the prayers of some one of God's unhonored poor. There is power in prayer. The resources of omnipotence are within our reach, and we may use them. Ask, and ye shall receive. The Word of the Lord stands sure.—S. S. Times.