"Oh! tired heart God knows! Not you nor I, Who reach our hands for gifts That wise love must deny We blunder, where we fain would do our best- God knows! Go thou to work or sleep." " CHAPTER XII. GOD HEARD HIM. The prayer of the righteous availeth much. God heareth him in Heaven, his dwelling place; God answers him without hesitation. It would seem impossible for any reasonable being to study carefully the life of Mr. Spurgeon as a prayerful Christian and not come to the deliberate conclusion that God does hear and directly answer prayer. We have referred to it before in speaking of the wonderful cures which follewed his prayers; but here again, we are obliged to enter into the realm of the miraculous and hear and tell of wonderful things for which no natural law gives an adequate explanation. Hard, solid, undeniable facts remain still facts, and command the respect and faith of sensible men though they may be often partially hidden by the surging waves of theory which dash and break around them. "God cannot answer prayer" says the unbeliever, and yet here are these facts established beyond any opportunity of reasonable contradiction. "The Lord will not change his natural laws to accommodate any single human being," has often been asserted by the theologians who claim to believe in the teachings of Scripture. They strongly assert that the day is past when God will perform miracles at the request of any of his children; yet here was a Godly man whose character was above reproach, whose sincerity is unquestioned and who moved among a cloud of witnesses, whose petitions to God were in hundreds of mysterious ways directly answered. The serious investigator will find his life experience a very fascinating field of research and the humble believer in Jesus of Nazareth will find encouragement in the exercise of faith and in the command to pray. A study of his methods and the record of its results must be of great practical use to every Christian man and woman who would imitate his character or who desires the same return for their petitions. His prayer for himself was answered many thousand times from the day when he first asked God for the forgiveness of his sins to the last day when he asked that the sustaining support of the everlasting arms might be underneath him. He was continually testifying of the wonderful goodness of God in granting to him the things for which he asked. That he petitioned for many things which he did not receive is also certain and while it complicates the problem somewhat it does not overthrow the testimony in cases where God did send to him the needed blessing. He had a most charming habit of going to God |