[Editorial in the Jamestown (New York) Evening Journal]

One of the most important features of the Christian religion is its belief in the commanding power of prayer.... J. E. Murdock says of a visit to the White House as a guest of President Lincoln: "One night, past midnight, I heard low tones proceeding from the room where the President slept. The door was partly open. I saw the President kneeling beside an open Bible, heard him cry out, 'O Thou God who heard Solomon in the night that he prayed for wisdom, hear me. I cannot lead this people without Thy help. O God, hear me and save the nation!'"

Have we outgrown prayer? Can this or any other nation be defended from the power of those who would destroy, apart from His concurring aid? ...

But Israel, long ago, discovered that although the mountains and valleys be filled with "chariots of iron," the world is also filled with the chariots and horsemen of Jehovah. It is these latter which must in the long, long last be victorious. In proportion as we yield to God, we become allied with God; and when we are allied with God we cannot fail. The command still obtains, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

[From the Shopper's News, Mansfield, Ohio]

We should not come before God only to ask Him for something. We should also come with the language of praise.

[Rev. S. E. Bentley, in the Luton (Bedfordshire, England) News]

Prayer is not merely asking for things.... Prayer is communion with God. Prayer lifts the heart far above all the worries of the world and the heartaches into the eternal life of God.... It is by prayer that faith recovers its right outlook, renews its health, returns to life with new power and greater will to victory. "And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

[Rev. James Reid, D. D., in the British Weekly, London England]

Have we enough of hidden resource to be able to endure? Will the lamp of our faith hold out through the long hours of trial and discouragement? Can we see the darkness through with a quiet heart because we have oil in our vessels with our lamps?

There are various sources of this staying power. One of them is a high purpose burning in the heart. Power in life always depends in the last resort on our motive. The very word "motive" implies this; for our motive is that which drives the wheels of effort. Motives are generally mixed, even in the best of us; but one motive will probably predominate, and our endurance will depend on what that motive is. A low or selfish motive, like the greed for money or the love of power, can be very strong for a time. But in the long run it cannot inspire the deepest heroism or the power to suffer and go through. It needs success to keep it alive. It has no roots beyond this world, and it cannot endure through failure and loss.

The one motive which can give us staying power is that which calls forth our love and our loyalty to God and His kingdom. If we are seeking God's righteousness in this war and not merely our own victory or our own survival, we can face anything with a quiet heart. That is why our aim is so important. If we are seeking God's glory and not our own good, we can endure. That is the will of God for us, and that is the thing for which we were made....

But the final and inevitable source of staying power is found in prayer. It is in direct communion with God.... That ... is the means of our replenishment with His infinite grace, His abundant life.

We may not be conscious of this contact with God. There are lakes among the hills which have no apparent inlet, yet whose waters are always fresh and pure. They are being fed from secret springs far down in their unseen depths. Drought cannot affect them. Frost cannot seal them. So it is with us and God.... "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." This is the vital source of staying power. If we keep touch with Him we can see any darkness through.

[Harlan L. Feeman, in the Michigan Christian Advocate, Detroit]

An ancient wise man said, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." How much the world needs this deeper understanding, this higher wisdom! For its cure of the body and the spirit it needs it; for restoration of its withered international relations and to withstand the nerve tension settling down on people everywhere.

To "trust in the Lord" is an idea which has been with us a long, long time. Most of us have heard of it since earliest childhood. We have heard it in the songs and sermons of the sanctuary all our days. But is it so familiar to us in actuality, even to us church folk? The idea is most familiar, but is it so familiar as an experience, "come what may come"?

What does it mean to "trust in the Lord," to possess this deeper understanding, this higher wisdom? It must mean to become acquainted with God. That is the first ground of confidence between persons, acquaintanceship. Perhaps that is the main issue in the Scriptures, or what they portray as going on, getting acquainted with the Lord. This book is ever urging that man seek the Lord, find Him, discover Him; especially in the history of the chosen people; and not only in the history written down, in the so-called important events man records, but in all human experience, in your experience and in mine. This whole human process we call life is for the purpose of getting acquainted with God, that we might trust Him.... Where shall we go to know Him, His mind, His purposes, His character? To the Word of God....

What is this "trust"? It is not mere ecstasy, a passing mood. It is an attitude of life, a steady reliance upon a wisdom and a power beyond ourselves. It is submission to an authority higher than our own or than our kind can create. It is the assurance of the friendship of One who is concerned with all the fullness of His gracious being, for all mankind, and for every man of us.... We become acquainted with the Father by the doing of His will, and he that doeth His will shall "know."

[James A. Monahan, in the Boston Globe, Massachusetts]

Despite the terror and physical damage of the nights on the rain-swept mountain, [Pamela Hollingworth] is not ill from any complication due to exposure, doctors said....

In a heart-to-heart talk with reporters at Eastern Slope Inn tonight, the weary father said that prayer and faith had brought his child out of the woods.

Pamela knew a prayer. She had learned it at the knee of her grandmother, a Christian Scientist, and the reporters heard it tonight from the lips of her father.

He said it was what kept her alive during an eight-day terror, and that her prayer voiced in the woods had the great and powerful support of the supplications of the people of every faith in the nation.

He was asked if he knew the prayer, and after a few minutes' reflection, struggling with emotion, he recited in clear, resonant tone:

No one spoke for a few minutes, and Hollingworth sat with head bowed, as every pencil in the press corps paused.

He looked up. "I want to tell you men.... Prayer and the power of Almighty God did it. What else could? They told me that my child could not live, could not survive what she went through; that the mountains would never give up that tiny tot alive after eight days without food or shelter."

The father pressed to his chest a packet of letters just delivered by messenger. "I have here letters from all parts of the country. What is the tenor of these messages? Predominantly religious, many testifying to the fact that their prayers had been answered.

"I know what people said. Not unkindly, but in the discussion of what they held likely. They said Pam could not live, but she's sitting up there in the hospital tonight with two bright blue hair ribbons perched atop her head."

["Pathfinder," in the Southern Weekly, Brighton, Sussex, England]

A famous missionary had gone to work among the South Sea Islanders. One of his first tasks was to translate the New Testament into the language of the natives. He could speak that language with considerable fluency, but the job of translating the New Testament into it was by no means easy. The natives had a very small vocabulary and a strictly limited range of ideas. Many of the ideas which are fundamental in New Testament teaching could not be translated readily into the native tongue.

For instance, take the word "faith." The natives had no word for "faith." Yet, obviously, if you leave faith out of it, your translation of the New Testament is going to be so seriously inadequate as to be practically useless.

The missionary puzzled long over this problem, but was unable to solve it. He was sitting in his study one day, still puzzling over the matter, when his native teacher came in, hot and tired after a long tramp over the neighboring country. The native threw himself down on a cane chair, put his feet up on another chair, and leaned back with a sigh of deep content. Then, as he closed his eyes, he murmured softly a single native word—a word which, translated, literally meant, "I am resting my whole weight here."

As the word left the native's lips, the missionary realized that he had found the very thing for which he had been searching. Faith—what is it? It is something utterly different from the shifting sands of theological or philosophical speculation. It is something firm and solid, like a rock, It is something to which a man may turn with utter confidence, and of which he can say, "I am resting my whole weight here." So that was how the word "faith" came to be translated into the dialect of the South Sea Islanders.... In everything we undertake, we ought first to ask whether it can be undertaken in the spirit of Christ Jesus. In everything we accomplish, we ought to strive to accomplish it in the spirit of Christ Jesus.