True to his Colours. Theodore P. Wilson
William Foster, though sorely angry, and conscious that his arrows had utterly failed of hitting their mark, was determined not to be driven ingloriously out of the field; his pride could not endure that. So, smothering his wrath, he turned again to Bradly and said—
“Here, give us one of your precious tracts, man.” The other immediately handed him one.
“Now see, mates,” continued Foster, “what I’ve got here—‘The Power of Prayer.’ See how it begins ‘Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.’ And you believe that, Tommy Tracks?”
“Yes,” was the reply; “I believe it; and more than that, I know it—I know that it’s true.”
“And how do you know it?”
“First and foremost, because the Bible says so; not those very words, indeed, but what means just the same: as, for instance, ‘The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.’ And, better still, I have it in our Saviour’s own words: ‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?’ ”
“Well, now, let me tell you, friend Bradly, that it’s all a delusion.”
“You’re at liberty, William, to tell me what you like; but I can tell you that it’s no such thing as a delusion, for I’ve proved it myself to be a blessed truth.”
“What! You mean to say that your own prayers have been answered?”
“I do mean to say so, William. There’s nothing like experience. I can tell you what I know myself. I’ve put the Lord to the proof over and over again, and he has never failed me. I’ve always had what I needed.”
“Hear him!” cried Foster, derisively. “Why, it isn’t a week ago that I heard him myself tell John Rowe that he’d like to build another cottage on the bit of land he bought last year, only he couldn’t afford it just at present. And now he says he has only to pray for a thing, and he can get whatever he likes.—Why didn’t you pray for the money to build the new cottage, Tommy?”
“Not so fast, William; a reasoning and scientific man like yourself ought to stick close to the truth. Now, I never said as I could get whatever I liked—though I might have said that too without being wrong; for when I’ve found out clearly what’s the Lord’s will, I can say with the old shepherd, ‘I can have what I please, because what pleases God pleases me.’ What I said was this: that I always got what I needed when I prayed for a thing.”
“Well, and where’s the difference?”
“A vast deal of difference, William. I never pray for any of this world’s good things without putting in, ‘if God sees it best for me to have it.’ And then I know that, if it is really good for me, I shall get it, and that’ll be what I need; and if he sees as I’m better without it, he’ll give me contentment and peace, and often something much better than what I asked for, and which I never expected, and that’ll be giving me in answer to prayer what I need.”
“Then it seems to me,” said the other, sneeringly, “that you may just as well let the prayer alone altogether, for you don’t really get what you would like, and you can’t be sure what it is you really want.”
“Nay, not so, William Foster; my Bible says, ‘Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’ I just go and do this, and over and over again I’ve got the thing I naturally liked; and it’s only been now and then, when God knew I should be better without the thing I fancied, that he kept it back. But then I always got something better for me instead, and the peace of God with it.”
“And you call that getting answers to prayer from a heavenly Father?” said Foster derisively.
“I do,” was Bradly’s reply. “My heavenly Father deals with me in the same way as I used to deal with my children when they was little, and for the same reason—because he loves me, and knows better than I do what’s good for me. When our Dick were a little thing, only just able to walk, he comes one evening close up to the table while I was shaving, and makes a snatch at my razor. I caught his little hand afore he could get hold; and says I, ‘No, Dick, you mustn’t have that; you’ll hurt yourself with it.’ Not that there was any harm in the razor itself, but it would have been harm to him, though he didn’t know it then. Well, Dick was just ready to cry; but he looks at me, and sees a smile on my face, and toddles off into the garden; and an hour after I went and took him a great blunt knife as he couldn’t hurt himself with, and he was soon as happy as a king, rooting about in the cabbage-bed with it. I did it because I loved him; and he came to understand that, after a bit. And that’s the way our heavenly Father deals with all his loving and obedient children.”
There was a little murmur of approval when Bradly ceased, which was very distasteful to Foster, who began to move off, growling out that, “it was no use arguing with a man who was quite behind the age, and couldn’t appreciate nor understand the difficulties and conclusions of deeper thinkers.”
“Just one word more, friends, on this subject,” said Bradly, not noticing his opponent’s last disparaging remarks. “William said, a little while ago, as it’s all fancy on my part when I gave him my own experience about answers to prayer. Well, if it’s fancy, it’s a very pleasant fancy, and a very profitable fancy too; and I should like him to tell me what his learned scientific authors, that he brags so much about, has to give me instead of it, if I take their word for it as it’s all fancy, and give over praying. Now, suppose I’m told as there’s a man living over at Sunnyside as is able and willing to give me everything I want, if I only ask him. I go to his door, and knock; but he don’t let me see him. I say through the keyhole, ‘I want a loaf of bread.’ He opens the door just so far as to make room for his hand, and there’s a loaf of bread in it for me. I go to him again, and tell him through the door as I wants some medicine to cure one of my children as is sick. The hand is put out with medicine in it, and the medicine makes a cure. I go again, and say I want a letter of recommendation for my son to get a place as porter on the railway. There’s no hand put out this time; but I hear a voice say, ‘Come every day for a week.’ So I go every day, and knock; and the last day the hand’s put out, and it gives me a letter to a gentleman, who puts my son into a situation twice as good as the one I asked for him. Now, suppose I’d gone on in this way for years, always getting what I asked for, or something better instead, do you think any one would ever persuade me as it were only fancy after all; that the friend I called on so often wasn’t my friend at all, that he’d never heard or listened to a word I said, and had never given me anything in all my life? Now, that’s just how the matter stands. It’s no use talking to a man as knows what effectual prayer is, about the constancy of the laws of nature, and such like. He knows better; he has put the Lord of nature and all its laws to the proof, and so may you too. I’ll just leave with you one text out of the Scripture as’ll weigh down a warehouseful of your sceptical and philosophical books; and it’s this: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ ”
Not a word more was spoken on either side, and the party broke up.
Chapter Six.
The Vicar of Crossbourne.
Of all the true friends of “Tommy Tracks” none valued and loved him more than the Reverend Ernest Maltby, vicar of Crossbourne. There is a peculiar attraction in such men to one another, which cements their friendship all the more strongly from the very dissimilarity of their social positions. For each feels dependent on the other, and that the other possesses gifts or powers of which he himself is destitute. The refined Christian scholar, while in perfect spiritual accord with the man of rougher mould and scanty learning, feels that his