By AN UNKNOWN CHRISTIAN
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
A traveller in China visited a heathen temple
on a great feast-day. Many were the worshippers of the hideous idol enclosed
in a sacred shrine. The visitor noticed that most of the devotees brought with
them small pieces of paper on which prayers had been written or printed. These
they would wrap up in little balls of stiff mud and fling at the idol. He
enquired the reason for this strange proceeding, and was told that if the mud
ball stuck fast to the idol, then the prayer would assuredly be answered; but
if the mud fell off, the prayer was rejected by the god.
We may smile at this peculiar way of testing the
acceptability of a prayer. But is it not a fact that the majority of Christian
men and women who pray to a Living God know very little about real prevailing
prayer? Yet prayer is the key which unlocks the door of God's
treasure-house.
It is not too much to say that all real growth in
the spiritual life-all victory over temptation, all confidence and peace in the
presence of difficulties and dangers, all repose of spirit in times of great
disappointment or loss, all habitual communion with God-depend upon the
practice of secret prayer.
This book was written by request, and with much
hesitancy. It goes forth with much prayer. May He Who said, "Men ought always
to pray, and not to faint," "teach us to pray."