GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



279 



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Pray for them which despitefully use you .and 

 persecute you.— Matt. 5:41. 



II? WONDER how many there are among 

 Jl^ my readers who have been inchued to 

 — ' laugh and jeer when tlie subject of pray- 

 er came up. 1 once had a talk with a saloon- i 

 keeper in jail who expressed liimself some- 

 thing like this : '' Why, Mr. Itoot, it really 

 makes me sick to hear folks talk about pray- 

 ing. I have heard so much about it that it 

 disgusts me." And to tell the truth, dear 

 friends, it is not very many years since 1 told 

 my good old mother that such things as fam- | 

 ily prayer and family worship were behind 1 

 the times, and only a relic of an old supersti- 

 tion. For many years family worship had ! 

 been dropped in my father's household, but 

 tliere had been a sort of neighborhood re- 

 vival at the time, and father and mother had 

 been discussing the matter of Bible-reading 

 and praver. Shall 1 tell you, friends, where 

 1 stood at the time I declared the Bible and 

 prayer were behind the times V I was about 

 eighteen years old, and of course thought 

 myself capable of deciding on the most im- 

 portant matters then before the world. My 

 Sundays were spent in going around and ■ 

 amusing myself wherever I felt inclined 

 to go. Although I had got started in no 

 very bad habits, I was averse to church-go- 

 ing, and preferred to spend my time with a 

 class of men and boys who told low-lived 

 and obscene stories, and rambled about the 

 woods, and sometimes the saloons, where, in 

 years after, the Abbeyville Sabbath-school 

 was started. Not long afterward, my good [ 

 father insisted on my going with the rest of 

 the family to church, and he did a very wise, 

 kind thing, I tell you. 



1 have taken up this subject of prayer just 

 now, because I have been thinking there 

 might be those among you, especially among 

 the younger ones, who feel annoyed by 

 prayer, and who also feel a backwardness 

 about discussing prayer. " What good does j 

 it do to pray V" some one may ask. May be I 

 I can help j'ou a little in it, friends ; or per- i 

 haps I can "suggest some place and times in 

 which prayer is a really good thing. Jesus | 

 recommended prayer a good many times. 

 He once told his disciples how to pray ; and 

 in the closing up of this great sermon of his 

 on the mount, he advises us to pray for those 

 who despitefully use us and persecute us. 

 AVhy did he give us such advice as this V In 

 the sentence just before this one, we read, 

 " Do good to those which hate you.'' Now, 

 it is a good plan to do good to anybody. One 

 who goes through the world doing good will 

 be happy ; there is no happiness that we find i 

 in this world of ours equal to the happiness 

 that comes from the sense of having done 

 good to somebody. It is a pleasant tbing to 

 do good to friends — to return favors — to do 

 them a kindness. But very few know of the 

 rare thrill of joy that comes to a human soul 

 Avhen he has deliberately and purposely done 

 a good act to some one who has been unkind 

 and spiteful ; especially if it has been done 

 because of these words from our Savior. It | 



is a hard thing to do, I know ; but blessings 

 come in proportion to the sacrifice and diffi- 

 culty we find in obeying the commands of 

 our Savior. ]3efore you can do good to an 

 enemy, your thoughts and feelings must un- 

 dergo aphange to a certain extent. You 

 have got to feel kindly toward him. You 

 have got to overlook his unkindness toward 

 you, and let it pass ; and to do this you will 

 have to cultivate a tlodlike spirit. Now, the 

 best step toward honest prayer for anybody 

 is to think kindly of him; in fact, you can 

 not pray with bitterness in your heart. Bray- 

 ing is the forerunner of doing good, and it 

 is, therefore, in one sense, doing good. AVhen 

 you pray for some one, you have commenced 

 to do that person good. You have called on 

 (:iod the Father, and invoked his divine 

 blessing upon him. Ungodly men know 

 what it is to curse people they do not like. 

 Of course, they have little or no faith that 

 God hears, or as little care. Still, they have 

 called upon him. They called upon him in 

 the wickedness of their hearts. One who 

 loves God, and who is trying to be honest be- 

 fore him, never takes his holy name upon 

 his lips, except it be with reverence and re- 

 spect and honest sincerity ; and so in call- 

 ing upon God to make the one who misused 

 us better. We have committed ourselves, 

 as it Avere, to the work of reclaiming not 

 only the brother who stands before us, of 

 whom we have been thinking, but of re- 

 claiming the world, and therefore we are in 

 unison with God, and working with him. If 

 there is any thing good in any human being, 

 all his better qualities, and all that is good 

 in him, is called out and called into its great- 

 est and best activity by the mental effort he 

 malv.es in going to God in prayer. The act 

 of praying frees him, as it were, from earth- 

 ly passions and selfish ends and motives. 



I have told you many times of how prone 

 I am to get prejudiced, or stirred up to lose, 

 for the time, my calm and quiet better judg- 

 ment. A great many times even now, as I 

 lie down at night I feel sorry that I have 

 been so vehement in some certain case dur- 

 ing the day. I feel sorry I have not been 

 more considerate in regard to the feelings of 

 those around and near me. I often, very oft- 

 en, feel sad to think I have dwelt so much 

 on what is wrong in my fellow-men, and 

 have thought so little of the good part there 

 is in almost every one. Brayer helps me 

 over this besetting sin of mine, and one of 

 the prayers I utter oftenest is for a gerater 

 and broader love for humanity. 



Once I had some difficulty with a very 

 good friend of mine. We both argued the 

 case, and each felt considerably tried with 

 the other because we did not see the thing 

 just alike. I felt badly that night as I knelt 

 in prayer before retiring, and felt a little 

 like apologizing for having been so vehe- 

 ment and ungentlemanly, for that is just 

 what it was. My friend was a Christian and 

 Christians should be very careful to remem- 

 ber that '• we be brethren." I had, as 1 said, 

 an uncomfortable sort of feeling that I had 

 somehow overlooked the matter that we 

 were both professed followers of Christ, but 

 it did not strike me very forcibly until I 

 came to my type -writer in the moruiag, 



