LET US PRAY. 
6i 
ing each other's hands, until they formed a very 
large circle indeed. At a given signal, they com- 
menced to leap and dance and shout. By-and-by 
they made, in turn, for the roots of the tree 
dripping with the blood of an animal slain in sacri- 
fice. Into the blood they dipped their fingers and 
smeared their foreheads and chests, crying all the 
while to the Spirit which they felt sure lived in that 
tree : Take care of me O ! Take care of me O ! " 
What was that fantastic dance and sacrifice and 
cry but the Aqua Obio people's way of praying to 
a Higher Power than themselves? One of the 
marked changes wrought by the Gospel is seen in 
the new ideas of prayer and methods of praying. 
Among all the youths who came to live at the 
mission-house, or entered the Oron Training Insti- 
tute as students, I never found one but prayed very 
quietly and reverently. When John Enang Gill, 
as a boy, was staying in this country he came home 
from the prayer meeting one Sunday night and 
asked why Mr. So-and-So shouted so v^^hen he 
prayed. Does he think God is deaf or that He 
dwells in a land far, far away?" Until the mis- 
sionary knows the language sufficiently well to pray 
in it himself, he makes it a practice to call upon a 
native Christian to open the meeting with prayer. 
I frequently called upon a fine Christian woman 
called Deborah Ime. She never failed to offer her 
compliments to Jehovah, and to express her sense 
of unworthiness and her glad acknowledgment of 
His greatness and power and love. It is very, very 
unusual for a native woman to shed tears, but I've 
seen the tears slowly run down Deborah's cheeks 
as she has felt the joy of being able to talk with 
