The Power of Prayer

Samuel I. Prime

1. The Work Proposed - The Commercial Revulsion - No Extraordinary Means - Prayer, and Prayer only - The Story - The Future.

The pen of an angel might well be employed to record the wonderful works of God in the city of New York, during the blessed years 1857-8.

The history will be a memorial of divine grace. In all future time it will proclaim the readiness of the Lord God Almighty to hear and answer prayer; of the Holy Spirit, to descend and convert sinners; of Jesus Christ, to forgive and save.

To GOD THE FATHER, GOD THE SON, AND GOD THE HOLY GHOST, BE ALL THE PRAISE!

The autumn of 1857 was signalized by a sudden and fearful convulsion in the commercial world. That calamity was so speedily followed by the reports of revivals of religion and remarkable displays of divine grace, that it has been a widely received opinion, that the two events stand related to one another, as cause and effect. In the day of adversity, men consider. When the hand of God is suddenly laid upon city and country, the sources of prosperity dried up, fortunes taking to themselves wings; houses, venerable for years, integrity, and success, tumbling into ruins; and names, never tarnished by suspicion, becoming less than nothing in general bankruptcy, it is natural to believe that men will look away from themselves, and say, ‘Verily there is a God, who reigns.’ As in the time of an earthquake, or wreck at sea, men’s hearts failing them for fear, they will cry to him who rides upon the whirlwind, so it was believed that the financial storm had driven men to pray. And it doubtless did. Never was a commercial crisis so inexplicable under the laws of trade. It was acknowledged to be a judgment. The justice of God was confessed in arresting men in recklessness, extravagance and folly. Thousands were thrown out of business, and, in their want of something else to do, assembled in meetings for prayer. But these meetings had been already established. The Spirit of God had been manifest in the midst of them. Before the commercial revulsion, the city and the country had been absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure and gain. Men were making haste to be rich, and to enjoy their riches. Recklessness of expenditure, extravagance in living, display in furniture, equipage, and dress, had attained a height unexampled in the previous social history of our country, and utterly inconsistent with the simplicity and virtue of our fathers. These signs of prosperity had filled the minds of good men with apprehension and alarm before the panic seized the heart of the world. Christians who had kept free from the spirit of speculation and the mania for making money had trembled for the future of a people so absorbed in the material, as to be oblivious of the spiritual and eternal. These pious people had been gathering in meetings for prayer, before the convulsion began. Now, indeed, the meetings received large accessions of numbers in attendance, and a new infusion of life from above. More meetings were established, and larger numbers attended. The prayer-meeting became one of the institutions of the city. Christians in distant parts of the country heard of them. They prayed for the prayer-meetings. When they visited the city, the prayer-meeting was the place to which they resorted. The museum or theatre had no such attractions. Returning, they set up similar meetings at home. The Spirit followed, and the same displays of grace were seen in other cities, and in the country, that were so marvellous in New York. So the work spread, until the year has become remarkable in the history of the church. This revival is to be remembered through all coming ages as simply an answer to prayer.

We must look behind all means, and acknowledge that this is the Lord’s doing. He had said that he would be inquired of by the house of Israel, and when they called, the Lord answered and heard. This is to be the standing testimony which the revival will bear forever in the history of religion. It is this fact which is to make this volume a memorial of the truth and goodness of God in after years. The design of its preparation is to exhibit the faithfulness of God to his promises, and his willingness to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him. It is to encourage and stimulate Christians in all places, everywhere, to seek the same glorious gifts of grace for themselves and perishing sinners around them. Pastors will read it, and communicate its wondrous records to their flocks. Thousands of the humble people of God, who know the way to the mercy seat, will here find their faith strengthened when they come to pray. In tens of thousands of meetings for prayer, the delightful stories in this book will be rehearsed amid the joyful tears of the people of God, while they will pray that such great things may be seen and done among them also.

Thus the revival is to be extended and perpetuated. Wherever the gospel is preached — this is to be told as a triumph of its love and power. Other trophies of the victorious grace of God are to be brought in, and their records too are to be made and published to the glory of Zion’s King, and the work is to go on from conquering to conquest, until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters fill the sea. This volume may be but the precursor of another at the close of 1859, in which the history of the great American revival will be continued.

We will now proceed to give an authentic account of the rise and progress of the work of grace in the city of New York. In the recital of the facts, the foregoing statements will be more than confirmed, and a record will be made, which will compel the reader to give glory to God. The object and tendency of the history are to illustrate the POWER of PRAYER. Every page of this book is a proof that the believer has power with God.