The Power of Prayer

Samuel I. Prime

3. Features Of The Work - Ways And Means - Enthusiasm -Catholicity Of Feeling And Action - The Reformed Dutch Church - Union, A Type - Influence Of Laymen - The Ministry Aided And Encouraged.

We have said that many have been impressed with the idea, that it was the late financial revulsion - the severity of the times which followed - by which men were forced into an acknowledgment of their dependence upon a divine being, and their minds made ripe and susceptible to the operation of spiritual influences and the impression of religious truth.

But whether these causes were adequate to produce this result, we need not attempt to determine, for it will be seen, in looking back at the history of this work, that it had actually commenced before the financial revulsion took place. That the commercial distress which followed had its influence to arrest men’s minds, and to make them feel their dependence upon God, we cannot doubt. But all speculations of this kind will fail to reach the cause of this wide-spread work of grace, and all inquiries into causes will resolve themselves into the sovereign grace of him who has promised to hear and answer prayer.

The first union prayer-meeting was held September 23, 1857, in Fulton street. It was not appointed to ‘create a revival’. This was not thought of. God had his own designs in view. The union prayer-meetings all over our country have not been appointed to create religious feeling, but rather to give expression to, and increase the religious feeling already existing. The appointment of these meetings was to meet the demand of religious interest already existing, not to create that demand. There is a wide difference between the two things, which has a significant and emphatic meaning. The revival was nowhere attended nor preceded by any special measures intended and adapted to produce intense excitement on the subject of religion. All these union prayer-meetings have been the effects of a great first cause. God poured out the Spirit of grace and supplication, and to his name be all the glory. As nearly as possible was this awakened interest simultaneous over all this western world. Even ships at sea were overtaken in mid-ocean - knowing nothing of what was transpiring upon the land - by unusual religious anxiety, and came into port bringing the strange news of a revival on board, and of the conversion of some of the men. Who can doubt but the ‘set time to favor Zion had come’? The popular voice spoke of the time of the union meetings, as they sprang up in various places, as the beginning of the revival in those places, when in fact it had begun before. The great feature of the revival everywhere was prayer —prayer by Christians united — prayer constant — each day sending up a cloud of prayer as a volume of incense before the throne of God — prayer that was divinely inspired and divinely answered. Such prayer has power — such prayer must always be heard — such prayer must prevail.

Among the indications of an awakened religious interest in the West was the calling of a convention on revivals at Pittsburgh late in last autumn. This convention continued in session for three days, for the purpose of considering the necessity of a general revival of religion in all the churches represented, and others as well; the means, the hindrances, the encouragements, the demand of the times, the indications of divine providence, and everything relating to this most momentous subject. It was a most solemn, anxious, melting, encouraging meeting. Much of the time of this convention was spent in prayer. There were not present less than two hundred ministers, besides many laymen, led in by the interest of the occasion. It was impossible that such a gathering should not be without a most timely and weighty influence. The ‘obstacles in the way of revivals of religion’ — ‘the means of promoting them’ — ‘the encouragement to seek for them’ — were discussed with signal ability and great solemnity. A committee was appointed, who drew up an address to the churches. It was prepared in the revival spirit, and was earnest and pungent in its appeals. It was timely and suggestive. It was recommended that this address be read from the pulpit by pastors on the Sabbath, so far as they were willing to accept it, and that the official members of the respective churches be called to meet in each church to discuss the same subjects as the convention had discussed, and to spend much time together in prayer; also, that a plan of personal visitation be adopted, according to which all the families of each parish should be visited by the pastor and some of his most experienced members; also, that he should preach on the subject of the importance of improving the present ‘grievous visitation’, and that he urge his people to prayer.

In conformity to this arrangement, on the first Sabbath in January of the current year, multitudes of ministers of the Presbyterian and other denominations delivered discourses on the necessity and practicability of revivals, and the first Thursday of the same month was observed as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer. All these arrangements told upon the country with great power, and the awakening received an intelligent and mighty impulse.

Immediately after this convention at Pittsburgh, another was called at Cincinnati, having similar objects in view. It was largely attended, and was followed with similar results. The public mind was thoroughly roused, and the ‘great revival’ was the all-absorbing theme in hotels, stores, shops, taverns, railroad cars, and everywhere. The religious and secular press, especially in the rural districts, teemed with items of intelligence on this one great subject, the facts of the revival being the absorbing topic.

So far as this city was concerned, the organized systems of tract and Sunday school visitation had much to do with the beginning of the revival, with its spread, and with its continuance to the present hour. The latter part of last year a more thorough system was resolved upon of searching out and exploring the destitutions of this great city, and inducing the neglected and neglecting perishing thousands to attend upon the worship of God, and to send their children to the Sabbath school. It was determined to push this plan of visitation into the fashionable avenues as well as into the ‘highways and hedges’ of the city. The numbers were greatly increased of those who visited the ‘house of prayer’. All denominations nearly were benefited by this work, and many of them shared in the labor of it. In many Sunday schools the members were doubled, in all increased. In this way, thousands of persons — some from the ‘brown stone fronts’, and some from the garrets and cellars, swelled the numbers, who were seen on Sunday morning wending their way to the sanctuary. ‘High life’ and ‘low life’ were on the street together, and in the house of God together.

This system of visitation was adopted and carried out in New York and Brooklyn about the same time. It was an organized plan adopted by the churches to visit in their respective localities and search out every kind of destitution.

The effect of the revival upon cities, towns and country, is most manifest. That tide of worldliness which destroys the power of all religious feeling and action had rolled over the land. It had gone up to the flood, and threatened to sweep away the foundations. Men were hardly aware what a low, lax state of religious feeling prevailed. There was outward attention to religion, but the power, the vitality was gone. It was not seen so much on the Sabbath as in the week. The congregations did not forget the place where the sermon was to be preached, but they did forget the place where the prayer-meeting was to be held. It is believed that not one-fourth part of our members of the various churches made a practice of regularly attending the prayer-meeting. They might be, perhaps, sometimes in the place of prayer, when there was more than the usual amount of religious interest, and when any extra effort was made to get them there. But as a rule, they never went to the prayer-meeting. They left the burden of sustaining it to that quarter part of the membership who did attend. If any think that we under-rate the number of regular attendants on the prayer-meeting in proportion to those who did attend, taking our churches at large, we will say again, that an investigation into the facts, of which we have been observers for twenty years past, will convince them that we are not far wrong.