But there were seasons when unusual sums were needed and when the money was furnished from some unexpected sources seemingly in direct answers to special prayer. On one occasion there was an especially large sum given into the treasury when it was imperatively needed and when no notice of the need had been given from the pulpit. On one Sunday morning the preacher could find no other satisfactory subject on which to build a sermon, and he talked with the people about the Bible-school lesson for that day. The subject included a description of how the Jews were required to select the best lamb of the flock for an offering to God. They did not hope that God would hear their prayers unless they gave their best to the Lord. The sermon closed with a sentence or two of application to our own times. The emphatic exhortation stated that offerings and prayers should go together, but the offering should precede the prayer. At the evening service some person sent to the pulpit a note, asking that the printed order of services "be changed so as, thereafter, to substitute the word 'offering' for the word 'collection.'" The minister, acting on the impulse of the moment, announced a change in the order of the services, and said that as the ancient custom of making an offering before asking the Lord for a gift or blessing was surely acceptable to God, an "offering" would be taken before the prayer, instead of after the prayer. No unusual sum came in that evening. The notes of the church were coming due ten days later. But those debts were not thought of by minister or ushers in any relation to that offering, though prayers were often made for the help of the Lord in the payment of the debt.