Many modern men have no faith in prayer of any kind save as a wholesome reaction on the mind of the one who prays. They scout the idea that the God of the universe would condescend to listen to the feeble chatter of such worms in the dust as men. They conceive it as impossible that God would alter his will in any particular because of such insignificant requests. Least of all do they admit the possibility that God would change the weather in response to the prayer of one or many individuals. They argue that the laws of the weather are fixed by the laws of nature and that God does not alter his own laws. A very pretty network of impossibilities is fixed up, but all the same, the experience of Christians breaks right through these entanglements. A real God is greater than his own laws, and his own will is the chief law of his nature. God is not an absentee God; he is our Father and loves for us to tell him our troubles. Certainly God knows how to work his own laws. We do not have to think that Elijah had the matter of drought and rain in his own hands at his beck and call. Far from it. Elijah won by strenuous prayer and perseverance, not by lightly informing God of his wishes. Besides, when rain came in response to the prayer of Elijah, it came out of clouds, as rain always does. God made the clouds gather from the west (the Mediterranean) till the rain came. As the hot winds from the east and the south brought the drought, so the west winds brought rain. Many times in my own experience I have known people to pray for rain, and the rain came. The rain may not have come in response to the prayer; that I do not know. But it came the very night in which prayer was made for it at the prayer meeting. The difficulty in the matter of rain is no greater than in cases of sickness. The root of the trouble is the lack of trust in God, the broken relation with God, the loss of power with him. Rescue Work or Restoring the Erring (5:19 f.) James makes a last appeal to his readers, and it has a touch of tenderness—“My brethren.” In verse 5 he spoke of the case of a sick man who is brought to confess his sins and is led to God. Here he seems to refer specifically to the case of a brother who has fallen into error. There are such sad instances that puzzle many a pastor by their indifference, hardness, and even scorn of Christ. “If any among you err from the truth, and one convert him.”