God does not interfere with the healthful exercise of our free will by holding bribes before our eyes or by forcing our discipline by awful fears. Chapter V Great Prayers Men talk and write of "great prayers" as though such petitions could be weighed or measured. They appear to think that sacred feelings can find a standard of comparison. But even the rightfully esteemed Lord's Prayer presents no universal standard by which to measure our varying appeals. One old saint writes that he often gets out of patience when the Lord's Prayer is intoned or recited, as none of its paragraphs fitly or adequately expresses his "soul's sincere desire." Prayer is necessarily as varying in its moods and objects as a kaleidoscope. Jesus said, "after this manner pray ye." And we must pray "after this manner." But person, time, place, hearers, sharers, emotions, ideas, desires, and needs all enter into the conditions of earnest prayer. To call on God in your own way, with your own motives and your own emotions and your own language, or without words, will be a clear fulfillment of the command to pray. The Lord understands every language and knows all that the heart would express if it could find an adequate form of speech. The books, except the Bible, most frequently quoted in these letters include volumes by St. Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Whitfield, Spurgeon, Moody, Fosdick, Nicoll, Campbell, Whittle, and Finney. In the quotations the idea is ever present that there are _great_ prayers. That place is given most frequently to the printed petitions of Spurgeon. But it is misleading to attempt to place a valuation on any of them. The most effective prayer recorded was the appeal of the Publican as he smote his breast; and Christ's long prayer at the Last Supper was the most comprehensive. But in the following circumstances, having trustworthy witnesses, no two of the marvelously effective petitions were alike--_viz._, the English boy's prayer for his blind sister's restoration to sight; Muller's prayer for a food supply for his orphanage; Doctor Cullis's appeal to God for his Consumptive Home; Doctor Kincaid's petition for protection for the converts of Ava; the Brooklyn child's prayer for her shipwrecked father; the groans of John Hall's praying, but starving, mother; the prayer of President Garfield's mother at the washtub when her boy was lost in the forest; the silent wish of Carey, the pioneer missionary; John Daniel Loest's prayer for money to pay his mortgage the next day; Spurgeon's prayer for his pastors' college in dire need; Moody's prayer for the establishment of a Bible school in Northfield; Luther's prayer for Melancthon; Halderman's prayer, in the Fulton Street daily prayer meeting, for the lost ship _Leviathan_; the petition of the mother of Doctor Talmage, asking that her son be made to decide at that moment to come home; Miss Lyon's prayer in the field for a seminary for women; and the prayer of the