People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1897 — Effectual Prayer. [ARTICLE]

Effectual Prayer.

There is an awful amount of so called prayer that is only from the throat outward; it begins nowhere and ends iu nothing. Such pointless repetitions of stereotyped phrases must be as wearisome to God as they are unprofitable to the utterers. There must be pith, point and purpose as well as faith iu every effectual prayer. At an evangelistic meeting for "roughs” over in New York, when the leader called on some one to pray, a hard looking character iii the crowd arose and said: “OLord, forgive me for being a bad man, and please excuse me. Lord, from saying any more now Amen. ” He did uot need to my any more. He had told God just whut l.e wanted.—Rev. Dr. Cuyier in Central Presbyterian. Hunting the Ballad. In no field of literature have the forger and the manipulator worked with greater vigor and success. From Percy’s day to our own it has been thought an innocent device to publish a bit of one’ own versifying now and then as an “old baliad or an “ancient song.” Often, too, a late stall copy of a ballad getting into oral circulation, has been innocently furnished to collectors rs traditional matter. Mere learning will not guide an editor through these perplexities. What is needed is, in ackli tion, a complete understanding of the “popular” genius, a sympathetic rccog nition of the traits that characterize oral literature wherever and in whatever degree they exist. This faculty, which even the folk has not retained, and which collectors living in ballad singing and tale telling times have often failed to acquire, was vouchsafed by nature herself to the late Professor Child. In reality a kind of instinct, it had bee n so cultivated by Jong and loving study *of the traditional literature of all nations that it had become wonderfully swift in its operations and almost infallible. No forged or retouched piece conld deceive him for a moment. He detected the slightest jar in the genuine ballad tone. He speaks in one place of certain writers “who would have beer all the better historians for a little read-, imr of romances. ” He was himself thoj better Interpreter oi tne poetry ox mi] for this keen sympathy with the poetry! of nature.—Atlantio. |