But Dr. Conwell doesn’t let the matter rest here.  A committee of church members already appointed for just such work, is posted like sentinels about the prayer meeting room, ready to extend practical help to those who have asked for the prayers of the church.  After the services are over, each one who has risen is sought out, by some member of this committee, talked with in a friendly, sympathetic way, and his name and address taken.  These are given to Dr. Conwell If time permits, he writes to many of them.  All of them he makes the subject of personal prayer.

Frequently, before asking those to rise who wish the prayers of the church, Dr. Conwell asks if any one wishes to request prayers for others.  The response to this is always large.  A member of the staff of “The Temple Magazine” made a note at one prayer meeting of these requests and published it in the magazine.  Three requests were made for husbands, eight for sons, one for a daughter, three for children, ten for brothers, two for sisters, two for fathers, one for a cousin, one for a brother-in-law, four for friends, eleven for Sunday School scholars, one for a Sunday School class, four for sick persons, two for scoffers, twenty-one for sinners, four for wanderers, five for persons addicted to drink, three for mission schools, five for churches—­one that was divided, another deeply in debt, another for a sick pastor and the other two seeking a higher development in godliness.

As many of these requests come from church members, both pastor and people pay especial attention to them and practically, as well as prayerfully, try to reach those for whom prayers are asked.  In many cases distinct answers to these prayers are secured, so evident that none could mistake them.  At an after-service on Sunday evening a mother asked prayers for a wayward son in Chicago.  Dr. Conwell and some of the deacons led the church in prayer for the boy, very definitely and in faith.  At that same hour, as the young man afterward related, he was passing a church in Chicago, and felt strangely impressed to enter and give his heart to Christ.  It was something he had no intention of doing when he left his hotel a few minutes before.  But he went in, joined in the meeting, asked for forgiveness of his sins and the prayers of the church to help him lead a better life, and accepted Christ as his personal Savior.  In the joy of his new experience, he wrote his mother immediately.

At another prayer meeting, Dr. Conwell read a letter from a gentleman requesting the prayers of the church for his little boy whom the doctors had given up to die.  He stated in the letter that if God would spare his child in answer to prayer, he would go anywhere and do anything the Lord might direct.  After reading the letter, Dr. Conwell led earnestly in prayer, beseeching that the child’s life might be saved since it meant much for the cause of Christ on earth.  Several members of the church made fervent prayers for the child, and at the close of the meeting, many expressed themselves as being confident that their prayers would be answered.  At that same hour, the disease turned.  The child has grown to be a young man, and with his father is a member of Grace Church.