The messenger waited breathlessly, and when in silence the doctor specifically mentioned the case before him, and asked the Lord to heal and spare the little one, and comfort the hearts of all, and make it a witness of his love and power, the messenger accidentally looked at the clock, and it marked just quarter to eleven, A.M.

When prayer was finished he returned home.  Arriving at home, he was astonished to find the child better, its whole condition had changed, the medicine had taken hold, and the doctor now said everything was so hopeful the child would surely recover, and it did.  But mark the unparalleled singularity of the scene.  The father asked the messenger the time when the prayer was offered.  He replied, “At a quarter to eleven." The father in astonishment said, “At that very moment the disease changed, and the doctor said he was better.”

The father, who had thus been proving the Lord with this test of prayer and its identity of time in his answer, was so overwhelmingly convinced of the real power of prayer, and thereby of the real existence of God, and that a Christian life was one of facts as well as beliefs, now finding that the Lord had indeed kept His own promise, he, too, kept his promise and gave his heart to the Lord, and became henceforth, a professing Christian.

But there were more wonderful things yet to happen—­a period of five years passed.  Other children were added to the family, and one day, the youngest, a sweet, beautiful girl, was taken suddenly ill with convulsions.  The sickness for days tasked the strength of the mother, and the skill of the doctor, but no care, ingenuity, or knowledge could overcome the disease or subdue the pain.  The little girl’s fits were severe and distressing, and there were but short intervals between, just time to come out of one and with a gasp, pass into another still more terrible.  In its occasional moments of reason, it would look piteously as if mutely appealing, and then the next convulsion would take it and seem to leave it just at death’s door.

All attendants were worn with care, the doctor fairly lived in the house and forsook all his other business.  The clergyman came and comforted the anxious hearts with words of sympathy and prayer; but her little brother Merrill, (whose own life we have just related,) tender-hearted, a mere child, scarce seven years of age, who had known of the Lord, and who believed that He was everywhere and could do everything, was intensely grieved at “Mamie’s” distress, and came at last to his mother and asked if he could go and “make a prayer to God for Sissy.”  The mother said, “Go.”  The little boy went back into his room, and kneeling humbly by the side of his bed, as he did at his night and morning prayers, uttered this request: 

"O God, please to bless little sister, she is very sick.  Please stop her fits so she won’t have any more.  For Jesus’ sake, amen."