SPURGEON’S PRAYER FOR MONEY.

Charles Spurgeon relates this incident connected with his ministry:  “When the college, of which I am President, had been commenced, for a year or so all my means stayed; my purse was dried up, and I had no other means of carrying it on.  In this very house, one Sunday evening, I had paid away all I had for the support of my young men for the ministry.  There is a dear friend now sitting behind me who knows the truth of what I am saying.  I said to him, ’There is nothing left, whatever.’  He said, ‘You have a good banker, sir.’  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I should like to draw upon him now, for I have nothing.’  ‘Well,’ said he, ‘how do you know, have you prayed about it?’ ‘Yes, I have.’  ‘Well, then leave it with Him; have you opened your letters?’ ’No, I do not open my letters on Sundays.’  ‘Well,’ said he, ‘open them for once.’  I did so, and in the first one I opened there was a banker’s letter to this effect:  ’Dear Sir, we beg to inform you that a lady, totally unknown to us, has left with us two hundred pounds for you to use in the education of young men.’  Such a sum has never come since, and it never came before; and I have no more idea than the dead in their graves how it came then, nor from whom it came, but to me it seemed that it came directly from God.”

THE PRAYER OF LATIMER.

The prayers of the martyr, Latimer, were very remarkable for their faith.  There were three principal matters for which he prayed: 

1.  That God would give him grace to stand to his doctrine until death.

2.  That God would of His mercy restore His gospel to England once again, repeating and insisting on these words “once again,” as though he had seen God before him, and spoken to Him face to face.

3.  That God would preserve Elizabeth; with many tears, desiring God to make her a comfort to this comfortless realm of England.  All these requests were most fully and graciously answered.

A MOTHER’S PRAYERS ANSWERED.

A Christian evangelist, whose work has been most singularly blessed, related this incident, how once in the days of his folly and sin, while as yet his course of life ran counter to the fondest wishes and prayers of his mother’s heart, he one day asked her the strange question, whether she really believed that he ever would be converted to God.  And her answer, inexpressibly touching and instructive, as being the answer of assured faith, which could see as yet no signs of the coming of what it so anxiously sought, was,

“Yes, I believe that you will one day be as eminent as a Christian, and an instrument for good, as you have been eminent in sin, and an instrument for evil.”

In later years the evangelist looked back with admiration to the faith of his mother, and thanked the Lord for His gracious answer to her prayers.