Here, where we are dealing, the whole thing moves up to an infinitely higher level, but the principle does not change.  If I will come into the relationship implied in these words:—­it shall be the one controlling desire and purpose of my life to do the things that please Him—­then I may ask for what I will, and it shall be done.  That is how to pray:  the how of relationship.  The man who will live in Matthew 16:24, and follow Jesus as He leads:  simply that:  no fanaticism, no morbidism, no extremism, just simply follow as He leads, day by day,—­then those six promises of Jesus with their wonderful sweep, their limitless sweep are his to use as he will.

The “How” of Method

Touching the Hidden Keys.

One of the most remarkable illustrations in recent times of the power of prayer, may be found in the experience of Mr. Moody.  It explains his unparalleled career of world-wide soul winning.  One marvels that more has not been said of it.  Its stimulus to faith is great.  I suppose the man most concerned did not speak of it much because of his fine modesty.  The last year of his life he referred to it more frequently as though impelled to.

The last time I heard Mr. Moody was in his own church in Chicago.  It was, I think, in the fall of the last year of his life.  One morning in the old church made famous by his early work, in a quiet conversational way he told the story.  It was back in the early seventies, when Chicago had been laid in ashes.  “This building was not yet up far enough to do much in,” he said; “so I thought I would slip across the water, and learn what I could from preachers there, so as to do better work here.  I had gone over to London, and was running around after men there.”  Then he told of going one evening to hear Mr. Spurgeon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle; and understanding that he was to speak a second time that evening to dedicate a chapel, Mr. Moody had slipped out of the building and had run along the street after Mr. Spurgeon’s carriage a mile or so, so as to hear him the second time.  Then he smiled, and said quietly, “I was running around after men like that.”

He had not been speaking anywhere, he said, but listening to others.  One day, Saturday, at noon, he had gone into the meeting in Exeter Hall on the Strand; felt impelled to speak a little when the meeting was thrown open, and did so.  At the close among others who greeted him, one man, a minister, asked him to come and preach for him the next day morning and night, and he said he would.  Mr. Moody said, “I went to the morning service and found a large church full of people.  And when the time came I began to speak to them.  But it seemed the hardest talking ever I did.  There was no response in their faces.  They seemed as though carved out of stone or ice.  And I was having a hard time:  and wished I wasn’t there; and wished I hadn’t promised to speak again at night.  But I had promised, and so I went.