This brought about a crisis.  Two weeks ago, Deacon Goodsole came to me to talk over the spiritual condition of our church.  I agreed with him that the prayer-meeting was a fatal symptom if not a fatal disease.  We agreed to do what we could to remedy it.  We asked the session to put it into our hands.  They were only too glad to do so.  We spoke quietly to two other of the brethren to co-operate with us.  We divided the parish among ourselves, and undertook to visit all the praying and waking members-not a very onerous task.  We talked with one by one, concerning the spiritual condition of the church, asked them to come next week to the prayer-meeting, and to bring with them warm hearts.  “Come,” we said, “from your closets.  Come in the spirit of prayer.”  Fifteen minutes before the hour of meeting we four met in the Bible-class room.  One agreed to act that night as leader.  It was Deacon Goodsole.  He told the rest of us his subject.  Then we all knelt together and asked God’s blessing on our prayer-meeting.  From that brief and simple conference we went together to the conference-room.  Each one agreed to carry some offering with him-a word, a prayer, a hymn.  Each one agreed also to bring in speech but a single thought, and in prayer but a single petition.  The leader himself should occupy but five minutes.  Our hearts were aglow.  We never had such a prayer-meeting in Wheathedge.  Deacon Goodsole did not have to announce that the prayer-meeting was open.  It opened itself.  We had hard work to close it.  The meeting last week was preceded in the same manner by fifteen minutes of prayer.  It was characterized by the same warmth and freshness.  We are astonished to find how short our hour is when we come to the meeting from our knees, when we bring to it, in our hearts, the spirit of God.  We have no long speeches.  So far we have had few exhortations and much true experience.  Shall we fall back again into the old ruts?  Perhaps.  It is something that we are not in them now.  Meanwhile, from this brief experience I cull five proverbs for my own reflection.

The minister cannot make a good meeting.

Warm hearts are better than great thoughts.

Solemn faces do not make sacred hours.

Little leading makes much following.

Brevity is the soul of the prayer-meeting.

CHAPTER XIX.

We are Jilted.

Wheathedge is in a fever of excitement-not very agreeable excitement.  Disappointment and anger are curiously commingled.  Little knots of men and women gathered after church on Sunday in excited discussion.  A by-stander might overhear in these conferences such phrases dropped as “Shameful.”  “It’s too bad.”  “If he is that sort of man it’s very fortunate we did not get him.”  “I have no faith in ministers,” and the like.  Do you ask what is the matter?  We have been jilted.

I will not give names, at least not the true ones.  For I have no inclination to involve myself in a newspaper controversy, and none to injure the prospects of a young man who possesses qualities which fit him for abundant usefulness if vanity and thoughtlessness do not make shipwreck of him.