xpect a direct answer to prayer; it is
the reflex action we are after." It is like a man endeavoring to lift
himself up by the straps of his boots; he will never do it, but he will
get a great deal of useful exercise.

The missionary goes to some pagan land, and there he finds a man
praying to a god of stone, and it excites the wrath of the missionary.
I ask you tonight, does not that stone god answer prayer just as well
as ours? Does he not cause rain? Does he not delay frost? Does he not
snatch the ones that we love from the grasp of death precisely the same
as ours? Yet we have ministers that are still engaged in that
business. They tell us that they have been "called;" that they do not
go at their profession as other people do, but they are "called;" that
God, looking over the world, carefully selects His priests, His
ministers, and His exhorters.

I don't know. They say their calling is sacred. I say to you tonight
that every kind of business that is honest that a man engages in for
the purpose of feeding his wife and children, for the purpose of
building up his home, for the purpose of feeding and clothing the ones
he loves--that business is sacred. They tell us that statesmen and
poets, philosophers, heroes, and scientists and inventors come by
chance; that all other departments depend entirely upon luck; but when
God wants exhorters He selects.

They also tell us that it is infinitely wicked to attack the Christian
religion, and when I speak of the Christian religion I do not refer
especially to the Christianity of the new testament; I refer to the
Christianity of the orthodox church, and when I refer to the clergy I
refer to the clergy of the orthodox church. There was a time when men
of genius were in the pulpits of the orthodox church; that time is
past. When you find a man with brains now occupying an orthodox pulpit
you will find him touched with heresy--every one of them.

How do they get most of these ministers? There will be a man in the
neighborhood not very well--not having constitution enough to be
wicked, and it instantly suggests itself to everybody who sees him that
he would make an excellent minister. There are so many other
professions, so many cities to be built, so many railways to be
constructed, so many poems to be sung, so much music to be composed, so
many papers to edit, so many books to read, so many splendid things, so
many avenues to distinction and glory, so many things