Fifteen Years of Prayer. By Irenams Prime. (S. Low.)—Here we
have an account of what has been going on for the last fifteen years in what may be called the "Head Centre" of Revivals. A little meeting for prayer was opened, it seems, about so many years ago, in Fulton Street, New York, and from this waves of revival, so to speak, have passed over the world, generally, it may be observed, getting weaker the further they are removed from their centre and source. There is, of course, much in Mr. Prime's book that sounds strange to our ears, and things here and there that look irreverent, as we commonly count irreverence. Yet doubtless he and his friends hold a theory of prayer that is in its essentials rational and defensible. If prayer is to have any power at all, if it exerts or causes to be exerted on the world any influence, it must be allowed that this domain of the human will is a proper sphere for its exercise. We would not be understood as limiting it to this, but so much at least must be conceded by all who are not wholly hostile. If man ever can pray aright, it must, beyond all question, be when he is praying for spiritual benefits. And such are the benefits for which, for the most part, these "fifteen years of prayer" have been offered up. Here and there we find a man praying that he might not become bankrupt—a period of national bankruptcy in Ainerica seems to have suggested the idea of the meeting—but for the most part, the supplications offered up are for the conversion of him who is praying, or his friend. By the way, we notice what strikes us as a curious expression. Some one is spoken of as "a bitter Universalist." Now Universalists may be wrong, but they seem to us the least bitter of mankind.
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