her dearest treasure should be the nation's _first_.

Then followed months of prayer while the man was coming. Samuel was born,
no, farther back yet, was conceived in the atmosphere of prayer and
devotion to God. The prenatal influences for those months gave the sort of
man God wanted. And a nation, _the_ nation, the _world-plan,_ was saved!
This man became a living answer to prayer. The romantic story of the
little boy up in the Shiloh tabernacle quickly spread over the nation. His
very name--Samuel, God hears--sifted into people's ears the facts of a
God, and of the power of prayer. The very sight of the boy and of the man
clear to the end kept deepening the brain impression through eyeballs that
God answers prayer. And the seeds of that re-belief in God that Samuel's
leadership brought about were sown by the unusual story of his birth.

_The answer was delayed that more might be given and gotten_. And Hannah's
exultant song of praise reveals the fineness to which the texture of her
nature had been spun. And it tells too how grateful she was for a God who
in great patience and of strong deliberate purpose delayed the answer to
her prayer.



The Best Light for Studying a Thorn.


The third great picture in this group is that of Paul and his
needle-pointed thorn. Talks about the certainty of prayer being answered
are very apt to bring this question: "What about Paul's thorn?" Sometimes
asked by earnest hearts puzzled; _some_times with a look in the eye almost
exultant as though of gladness for that thorn because it seems to help out