praying altogether I think I should if I never got answers.

Now I say, this is a very God-dishonoring experience, and there must
be something wrong somewhere when this is the case. There must be
something wrong either with the suppliants or the Giver. Oh! I feel
often what a deeply God-dishonoring thing it is when Christians meet,
as they frequently do, up and down the country, to pray for a
revival, to pray for a specific thing in their Churches and in their
families, and it never comes.

Some years ago, when the wave of revival was sweeping over Ireland
and America, you know the Churches in this country held united prayer-
meetings to pray that it might come to England; but it did not come,
and the infidels wagged their heads, and wrote in their newspapers:
"See, the Christians' God is either deaf or gone a-hunting, for they
have had prayer-meetings all over the land for a revival, and it has
not come." Oh! how my cheeks burned with shame as I thought of it;
how I mourned over it! I knew it was not because our God was asleep
--not because His arm was shortened--not because His bowels of
compassion did not yearn over sinners--not because he could not have
poured out His Spirit and have given us the same glorious times of
refreshing they had in other places. _That was not the reason_.
There was only one reason, and that was, that His people asked amiss.

They did not understand the conditions of prevailing prayer. They
did not fulfil them. If they had prayed till now, and maintained the
same attitude, they would not have got the answer, because there are
conditions to these promises, as to all other promises; and we may
pray ourselves black and blue in the face if we do not comply with
the conditions. God will never move an inch to meet us, and never