"There is no answer to prayer; it's all imagination. Don't be carried away. Use your common sense. There is no hereafter. When we are dead we are done for."
The speaker was standing at the foot of a monolith erected in an open space of a busy city. He had an excellent gift of speech and a winning manner. A large crowd stood listening. In a persuasive voice he tried to prove the nonexistence of God and the inefficacy of prayer. He concluded with a professed readiness to debate the question with any person in the audience.
At this point a man was seen making his way towards the speaker, saying at the same time, "I accept the challenge."
The people eagerly made way for this champion of prayer. He stood on the step of the monolith and faced the crowd. He was tall and well dressed, but he was no orator. He had no set phrases to tickle the ear; he had not the winning demeanor of his opponent.
For a moment or two he stood looking at the sea of faces before him. A flush of color came over his features, and the sweat stood in beads on his forehead.
"Friends, I am not a public speaker," he said. "I did not come to this meeting with the intention of disputing anything our friend might say. But when he denied that there was any efficacy in prayer, and challenged anyone to prove the contrary, I felt bound to come forward." The crowd cheered the frank yet modest statement. He continued.
"You see standing before you a man who was once as big a scoundrel as it was possible to find in the city. I was a drunkard, a gambler, a wife-beater; yes! everything the word 'brute' implies. My wife and child dreaded the sound of my footsteps; and yet, bad as I was, my wife had for years been praying for me, unknown to me, and she taught my child to pray."
He paused a moment, as if overcome with sadness at the memory, and then continued.
"One night I went home unexpectedly, rather earlier than usual, and, by accident, sober. When I opened the door, my wife had just gone up the stairs to put the little one to bed. I stood listening at the foot of the stairs. My child was praying; she was praying for me: " 'Dear Lord, save my Daddy! Save my dear Daddy, Lord! Dear Lord Jesus, save my Daddy!' And as she prayed in her simple childlike way, I heard my wife saying, with a sob in her throat! " 'Lord Jesus, answer her prayer.'
"They did not know I was listening. I crept softly out of the house into the street. Strange feelings were coming over me, and ringing in my ears was my child's prayer: 'Dear Lord Jesus, save my dear Daddy!'
Was I indeed dear to that child? In what way? She had never known a father's love. I question whether she had ever known a father's kiss. And as I thought of it, a great lump came into my throat; tears filled my eyes and I cried aloud.
" 'Lord, help me. Lord, answer my child's prayer.' AND HE DID!
"Years have passed away since then. Today I am a Christian. My past is under the blood. I live in the present, a new creature in Christ Jesus." Again he paused, and then said earnestly, "Friends, don't you think I should have been a coward if I had kept silent today? Can I do other than believe there is a God, and that He not only hears, but answers prayer?"
The skeptic made no reply. The man's story had moved the crowd to tears, and when he finished speaking the people went silently and reverently away.