There are some who very greatly spoil their prayers because they waver as to God’s granting the specific thing which they are seeking at his hands. You know, dear friends, that there is a way of praying in which you ask for nothing, and get it. I have heard that kind of praying even in public prayer-meetings.

What a lot of praying there is that prays for everything in general and nothing in particular! I was reading a very good illustration, given by an eminent minister, upon this point. He says, ‘Why was it that the Boers in South Africa were able to hold their own against the best-trained British troops on a certain lamentable occasion? Why, because the ordinary soldier fires at the enemy in the mass, and so, much of his ammunition is often lost; but the Boer, from his childhood, never wastes a shot. When he is out in the open, and he sees a lion, he aims so as to hit the animal’s heart; and many of them are such shots that they are never known to miss the object at which they aim. Consequently, every time a Boer did shoot at our men, he killed somebody, and such soldiers as those are terrible adversaries on the field of battle’. There are some people who pray, as it were, like a man shooting at a whole regiment, they fire anyhow, at anything; but the man who wins his suit at the throne of grace is the man who prays distinctly for some one thing that he wills to have.

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