Thomas Roberts Slicer
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 60
Get eBook
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ...a little camp they had half a mile away on the plain. They were as compliant as paupers are apt to be, and we were as interested as those always are who have something that another wants. To divert the general tedium I said to a Ute Indian, "Let me have your bow and arrow;" and he handed it to me. It was a very stiff bow not more than two and one half feet long, with a thong for a spring and a rather harmless arrow to be used upon the string. I set the arrow upon the thong and drew it with all my might, to shoot it, as I thought, until it should be a fluttering feather in the air; but it only made a little curve and dropped just in front of me. Then with a grunt of satisfaction the Indian himself took the bow and drew the arrow to the head, and with a quick release sent it, until I could just discern against the blue sky the fluttering feather of its hock. I was fervent, and he was "effectual fervent." Probably he put no more pounds of pressure on the string than I. Some such idea is in the declaration, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much!" Now the old design of prayer is held to be irrational. The old view was this: If you wanted anything from God's treasury, which is always filled, you must either arrange with some one who knows where the key is, viz., the priest, or you must devise some form of expression which is easily interpreted by the treasurer of Goodness; or you must petition for it until you get what you want. This is the old view of prayer that leads, and has led in the history of the world, to the formation of every liturgy and the erection of all the orders of priesthood, and to the building for the most part of the temples of worship, and to the disappointment of a...