Then we go into this service with that fine spirit of expectancy that sweeps the field at the start, and steadily sticks on the stubbornly contested spots until the whipped foe turns tail, and goes.  Prayer is striking the winning blow at the concealed enemy.  Service is gathering up the results of that blow among the men we see and touch.  Great patience and tact and persistence are needed in the service because each man must be influenced in his own will.  But the shrewd strategy that wins puts the keen stiff secret fighting first.

The Spirit Switchboard.

Electricity is a strange element.  It is catalogued in the study of physics.  It is supposed to be properly classed among the forces of nature.  Yet it seems to have many properties of the spirit world.  Those who know most of it say they know least of what it is.  Some of the laws of its being have been learned, and so its marvellous power harnessed for man’s use, but in much ignorance of what it is.  It seems almost to belong somewhere in between the physical and spirit realms.  It furnishes many similes of graphic helpfulness in understanding more nearly much truth of the Spirit life.

In the power-house where the electricity is being wooed into man’s harnessing, or generated, as the experts say, is found a switchboard, or switch-room with a number of boards.  Here in a large city plant a man may go and turn a switch, that is, move a little handle, a very short distance.  It is a very simple act, easily performed, involving almost no strength.  But that act has loosened the power in the house back of the switchboard out along the wires, and perhaps lighted a whole section of the city.  He goes in again at another hour, and turns this set of switches, and this, and sets in motion maybe scores of cars, carrying swiftly, hundreds of passengers.  Again he goes in, and moves the little handles and sets in motion the wheels in some factory employing hundreds of operatives.

It is a secret service, usually as far as any observers are concerned.  It is a very quiet, matter of fact service.  But the power influenced is unmeasured and immeasurable.  And no one, seemingly, thus far, can explain the mysterious but tremendous agent involved.  Does the fluid—­it a fluid? or, what?—­pass through the wire? or, around the wire?  The experts say they do not know.  But the laws which it obeys are known.  And as men comply with them its almost omnipotence is manifested.

Just such a switch-room in the spirit realm is one’s prayer-room.  Every one who will may have such a spirit switching-board in his life.  There he may go and in compliance with the laws of the power used loosen out the gracious persuasive irresistible power of God where he wills to; now in Japan; now in China; among the hungry human hearts of India’s plains and mountains; again in Africa which is full as near to where Jesus sits as is England or America; and now into the house across the alley from your home; and down in the slum district; and now into your preacher’s heart for next Sunday’s work; and now again unto the hearts of those you will be meeting in the settlement house, or the mission school.