ct on the program. Now be
sure and tell them not to pray for the Holy Spirit." I replied, "My
brother, I will be sure and not tell them that: for Jesus says, 'How much
more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask
Him?' " "Yes, but that was before Pentecost." "How about Acts iv. 31, R.
V., was that before Pentecost or after?" He said, "It was certainly
after." "Well," I said, "take it and read it." "And when they had prayed,
the place where they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all
filled with the Holy Ghost and spake the Word of God with boldness." "How
about Acts viii. 15, 16, was that before Pentecost or after?" "Certainly,
it was after." "Take it and read it." "Who when they were come down prayed
for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for as yet He was fallen
on none of them, only they were baptized in the name of Jesus." He had
nothing more to say. What was there more to say? But with me, it is not a
matter of mere exegesis, that the Holy Spirit is given in answer to
definite prayer. It is a matter of personal and indubitable experience. I
know just as well that God gives the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer as I
know that water quenches thirst and food satisfies hunger. In my first
experience of being baptized with the Holy Spirit, it was while I waited
upon God in prayer that I was thus baptized. Since then time and again as
I have waited on God in prayer, I have been definitely filled with the
Holy Spirit. Often as I have knelt in prayer with others, as we prayed the
Holy Spirit has fallen upon us just as perceptibly as the rain ever fell
upon and fructified the earth. I shall never forget one experience in our
church in Chicago. We were holding a noon prayer-meeting of the ministers
at the Y. M. C. A. Auditorium, preparatory to an expected visit to Chicago
of Mr. Moody. At one of these meetings a minister sprang to his feet and
said, "What we need in Chicago is an all-night meeting of the ministers."
"Very well," I said. "If you will come up to Chicago Avenue Church Friday
night at ten o'clock, we will have a prayer-meeting and if God keeps us
all night, we will stay all night." At ten o'clock on Friday night four or
five hundred people gathered in the lecture-rooms of the Chicago Avenue
Church. They were not all ministers. They were not all men. Satan made a
mighty attempt to ruin the meeting. First of all three men got down by the
door and knelt down by chairs an