Prayer Meetings the Gauge of Prosperity – Charles Spurgeon

IT might make a man weep tears of blood to think that in our Dissenting churches in so many cases the prayer meetings are so shamefully attended. I could indicate places that I know of, situated not many miles from where we now stand, where there are sometimes so few in attendance that there are scarcely praying men enough to keep up variety in the prayer meeting. I know towns where the prayer meeting is put off during the summer months, as if the devil would be put off during the summer! I know of agricultural districts where they are always put off during the harvest, and I make some kind of excuse for them, because the fruits of the earth must be gathered in, but I cannot understand large congregations, where the prayer meeting and lecture are amalgamated because there will not be enough persons coming out to make two decent services in the week. And then they say that God does not bless the word! How can he bless the word? They say “Our conversions are not so numerous as they were,” and they wonder how it is that we at the Tabernacle have so large an increase month by month. Do you wonder, brethren, that they have not a blessing when they do not seek it? Do you wonder that we have it when we do seek it? That is but a natural law of God’s own government, that if men will not pray, neither shall they have; and if men will pray, and pray vehemently, God will deny them nothing.