The Power of Prayer and the Prayer of Power is a 1924 book of sermons by Reuben Archer Torrey pubished by Fleming Revell.
In the introduction, Torrey says the sermons are largely the ones he has given around the world, but that "in their present completed form they were delivered to his own people in the Church of the Open Door, Los Angeles, and they were all heard over the radio by perhaps a hundred thousand people (some say far more) each week in places from one mile to three thousand miles away, who were "listening in" Sunday after Sunday, in the autumn and winter and spring of 1923 and 1924."
10 chapters
I. The Power of Prayer
II. What Definite and Desirable Results Will Definite and Determined Prayer Produce?
III. What Prayer Can Do for the Churches, and for the Nation and for all Nations
IV. How to Pray so as to get What You Ask
V. Who Can Pray so as to Get What They Ask?
VI. Praying in the Name of Jesus Christ
VII. The Prayer of Faith
VIII. Praying Through and Praying in the Holy Ghost
IX. Hindrance to Prayer
X. Prevailing Prayer and Real Revival
Excerpt on dancing from chapter 5:
How about the dance? Ought a Christian to dance? The answer to that question is found in the other question, Will it please God? Is God better pleased when a child of His dances, or when His child refuses to dance? Now, there are certain things that we all know about the dance. First of all, we know that a familiarity of contact is permitted between the sexes in the modern dance that is nowhere else permitted in decent society. How is it any better in the dance than it is elsewhere?
When I was in Balarat, Australia, I said some pretty plain things about the dance, which led to a good many of the dancers giving up the dance, and to the breaking up of a prominent dancing club in the city. Some months afterward I was crossing over from Tasmania to Australia, and a fellow passenger on the boat was a lawyer from Balarat. This lawyer came to me and said, "Are you not Dr. Torrey?" "Yes." "Well, I do not think you were fair to the dancers of Balarat." "What did I say that was not true?" He replied, "I simply think you were not fair." "Yes, but will you state one single thing that was not true?" "He said, "I simply think you were not fair." "Now see here," I said, "do you dance?" "Yes." "Are you a married man?" "Yes." "Does your wife dance?" "Yes." "Well, tell me, if you should see your wife in the same attitude toward some other man than yourself, at any other place than the ballroom, that she takes in the ballroom, what would you do?" He replied, "There would be trouble." I said, "Will you please tell me how it is any better in the ballroom, to the strains of seductive music, than anywhere else? Now, tell me another thing. Do you not know that in every class of society, even the most select, there are some men who are moral lepers?" He replied, "Of course we all know, Dr. Torrey, that in every class of society there are men who are corrupt." "And your wife dances with those men?" "Well," he said, "she does not know their character." "You are willing," I said, "that your wife should be in the embrace of some other man who is a moral leper, simply because she does not know his character?" He made no reply. What reply could be made?
Now, I do not believe for one single moment that every woman who dances has evil thoughts. I think that some of the girls who dance are sweet, innocent, pure-minded girls; but, if they knew the thoughts that were in the minds of the men with whom they dance, they would never go on the floor again. Three young men came to me in an eastern college town and said to me, "Dr. Torrey, what have you got against the dance?" I replied, "Do you dance?" "Yes." "Are you Christians?" "Yes." "Will you please tell me what your thoughts are when you dance?" They said, "Our thoughts are all right if we dance with a pure girl." I said, "Do you dance with any other kind?" "Well," they said, "you know, Dr. Torrey, that there are some girls that are not what they ought to be." "And," I said, "you dance with them?" "Yes." "Well, you have answered your own question."
It is a well-known fact, proven by m any a test, that the select dance is the greatest feeder of, and auxiliary to, the most awful institution that exists in civilized society today. Oh! if pure women could only know where many of the young men who dance with them go immediately after the dance is over, if I could only tell you things that I know personally, not that I have read in books but that have come under my own personal observation, regarding the effect of the select dance, among what are called the better classes of society, there is not a self-respecting woman in this audience, to say nothing of a Christian woman, that would go on the floor again.
There is certainly no dance that is considered more select than a dance at some college function. A young man whom I know very well attended one of our leading eastern Presbyterian colleges. He did not dance, he had been brought up by parents who did not believe in the dance. But his most intimate friend did dance. This friend was a Christian, and president of the Y.M.C.A. To one of the college functions he invited a young lady in whom he was interested. The other young man who did not dance asked his friend who had invited the young lady to the dance, to let him see the dancing card that he had filled out for her. When he looked it over he saw that his friend had given a dance with this young lady in whom he was interested, to a man whose immorality was notorious in the college, and who was in a very disgusting physical condition at the time, as the direct outcome of his sin. He turned to his friend and said, "What! do you not know the condition in which ______ is in at the present time? Does not everybody in college know?" "Yes, I know." "And you have given a dance with this young lady whom you are interested in, to that young man?" The young man replied, "Well, you know R___, you cannot make those distinctions in college." No, you cannot, nor can you elsewhere, if you dance. Any woman that dances is bound, sooner or later, to get into the arms of a moral leper. And is God pleased?