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SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 

 
SELF-TRAINING 
 
 BY 
 
 A. H. McNEILE, D 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 DUBLIN; FELLOW OF SIDNEY SUSSEX COLLEGE, 
 CAMBRIDGE; AUTHOR OF “CONCERNING 
 CHRIST,” “SELF-TRAINING IN 
 MEDITATION,” ETC. 
 
 
 
 “Despise not thy prayer, for He to whom thou prayest 
 , despiseth it not.” f 
 S. BERNARD. 
 
 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 NEW YORK ae x MCMXXVI 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1926, By 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In the turmoil of our surface life there is a 
 multitude of men and women who would give 
 anything to be able to look through it and see 
 God. Many of them pray, but seldom feel that 
 they are doing something real. They cannot 
 launch out into the deep, and let down their 
 nets for a draught from the ocean of Reality. 
 Prayer is to them a religious duty rather than a 
 religious experience. 
 
 It is to such that these suggestions are of- 
 fered. For the deepening consciousness of 
 the Reality of prayer is one of the first es- 
 sentials of a deepening Christianity. True 
 prayer is not simply a means by which we can 
 make ourselves “good enough to go to Heaven,” 
 but a means by which we can put ourselves 
 and the world around us into touch with God. 
 ‘And therefore without it all schemes for the 
 lifting up of mankind are schemes with God 
 left out; which will fail in the long run as 
 they have always failed. It is possible that 
 
 some of those who read these chapters have 
 Vv 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 in the past been able to get into touch with 
 Reality in their prayers, but that they are 
 conscious of having lost ground again. Not 
 that their prayers are fewer but that they are 
 less alive. They have allowed themselves, that 
 is, to get a little out of practice, and to be con- 
 tent with prayers that are less alive. If so, they 
 might find it a help to read this little manual 
 for self-training once more, and to use its sug- 
 gestions, as they would use exercises in a book 
 of music, as material for fresh and determined 
 practice. 
 A. H. McNEILE. 
 
 DvuBLIN. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 EE a. Was NGI na eA TE a Ea 
 CHAPTER 
 I. REALITY IN PRAYER . I 
 II. Nature 6 
 III. PErsons t2 
 IV. THE EssENCE OF Phacue 15 
 V. PENITENCE AND HUMILITY 19 
 VI. INFLUENCE 24 
 VII. CHARACTER 20 
 VIII. PriestHoop ; 32 
 IX. PRAYER AND WoRK . 36 
 X. Metuops oF PRAYER 40 
 XI. EARNESTNESS 42 
 XII. Tue True Motive . 44 
 XIII. Puxstic WorsuHIp 47 
 XIV. Tuy Witt Be Done 51 
 XV. PRAYER oF THOUGHT 53 
 XVI. PRAyvER oF UNION 58 
 XVII. MisTaKEs . é 60 
 XVIII. THe GIve-AND- ayes OF fave 64 
 XIX. FELLOWSHIP . 68 
 On INTERCESSION 70 
 
 Vil 
 

 
SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 PORE ALTTY INGO PRAY TR 
 
 RAYER may be looked at from different 
 
 points of view, as either a problem, a 
 phenomenon, or a profession. As a philosophi- 
 cal problem it involves other problems, such as 
 those connected with the so-called “laws of 
 Nature” and miracle, divine foreknowledge 
 and determination, and man’s will and power 
 of voluntary action. As an historical phenom- 
 enon it is a fascinating study; it may be 
 traced from the most primitive of savage in- 
 cantations till it reaches its highest develop- 
 ment in the life of Christian saints. As prob- 
 lem or as phenomenon alone, it is of purely 
 academic interest ; but whatever may be the best 
 word to use as a counterpart to “academic,” 
 that word must be applied to prayer as a pro- 
 fession. It is a subject that is intensely alive 
 to those who believe in it and practice it. And 
 this book is written for no one else. There is 
 
 only one object that I would ask you to set be- 
 1 
 
2 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 fore you in reading these pages, and that is to 
 study prayer in such a way as to gain a deeper 
 and more vivid understanding of its aliveness. 
 To study prayer is not simply to study a book 
 about it, but to make the suggestions which the 
 book contains, if they are of any value, a guide 
 in a long, diligent course of self-training. A 
 beginner should set himself to practice them, 
 as he would work through the exercises in a 
 grammar. Ina sermon on the subject it would 
 be natural for a preacher to try to rouse his 
 audience to pray more. Probably none of us 
 prays enough. But it is far more important to 
 learn how to pray better. At best “we know 
 not what we should pray for as we ought’; 
 the Holy Spirit must do that for us “with un- 
 utterable groanings,’ because at present we 
 know only in part, and pray as well as prophesy 
 in part. But even in this partial power that 
 we possess there are many different degrees. 
 Some Christians are advanced experts, and 
 others the most elementary beginners. It is a 
 common experience, however, that the advanced 
 expert is not always the most suitable person 
 to teach the elements of a subject, and that 
 is why I can venture to offer these suggestions. 
 
 We are all longing that the world may be- 
 come a better world after the War, and number- 
 
REALITY IN PRAYER 3 
 
 less ideas are afloat as to how to make it so. 
 We know that many thousands of men and 
 women are not Christians at all, and need to be 
 converted. But I am sure—and I say it as de- 
 liberately and earnestly as I can—that the great 
 and crying need is that those who are Christians 
 should learn to pray better. So many do not 
 think of it as the profession of their lives, for 
 which they need training, practice, experience, 
 just as truly as a doctor, or nurse, or school 
 teacher. If Christianity is to spread, it must 
 be spread by Christians, and the one and only 
 effective means of doing so is not argument 
 but holiness, which includes prayer. 
 
 Let us begin with our Lord’s words in St. 
 Matt. 6:7: “When ye pray, use not idle words” 
 —our English translation, “use not vain repe- 
 titions,” does not really represent the force of 
 the Greek—“use not idle words as the heathen 
 do, for they think that they shall be heard for 
 their much speaking.’ And do not some 
 Christians think the same? or at any rate act 
 as if they thought so? They use many books 
 of devotion, they attend many services, they 
 say many prayers; but all the time they know, 
 at the bottom of their hearts, that a great deal 
 of it is idle words. Carry your mind back 
 to last Sunday, or the last time you were pres- 
 
4 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 ent at a Church service, and ask yourself— 
 How much of that service was, in my case, 
 real prayer, and not merely listening, or pos- 
 sibly woolgathering, while prayers were being 
 read? St. Augustine has a characteristic com- 
 ment on our Lord’s words. He says that our 
 prayers ought to contain not multa locutio, but 
 multa precatio—‘not much speaking, but much 
 prayer.” Our great difficulty is not to say a 
 great many prayers, but to make our prayers 
 alive, and vivid, and real. 
 
 I once read an article in a Church paper 
 entitled, “What’s Wrong with the Laity?” I 
 have very little doubt as to the answer. The 
 mass of Christian people are losing their hold 
 on religion, or perhaps I should say religion is 
 losing its hold on them, because for some cen- 
 turies past its Reality has been gradually fading 
 from their lives. God is not real to them, nor 
 Christ, nor the Holy Spirit; this world is real 
 to them, but not the other. And prayer, instead 
 of being the center and mainspring of their 
 lives, has become a mere appendage, a nice 
 little habit tacked on to them as children with 
 their pinafores, and given up when they put 
 away childish things. Nothing will make the 
 world Christian till the world has learnt to pray. 
 And in the same Church paper, soon after- 
 
REALITY IN PRAYER 5 
 
 wards, some one retorted with the question: 
 “What’s Wrong with the Clergy?” And I be- 
 lieve the true answer is precisely the same. A 
 terribly large percentage of the clergy needs to 
 be converted. They are obliged, by their pro- 
 fession, to say many prayers; but the best men 
 among them would confess that they very often 
 use idle words, because their prayers are lack- 
 ing in reality. The first step in our self-train- 
 ing is to recognize our need. 
 
 At this point the reader who wants to make 
 full use of these pages is advised to kneel down 
 and think slowly and quietly about himself, to 
 find out how great his need really is. In his 
 daily life—his work, recreation, walks, meals, 
 conversations—how small a place is occupied 
 by God! How seldom he remembers Him, or 
 does the small daily actions for His sake, with 
 the conscious wish to give Him pleasure be- 
 cause he loves Him! 
 
II. NATURE 
 OW dwell on the word Reality. Look at 
 
 a rose in summer, arrayed as Solomon in 
 all his glory was not arrayed, and try to think 
 what it really is. Ask the botanist and the 
 biologist to help you, and they will describe, 
 probably with many Latin words, its genus 
 and family, all its parts, its growth, and its 
 habits. But that will not tell you what a rose 
 really is. You call in a mathematician, and by 
 means of geometry and trigonometry he might 
 be able to tell you all about its curves and 
 planes; its form and shape could, theoretically 
 at any rate, be mapped out in diagrams. But 
 that would not express the real rose in its sen- 
 suous and compelling loveliness. Or, once 
 more, the chemist could tell you the part played 
 by sun and rain, air and soil; he might explain’ 
 the causes of color and scent. But the real 
 rose would be as far off as ever. Something 
 affects you which is deeper and more myste- 
 rious than all this, something intangible, in- 
 visible, but which appeals to you as infinitely 
 
 6 
 
NATURE 7 
 
 more real than anything which your senses can 
 grasp. And we call it Life. Your eye passes 
 to another rose, to a lily, to a hundred other 
 revelations of beauty. And as you feast your- 
 self upon them, you know that it is one and 
 the same Life that makes them all what they 
 are. You cut a shoot off the rosebush and 
 plant it, and it makes roots for itself, and yields 
 you another rose. It is the same Life, express- 
 ing itself by means of sun and air and soil, 
 shape and color and scent. 
 
 Now yield yourself to that thought; deliver 
 yourself up to the unspeakable Reality which 
 is the source of your garden’s beauty. And 
 then let yourself wander on through all the 
 vast tracts of the earth, and then through all 
 the dizzy tracts of the universe; and try to feel 
 that what is true of the rose must be true of 
 all that is. Goethe expressed the truth in a 
 sentence when he said, “Everything transitory 
 is parable’; in other words, everything mate- 
 rial is only a temporary outward and visible 
 instrument by which Life—Reality—expresses 
 itself. 
 
 I think it is probably true to say that the 
 great majority of people have done very little 
 indeed towards getting into touch with Reality 
 in this way. They enjoy what meets their 
 
8 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 senses, but they do not penetrate to its Source. 
 Those who do it most successfully are the true 
 artists, the painters and poets and musicians 
 and all the people whom we call geniuses. But 
 it is possible for every one to do it to some 
 extent, if he sets to work to train his faculties 
 to that end. An artist of any kind is born, not 
 made; but many a born artist has remained un- 
 discovered, even by himself, because his natural 
 faculties have not been given a proper chance 
 of doing their work. I am not, however, ask- 
 ing any one to try to become an artist, but to 
 try to gain a little more of the wealth of inter- 
 est and beauty that is added to life when he can 
 feel, or perceive, or realize, the divine Reality 
 behind and within everything in the universe. 
 
 This Life, or Reality, which is the only real 
 thing in Nature, is sometimes described as 
 “supernatural”; but the word is apt to be mis- 
 leading, because to so many minds it suggests 
 something unreal. We might coin the word 
 “intranatural,’ “within the natural’; but we 
 must get rid of all notion of space or locality. 
 Music is not locally in a violin when it is ex- 
 pressed by means of a violin. And the divine 
 Reality is not locally in Nature, but expresses 
 itself by means of Nature. 
 
 But next let us ask—lIf it is there, why do 
 
NATURE 9 
 
 not we all realize it naturally? Well, suppose 
 we could imagine a person born, and brought 
 up, and living unceasingly, in a certain light, 
 or with a certain sound always in his ears, or a 
 certain scent always in his nostrils. It would 
 be very difficult for him to realize the fact of 
 such a light, or sound, or scent. He could do it 
 only by a special concentration of thought upon 
 it. Having been told that it existed, he would 
 have to bring himself into such a condition that 
 he could disregard everything else that met his 
 senses, and strive with his whole being to realize 
 that one thing which always surrounded him. 
 He could do it gradually, if he went to work 
 the right way. This thought of concentration 
 is very important, and will come before us 
 again, 
 
 To realize the divine Reality in Nature to 
 ever so small an extent, to wonder at it, and 
 enjoy it, and to be lifted out of ourselves by 
 it, is what is called Natural Religion, or the 
 Religion of Nature. And some of the artistic 
 geniuses who do it well and easily are so en- 
 grossed and enraptured that they feel as though 
 they were satisfied by it, and so they never get 
 any further. They are so entirely enthralled 
 by the cult of Beauty that they have no thought 
 or conception of anything better. And if to 
 
Io SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 this Reality, which they reach by means of 
 Nature, they give the name God, and find Him 
 in no other way, they are what we call Pan- 
 theists. The truth contained in Pantheism is 
 gloriously true so far as it goes; but by itself 
 it is only a half truth, and therefore false. But 
 since truth is in it, it ought not to be neglected 
 by the Christian. In our self-training in prayer 
 it is a real help to practice that inner concen- 
 tration by which we can pass through Nature, 
 which is seen and temporal and therefore sym- 
 bolic and unreal, to that which is unseen and 
 eternal and therefore the only Reality. ‘That 
 is the nearest approach to prayer that the Pan- 
 theist can make; and many of them do make it 
 to a wonderful extent, which puts many Chris- 
 tians to shame. It is, in fact, an urgent call to 
 us for self-scrutiny. It is worth while to pause 
 here before passing to the next chapter, and to 
 think whether, in this respect, you have not 
 been shutting the eyes of your soul to Reality 
 —reveling, perhaps, in the sense-enjoyment of 
 Nature, but making very little effort to get, by 
 means of it, into touch with the Divine. Rec- 
 ognize your need, and then begin at once to 
 practice, and to train yourself at every oppor- 
 tunity to realize that every beautiful object in 
 Nature is an instrument by which God is ex- 
 
NATURE If 
 
 pressing Himself. We know it theoretically; 
 sometimes we thank Him for it; but to very 
 few is it real. 
 
 Note.—A correspondent writes, “What are we 
 to say about ugly things?” I think that we may 
 reply by adapting St. Paul’s words in Rom. xiv. 
 14: “There is nothing ugly of itself; but to him 
 that esteemeth any thing to be ugly, to him it is 
 ugly.” Ugliness is my description of the unpleas- 
 ant effect produced upon me by the physical ap- 
 pearance of a thing. The effect is akin to pain. 
 Heat, light, sound, taste, may each be pleasant to 
 a certain degree of intensity, but if the intensity 
 increases they become painful. And they may be 
 pleasant for one person to a much greater degree 
 of intensity than for another. It is impossible to 
 say that they are instruments of God’s Self- 
 expression only as long as they are pleasant, and 
 not when they become unpleasant. The problem 
 of ugliness, as of pain, is as difficult for our 
 _ limited intelligence as the problem of man’s will, 
 which can, and does, set itself in opposition to 
 God’s will. But it is not to be solved by a dualism 
 which excludes from His all-reaching activity 
 things which do not cause us physical sensations 
 of pleasure. 
 
III. PERSONS 
 
 HEN we pass from the half truth in 
 
 Pantheism to the whole truth in Chris- 
 tianity, our thoughts must move in the same 
 direction, but on a higher plane. The Christian 
 has learnt that the supreme, the only, Reality— 
 that which expresses itself impersonally in 
 Nature—is personal. We can speak of He, 
 not of It. Personality has been defined as “the 
 capacity for fellowship,” that is the capacity 
 for self-communication to persons, communion, 
 mutual response, mutual indwelling, real union, 
 with persons. So that I am able to say—God 
 is in me; God is in you. But remember, all 
 idea of locality must be avoided. It is not a 
 little bit of God inside me, and a little bit of 
 God inside you, any more than we can say that 
 there is a little bit of music inside one violin 
 and a little bit of music inside another violin. 
 It is God, the one infinite Reality, who reveals 
 Himself as physical life in all Nature, and as 
 personal character in man. The twofold truth 
 
 is stated in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: 
 12 
 
 : 
 : 
 
PERSONS 13 
 
 “All things were made by Him, and without 
 Him was not anything made that was made; in 
 Him was Life.” Thus far the evangelist de- 
 scribes Reality in Nature. But then comes the 
 leap to the higher plane: “The Life was the 
 Light of men.” That is what makes all man- 
 kind one. As individuals, men are only in- 
 struments, symbols, “parables,” to use Goethe’s 
 word, of the Infinite and the Eternal. But as 
 personal, mankind is one communion and fel- 
 lowship. And the more we can annul our indi- 
 vidual Self, the freer we are to realize our 
 oneness with the Whole. He that loseth his 
 Self shall find it. 
 
 But the Whole, in its ideal and complete per- 
 fection, proceeding eternally from God, exist- 
 ing eternally as the Object of God’s love and 
 thought, and expressed in time in the Person 
 of Jesus Christ, is the Second Person of the 
 Holy Trinity. And dwelling in us, manifest- 
 ing, expressing Himself by means of us, is His 
 Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. 
 St. Paul had a clear grasp of the twofold truth. 
 He describes the purpose for which God con- 
 verted him in the words: “It pleased God... 
 to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. 1:15) ; God did 
 not convert Saul merely for his own sake, but 
 that he might become an instrument by which 
 
14 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 the divine personal Reality should express Him- 
 self. And exactly parallel with that is his de- 
 scription of the use which God makes of all 
 Christians: “There are diversities of workings, 
 but the same God who worketh all in all. But 
 to each one is given the manifestation of the 
 Spirit for the (general) advantage” (I Cor. 
 12:6, 7). .The. Holy Spirit manifests, ex- 
 presses Himself in all Christians as instru- 
 ments, or, as St. Paul puts it later in the chap- 
 ter, in all the several members of the one Body 
 of Christ. 
 
iV. THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER 
 
 HE thought of divine Reality expressing 
 
 Himself personally by means of persons 
 carries us to the heart of our subject. What 
 exactly is prayer? I hope that all that has 
 been said so far will have helped to lead us to 
 a definition. Prayer is not petition, or inter- 
 cession, or praise, or thanksgiving, or medita- 
 tion, or contemplation. These are, so to speak, 
 the bookwork of the subject; they are the 
 grammar and vocabulary of the celestial lan- 
 guage. And self-training requires that they 
 shall be worked at with steady, plodding, per- 
 severance, in order that we may arrive at its 
 very spirit and meaning. They are methods, 
 which we shall study later; roads by which we 
 can travel towards our goal. But the goal 
 itself, the inner essence of prayer is one and 
 the same. It is by a deliberate act of our whole 
 being to make real to ourselves the divine 
 Reality. That which is divinely personal in us 
 reaches after the personal God who wants to 
 
 reveal Himself through us. It is the act of 
 15 
 
16 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 realizing Christ in us and in all men, of arriv- 
 ing at a consciousness of His Spirit in us and 
 in all men. A Christian at prayer is like a 
 living violin striving to realize, to immerse 
 itself consciously in, the musician’s soul of 
 which it is an instrument. That which the 
 artist does by the consideration of material 
 nature, the Christian does, on a higher plane, 
 by prayer. “The Life was the Light of men.” 
 Light is one of the greatest of Biblical meta- 
 phors for the divine, personal Reality revealing 
 Himself in man, and found perfectly in Christ. 
 And the aim of prayer is to gain a real inner 
 perception of the Light. 
 
 But to how many Christians do words like 
 these convey any vivid meaning? A sign of 
 the extent to which many Christians fail in 
 the matter of prayer is the meaning which they 
 attach to the word “faith.” We read: “Blessed 
 are they that have not seen, and yet have be- 
 lieved”; and St. Paul says: “We walk by faith, 
 not by sight.” Such sayings mean that we 
 must not wait to accept spiritual truths until 
 we are convinced of them by proofs supplied 
 through our bodily senses, or arrived at intel- 
 lectually by logical deduction. But many peo- 
 ple are apt to make “faith” equivalent to what 
 is called “blind faith,” a nominal acceptance of 
 
THE ESSENCE OF PRAYER Ly, 
 
 untried truths simply on the testimony of 
 others—the testimony of the Bible, or of the 
 experience of other Christians. 
 
 There is, indeed, another misuse of the word 
 “faith,” which has to do with answers to prayer. 
 Some people make it mean a feeling of cer- 
 tainty that God will give something that He is 
 asked for, which, if they could only contrive 
 to feel it, would be an infallible magic in pro- 
 curing whatever they happen to want. And 
 when God does not give just what they happen 
 to want, because it would not help forward His 
 plans for them and for mankind, they conclude 
 mournfully that the reason must have been their 
 want of faith. 
 
 Both of these are caricatures of real faith. 
 Faith is that which enables us to say: “We 
 speak that we do know, and testify that we have 
 seen.” The Queen of Sheba heard a report in 
 her own land of Solomon’s wealth and wisdom; 
 and she was willing to accept the information 
 as trustworthy. But when she came—that was 
 the real act of faith—and saw it with her own 
 eyes, she said, “Behold the half was not told 
 
 9 
 
 me, 
 
 But what to those who find? Ah! this 
 Nor tongue nor pen can shew; 
 
18 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 The love of Jesus, what tt is 
 None but His loved ones know. 
 
 It is quite right to begin by taking the fact of 
 Christ for granted on the report of others; but 
 it is something unspeakably different when we 
 reach actual personal experience. That is the 
 crying need of to-day. The faith in Christ of 
 so very many Christians is still nominal, and 
 theoretical, and conventional. “The Incarnate, 
 Crucified, and Risen Christ is the only Reality 
 —our salvation and strength and glory and 
 joy? Yes, oh yes, so I have been told; and I 
 quite believe it. That is why I say my prayers 
 and go to Church.” But it isn’t real to them. 
 We want to be able to say, as the Samaritans 
 said to the woman, “Now we believe, not be- 
 cause of thy speaking, for we have heard for 
 ourselves.” ‘Oh come hither and hearken, all 
 ye that fear God, and I will tell you what He 
 hath done for my soul!” That is the result of 
 faith. Faith is the action of the whole being 
 which drives a man to make experiment, to gain 
 living experience, of the divine Reality; and 
 prayer is the experiment and the experience. 
 
V. PENITENCE AND HUMILITY 
 
 E must next turn to a thought of quite 
 
 immeasurable importance. If the divine 
 Reality, which wants to express itself, is per- 
 sonal, and possesses character, it can be realized 
 in actual experience only by persons possessed 
 of character akin to it. In other words, that 
 which destroys our power of experiencing 
 Reality, and hinders us from reaching after 
 union with it, is Sin. The pure in heart shall 
 see God. Perfect sinlessness alone can be in 
 complete oneness with infinite perfection. It is 
 only by being united with Christ’s sinlessness, 
 by being “accepted in the Beloved,” that we 
 can begin to catch the faintest spiritual glimpse 
 of the personal Reality. But to be accepted in 
 the Beloved means to be forgiven by God. And 
 therefore at every stage in our self-training no 
 step in advance is conceivable without Peni- 
 tence. Weare-always surrounded by the limit- 
 less ocean of God’s love, but like the shellfish 
 we can shut it out. When penitence opens the 
 shell, the love of God immediately, “auto- 
 
 19 
 
20 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 matically” floods our heart, and we are for- 
 given. But as long as we have one sin know- 
 ingly unrepented of, one sin from which we 
 do not really want to be free, any approach to 
 Reality is absolutely barred. Sin is the asser- 
 tion of our individual Self, the separation of 
 our individual Self from the infinite Person. 
 Sin is the act of moving away from God; and 
 since prayer is the act of moving into union 
 with Him, sin and prayer are a contradiction 
 in terms. 
 
 And from Penitence Humility is born. It 
 sounds hard, but it must be said: You cannot 
 pray, you cannot get into touch with divine 
 Reality, except in proportion to your humility ; 
 your selflessness; your readiness, for example, 
 to take a rebuke or a slight without resentment, 
 to give a real meaning to St. Paul’s words “in 
 honour preferring one another,’ to esteem 
 others better than yourself. You can pray only 
 in proportion as you “have this mind in you 
 which was also in Christ Jesus, who... 
 emptied Himself ... humbled Himself, be- 
 coming obedient even to (the climax of) death, 
 yea the death of the Cross.” “Becoming obedi- 
 ent.” That is, to most of us, a matter of 
 desperate difficulty: sheer humble obedience to 
 God’s will, in whatever form, or by whatever 
 
PENITENCE AND HUMILITY 21 
 
 means, it may make itself known to us, whether 
 through the guidance of circumstances, or the 
 call of conscience, or—what is often harder to 
 accept—through other people. 
 
 And beside the difficulty of obedience there 
 is the difficulty of readiness to be in the back- 
 ground, to be unnoticed, and passed over, to 
 take trouble and to receive in return little or 
 no praise or acknowledgment or thanks. Every 
 one has felt the thousand pin pricks of life, 
 which hurt so horribly while we are diseased 
 with Self-love. They usurp our whole atten- 
 tion, they keep our thought and memory en- 
 grossed. While we are feeling resentment, 
 pride, touchiness, temper, and such like, we 
 cannot feel God. While we are in the grip of 
 Self we cannot be free to fling out our arms in 
 a yearning grasp of the Infinite and the Eternal. 
 
 So we begin to see why it is that the great 
 masters of the spiritual life who have taught 
 the world how to pray, one and all without 
 exception, began and carried on their self- 
 training with penitence, self-mortification, 
 struggles against sin, humility, selflessness. 
 Every branch in the True Vine that beareth 
 fruit, even to the extent of the first newborn 
 desire to feel after Him and find Him, the 
 Father purgeth that it may bring forth more 
 
22 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 fruit. And if He does it by sorrow, anxiety, 
 or pain, it is for the same all-loving purpose. 
 However far you advance, however close the 
 union with God to which you attain, the purg- 
 ing must still go on, that you may bear more 
 and more fruit, and learn obedience by the 
 things that you suffer. 
 
 And is not that exactly the meaning of Bap- 
 tism? Union with the Divine Life by means 
 of a death unto sin. The struggle of the Chris- 
 tian towards God is simply the continuation, 
 the making real and actual, of the New Birth 
 in Baptism. 
 
 Before passing on to the next chapter I 
 would ask you to undergo again a long quiet 
 self-scrutiny, to determine, as fully and ruth- 
 lessly as you can, the ways—perhaps the many 
 ways—in which Self asserts its claims in your 
 life; the ways in which you find obedience and 
 humility peculiarly difficult. And then offer a 
 prayer of penitence. 
 
 The first part of our subject is now com- 
 pleted. I hope that the reader will not be sur- 
 prised that up to this point practically nothing 
 has been said about prayer as it is usually 
 understood. Precisely what I am trying to do 
 is to get away from the ordinary, conventional 
 ideas about prayer, and to carry our minds to 
 
PENITENCE AND HUMILITY 23 
 
 the point of view of those who knew more 
 about it by experience than most of us have 
 attained to—people like St. Augustine, St. 
 Bernard, St. Teresa, Brother Laurence, and 
 many others; and behind them the apostles and 
 prophets on whom the Church is built; and 
 behind them Jesus Christ Himself the head 
 Corner Stone. All these knew by vivid, com- 
 pelling, personal experience that prayer is not 
 a mere telephoning to God to ask Him to do 
 things, but a developing life, an expanding, 
 deepening, heightening, intensifying, of the 
 whole being, by allowing it to be drawn in the 
 embrace of God nearer and nearer to Himself. 
 
VI. INFLUENCE 
 
 HE second part of our subject will still 
 
 not be prayer as ordinarily understood. 
 Nevertheless it brings before us an aspect of 
 our self-training whose importance cannot be 
 exaggerated. In Chapter III it was said that 
 because the divine Reality makes mankind the 
 instrument of His personal Self-expression, the 
 medium through which He reveals Himself— 
 in other words, because “the Life was the Light 
 of men’—all mankind is one. If you tell some 
 people that, they will shrug their shoulders and 
 say, “No doubt there is a sense in which it is 
 theoretically true; but practically it is non- 
 sense; mankind is many and not one.” To 
 speak of the solidarity of man is a playing with 
 words, a fanciful absurdity, to those whose 
 thoughts are bound to the transitory, material, 
 surface things of life. But for self-training in 
 prayer it is all-important to try to gain a vivid 
 grasp of itas areal truth. The tendency of the 
 modern Western mind is towards Individual- 
 
 ism, but it is a tendency which leads away from 
 24 
 
INFLUENCE 25 
 
 prayer. That is one of the reasons why true 
 prayer—the real thing—has been fading away 
 from so many lives. 
 
 When we approach the conception of the 
 oneness of mankind, we must try to lift it out 
 of vagueness, and to change it from an abstrac- 
 tion or a poetical figure of speech into a clear- 
 cut and appealing fact. And I think that the 
 best way to do that is to study what we call 
 Influence. It will show us what we want to 
 see in—one might almost say—an outward and 
 visible form. Consider the word itself. Who- 
 ever was responsible for coining it went a long 
 way towards explaining the idea. “Influence’’ 
 is derived from the same word as “Influx,” a 
 “pouring or flowing in.” Any word involving 
 the thought of motion in space, if it 1s employed 
 to describe that which is nonmaterial, must be 
 recognized as metaphorical. But this is, at 
 least, an extremely good metaphor. Influence 
 is the pouring in of personality into personality ; 
 it is the interpenetration of souls. An officer 
 is in a trench with his men, and the order comes 
 to make a charge. He leads the way with the 
 courage of a true man, shouts a rousing word 
 of encouragement, and pours courage into the 
 whole of his company. But think what that 
 means. Courage is not an unreal abstraction, 
 
26 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 but, on the other hand, it is not a thing in itself 
 
 with an existence separate from the officer. It 
 is his courage which he pours into them, an 
 ingredient of the person flowing into other 
 persons. May we not say that Influence, looked 
 at in this way, becomes a clear-cut and appeal- 
 ing fact? Courage does not leave the officer. 
 On the contrary his courage grows, because in 
 rousing his men to courage, he in turn receives 
 theirs poured into him. It is a mutual influx 
 of personalities. But I think we may go fur- 
 ther, and say that all the soldiers who fought 
 bravely in Europe and Asia and Africa, 
 whether of the allies or of the enemy, were 
 severally items in one complex system of In- 
 fluence. The mutual give-and-take of courage 
 extended over three continents. And more 
 than that, it extended to thousands who were 
 not fighting; the courage of the wounded, the 
 courage of those who were maimed for life, 
 the courage of prisoners of war, and the cour- 
 age of multitudes of men and women who were 
 bravely bearing sorrow, anxiety, and strain. It 
 was one communion and fellowship of cou- 
 rageous souls, every one of whom was poured 
 into all the others. 
 
 But that was only one minute specimen of 
 Influence. When one person receives it from 
 
 —— 
 
INFLUENCE ey 
 
 another, whether in the form of courage or of 
 any other ingredient of the soul, it can flow on 
 from him into others without diminishing in 
 the process, and with no limits of possibility. 
 All mankind, past and present, form one com- 
 munion and fellowship, one inconceivably com- 
 plex system of interpenetration. If you think 
 it out, it is a frightening thought—the im- 
 measurable responsibility of every soul in its 
 effects upon the whole of mankind. It is paral- 
 lel with what we are told is the case in the 
 physical universe. In a paper entitled “The 
 Modern Conception of the Universe,” * Dr. G. 
 F, C. Searle writes: “The effects of a single act 
 of free-will extend through the whole of space, 
 and will last as long as the present order con- 
 tinues. Thus the voluntary motion of a man’s 
 hand not only affects the motion of the earth 
 by a calculable amount, but also the motions of 
 the sun and of the remotest stars, and the 
 motions of all these bodies will differ for the 
 rest of time from the motions they would have 
 had if the man had not moved his hand.” 
 
 And if it is a frightening thought, it is also 
 extraordinarily humbling when it is once clearly 
 grasped. The words I and Me begin to be a 
 
 
 
 ; * Pan-Anglican Papers, S.P.C.K., 1908. 
 
28 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 little less clear-cut and obtrusive. We begin 
 to see that it is not only proud but also very 
 silly to lay so much stress on our individual 
 Self, when we realize that the soul of each of 
 us is conditioned, to so enormous an extent, by 
 the interplay of all souls. 
 
 Influence, then, is an almost visible exhibi-— 
 tion of the oneness of mankind. If you dwell 
 on it, and allow yourself quietly to be steeped 
 in the notion of the interpenetration of per- 
 sonalities, you can almost come to see it. On 
 certain occasions, with certain groups or bodies 
 of people collected together, it is peculiarly 
 vivid. Sometimes when you and another per- 
 son are alone together, you can affect each 
 other intensely; something seems to pass and 
 repass between you so real that you feel as 
 though you can, so to speak, cut it with a knife. 
 But apart from these special instances, it is 
 possible to gain a real grasp of the truth as a 
 whole. And we must remember that it is not 
 only the Influence of which we are conscious 
 that counts, but also that far greater mass of 
 which we are unconscious, that is poured out 
 by, and stored up in, what is popularly called 
 our subconsciousness, and shows itself perhaps 
 long afterwards in word or deed or thought or 
 habit. It all goes to shape character. 
 
INFLUENCE 29 
 
 This wonderful system of mutuality between 
 souls is an instance of something which it is 
 very hard to grasp because we always live in 
 it. But the reader is strongly advised, if he 
 wishes to excel in prayer, to make a frequent 
 and diligent practice of concentrating himself 
 upon it, until it emerges and takes shape as one 
 of the most compelling objects of his thought. 
 
Vil CO AR AC TER 
 
 ET us go further, and see what follows 
 from this. If all souls interpenetrate, 
 mankind is not merely a jumble of different 
 characters, like a boxful of differently colored 
 marbles. Mankind, as one real whole, pos- 
 sesses one real character, the net result, at any 
 given moment, of the whole process of its 
 spiritual life. Every thought, word, and deed 
 of every individual either lifts up or drags 
 down, either improves or spoils, the net char- 
 acter of the whole, because every thought, word, 
 and deed affects his own character, and there- 
 fore his influence. If one member suffer— 
 spiritually—all the members suffer with it. 
 
 To grasp this truly and thoroughly is to 
 arrive at a motive for holiness, and therefore 
 a motive for prayer, which is free from all 
 taint of Self. “For their sake I sanctify my- 
 self” —in order to lift up the net character of 
 mankind. But when we speak of lifting up, 
 or dragging down, the character of mankind, 
 
 we mean drawing it nearer to, or further from, 
 30 
 
CHARACTER 31 
 
 the Character of God. That is the character 
 that He wants to reveal and express in man- 
 kind as His instrument. It is the character of 
 mankind as He thinks and plans it, and works 
 and longs for it. In other words, it is the 
 Character of the Incarnate, Crucified, and 
 Risen Christ, Eternal, Human, Universal, the 
 perfect expression of God, offering His life and 
 power and perfection to every soul who wants 
 to lift up the character of men. 
 
VIII. PRIESTHOOD 
 
 LL that has been said in the foregoing 
 pages leads to the thought of Priesthood, 
 which is quite fundamental in Christianity, and 
 without which prayer is well-nigh emptied of 
 all meaning. 
 
 An ambassador at a foreign court communi- 
 cates the will of his government. In that act 
 his individual self is by the nature of the case 
 blotted out and nonexistent. His nation as a 
 single whole expresses itself by means of him; 
 he is a point at which the whole of one nation 
 can come into contact with the whole of an- 
 other nation. 
 
 And every human being is similarly repre- 
 sentative of the whole of mankind. But to 
 grasp the oneness of mankind, and the oneness 
 of its character, and our representative relation 
 to it, to concentrate ourselves upon it, to ponder 
 it, and at last to feel it, is to feel the shame of 
 the sin of the world—not only the shame of my 
 sin, because it spoils my character, but the 
 shame of all men’s sin, because it wrongs the 
 
 32 
 
PRIESTHOOD 33 
 
 Father of love, who wants to express Himself 
 perfectly in man. The closer that we approach 
 to union with Reality, the more we shall, as a 
 medieval writer puts it, “feel sin as a lump”— 
 feel all sin as one vast mass of crushing de- 
 filement which keeps mankind from rising to 
 the divine ideal. Self-training in prayer, for 
 any one who wants to become an expert, in- 
 volves long and earnest practice in this realiza- 
 tion of the oneness of human sin as of the 
 oneness of human character. To feel all sin as 
 my own, to feel myself a point at which human 
 sin reveals itself, is at the opposite pole to the 
 self-congratulation which says “I thank Thee 
 that I am not as other men are.” As far as 
 the East is from the West so far is true “sym- 
 pathy” removed from pious horror. But 
 equally far is it removed from “apathy,” and 
 from the weak amiability which condones sin 
 as a foible or a misfortune. To “feel sin 
 as a lump” is to feel it intensely as your own; 
 and the more you can do so, the nearer you 
 will reach to the infinite sympathy of the Lamb 
 of God, the sinless Penitent, who “taketh away 
 the sin of the world” by making it His own, 
 and destroying it by His life of obedience cul- 
 minating on the Cross. That is what St. Paul 
 meant when he said that “God made Him who 
 
34 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 knew no sin to be sin on our behalf” (II Cor. 
 5:21). Any crude notion of mere substitution 
 is far removed from this wonderful aspect of 
 the Atonement. 
 
 And what is true of all sin is true of all 
 sorrow. Here we use the word “sympathy” 
 with the meaning that is more commonly 
 attached to it. ‘Surely He hath borne our 
 griefs and carried our sorrows.” In His 
 measureless love He not only knew, but felt 
 Himself to be the Representative of mankind, 
 and therefore felt the world’s agony as His 
 own. And every human being is necessarily 
 a representative of mankind; but we seldom get 
 beyond the point of knowing it theoretically. 
 To make it real, and feel it, requires a lifelong 
 progress in love. And love grows by prayer, 
 which brings us gradually to the realization of 
 the oneness of the life of men. As we keep 
 these things and ponder them in our hearts we 
 learn that self-training in prayer involves fol- 
 lowing our Lord to Calvary, and hanging with 
 Him upon His Cross. 
 
 But this is what we mean by a “priest.” A 
 priest is one who “being taken from among 
 men is appointed for men in things pertaining 
 to God” (Heb. 5:1). And from among the 
 whole body of mankind a particular group of 
 
PRIESTHOOD 35 
 
 people has been divinely appointed to be “a 
 kingdom of priests,” that is the Christian 
 Church, which in turn chooses and appoints its 
 representatives whom we call priests. The 
 Church is the priest of mankind. And every 
 Christian—man, woman, and child—ought to 
 be taught that his whole and sole function, in 
 things pertaining to God, is to exercise the 
 priestly office. Every Christian, in so far as he 
 is truly Christian, is a point at which mankind 
 comes into union with God. Through Chris- 
 tians the Self-expression of the personal God 
 is deepened and intensified as the ages go by, 
 because the Church is in living and progressive 
 union with the perfect expression of God, Jesus 
 Christ the Priest. 
 
 Self-training in prayer, therefore, requires 
 us to ponder on our priesthood, and on the 
 “sympathy” which it involves, and to give ita 
 living place in our understanding and life. 
 
IX. PRAYER AND WORK 
 
 | fa the first five chapters our thoughts dwelt 
 mainly upon God as the one infinite per- 
 sonal Reality. In the next three we considered 
 mankind as the instrument of His Self-expres- 
 sion. All this has shown us that prayer is a 
 very big thing, a lifelong profession needing 
 the most patient and strenuous self-training. 
 The way is now clear to think of prayer as 
 ordinarily understood, that is the various meth- 
 ods of prayer. But as a preliminary the rela- 
 tion between prayer and work calls for atten- 
 tion. 
 
 Every one is busy, or nearly every one. And 
 some people are tempted to think: “Prayer? Oh 
 yes, very important of course; but just now I 
 absolutely haven’t the time!’ And they are 
 inclined to add, “After all, when one is work- 
 ing for others it is a relief to think that laborare 
 est orare, to work is to pray.” Now when a 
 person thinks that he is too busy to pray, he 
 feels it annoying to be referred to the story of 
 Martha and Mary, and cannot help sympathiz- 
 
 36 
 
PRAYER AND WORK 37 
 
 ing very much with Martha. But I am sure 
 that that story is constantly misused. Are we 
 really to suppose that Mary spent the whole of 
 her life sitting still and doing nothing but con- 
 template, or read her Bible, while Martha spent 
 the whole of her lifé in housework? Her 
 grumble against Mary, “Lord, carest Thou not 
 that my sister hath left me to serve alone?” 
 shows that she was not accustomed to be left 
 to serve alone, and that Mary usually helped 
 her. Martha and Mary must not be taken as 
 types of two people, the one all work and the 
 other all prayer. They are a photograph, a 
 snapshot, so to speak, of two states of mind at 
 a particular moment—the moment when the 
 chance offered itself of a quiet, satisfying con- 
 versation with our Lord. Mary seized it and 
 Martha did not. They represent, in fact, two 
 different attitudes towards the divine Reality. 
 A few people have received a vocation to spend 
 their lives in prayer, and nothing but prayer. 
 But the majority, whose vocation is to what is 
 called an active life of work, can themselves 
 be likened to either Martha or Mary according 
 as their work is lacking in prayer or filled with 
 prayer. The question is, What is the meaning 
 of work filled with prayer? Now I cannot 
 speak smooth things; I must put before you 
 
38 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 the highest Christian ideal. It means work 
 done in such a condition of soul that in every 
 detail, in every hour and moment and second, 
 you are filled with the Presence of God, you 
 are in touch with the divine Reality. To make 
 quite true in your life the saying that “to work 
 is to pray,’ is to be Martha and Mary at the 
 same time; and that is the climax of Christian 
 perfection. It gives a new meaning to the Gos- 
 pels to read the accounts of our Lord’s busy 
 life, remembering that that was literally true 
 of Him; never for an instant was He out of 
 touch with God. But how did He doit? Even 
 He did not spend His whole life in work. Be- 
 cause He was human, because He was tempted 
 like as we are, and hemmed in by physical 
 limitations as we are, He spent long, long hours 
 of silent solitude and prayer, keeping Himself 
 in unvarying union with the divine Reality. 
 And if He needed it, how can we dare to spend 
 a busy day without it? We must follow Mary 
 every day, if we are to do Martha’s work with- 
 out the Lord’s rebuke. If in all the busy racket 
 of work we are to dwell under the defense of 
 the Most High, and abide under the shadow of 
 the Almighty, we must retain that defense, and 
 hide ourselves under that shadow, by making 
 time for deep, quiet prayer. It is the stern 
 
PRAYER AND WORK 39 
 
 practice in private that makes the world-famed 
 professional. And if it is our profession to 
 “follow the example of our Saviour Christ and 
 to be made like unto Him,” in other words, to 
 be priests always in touch with God on behalf 
 of mankind, an absolute necessity in our self- 
 training is practice in private. 
 
X. METHODS OF PRAYER 
 
 T is this practice of prayer in its various 
 
 methods that we are now to study. Dif- 
 ferent writers have classified prayer in different 
 ways. But perhaps the most helpful classi- 
 fication is one which may be connected with 
 our Lord’s words, “Ask and it shall be given 
 you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall 
 be opened unto you.” We may call the 
 three classes Prayer of Utterance, Prayer of 
 Thought, and Prayer of Union. 
 
 Prayer of Utterance comprises all prayer 
 that takes the form of words, whether actually 
 vocal and audible, or uttered internally in the 
 mind. This includes petitions for oneself, in- 
 tercession for others, and praise and thanks- 
 giving to God. And I think that for large 
 numbers of Christians who have not made 
 much effort at self-training this virtually ex- 
 hausts the whole of prayer. And even in this 
 class, the practice of one or two or all three of 
 them divides Christians into three grades. The 
 least trained do not rise beyond petitions for 
 
METHODS OF PRAYER 4I 
 
 their personal needs, and that mostly when the 
 needs are sudden and pressing. That is the 
 sort of prayer that a good many people use 
 instinctively. That their prayers are often in- 
 tensely earnest, and that God hears them, no 
 Christian would think of doubting. But if 
 their prayers do not advance beyond that, the 
 natural eagerness with which they ask for the 
 supply of immediate personal needs will not 
 carry them far in their spiritual progress. 
 But any one who can add to his prayer inter- 
 cession for others, has taken a great step for- 
 ward. And the intercessions increase in width 
 and range with the Christian’s spiritual growth. 
 But, thirdly, to add praise and thanksgiving to 
 God with any reality of meaning marks a much 
 further advance. 
 
XI. EARNESTNESS 
 
 OW, what is it that makes prayer effec- 
 tual? Or, in other words, what sort of 
 prayer accomplishes most? 
 
 It is easy to give a wrong answer to the 
 question, and to think that effectiveness in 
 prayer depends simply on the earnestness with 
 which we pray. But take an instance. A 
 mother is in an agony of mind because her little 
 child falls dangerously ill, and she prays for 
 his recovery with an earnestness equal to her 
 agony of mind. And she may be inclined to 
 feel, “Surely, surely, God cannot refuse me 
 what I long for so intensely!’ Just down the 
 street there is a workhouse, where a little child 
 is dangerously ill in the infirmary. His parents 
 are dead, and no one in the world is fond 
 enough of him to pour out passionate, agon- 
 ized petitions for him. Do you suppose that 
 God is going to restore the first child to health, 
 but let the second die because any prayers that 
 may have been offered for him were not earnest 
 enough? When it comes to earnestness, peti- 
 
 tions for ourselves and intercessions for others 
 42 
 
EARNESTNESS 43 
 
 are sometimes hardly distinguishable. It is 
 natural and human to feel a desire most acutely 
 when it is for something which bears upon one- 
 self. And this is, for the most part, true even 
 in the matter of praise and thanksgiving to 
 God. We are generally moved to thank Him 
 most warmly for blessings which affect us 
 individually. If the former of the two children 
 recovers, we can picture the eager joy with 
 which the mother will pour out her thanks, 
 whereas no one, perhaps, will feel the same joy 
 over the motherless waif. We do not, of 
 course, find fault with the earnestness of per- 
 sonal desire; but we must not think of it as 
 capable in itself of persuading God to give us 
 what He might not have given us otherwise. 
 Further, if earnestness of personal desire is 
 the one thing needful, what are we to think of 
 the effects produced by our public worship? 
 I am very far from saying that our prayers, 
 private and public, are not in need of more 
 earnestness; but it must be an earnestness of 
 the right kind; one that is not excited by the 
 faintest touch of Self. In our training and 
 practice in prayer few things are harder, and 
 few things are more important, than this escape 
 from Self. Our earnestness must be the 
 earnestness not of individuals but of priests. 
 
A DAE AR Mio 
 
 ND so we go back to the subject of Chap- 
 ters VI-VIII, mankind, as one real 
 whole, growing up towards the perfect Man. 
 The nearer we can get to a passionate earnest- 
 ness for that, the more will our prayer accom- 
 plish. Look at St. Paul. He wrote to the 
 Colossians (2:1): “I want you to know how 
 great a conflict I have [that is, with what 
 agony of earnestness I pray] for you, and them 
 at Laodicea, and as many as have not seen my 
 face in the flesh.” He had not founded either 
 of those Churches, and his earnestness, there- 
 fore, was not caused by the fact that he was 
 praying for personal friends, but was due to 
 his burning desire for the building up of the 
 whole Body of Christ, through which all man- 
 kind could be lifted into union with God. 
 Think of your prayers for foreign missions, 
 and for the Church’s work at home, your pray- 
 ers for the clergy, soldiers, sailors, doctors, 
 nurses, chaplains, at home and abroad. Test 
 your state of advance with regard to self- 
 44 
 
THE TRUE MOTIVE 45 
 
 training in prayer. Is the lifting up of man- 
 kind as one whole into union with God a motive 
 real and pressing enough to give you a deep 
 earnestness in these intercessions? And your 
 prayers for your nation. What is their motive? 
 They may spring from various degrees of self- 
 ishness. But the only sort of prayer that will 
 accomplish anything is that the success of your 
 nation, and the nature of its successes, and 
 its consequences, may serve the purposes of 
 God’s king¢dom—the lifting up of all mankind 
 into union with Him. 
 
 And your prayers for the departed. It ought 
 not to have needed the War to bring back this 
 practice into wider use. If mankind is one, it 
 is not only the little group of human lives at 
 present on the planet in flesh and blood, but all 
 souls past and present, who must be lifted up 
 into union with God. Our prayers for them 
 and theirs for us are alike intercessions for 
 mankind as one whole. 
 
 Further, if this and nothing less than this is 
 really our longing desire, we shall free our- 
 selves from what is for some earnest Christians 
 a great difficulty and snare. We shall be able 
 to avoid the distracted feeling that, owing to 
 the multitude of things and persons that need 
 our prayers, we cannot, so to speak, cover the 
 
46 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 ground. It is right, of course, to offer par- 
 ticular intercessions on matters which come 
 under our individual notice, and are com- 
 mended to our sympathy, provided we place 
 them in their true relation to the whole. But 
 we must not let ourselves wander into discur- 
 siveness, which too often means perfunctori- 
 ness; we must throw off the burden of mere 
 multiplicity. That is a form of the “much 
 speaking” in prayer which our Lord condemns. 
 Our intercessions are not valuable in propor- 
 tion to the number of things that we pray 
 about, 
 
XIII, PUBLIC WORSHIP 
 
 HAT is where public worship ought to be 
 a help rather than a difficulty. In public 
 worship we join, as members of the Church, 
 in a corporate act, “to make prayers and sup- 
 plications and to give thanks for all men” as 
 our Prayer Book puts it. Try hard to make 
 more real the conception of the Church as the 
 priest of humanity; try hard to feel that the 
 Church is not a collection of pious individuals, 
 but a single organism working for the spiritual 
 advance of the whole body of mankind; and 
 Church services, even the sober intellectual re- 
 straint of Morning and Evening Prayer and 
 the Litany, will become a new thing to you. 
 Above all, the Holy Communion must be 
 freed from every vestige of Self. It is in its 
 essence a corporate act in behalf of all men, 
 one aspect of which is intercession. Whatever 
 your particular shade of views about the doc- 
 trine of the Holy Sacrament, to leave it out of 
 your life, or to throw it in occasionally as an 
 extra, is to neglect the most non-selfish act of 
 47 
 
48 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 intercession that you can make. Throughout 
 the length and breadth of our religion the 
 spiritual and the sacramental are complemen- 
 tary to each other. The Christian, therefore, 
 who practices intercession without sacramental 
 intercession cannot, from the nature of the 
 case, reach the fullest success in his self-train- 
 ing. 
 
 Again, if any advance in prayer must begin, 
 for each of us, with penitence and self-morti- 
 fication, the same is true of corporate prayer. 
 It ought to be the result of true sympathy, the 
 feeling of the shame of the world’s sin, of 
 which we thought in Chapter VIII. The avoid- 
 ance of a corporate act of penitence by English . 
 Christians during the War, lest the enemy 
 should think we were downhearted, or doubted 
 the rightness of our national cause, was a 
 mournful exhibition of ignorance as to the 
 nature of prayer. 
 
 Probably most Christians would admit that 
 one of their greatest needs in the spiritual life 
 is the self-training which will enable them to 
 make public worship what it is intended to 
 be. We must immerse ourselves, gradually, by 
 practice, in the reality of the corporate life of 
 the Church acting for mankind as one Whole 
 in things pertaining to God. In Chapter II we 
 
PUBLIC WORSHIP 49 
 
 thought of the concentration by which it is 
 possible to gaze with the eye of the soul through 
 Nature to the divine Reality. And the same 
 is true with regard to mankind. It would be 
 a great help in practice if some members of a 
 congregation would agree beforehand to come 
 to an ordinary Church service with the united 
 intention of concentrating themselves upon 
 mankind as a whole, striving to make every 
 petition bear upon that. They would find our 
 Lord’s words come home to them with won- 
 derful force: “If two of you shall agree upon 
 earth concerning any matter that they shall ask, 
 it shall be done for them by My Father which 
 is in heaven.” The concentration of two is 
 more than double the concentration of one; 
 they can help each other to reach out to the 
 divine Reality. 
 
 But this is a matter which needs long and 
 patient practice. If the reader to whom this 
 point of view is new will study his Prayer 
 Book, as though for the first time, in such a 
 way as to learn to make “We,” “Us,” and 
 “Our” refer in every case not to the individual 
 worshipers gathered at the moment in Church, 
 much less to himself alone, but to mankind of 
 which we are members, and to make every 
 petition in which the personal pronoun does not 
 
50 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 occur definitely contribute to the working out 
 of God’s plan of lifting up the whole of man- 
 kind, he will realize how large and noble an 
 element of public worship has hitherto been lost 
 to him. 
 
PoDreeet hy WALT Di DOIN 
 
 HE same motive will safeguard our 
 
 private petitions for ourselves. They 
 will not be individual but personal, that is, they 
 will be petitions that something may be granted 
 to us which will somehow, in the manifold 
 wisdom of God, advance the one personal life 
 of mankind. That is really the meaning of 
 saying “Grant me this if it is Thy will,’ and 
 also “Grant me this for Jesus Christ’s sake.” 
 God’s will is always that “all men should be 
 saved,” all men as one whole should grow to- 
 wards the perfect Man; and nothing which will 
 not contribute to that will receive the endorse- 
 ment of the perfect Man, and be included in 
 the intercessions which, with unutterable groan- 
 ings, the Holy Spirit offers for and in us; and 
 hence nothing which will not contribute to that 
 will be granted to us as an answer to prayer. 
 This motive will give us perfect peace and sub- 
 mission in the numberless cases in which we do 
 not get just what we ask for. “Ask and it shall 
 
 be given you,’ means ask with God’s will for 
 51 
 
52 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 mankind in view, and ye shall receive, not 
 necessarily your exact request, but that which 
 you really want far more—something that will 
 help to work out His will. 
 
 But it is impossible that that motive can 
 really move us unless we are in close contact 
 with Him—not holding the right views about 
 Him, not a general benevolence which can ex- 
 tend itself widely over mankind, but real, inner, 
 living contact with Him; in other words, real, 
 inner, living love for Him, a love which wants 
 nothing but that His will may be done, and 
 wants that with all the strength of our being, 
 and a love which is always ready to praise and 
 thank Him for every exhibition of His will, 
 whether it sends to us what we commonly call 
 blessings, or whether, for His own loving 
 purposes, it places us, and all the nations of the 
 earth, with Him on the Cross. 
 
XV. PRAYER OF THOUGHT 
 
 ‘* ASK and it shall be given you, seek and ye 
 
 shall find.” The first has suggested 
 Prayer of Utterance, or verbal prayer. The 
 second suggests what I have called Prayer of 
 Thought. 
 
 The search for truth has been the occupation 
 of all thinking people in all countries at all 
 times. In every branch of learning students 
 profess, as the object of their lives, to be seek- 
 ers after truth; some call themselves seekers 
 after God. But in every branch of learning, 
 intellectual search will teach men only facts 
 about God and His actions, it will not find 
 God Himself. We saw how true this is in 
 thinking about a rose. Biologist, botanist, 
 mathematician, chemist, or all combined, can- 
 not make you know what a rose really is. 
 And if this is ‘the case with the divine Reality 
 in Nature it is not less so with the divine per- 
 sonal Reality in man. To reach that, requires 
 our will and our emotions more than our in- 
 tellect; it requires something which is of the 
 
 53 
 
54 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 nature of spiritual thought rather than of 
 study. And this is afforded by what is usually 
 called Meditation, in which the intellectual 
 faculty is not excluded but takes the lowest 
 place. 
 
 Large numbers of Christians think of medi- 
 tation as an elaborate and artificial exercise of 
 pious ingenuity for which a few religiously 
 minded people seem to have time and inclina- 
 tion, but which for most people is quite out of 
 the question. I will not pretend that it is easy. 
 The easy things are not always the most worth 
 doing. But whatever else may be said about 
 it, “elaborate” and “‘artificial’’ are the last 
 epithets that it deserves. Utter simplicity is 
 the first mark of true meditation. The reason 
 why it is not easy is that, being a method of 
 reaching after contact with God, it requires all 
 the preliminary conditions of penitence and 
 humility. It requires a real longing to find the 
 very God Himself, and it requires considerable 
 determination, especially for beginners. 
 
 An illustration may help to show what it 
 means. Some people, when they travel, fly 
 from place to place, seeing the famous sights 
 as fast as trains and motors will carry them. 
 They want to have seen as many things as 
 possible. But this continual hustling allows of 
 
PRAYER OF THOUGHT 55 
 
 no real, intimate, inner knowledge of any one 
 thing or place. That is like a person who reads 
 through some prayers, or a passage in the 
 Bible, and feels that he has done his duty to 
 God for the day. But has he? Has he found 
 God? Has he gained afresh any real, intimate, 
 inner knowledge of Him? To do that, he must 
 constantly pause over a verse, a phrase, even 
 a word, and gaze right into its meaning, and 
 get something out of it for his soul. He must 
 go so slowly that it becomes a means of seeking 
 after Reality, and finding in scene after scene, 
 or sentence after sentence, a message from 
 God which he, in turn, can translate into fer- 
 vent prayer for himself and for others, into 
 an earnest longing, or a hope, or a resolve, or 
 a cry of penitence. It does not need elaborate 
 study, or cleverness; it does not need any care- 
 ful arrangement of your thoughts such as you 
 would want if you had to preach a sermon or 
 give a lesson; indeed it is a misuse of medita- 
 tion to make it a means of preparing a sermon 
 or a lesson. But it needs an eager desire to 
 use the words, through which you are very 
 slowly wandering, as a medium by which to get 
 yourself into closer contact with God. It does 
 not matter what you do with the passage; your 
 treatment of it is known only to God and your- 
 
56 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 self. It does not matter whether you can exer- 
 cise much brilliant imagination or none at all. 
 The only thing you have to do is to make the 
 passage, or sentence, or word, by any means 
 you like, and by as many means as you can 
 contrive, helpful to your spiritual life, that is 
 to your will and your love, your determination 
 and your longing to reach after God. You need 
 not expect to gain much pleasure from it at 
 first; possibly you may never gain much pleas- 
 ure from it. The facility in meditation of the 
 spontaneous kind that makes it a daily delight 
 to some people is not given to every one. But 
 the patient continuance in effort is itself a dis- 
 cipline of incalculable value. And even to 
 * those who find the effort very hard indeed there 
 comes from time to time a flash of spiritual 
 insight which lights up a sentence, and makes 
 the way easier. For the purpose of meditation 
 the New Testament, since it deals directly with 
 Jesus Christ, especially a Gospel, is more likely 
 to be helpful than anything else, because He is 
 the perfect revelation of God, and therefore it 
 is easier to reach God by pondering on Him 
 than on any other thing or person. 
 
 It is possible also to make use sometimes of 
 a devotional book and not the Bible. But it is 
 generally the best plan not to depend upon 
 
PRAYER OF THOUGHT 57 
 
 other people’s meditations, but to undergo the 
 effort of making your own, however imper- 
 fectly. 
 
 All the great saints in the Church’s history, 
 and all the holiest men and women alive to-day, 
 have made use of meditation as an absolutely 
 indispensable part of their self-training. And 
 no Christian who really wants to train himself 
 in prayer can do without it. 
 
 Some people find it wise not to make a rule 
 to give to it a fixed time every day, because in 
 a busy life there are days when this is almost 
 impossible; but make a rule, and often ask for 
 the strength of God to help you to keep it, to 
 spend on meditation a fixed time every week, 
 so that you are free to vary the daily time when 
 needful. 
 
 Modern Biblical study, which is now so 
 widely spread, however useful in itself, tends 
 to place a difficulty in the way. People are apt 
 to get the notion that Bible reading always in- 
 volves a study of the Synoptic problem, or 
 Jewish eschatology, or the geography of Asia 
 Minor, or something else up-to-date and aca- 
 demic. Devotional Bible reading, let me repeat, 
 involves literally nothing but a longing deter- 
 mination to get, through penitence, humility, 
 and quiet thought, into closer touch with God. 
 
XVE MPRAYER ORSOUNTON 
 
 E turn now to the third clause in our 
 Lord’s sentence: ‘Knock and it shall be 
 opened unto you,” which suggests what I have 
 called Prayer of Union. Meditation requires 
 the intellectual faculty not to be excluded but 
 to be kept rather in the background as com- 
 pared with the free play given to the will and 
 the emotions in their reaching after God. But 
 Prayer of Union, or contemplation, is a further 
 stage in which the intellectual faculty is not 
 allowed to assert itself at all. “Commune with 
 your own heart and in your chamber, and be 
 still.” That exhortation is not fully met either 
 by petitions or meditations. There is some- 
 thing else, which it is exceedingly difficult to 
 explain in words, and which can really be learnt 
 by nothing but practice and experience, built 
 upon the basis of true penitence and humility. 
 If I were to ask a musician to explain what 
 method I must adopt to gain a deep inner under- 
 standing of the meaning and glory of a sym- 
 phony of Beethoven, he would not find it easy. 
 But obviously he would begin his explanation 
 58 
 
PRAYER OF UNION 59 
 
 by telling me that first of all I must listen in 
 silence. And yet though that is obvious in the 
 case of music, it is not at all obvious to many 
 Christians in the case of spiritual contact with 
 God. 
 
 This subject has often been written about. 
 It is the burden of a large number of medieval 
 books on the spiritual life. It has been called 
 Quietism, and other bad names. It is an im- 
 portant element in the religious practice of the 
 Society of Friends. And it has recently been 
 revived within the Church. But there is still 
 room, perhaps, for a restatement of it, if only 
 to guard against mistakes. For there are some 
 bad mistakes into which it is easy to fall. 
 
 It may be well to suggest a definition as a 
 asin tor study.) braver ot.) Union! or or 
 silence, or of contemplation—it has many 
 names; some writers have called it “interior 
 prayer’—is an attitude towards God in which 
 intellectual thought and emotional feeling are 
 kept in abeyance, the will is exercised in keep- 
 ing them so, and the love of the whole being is 
 free to unite itself with the love of God. The 
 last may be expressed metaphorically by saying 
 that love silently and persistently knocks at the 
 door, that it may be opened for God’s love to 
 stream out. 
 
XVII. MISTAKES 
 
 ND first, what to avoid. Three mistakes 
 are often made, especially by beginners, 
 
 in attempting the practice of contemplation. 
 1. We saw that in meditation all artificiality 
 must be avoided. And the same is even more 
 urgently necessary here, for artificiality is so 
 closely akin to self-consciousness; and nothing 
 is more fatal to the free play of humble and 
 penitent love. When a person first begins this 
 kind of self-training, he is at once troubled 
 with the feeling—“I am now doing something 
 really advanced in the Christian life, something 
 novel and exciting, something that most Chris- 
 tians do not even attempt.” But the moment 
 the attempt becomes a pious pose, its value is 
 instantly blotted out, and the door between the 
 soul and the divine Reality is locked and 
 double-locked by man himself, with no possi- 
 bility of opening. Instead of doing something 
 really advanced and novel, he is away back in 
 the very old and very elementary condition of 
 self-love, pride, and foolishness, the condition, 
 
 in fact, of the Pharisee in the temple. 
 60 
 
MISTAKES 61 
 
 2. But some who free themselves, by God’s 
 help, from self-love and pride, do not quite 
 escape the foolishness. They fall into a mis- 
 take arising from their very anxiety to gain the 
 blessing that they seek. They imagine that the 
 results of contemplation must take a striking 
 or unusual form, a wonder, a thrill, a sweet- 
 ness; and in their eagerness they strain after 
 it with a mental, and even physical, tension. 
 Some even adopt physical means to carry 
 themselves away from their surroundings; 
 they gaze at a crucifix, or an altar, or its 
 lights, or a stained widow, or a picture. Of 
 course any of these may suggest material for 
 helpful meditation. But if they are used asa 
 means of inducing a process which is difficult 
 to distinguish from hypnotic self-suggestion, 
 they have no more right to be considered as a 
 legitimate method of Christian contemplation 
 than crystal gazing. I think it should be clear 
 that this is artificiality appearing in another 
 guise, and one which may do great injury to 
 a nervous, highly strung temperament. It is 
 just such a temperament which lends itself most 
 readily to the mistake. One of the commonest 
 objections to religion is that it is merely a 
 matter of temperament; and mistaken enthu- 
 siasm of this kind, which is as strictly artificial 
 
62 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 as alcoholic excitement, gives a serious handle 
 to the charge. As St. Theresa said, “From silly 
 devotions God deliver us!’ And in the same 
 spirit of common sense Ruysbroek advises 
 learners to adopt for contemplation any physi- 
 cal posture that will best make for quiet of 
 mind and body, that neither mind nor body may 
 intrude itself and interrupt the interior com- 
 muning. He recognizes that some people can 
 contemplate best when walking about, or 
 standing, or kneeling; but he himself found it 
 easier, and therefore simpler and more helpful, 
 to sit. Anything will do, provided that it helps 
 to reduce the physical element in contempla- 
 tion to a minimum. 
 
 3. A third mistake, closely allied to the last, 
 is to expect, or even to want or hope for, 
 visions, trances, ecstasies or the like. These 
 were related of many of the medieval saints, as 
 also of Christians in earlier days; and they are 
 by no means unknown in modern times. But 
 those who have written about contemplation, 
 and recorded their experiences, are unanimous 
 in declaring that such experiences are never to 
 be sought for, and cannot be gained by trying. 
 I will not attempt to discuss the psychology of 
 them. That branch of study is still far too 
 young to afford safe ground for any definite 
 
MISTAKES 63 
 
 decision as to how far they are pathological, the 
 results of temperament or of something in the 
 nature of self-suggestion, and whether, or to 
 what extent, they are an immediate divine gift. 
 I want only to make clear that in either case 
 they lie entirely outside the limits of our self- 
 training. 
 
XVIII. THE GIVE-AND-TAKE OF LOVE 
 
 F we are right, then, in assuming that these 
 
 three things—self-satisfaction, self-excite- 
 ment, and the seeking for abnormal experiences 
 —are bad mistakes to be resolutely avoided, 
 what can be said as to the true nature of con- 
 templation or Prayer of Union? It has two 
 aspects, which are strictly and literally mutual, 
 and inconceivable each without the other. 
 
 1. Recall what was said in Chapter VI 
 about Influence, the influx, the flowing in, of 
 personality into personality, the interpenetra- 
 tion of souls. Now, when some one exercises 
 a strong influence over me, I may recognize 
 the fact if I think about it, I may realize that 
 when I speak or act or think in a particular 
 way it is because he has influenced me. Again, 
 I may, by a conscious act of will, put myself, 
 or allow myself to be drawn, under his in- 
 fluence. And once more, I may experience a 
 feeling of pleasure in doing so, But what is it 
 in me which has actually received his influence? 
 
 It is not my thinking consciousness, nor my 
 64 
 
THE GIVE-AND-TAKE OF LOVE 65 
 
 will, nor my feelings, but my whole Self, my 
 Ego, to its deepest depths and its fullest con- 
 tent, not differentiated into its several aspects. 
 This need not be described as my subconscious- 
 ness, or subliminal or supraliminal conscious- 
 ness, because we do not know enough about 
 it to give it any such spatial name. It is better 
 to call it simply my Ego, or my spirit. 
 
 And the reception of God’s influence, or in 
 other words the influx of His Spirit, is 
 analogous to this reception of human influence. 
 One of the two aspects of contemplation is that 
 in silence, with no striving of thought or will 
 or feeling for the purpose of obtaining an 
 effect, but with a concentration of the whole 
 being, not on a purpose but on a Person, you 
 receive His Spirit into your spirit; your spirit 
 lies open and susceptible to the influence of 
 His Spirit. When you afterwards think about 
 it, you know that it has been so by its effects 
 upon you; you can then feel and enjoy the 
 tremendous fact of His Presence growing, 
 deepening, brightening—how can language 
 describe it?-—as the years go by. And you 
 find also that when you turn to the other 
 methods of prayer that we have thought of, 
 petition, intercession, praise, thanksgiving, 
 meditation, you come to them enveloped in an 
 
66 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 atmosphere of God’s Presence which gives to 
 all of them an increasing reality. But the very 
 act itself, the reception of God’s influence, is 
 the reception of what is divine, and what, on 
 that account, your human thinking conscious- 
 ness cannot possibly grasp. 
 
 It is a matter of perfect peace; no excite- 
 ment, or straining, or striving, or contriving; 
 and on the other hand no lazy dreaminess or 
 hypnotic lethargy. Contemplation can often 
 be reached by passing straight on from medita- 
 tion. Some of the greatest writers on the sub- 
 ject have earnestly advised that as the best way 
 of escaping the danger of mere dreaminess. 
 You pause so long over a sentence or a thought 
 suggested by what you are reading that the 
 earthly language begins to fade as the bright- 
 ness of His Presence grows. Meditation 
 brings you into contact with Reality, and con- 
 templation keeps you there. It is letting your 
 soul stand in an attitude to receive God. It 
 is knocking at the door, and waiting for God 
 to open. 
 
 2. The second aspect of contemplation is 
 inseparable from the first. Take the words in 
 our Communion Office: “Here we offer and 
 present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves.” Our 
 mind can think about doing this; our will can 
 
THE GIVE-AND-TAKE OF LOVE 67 
 
 determine to do it; our feelings can enjoy the 
 thought, and the determination. But the very 
 act itself, the very offering and presenting, 
 which takes place in silent contemplation, 1s 
 the work of the Ego, the spirit, the whole Self, 
 not differentiated into its several aspects, giv- 
 ing itself to God’s Spirit. The Lord says, 
 “Behold I stand at the door and knock.” In 
 contemplation we realize that He on His part 
 is waiting for us to open; and we hear Him 
 say, “Is thy heart right, as My heart is with 
 thy heart?” 
 
 But what is this mutuality of receiving and 
 offering, the method of which I have called 
 Prayer of Union? There is only one word for 
 it—Love. The method is not dreamy laziness, 
 or anything quietistic or hypnotic; it is the 
 give-and-take of Love. As St. Bernard puts 
 it, it is “God loving Himself [by a love pro- 
 ceeding] from man.” 
 
XIX. FELLOWSHIP 
 
 F it is truly this, it is not selfish, because all 
 mankind is one, the instrument of the Self- 
 expression of the personal Reality. The prin- 
 ciple of representation, of “sympathy,” of 
 priesthood, comes into play here as in all other 
 methods of prayer. Our Prayer of Union 
 works towards the closer union of God with all 
 mankind. 
 
 Some members of the Church have recently 
 made the attempt to realize the true corporate- 
 ness of prayer, by meeting together for the 
 purpose, and joining in what has been called 
 the Fellowship of Silence. It would be of 
 untold value if the silence could sometimes 
 be made an opportunity for united contempla- 
 tion. There is no reason, in the nature of 
 things, why the practice of public worship 
 should not be extended to include all the three 
 methods of prayer. A group of people unite 
 in knocking at the door, and opening to God’s 
 knock. And if they really contemplate, really 
 meet with God in the give-and-take of Love, 
 
 68 
 
FELLOWSHIP 69 
 
 they are at the same time mutually pouring 
 their influence into each other, and therefore 
 drawing each other nearer to God. One word 
 of warning is needed. When they first begin 
 to try, and probably for some time, they will 
 find the difficulty of escaping self-conscious- 
 ness much greater than in solitude. But if 
 they can overcome that by practice and habit, 
 their souls will rise in unison to God. 
 
 Lastly, let it never be forgotten that, as in 
 the case of intercession, spiritual communion 
 has its necessary complement in sacramental 
 communion, wherein, as a united whole, we 
 offer ourselves to God in union with Christ’s 
 eternal Self-offering, and as a united whole re- 
 ceive His Life. It is the sacrament of the 
 give-and-take of Love. 
 
 The Christian Church must continue to train 
 itself in prayer, thereby drawing all men into 
 the vortex of the Love of God, “till we all 
 come in the unity of the Faith and of the knowl- 
 edge of the Son of God, unto a perfect Man, 
 unto the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ.” 
 
ON INTERCESSION 
 
 OMETHING has been said on this subject 
 
 in the preceding pages; but Intercession 
 
 is a spiritual duty so important, and so little 
 practiced or understood by large numbers of 
 Christian people, that it will not be out of place 
 to deal with it here a little more fully. Prayer 
 for others—What does it involve? What are 
 its limits? What are its gains? Many ques- 
 tions rise to our minds; and we must approach 
 them by recalling one or two of the funda- 
 mental aspects of prayer in general. All 
 prayer is a reaching out after the divine Reality 
 which lies at the heart of our being, and at the 
 heart of the world. It is a striving, pressing, 
 feeling after oneness with God. But it has 
 to be remembered that there are countless dif- 
 ferent degrees of oneness with God. Take 
 an illustration from human life. You are at 
 a meeting or conference, and some one gets up 
 —a total stranger to you—and makes a speech, 
 pressing some point with which you are in 
 
 hearty agreement, or proving some point that 
 70 
 
ON INTERCESSION 71 
 
 you did not see before, and making you agree 
 with him. The speaker at once establishes a 
 certain degree of oneness between himself and 
 you. And any degree of oneness carries with 
 it just that degree of admiration or respect. 
 But suppose that you get to know him, and you 
 find on closer acquaintance point after point on 
 which you agree with him; you learn to admire 
 his mind and character, and the feeling might 
 deepen into devoted attachment, affection, love. 
 Every stage in the process means reaching a 
 greater degree of oneness. If that is applied 
 to our relations with God, the process is the 
 Christian life. Some who read this are in far 
 closer oneness with God than others. It is not 
 simply a question of avoiding wrong things and 
 doing right ones; it is something much deeper 
 and more wonderful. How, then, is it done? 
 In order to find yourself in deeper and deeper 
 oneness with your friend, to arrive at devoted 
 affection and love, you obviously require fre- 
 quent conversations, frequent contact, frequent 
 listenings to what he has to say, frequent ex- 
 pressions of agreement and oneness, an absence 
 of any nervous reserve in letting him see your 
 admiration and attachment—not always in 
 words, but always in feeling and sympathy— 
 a steady growing and intensifying of mutual 
 
72 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 intimacy. And towards God all that increase in 
 approach and intimacy is reached by prayer. 
 
 Here we have to do only with petitions for 
 other people. What part will they play in our 
 growing oneness with God? When we ask for 
 something, and get exactly what we want, it is 
 very nice and satisfying. And it happens very 
 often, as all the saints of God can tell you. If 
 free spirit, the spirit of man, can to some ex- 
 tent control the forces of Nature and adapt 
 them to his purposes, can we say less of the 
 Spirit of God? If man can do many things, 
 consciously and with purpose, in answer to 
 petitions, can God do less? The difficulty seems 
 to begin when we ask for something and do not 
 get it. We must remember that God has His 
 purposes, not only for our little individual 
 lives, but great and untraceable purposes for 
 the human race as a whole. Some of those 
 purposes He cannot fulfill without our co- 
 operation, because we possess the extraordinary 
 power of voluntary choice, a will which is able 
 to help or hinder Him. Every time we offer 
 Him a genuine prayer, what is the effect? We 
 do not force or persuade Him to give us what 
 we ask for. But we get into touch with His 
 power. His power is there, ready to be used, 
 and in those things in which He needs our co- 
 
ON INTERCESSION 73 
 
 operation we voluntarily set it in motion, so 
 to speak. Very often we cannot see in what 
 direction our prayer has its effect; we can only 
 feel sure that we are contributing something 
 towards making the divine energy active and 
 fruitful. As regards our immediate request 
 His answer to our prayer may be the answer, 
 No; but every prayer does something towards 
 the fulfillment of the world-wide purposes of 
 God; somehow, somewhere, we are making a 
 difference in the life of mankind. It needs a 
 very broad outlook and. a very earnest desire 
 for God’s glory to make us go on praying when 
 we do not appear to be answered. 
 
 But we can always comfort ourselves, not 
 only by sheer faith that we are accomplishing 
 something in the world, but by pointing to two 
 definite effects of which we can be quite cer- 
 tain. On the one hand, by asking for anything 
 in humble and loving dependence, we can ex- 
 press our relationship of children to a Father. 
 That is to say, our intercessions for those who 
 are known and dear to us, or known and not 
 dear, or not known at all, quite apart from their 
 results to us or them, are an offering to God; 
 every true prayer that we breathe is a transla- 
 tion into words or thoughts of the inarticulate 
 language of love, and has the same effect as 
 
74 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 would be reached if we were able to go on and 
 on saying with real earnestness and meaning 
 the two words, “our Father.” If more of His 
 children could only realize that they can throw 
 themselves into prayer—on any subject, at any 
 time or place, in any attitude, with any words 
 or no words—for His delight, He would get 
 so much more from them than He does. On 
 the other hand, nothing that we can do to give 
 Him delight fails to react upon ourselves. To 
 be in touch with His power by any sort of pe- 
 tition contributes to our own spiritual growth. 
 If people live for some time in a foreign coun- 
 try they not only learn the language and catch 
 the accent, but gradually change to some ex- 
 tent in manner and habits and even in appear- 
 ance, and become like those around them. And 
 if your heart travels frequently to the Presence 
 of God, and you talk with Him, you will 
 gradually be transformed into the same Image. 
 The one thing you want to get and keep is con- 
 tact, to be naturally and easily in touch. 
 
 Let us now look more particularly at our 
 prayers for other people. Our requests for 
 our own personal needs so easily slide into - 
 selfishness or self-centeredness, or self-pity, 
 that to pray for others is a safer and surer 
 method of putting ourselves in tune with the 
 
ON INTERCESSION 75 
 
 great love of God. And to be in tune with His 
 love means the same as to be in touch with 
 His power. God is love, and any expression 
 of our love in intercession is, by its very nature, 
 cooperation with Him. We are contributing 
 to the world-wide forward movement towards 
 the satisfying of His love. When we come 
 to look at the matter closely most of us find that 
 what makes our intercessions so feeble and 
 lifeless is chiefly that we have not reached that 
 love and longing for the souls of men which 
 can put us really into tune with the love of 
 God. Our love and longing are not to be 
 simply the natural affection that we feel for 
 those nearest and dearest to us. We can easily 
 be moved to utter fervent petitions for them 
 when any special need arises. The love that is 
 most akin to God’s love, and which therefore 
 does the most work, is the love for human souls 
 as such; the longing that that which is made in 
 His Image may grow nearer to His fullness. 
 That kind of love, while it naturally comes 
 easiest for our family and close friends, can be 
 extended in genuine reality to reach out to all 
 men. 
 
 And that thought, in turn, can afford us a 
 welcome relief from a difficulty felt by many 
 which has already been referred to in Chapter 
 
76 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 XII. Imagine the millions upon millions of 
 things that we should have to pray about if we 
 started praying for all the needs of the world. 
 How are we to pick and choose? And how 
 many things ought we to pray for? I have met 
 some people who were anxious to pray well, 
 and were really burdened by the feeling of the 
 vast number of petitions that they ought to 
 offer but cannot for want of time. What are 
 we to do? Well, one thing is quite clear, that 
 only God can know the individual needs of 
 every one, and therefore if the value of our 
 prayers depended upon our knowledge of in- 
 dividual needs, there are millions of human 
 beings who would never be prayed for at all, 
 and unnumbered millions of things that human 
 beings need, but of which no praying person 
 knew anything. The working out of God’s 
 purposes is dependent on our codperation, but 
 not on our knowledge. What we have to do 
 is to love the souls of men so truly that we 
 really and deeply desire the fulfillment of 
 God’s purposes for every one of them. And 
 if we could abide permanently in that state of 
 desire, we should have no need to offer any de- 
 tailed petitions at all. God knoweth what every 
 one in the world hath need of before we ask 
 Him, He does not require us to give Him 
 
ON INTERCESSION a i 
 
 information on the subject. It is not knowl- 
 edge that is wanted; it is the conscious, vol- 
 untary state of desire; it is the being in tune 
 with His love, and therefore in touch with 
 His power. But because our minds are unable 
 to abide consciously more than a very short 
 time in that condition, we find it a help to 
 resort to details; they are specimens, tangible 
 points, handles by which the mind keeps its 
 hold on the universal desire. And I am sure 
 that we ought, in our self-training, to practice 
 the large desire, and try to make it play a 
 much bigger part in our prayers than it usually 
 does, and only turn for help to details from 
 time to time when the mind needs them. That 
 is exactly what we have in our Lord’s pattern 
 prayer. It is not simply words to be said, it is 
 a summing up of the whole method and pro- 
 gram of our petitions. First He illustrates in 
 three different ways the great universal desire 
 for the working out of God’s purposes in the 
 souls and bodies of men: “Hallowed be Thy 
 Name”; “Thy Kingdom come”; “Thy Will be 
 done.” And then He gives four specimens of 
 detailed petitions that we can use as helps: 
 “Give us this day our daily bread”; “Forgive 
 us our trespasses”; “Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion”; “Deliver us from evil.” All four are 
 
78 SELF-TRAINING IN PRAYER 
 
 intercessions because the words “us” and “our” 
 include all mankind—at least they ought to if 
 we practice the kind of prayer of which the 
 Lord’s prayer is an example and guide. They 
 add literally nothing to the threefold universal 
 petition which precedes them, in fact they do 
 not nearly cover it; they are a wise and merci- 
 ful concession to the limitations of the human 
 mind, and show us that we are justified in men- 
 tioning details in our intercessions provided 
 they are kept in their proper place. To pray 
 well is not the same as to pray regularly, or 
 often, or carefully, or beautifully, or diligently. 
 It is to desire continuously—“without ceasing,” 
 as St. Paul says—that the desire of God may 
 be achieved. 
 (1) 
 
Ana 
 “ai , 
 
 
 
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BOOKS OF RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION 
 By SHAILER MATHEWS and Thirteen Contributors 
 
 How modern science conceives the universe, and how 
 the conception of God is necessary to complete it. 
 
 RELIGION AND THE MIND OF TODAY 
 By JOSEPH A. LEIGHTON 
 
 A sincere, unbiased, reverent study of the confusion 
 between the spirits of scientific inquiry and religious 
 
 faith, $2.50 
 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SPIRITUAL 
 IDEAL 
 
 By FELIX ADLER 
 The Hibbert Lectures of 1923. Dr. Adler’s ge a 
 phy applied to burning questions of the day. $1.50 
 
 RELIGION AND LIFE 
 By DEAN INGE and Others 
 
 Six connected chapters by eminent thinkers, on the 
 fundamentals of personal religion. 
 
 A CENTURY OF ANGLICAN THEOLOGY 
 By CLEMENT C. J. WEBB 
 Theological developments in the Church of England 
 and their relations with modern thought and ei ; 
 Ms 
 RELIGION AND NATURAL LAW 
 By C. F. RUSSELL 
 Clears away difficulties between religion and eres 
 HUMAN RELATIONS IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST 
 By H. C. CARTER 
 Applications of Christianity to modern human life. 
 i 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS BY A NOVELIST 
 By GUSTAV FRENSSEN 
 
 Simple, straightforward little talks on Christian 
 essentials. $1.50 
 
 CONCERNING CHRIST 
 
 By A. C. McNEILE 
 Fundamental truths of Christianity for the world to- 
 
 day. $1.50 
 
 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 New York London 
 
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