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 .VILLIAM WATSON 
 
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 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mrs. Donald Sinclair 
 
 BV 205 .W376 
 Watson, William. 
 Prayer 
 
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PRAYE 
 
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 f'a,'GI(lALSt^ 
 
 WILLIAM WATSON, M.A 
 
 0LAT70HT0N, BIBKENHXiS 
 
 CINCINNATI : JENNINGS AND GRAHAM. 
 NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS. 
 
MY WIFE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE NATURE OF PRAYER • » • 9 
 
 II. THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER . . 32 
 
 III. THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER . . ,52 
 
 IV. THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER . . , 74 
 
 V. THE GAIN OF PRAYER , . • ,96 
 
L 
 
 THE NATUEE OF PKATER. 
 
 If one were to write a history of 
 Christian prayer we should possess a 
 record of the lives of the saintliest souls. 
 It would indeed be a narrative of human 
 incidents, but with very much in it that 
 could not be readily explained in the 
 terms of ordinary human experience. 
 There would certainly be more of God 
 than of man in it, but we should not be 
 unwilling to accept it though an air of 
 mystery hung about it all which we 
 could neither penetrate nor raise. There 
 would be much in it that would be 
 kindred to our own feeling and life. A 
 history of prayer would be the history of 
 religion, the account of the origin and 
 end of man's spiritual beHefs and hopes. 
 It would be the rehearsal of God's long 
 
10 PRAYER. 
 
 intercourse with the race, at their lowest 
 and at their best. 
 
 That history cannot yet be written. 
 The time for it has not come. We shall 
 only be able to read it in that far-off day 
 when man's life has been spiritually per- 
 fected, and when God's love has subdued 
 all things to itself, and He is all in all. 
 
 Prayer is a great necessity, as well as 
 a great duty, an instinct, as it is an 
 obligation. It is natural for us to pray. 
 We are never so wise as when we pray. 
 It is then we are completely and trans- 
 parently ourselves. And we are wisest 
 when, though it be but for a few moments, 
 we withdraw ourselves from human inter- 
 course, and from crowded hours, and 
 with our personal wants and burdens, 
 fall down alone before our Father, and 
 tell Him all, and gain the calm and 
 strength of His fellowship. It is then 
 we best understand how we can become 
 His children again. Such knowledge 
 will not come readily to us amid the 
 stress of ordinary toil. Solitary prayer 
 
THE NATURE OP PRAYER, 11 
 
 is, among its other blessings, an occasion 
 of unusual insight into God's will and 
 our own needs. Truth and duty are 
 disclosed to us then as in no other hour, 
 and a man never knows God or himself 
 except in an interview at which there is 
 present no one but God and himself. 
 
 Besides, there are regions of emotion 
 and experience in every human spirit 
 where certainly no stranger dare intrude, 
 and with which our best-loved friend 
 may not attempt to intermeddle. We 
 are never so safe as when we are near 
 God. There is no possibility of disguise 
 there. We may indeed play falsely with 
 ourselves in such a sacred act, but our 
 insincerity destroys our prayer, and 
 we gain nothing but shame and self- 
 contempt. 
 
 What is prayer? Many definitions 
 have been given ; the Bible gives us 
 none. This silence is suggestive. The 
 Bible never proves the reality of prayer 
 any more than it proves the existence of 
 
12 PRATER. 
 
 God. It takes the one for granted as 
 completely as the other. Its doctrine is 
 a simple one : God exists ; He is the 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 Him. God cannot but be ; man cannot 
 but cry to Him. And so it has no 
 account to give of the reason why man 
 has always prayed, or of the methods by 
 which God has always met his prayer. 
 
 Any difficulty that may be felt by us 
 to-day with respect to the origin and 
 nature of prayer is as old as prayer itself 
 is. Man still prays, though, after all these 
 centuries of experience he remains quite 
 ignorant of the root and scope and laws 
 of prayer. He may have *' no language 
 but a cry," but he feels he has to utter 
 that cry, however blindly, to some 
 one. From the first day of his existence 
 prayer has been one of the strongest 
 forces in his nature. It expressed itself 
 in his recurring sense of weakness under 
 the pressure of his ignorance. It came 
 with his tears when sorrow struck his 
 heart, and loss changed his home. It 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYER. 13 
 
 came with his joys when their very fresh- 
 ness made him sing his song of thaoJiful- 
 ness. It has always been with him, a 
 power as real as his power of sight and 
 hearing and speech. It is his soul 
 breathing in its effort to live. It will 
 continue as long as mankind lasts. 
 Prayer is man's life touching its source. 
 Clement of Alexandria says " the 
 prayers God hears are the thoughts 
 within our mind." T. H. Green defines 
 prayer as " a wish referred to God." The 
 Shorter Catechism says : " Prayer is the 
 offering up of our desires unto God for 
 things agreeable to His will, in the name 
 of Christ, with confession of our sins 
 and thankful acknowledgment of His 
 mercies." These may not be full defini- 
 tions — they may rather be descriptions 
 of prayer — but they express what is at 
 the very basis of prayer, a sense, not 
 only of relationship to God in virtue of 
 a common nature, but a sense of depend- 
 ence on Him as the only source of help 
 in time of weakness and need. The very 
 
14 PRATER. 
 
 existence of this instinct helps to explain 
 the coarse idolatry of the savage as truly 
 as the happy worship of the Christian. 
 It is not a vague force that terminates 
 nowhere. Man is what he is, a grander 
 being than the creatures he fears or 
 slays, simply because of this reaching 
 out of his nature to something, or some 
 one, beyond himself. The most foolish 
 judgment ever passed on prayer is that 
 which calls it a fiction, an invention, an 
 imagination of man. It is the divinest 
 thing man has. It is because he is a 
 praying being that man is a rehgioua 
 being. A prayerless religion is no 
 religion. And the more spiritual the 
 religion, the purer and loftier is the 
 prayer, and man is never at his best and 
 strongest as a moral creature, except in 
 those times when prayer, " man's rational 
 prerogative," as Wordsworth terms it, is 
 simplest and most confidential. 
 
 Whatever may be the direction of the 
 future development of the human race, 
 it cannot have the comfort and hope of 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYER. 15 
 
 religion without the reaUty of prayer. 
 As prayer lessens, the force of the unseen 
 lessens. We are amazed at the quick 
 progress of mankind, and never has the 
 advance been more rapid than in our 
 own generation, and yet with all the 
 changes which our civilisation has 
 wrought, our common human nature in 
 its roots and tendencies remains quite 
 unaltered. The increase of our goods 
 has not satisfied our hunger. The 
 hunger indeed is the occasion of the 
 increase, and did we not ever cry for 
 more we should have no gladness in 
 any gain. The most ancient thing in 
 human life is this inner yearning. Man 
 is not content with tilling his fields and 
 rounding off his daily labour with nightly 
 sleep. He associates with his fellows, but 
 leaves them again and again, persuaded 
 that they are as feeble and as destitute 
 as himself. He wants something more 
 than the joy of labour and society. He 
 will stretch out his hands, and lift his 
 thoughts beyond himself and his place, 
 
16 PBAYER. 
 
 and believe that some one unseen takes 
 note of all the movements of his inner 
 life. 
 
 This haunting sense of incompleteness 
 cannot be a vain imagination, and so 
 strong a tendency to call on God, cannot 
 be based on a fictitious or passing senti- 
 ment. No force in him can thrive or 
 grow unless it have its adequate environ- 
 ment, and the cry that breaks so often 
 from within his heart must have its 
 answer from without. The eye was 
 made for light, and the sunshine falls on 
 sea and meadow and flower, and makes 
 man's spirit rejoice. The ear was made 
 for sound, and the music of bird and 
 stream and human voice lifts him 
 upward to wide invisible realms. The 
 human spirit in its very make justifies 
 the reasonableness of prayer : and the 
 prayer it prays is as much the sign of 
 its own natural way of living, as it is 
 the expression of its ignorance and help- 
 lessness and its need of God. 
 
 There is nothing grander than a soul 
 
THE NATURE OF PEATBR. 17 
 
 on bended knees. Is there not some 
 significance in the construction of our 
 life, when we find that this natural 
 instinct of prayer is fortified by experi- 
 ences of various kinds that drive us, 
 almost against our will, outside of and 
 beyond ourselves ? Man has ever been 
 a seeker, a wanderer in a world too 
 strange and cold and uncertain to be his 
 home. If he has journeyed in strange 
 places and stumbled painfully in the 
 darkness, his hands have always been 
 stretched out, if haply they might find 
 a guide whose friendly aid would be 
 abiding, and his ear has ever listened 
 for a message he could trust. 
 
 •* Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit 
 Roam'd ere birth the treasuries of God, 
 Saw the gifts, the power it might inherit 
 Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road." 
 
 Man is lonely, blind, lost, until he finds 
 God and speaks to Him, and God's joy 
 is not complete until He finds His child 
 ftnd hears him pray. 
 
 p. V 
 
18 PRAYEE. 
 
 The Bible always honours and rever. 
 ences this instinct of prayer. Its serious 
 regard for man at his best is one of 
 those notes of Scripture which are as 
 true and deep as its picture of God's 
 love for him at his worst. It is a bock 
 of prayers, because it is a history of 
 human hearts. For us in these later 
 days it is impressive to turn back the 
 pages of Scripture and read the prayers 
 of that earlier time, and learn how easily 
 religion was made to fit into life, and 
 how glad and fearless human hearts 
 were in God. There was no hesitancy 
 in their voice when these people spoke 
 to their unseen Lord. In whatever 
 darkness He might dwell, they were 
 sure He heard. Like Faber's old 
 labourer, their 
 
 *• One thought was God: 
 In that one thought they abode, 
 For ever in that thought more deeply sinking,** 
 
 He was their nearest Friend, and it was 
 no more unnatural for them to call 
 
THE NATUKE OP PBAYER. 19 
 
 upon His name and to keep in fellow- 
 ship with Him, than it would be for a 
 child in his father's house to ask gifts 
 from his father's hands. 
 
 We might expect that these prayers 
 would read like stumbling ventures, the 
 tentative struggles of half-awakened 
 souls who were ignorant of the way in 
 which they sought to go, and uncertain 
 of the help they needed. It is not so. 
 They are prayers that carry a strength 
 that only confiding natures have, and 
 are as pure as are the cries of the wiser 
 Christian souls of our modern time. 
 We marvel at the moral heights to 
 which the men and women of that day 
 rose, and the readiness with which 
 they walked those heights with God. 
 Life, it is true, was not so complex as 
 it has since become, but the burdens 
 and fears and sins of the personal soul 
 were not less oppressive than they have 
 ever been. People then wept and failed, 
 hoped and despaired, as unmistakably 
 as people do now, and felt as keenly, too, 
 
 b2 
 
20 PRAYER. 
 
 the pain and perplexity of existence. 
 But they could step fearlessly where 
 we move haltingly. They could not 
 tell whither they went, nor altogether 
 why they went, but they always knew 
 to whom they went. Fearing the Lord 
 with all the filial reverence that comes 
 from long experience. His secret was 
 with them, and they greatly dared and 
 greatly believed. 
 
 Look at such a career as that of 
 Abraham ; full of interests and duties, 
 and not unmixed with gross faults, yet he 
 holds himself in such terms of fellowship 
 with the Most High that he is known 
 distinctively as " the friend of God." 
 The patriarch's acceptance of the divine 
 will is not a blind obedience, but an 
 intelligent and devout surrender. He 
 is too sure of God's word to believe He 
 will mislead. His prayer is trustful 
 conversation, with all the wonder of a 
 child in the heart of it, but all the 
 unreserved confidence of the child as 
 well. He builds his altars as he journeys 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYER. 21 
 
 from place to place, reverently worships 
 his unseen Guide, " calls upon the name 
 of the Lord," and quietly waits the divine 
 direction. What the Christian mystics 
 of the middle ages loved to call the 
 practice of the presence of God was the 
 continual habit of his soul. It seems 
 to have caused him no surprise that his 
 Divine Visitor should come and go while 
 he is occupied with his needful work, 
 and should talk to him of great things 
 yet to be, and hedge his pastoral life with 
 promises and hopes that strengthened 
 his faith and made ordinary things 
 sublime. " And the Lord appeared unto 
 him as he sat in the tent door in the 
 heat of the day." 
 
 Prayer in that old time was con- 
 verse, — unrestrained, devout intercourse 
 with God about the common incidents 
 of life : the day's wanderings, the day's 
 labour, the cares of the family, the life 
 of the children, the disposal of property, 
 and all the future too of the unborn 
 generations. And whatever criticism 
 
PRAYER. 
 
 may make of these Old Testament stories 
 it cannot destroy the reality and beauty 
 of the filial spirit that breathes through 
 them, the recognition of God as the 
 closest friend, unfailing in His provi- 
 dence and love. Man does not make 
 fictions out of his holiest emotions, and 
 then fit them to the facts. Had the 
 facts not been what they were, these 
 emotions could not have taken the course 
 they did. These make prayer possible. 
 It is one thing, however, to have a sense 
 of God, and another to believe that He is 
 near. It was belief in His nearness 
 that made the prayers of these men and 
 women strong. They could write no 
 philosophy of prayer, and only very 
 rarely did they question either its neces- 
 sity or value. They seem to have felt, 
 what we in our day have almost failed to 
 feel, that prayer is always a test of char- 
 acter. A man is never himself unless 
 he can deliberately place himself within 
 the light of God, and stand still while it 
 streams into every corner of his life. 
 
THE NATURE OP PRATER. 28 
 
 Not a few of us dread the sight of our own 
 hearts when it is given us in that way. 
 Prayer, as much as conscience, is apt " to 
 make cowards of us all," just because it 
 is the steady confronting of self with 
 God, when His hand unveils the con- 
 cealed and shameful things of our soul. 
 As a man prays, so a man is. 
 
 The visible life of these men and 
 women of the Old Testament was so much 
 touched by the invisible, that they lived 
 always within the scrutiny of the divine 
 judgment. That is why they put them- 
 selves so completely into their prayers. 
 There are no confessions, or longings, or 
 thanksgivings in any religious literature, 
 like those in the Old Testament. Even 
 their selfishness, as we should term it, is 
 redeemed from sordidness by the over- 
 mastering thought of God which is in 
 the mind of him who prays. Jacob can- 
 not keep the bargaining spirit out of 
 his most solemn vows, but it is his con- 
 sciousness of God that saves his prayer 
 from degenerating to the low level 
 
24 PRAYER. 
 
 to which it might easily enough have 
 fallen. " If God will be with me and 
 will keep me in this way that I go, and 
 will give me bread to eat and raiment to 
 put on, so that I come again to my 
 father's house in peace, then shall the 
 Lord be my God ; and this stone which 
 I have set up for a pillar shall be God's 
 house, and of all that Thou shalt give me, 
 I will surely give the tenth unto Thee." 
 A crude prayer, we say ; narrow in its 
 aim, with no wide horizon, no self-for- 
 getfulness and quiet gratitude ; and yet 
 through it all there is the recognition of 
 the relationship of the soul to the 
 eternal, the link that binds the wan- 
 derer to the yearning heart, the con- 
 viction that after all, go where he will 
 and do what he may, he can never be 
 better off than when he keeps close to 
 his God. A man who begins with that 
 estimate of himself is certain, as exper- 
 iences increase, to reach a higher view 
 some day, and to work with a devouter 
 idea of the Almighty. Christian people 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYER. 25 
 
 even in our own time, with their larger 
 knowledge of God and more varied 
 experience of life, have not seldom 
 uttered more selfish prayers, and have 
 carried a mercenary motive into what 
 seemed their most earnest supplications. 
 They have worked with an impoverished 
 idea of God. But in the case of the 
 religious souls of the early world, whose 
 histories are written for us in the Old 
 Testament, it was the conviction of God 
 as brooding constantly over them, mov- 
 ing in their actions, and will, and affection, 
 that dominated their life. It had woven 
 itself inextricably into every fibre of 
 their moral nature. It was the secret of 
 their goodness; it explains the pain of 
 their remorse, the hope they felt amid 
 their sorest disappointments and sorrows, 
 and the calm with which they died. 
 The sunshine has no service to give for 
 the flower that stays within the dull 
 narrow corner of the field. These men 
 and women lived in the open, and 
 were ready to let God see them and 
 
26 PRAYER. 
 
 teach them, and work His will within 
 them. They never gave up prayer, 
 because they did not give up God. 
 
 Petition was the least part of their 
 prayer. Prayer was such complete sub- 
 mission to the authority of God as would 
 enable them to have His will done 
 through them. Abraham prays for a 
 son, but it is not more for the gladness 
 of his home than that by such a gift he 
 may understand that incredible word 
 that had come to him in an earlier day, 
 that his descendants would possess the 
 land into which he had gone as a 
 stranger. He cannot read the future 
 unless the facts of the present are more 
 visible. His prayer, therefore, is the 
 honest expression of an eager childlike 
 soul who can trust God, but yet wishes 
 to know His way. Do we not love this 
 man all the more that there is hesitancy, 
 wonder, in his prayer ? His emotions are 
 our own. He speaks not our language, he 
 lives not in our land or time, but his sur- 
 prise is our surprise and his fear our fear. 
 
THE NATURE OF PEAYER. 27 
 
 Eliezer asks that God may give him 
 good speed on his journey, but it is all 
 for the sake of the master he serves. 
 He has a simple doctrine of God. He 
 believes that God is in life, moves and 
 works in all its common business. 
 He does not ask to be saved from an 
 unpleasant task, he only wan s to be 
 helped to interpret providence and read 
 signs and tokens of the divine will in 
 casual occurrences. He is sending his 
 faith and prayer to practice. 
 
 We lose more perhaps by what we 
 leave out of our prayers than by what we 
 wrongly place within them. The narrow 
 survey of our own needs limits our sup- 
 plications, and makes us less conscious 
 of the wealth and willingness of God. 
 The faith that can venture far is the 
 faith that can carry the most to God, and 
 where we are perplexing ourselves about 
 the range of our petitions and the reality 
 of God's interest in us, this serving man 
 by the well is firmly holding the wise 
 and helping Hand. 
 
28 PRAYER. 
 
 If prayer reveals our thought of God 
 it also shows us ourselves. Prayer indeed 
 is less a beseeching of the divine Heart 
 than a proof of our own spiritual 
 worth. " Behold he prayeth," and a 
 man is estimated by his prayer. Prayer 
 indicates the measure of our faith in 
 Him to whom we speak. It declares in 
 what degree we are hoping in His sym- 
 pathy and love, but it affirms also our 
 thought about our own character. It 
 discloses whether our life is attached to 
 God because of what God is in Himself, 
 or because of what we expect Him to 
 give us, whether we love Him for a gain 
 which is merely a temporal comfort, or 
 for a godliness which is eternal life. 
 
 The simplicity and naturalness that 
 mark the prayers of the Old Testament 
 are found in those recorded in the New 
 Testament, and especially in the prayers 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. His life was 
 spent continually in doing good, wholly 
 consecrated to its great spiritual purpose, 
 but was full of prayer, finding occasions 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYBB. 29 
 
 and hours in which it was alone with 
 God. It is not possible for us to under- 
 stand fully why it was needful He should 
 pray. Few details are given of His lonely 
 vigils. What He said in those hours no 
 human pen has written. The roots of 
 His inner life were buried far down in 
 holy ground. Yet we can trace here and 
 there, above the surface, small portions of 
 these roots. We have not only the record 
 of His actions, and the reverence and calm 
 with which He blessed the bread before 
 He brake it, and prayed before He 
 healed, but the mention of an occasional 
 word like " Abba " that showed how 
 strongly His soul trusted God. 
 
 And once He stated the contents of 
 one of His own prayers. " Simon, Simon, 
 behold Satan asked to have you that He 
 might sift you as wheat: but I made 
 supplication for thee that thy faith fail 
 not." What a startling announcement 
 to Peter, what a disclosure of the sym- 
 pathetic intercession of the greatest 
 heart in the universe ! The two prayers 
 
80 PEAYER. 
 
 whose words are preserved, the prayer 
 of thanksgiving which He offered when 
 His disciples returned with joy exulting 
 in their victories over the demons, and 
 His prayer in Gethsemane, show not 
 merely that prayer was natural to Christ, 
 but a great necessity and delight. 
 
 His prayers are brief, spontaneous, 
 earnest. He sees things as they are, 
 knows the moral perils of the world, the 
 temptations that assault the human will 
 and heart, and feels that God must be 
 sought for refuge and strength. And we 
 may well believe that such stories as He 
 told of the friend petitioning at midnight 
 (Luke xi., 5 — 8), the child asking for food 
 (Luke xi., 11 — 13), and the importunate 
 widow (Luke xviii., 1 — 8), were spoken 
 out of the secrets of His own supplica- 
 tion, and His own experience of need. 
 The simplicity of His prayers was not 
 disturbed by any shadow of misgiving as 
 to their utility and place in His own life. 
 The faith of His soul in God, His love 
 for holy things. His conflict in an evil 
 
THE NATURE OF PRAYER. SI 
 
 world, the hunger of His heart for fellow- 
 ship, His devotion to His friends and to 
 the weary lost souls that followed Him, 
 made him pray; and not once only, we 
 may be certain, but often was it true, 
 **He continued all night in prayer to 
 God." 
 
n. 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF PRATEE. 
 
 To pray is to speak to God. Can we 
 tell God anything which He does not 
 know? If, in our speaking to God, 
 we ask Him for anything, is it possible 
 for us by so asking to overcome some 
 reluctance on His part to grant our 
 request ? Is He not always willing and 
 merciful and kind, and does our crying 
 to Him make Him more so ? Can we by 
 anything we say affect His will and 
 work a change in His mind ? If we can, 
 does this not mean that the unchange- 
 able God can by the importunity of man 
 be made to alter His purposes, and if He 
 alters them in response to our entreaty, 
 is He not thereby finite rather than 
 infinite? If God can listen to man's 
 will, how can His own will be done ? 
 
THE PURPOSE OP PRATER. 88 
 
 These are questions which, in more or 
 less varying forms, occur to every mind 
 that thinks seriously about prayer. These 
 questions will always be asked. They 
 arise inevitably from the very nature of 
 prayer. It is a relationship of the finite 
 spiritof man with the infinite Spirit whom 
 we call God. All problems that gather 
 round this relationship have their diffi- 
 culties. On the intellectual side they 
 are beyond our present knowledge, but 
 there is another side where they do not 
 press at all. 
 
 Prayer is communion with God, the 
 inward speech of the human heart with 
 its Creator. We have regarded prayer 
 too much as petition, and, with this 
 inadequate idea of it, we have limited its 
 range and often questioned its force. It 
 is quite true that when we pray we beg, 
 but we are something more than sup- 
 pliants, and the highest act of the soul is 
 not asking. It would be strange all the 
 same if we did not ask, and ask very fre- 
 quently. The inevitable imperfections 
 
 p. 
 
34 PRATER. 
 
 of our life make us beggars. The better 
 we know ourselves the better we know 
 our defects. The self-complacency that 
 asks, "What lack I yet?" is the mark 
 of a life that is morally dead. The soul 
 is overburdened by its own unfinished 
 life. Its contini il movement downwards 
 or upwards is the evidence of a great 
 recurring need. The man who does not 
 ask for something is scarcely a human 
 being. 
 
 To limit prayer, however, to petition, 
 is to limit the free movement of man's 
 own spirit. He can be other than a 
 beggar, other than even a seeker for divine 
 gifts ; he can prove himself a son and 
 confess that his true life only has its 
 hunger met when he rests in friendship 
 with God. There is a great difference 
 between believing in prayer because you 
 get and believing in it whether you get 
 or are refused. 
 
 The quality, therefore, of our prayers 
 may be judged by the object we have in 
 view. The man who sincerely and in- 
 
THE PURPOSE OP PRAYER. 85 
 
 telligently believes in God will never be 
 satisfied with the position of a suppliant. 
 Prayer is intercourse with God, and such 
 intercourse as a child may freely have 
 with its parent. The human household 
 is kept together, not by its giving and 
 receiving of temporal things, but by its 
 moral atmosphere, its common confi- 
 dence and affection ; and not seldom are 
 those homes the richest that have little 
 or nothing of this world's goods, but are 
 generous in their attachments, self-sacri- 
 ficing and self-forgetful in their deeds, 
 and where the inmates feel themselves 
 not so much separate individuals as a 
 little complete world whose every move- 
 ment is regulated and inspired by un- 
 feigned love. 
 
 The divine government of the world 
 has, as its central principle, the educa- 
 tion of mankind out of low conditions 
 into high conditions ; and prayer works 
 in the line of such a growth. It is 
 designed to raise us nearer God, to 
 stimulate our nature to larger achieve- 
 
 o2 
 
36 PBATBR. 
 
 merits, to unfold that which is holiest 
 within us. It often happens that the best 
 result of our prayer is the awakening oi 
 our spirit to the presence of God as the 
 satisfaction of our deepest need. 
 
 The source of our most common mis- 
 judgments of prayer lies in our forget- 
 fulness of that truth. People are apt 
 to test the validity as well as the value 
 of prayer by the answers that come 
 to it. They very often anticipate the 
 answers. Where the answer does not 
 come as they expected it, they begin 
 to doubt whether it is worth their while 
 to pray. But it needs little proof to 
 show that this is a mistaken view of 
 prayer and its purpose. God has not 
 promised to answer every prayer, nor is 
 every prayer, even when earnestly offered 
 to God, wise in the expression of the 
 heart's real wants. There is no part of 
 our life that requires more scrutiny and 
 carefulness than the devotional side. 
 
 It is not surprising that so much is 
 said in Scripture about prayer, because, 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRATEB. 37 
 
 easy though praying seems to be as an 
 act of mind and soul, there is no exertion 
 of our nature that ought to be made 
 with more deliberation and wisdom. 
 Jacob is said to have wrestled with a 
 divine combatant all through the night 
 by the lonely stream side ; but he 
 wrestled as truly with himself as with his 
 unknown antagonist. He learned a great 
 lesson about prayer in that encounter. 
 No one should pass consciously and 
 deliberately into the presence of God 
 without realizing what must be involved 
 in that act and the interview that follows 
 it. It is a gathering together of the 
 soul's powers that they may be firmly 
 set on God. We cannot collect ourselves 
 for an act of intercourse with our unseen 
 Lord without remembering that He is 
 wiser and holier than we. The misuse 
 of prayer is the misuse of God. To con- 
 fine it to petition is to belittle God in the 
 time of the most solemn action of our 
 soul. "Ye ask, and receive not, because 
 ye ask amiss." It is a common error. 
 
PRATEB. 
 
 What is necessary then to a true con- 
 ception of the end of prayer? A true 
 conception of God. Our prayers are 
 governed and moulded and inspired by 
 our thought of God. What thought of 
 God is in your mind when you pray ? 
 If your prayer is wrong, it is because 
 your thought of God is wrong. The 
 defective suppKcations of Christendom 
 spring from a false idea of God. 
 
 We marvel at times at the spacious 
 prayers contained in some of the Psalms, 
 and in some of the prophecies of the 
 Old Testament. How easily, yet how 
 grandly, these men of long ago moved 
 among great thoughts of the Creator. 
 The very names they gave Him — 
 "Almighty," "Everlasting," "King," 
 " Lord of Hosts," — reveal the magnitude 
 of the ideas which dominated their 
 minds. These names indicated some- 
 thing real and vast. They represented 
 the supremacy of the divine control, 
 its absoluteness in great things as in 
 small. A man who uttered such prayers 
 
THE PURPOSE OP PRAYER. 39 
 
 never felt himself lost in the unlimited 
 largeness of the universe, but was sure 
 that He who knew all and was every- 
 where could never forget the least of 
 His creatures, or be uninterested in 
 him. '' Lord, Thou hast searched me 
 and known me : Thou knowest my down- 
 sitting and mine uprising. Thou under- 
 standest my thought afar off. There is 
 not a word in my tongue but lo, 
 Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. 
 Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, 
 or whither shall I flee from Thy pre- 
 sence? Search me, God, and know 
 my heart : try me, and know my 
 thoughts ; and see if there be any way 
 of wickedness in me, and lead me in 
 the way everlasting." The majesty of 
 God and the faith of man are brought 
 together in thoughts and words that 
 are only made possible to him who in 
 endeavouring to understand himself 
 strives to come near in reverent belief 
 to his Creator. 
 
 " Lord, I have heard the report of 
 
40 PRAYER. 
 
 Thee, and am afraid : Lord, revive 
 Thy work in the midst of the years : in 
 the midst of the years make known ; in 
 wrath remember mercy. The moun- 
 tains saw Thee, and were troubled ; the 
 sun and moon stood still in their habita- 
 tion. Thou wentest forth for the salva- 
 tion of Thy people. Although the fig 
 tree shall not blossom, neither shall 
 fruit be in the vines, yet I will 
 rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the 
 God of my salvation." 
 
 Are we surprised that the men who 
 thought so grandly about God should 
 write so grandly about Him? Had 
 they not confided in Him so fully, 
 could they have written of Him and of 
 themselves so tranquilly? "The Lord 
 is my shepherd ; I shall not want. He 
 maketh me to lie down in green pastures, 
 He leadeth me beside the still waters. 
 He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I 
 walk through the valley of the shadow 
 of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art 
 with me : Thy rod and Thy staff, they 
 
THH PURPOSE OF PRAYER. 41 
 
 comfort me. Surely goodness and 
 mercy shall follow me all the days of 
 my life, and I will dwell in the house 
 of the Lord for ever." Why do we 
 love that jDsalm in the days of our 
 sorrow ? Is it not for its comforting: 
 thought of God? The music of its 
 language haunts us from childhood to 
 our dying day, but behind its words is 
 something more beautiful and restful 
 still: the presence of the Shepherd; the 
 assurance of the hand that never fails to 
 lift the wounded sheep from the thicket 
 and carry it homeward through the dark 
 and the loneliness. 
 
 So is it with the prayers of the New 
 Testament. It is the thought of God in 
 the heart of them that makes them 
 effectual and fervent. If Paul had had 
 no large experience of God's fellowship 
 and grace he could not have uttered the 
 prayers for his friends that are contained 
 in some of his letters. There is nothing 
 timid, hesitating, small, selfish, about 
 these prayers. " I bow my knees unto 
 
42 pniTBja. 
 
 the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 from whom the whole family in heaven 
 and earth is named, that He would 
 grant you, according to the riches of His 
 glory, that ye may be strengthened 
 with power through His Spirit in the 
 inward man, that Christ may dwell in 
 your hearts through faith, to the end 
 that ye, being rooted and grounded in 
 love, may be strong to apprehend with 
 all the saints what is the breadth and 
 length and height and depth, and to 
 know the love of Christ, which passeth 
 knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all 
 the fulness of God." Could any man 
 pray such a prayer for his friends unless 
 he had a clear and lofty conception of 
 God ? It is the great earnest cry of a 
 great earnest heart. 
 
 So also is it with such prayers of our 
 Lord as are recorded in the Gospels. We 
 cannot explain altogether why it was 
 that He prayed, but the fact that He 
 did pray, and prayed frequently and 
 alone, indicates that He attached 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER. 48 
 
 momentous significance to prayer. 
 There is ample witness to that in the 
 prayers that the Evangelists record. 
 How simple and unwavering they are, 
 and what far reaches they take ! ''Holy 
 Father, keep through Thine own name 
 those whom Thou hast given Me, that 
 they may be one even as we are. 
 Sanctify them through Thy truth; 
 Thy word is- truth. Father, I will that 
 they also whom Thou hast given Me be 
 with Me where I am, that they may 
 behold My glory which Thou hast given 
 Me, for Thou lovedst Me before the 
 foundation of the world." It is not 
 possible to read such prayers without 
 feeling the breath of another world upon 
 our spirits. 
 
 And one sees how inept is that adverse 
 criticism of prayer which is so common 
 in our time, and which regards it for the 
 most part as a beseeching of God for 
 certain things which we cannot procure 
 by our own unaided labour. A prayer- 
 less mind cannot discuss the virtue and 
 
44 PBAYEB. 
 
 place of prayer, any more than a mind 
 untrained in geology can discuss a 
 problem in glaciers and rocks. Experi- 
 ence of prayer is needed to understand 
 what prayer is. The deeper the experi- 
 ence of it the more valued is its strength. 
 He who can interpret fully the mind of 
 psalmist and prophet, and Paul and 
 Christ, will be able to understand some- 
 thing of the nature of prayer. They have 
 prayed most simply and triumphantly 
 who have believed God most fully. To 
 disbelieve in prayer is very much the 
 same thing as to have no faith in 
 God. "He that cometh to God must 
 believe that God is, and that God is the 
 rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 Him.*' Many prayers do not seem to 
 be addressed to God at all. 
 
 What we want to make real in prayer 
 is our thought of God's personality. 
 People believe in prayer, but they can- 
 not call up before their mind such a 
 conception of God as will make them 
 certain that they are speaking to One 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER. 45 
 
 who is as personal as themselves. We 
 can understand and approach one another 
 as individuals. We can see one another 
 andput ourselves into one another's place, 
 but " no man hath seen God at any 
 time," and how are we to think of Him 
 when we quietly pray to Him ? Under 
 what form are we to picture Him to our 
 minds ? How are we in our moments of 
 adoration and supplication to place in the 
 very heart of our spiritual convictions 
 the image of One who is as much a free 
 personal spirit as ourselves ? Christian 
 people often acknowledge that this is a 
 distressing difficulty to them. The very 
 effort to conceive God as always present, 
 always listening, always interested in 
 them, is thinned out into a hazy vision. 
 And, as a consequence of this, there is no 
 intense feeling of personal relationship 
 between Him and them. It is very 
 much the difficulty that is created by the 
 difference between realising a particular 
 tree and realising an atmosphere. 
 How is that difficulty to be met ? It 
 
46 PRATBE. 
 
 does not seem to have been felt very 
 keenly by the people of Old Testament 
 days. God was very personal to them. 
 Every common bush was afire with Him. 
 They spoke and acted as if they saw 
 Him. Elect souls who had trained 
 themselves to believe in the moral 
 attributes of God came to trust the 
 personal God Himself. God's righteous- 
 ness, mercy, loving-kindness, truth, are 
 not so much abstract attributes of His 
 essential nature as the forms through 
 which He brings Himself near to man's 
 life. By the manifestation of these in 
 history and in the career of individuals, 
 He reveals Himself. He cannot be 
 separated from these attributes. They 
 have no reality apart from Him, and this 
 was the lesson which the prophets more 
 particularly and the teachers of ancient 
 Israel were continually insisting should be 
 learned by their countrymen. A few of 
 them learned it. They could not think 
 of goodness and righteousness except as 
 associated with one God, whose law as 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRATER. 47 
 
 it sought to rule men's lives was the 
 expression of His mind. 
 
 Nothing in human records has been so 
 splendid as the daring of their faith and 
 the strength of their love. But it was a 
 conception which every mind could not 
 grasp or keep. As other ideas became 
 influential this tended to become less and 
 less definite and firm. 
 
 There came to be in course of time 
 necessity for a fuller expression of the 
 life and will of the Divine Being. That 
 was given by Jesus Christ. He had a 
 work to do for man in saving him, and a 
 work to do for God in making Him truly 
 known. " He that hath seen Me hath 
 seen the Father." We take our conception 
 of God from Christ ; and that conception 
 gives us the right view of prayer. In 
 prayer we are not speaking to an unknown 
 God ; we are holding communion with a 
 Father. The name which Christ gives 
 to God elevates the whole idea of prayer, 
 and places within the reach of us all a 
 truth about the Creator which only a 
 
48 PEAYER. 
 
 few of the most serious minds before 
 had reached. Christ's teaching that God 
 is our Father suppHes us with the belief 
 about God that quickens and purifies all 
 our entreaties and resolutions. We begin 
 then to understand that prayer is one of 
 our privileges as His children, and we 
 regard it less as a means of obtaining 
 the gratification of our personal wishes 
 than as an occasion of confidential inter- 
 communion by which all our cares and 
 griefs pass from us into the divine heart, 
 and we are made of one will with the 
 Father. 
 
 Prayer, therefore, should be less 
 difficult now than once it was, simply 
 because we know more and better about 
 God. It should be a stronger and wider 
 outflow of our nature. It should carry 
 with it less hesitancy, less doubt. It 
 should be deemed a peculiarly filial act. 
 Unless you know yourself to be God's 
 child, you will not know how to pray. 
 To know that, and to make that know- 
 ledge the abiding conviction of your 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRATER. 49 
 
 mind, is to have a discernment of God's 
 purpose which cannot be gained in any 
 other way. Once it is gained, what is 
 usually termed the problem of prayer 
 becomes very much simplified, and more 
 thought is given to it as a fact than as a 
 problem. A man will pray because he 
 is sure God loves him. He will pray 
 without ceasing, because he loves and 
 trusts without ceasing. He will ask, not 
 as a stranger and alien, but as a son. 
 He will not dictate to God the answer to 
 his prayer. He will again and again ask 
 for nothing but to lie gladly and rest- 
 fully in his Father's presence. And 
 even when a refusal comes he will 
 interpret it so as to recognise it as a 
 blessing. Love is never blind, such love 
 as this at least; it sees, and sees far 
 and steadily. It can bear up under 
 the strain of the longest silence, and not 
 be surprised even at the quick response 
 of God that seems to wound. It will 
 find the healing long ere the wound goes 
 deep. 
 
 P. D 
 
50 PRAYER. 
 
 " God answers sharp and sudden on some 
 
 prayers, 
 And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in 
 
 our face, 
 A gauntlet with a gift in it." 
 
 Love finds the gift and prizes it, where 
 other eyes see neglect and forgetfulness. 
 
 The purpose of prayer then is not to 
 change the will of God, but to make us 
 fulfil it. The more intimate our friend- 
 ship with Him the more wisely shall we 
 pray. We shall discern something of 
 the design God is working out in us, 
 and we shall pray not because we want 
 something, but because we are eager to 
 take the full profit of our heritage and 
 cultivate that spiritual kinship with God 
 which the world tempts us to forget. 
 
 Enlargement of spirit will come from 
 our discovery of the real function of 
 prayer. With that enlargement we 
 shall think more of the great things 
 than of the little things of life. It is 
 said that when Emwson visited Carhde 
 in his Scottish home these two great 
 
THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER. 61 
 
 minds spent a whole night talking 
 earnestly about God. Great hopes make 
 the soul great, and he who believes 
 that God is his T'Utier should always 
 pray with a strong spiritual hope beat- 
 ing "beneath his prayer, and lifting nim 
 up to heights among the great ever- 
 lasting peaks of truth. He will then 
 best understand how the little things of 
 life need not harass him, for God works 
 in these as really as in great outstanding 
 occurrences. 
 
 " And wlien in silent awe we wait^ 
 And word and sign forbear, 
 The hinges of the golden gate 
 More soundless to our prayer.** 
 
nL 
 
 THE CONDITIONS OF PKAYEB, 
 
 Pbayer is confidential communion 
 between the heavenly Father and His 
 child. The laws of the soul's well-being 
 are as real as those that regulate our 
 physical life. When prayer becomes 
 mechanical it ceases to be prayer. The 
 more natural and personal it is, the 
 more profoundly is its benediction felt. 
 Prayer m essentially a personal solitary 
 act of the human spirit. Occasions 
 should not be few when we are absolutely 
 alone with God. May it not be because 
 we have so largely fallen out of the culti- 
 vation of spiritual solitariness that we 
 have so much lost our faith in prayer ? 
 "When we are afraid of the company of 
 our own hearts we scarcely care to talk 
 to God. 
 
THE CONDITIONS OP PRAYER. 68 
 
 We are not always in the crowd. In 
 the most engrossed life there are breaks 
 and intervals that ought to be wisely 
 utilised, when, as Jeremy Taylor quaintly 
 advises us to do, " every man can build 
 a chai^el in his breast, himself the 
 priest, his heart the sacrifice, and the 
 earth he treads on the altar." For 
 prayer is something more than the 
 pious exercise of our hearts in the 
 morning and evening moments. It is 
 conversation, fellowship with God. The 
 reason, we may say, why our Lord spoke 
 frequently of withdrawal from the duties 
 and interests of the busy days, was that 
 it was not possible to maintain the filial 
 spirit otherwise. The door must be 
 shut, and prayer must be offered in 
 secret to the Father. In His own history 
 too He gave the illustration of its neces- 
 sity. " And it came to pass in those 
 days that He went into the mountain 
 to pray, and He continued all night in 
 prayer to God." He was always laying 
 emphasis on the closeness of the 
 
64 PRAYER. 
 
 relationship between the soul and God. 
 And He made people feel that, while they 
 would shrink from allowing their dearest 
 friends to be the sharers of their sorrows, 
 they could be sure of the attentive ear 
 of One who was willing to wait long and 
 unweariedly by the door of every human 
 life. 
 
 Is it not one of the permanent con- 
 ditions of prayer that it be offered with 
 a clear apprehension of the personal 
 relationship which we occupy to God? 
 In the measure in which we realise that 
 relationship are we able to pray with an 
 intelligent faith. We are not driftwood on 
 an uncontrolled sea, but souls in a moral 
 world ever watched by a Fatherly provi- 
 dence. As the years pass do we not find 
 that this is more and more impressively 
 true ? The little child in some hour of 
 its misfortune, with its troubled heart, 
 comes close up to its mother, and taking 
 her aside, stammers out amidst its tears 
 the tale of its unhappiness. You have 
 seen the gentle motherly hand stroke 
 
THE CONDITIONS OP PRAYER. 55 
 
 the weeping face, and you have heai:(i 
 the comforting words that sent it to its 
 play again bright and happy as before. 
 Have you ever seen a prodigal creep 
 homeward from the far country, and 
 halt at the old doorway wondering and 
 afraid, and then, when received within, 
 wait until all had left the room except 
 the old glad father ere he told the story 
 of his shame ? Have you seen the look 
 of forgiveness in the father's face, and 
 heard the affectionate welcome back to 
 the grace and peace and the clean 
 changed life ? How natural, sponta- 
 neous, informal, it all is. One has a 
 glimpse then of the deep places of the 
 soul. And as the mother comforts the 
 child, as the father restores the son, so 
 are we consoled and received when we 
 turn from the rough highways of the 
 world to the secret place of the Most 
 High. The heart can be content with 
 no lesser good than God. 
 
 It is so with other experiences in our 
 history : the loss of friends by death, 
 
56 PRAYER. 
 
 and. what is sometimes worse, the aliena- 
 tion of friends through misunderstand- 
 ing, and those private and half sacred 
 events that make up large sections of 
 our personal history, and which our 
 nearest neighbour never hears of or 
 sees. God's one purpose is to get us by 
 ourselves, to make us stand alone and 
 feel that He loves us with a surpassing 
 personal love. Have we Christian folk 
 of this later day grown afraid of the 
 spiritual solitudes where no voice speaks 
 but God's voice, still, small, whispering ? 
 Have we gone down from the great 
 heights of faith which our forefathers 
 trod with so calm and sure a foot ? They 
 were strong in prayer, because they 
 were never afraid of the society of their 
 own hearts. 
 
 Is the devotional side of our life 
 becoming the feeblest side ? We say our 
 prayers, but do we pray ? We maintain 
 a pious custom, but do we stay a long 
 time alone with God ? 
 
 Modern ways throw us so much into 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 57 
 
 the crowd, that we run the risk of losing 
 sight of the claims of our own personality. 
 From the religious point of view, it 
 certainly is serious that the privacy of 
 life to-day is invaded by so many kinds 
 of interests that leave little leisure for 
 prayer. " We have no time to pray " is 
 a complaint one hears too often, and 
 from the lips of people who ought not to 
 make it. It means that they have no 
 time to think of God, and no care for 
 the real requirements of their life. As 
 Newman was wont to say, the only two 
 facts in the universe are God and the 
 soul. The prayerless life ignores both. 
 
 It is not simply that there is a decay 
 of family worship, but of private personal 
 spiritual culture. What is taking its place? 
 Nothing indeed that is its equivalent. 
 " For what can a man give in exchange 
 for his soul ? " Is there any substitute 
 for God, and any satisfaction for the 
 hunger of the inner nature apart from 
 Him ? We are multiplying our engage- 
 ments and duties ; we are shortening our 
 
68 PRAYER. 
 
 times of private prayer. The best claims 
 are being crowded out. We are so much 
 with one another, we have little or no 
 liking to be with ourselves and God. 
 They who never doubt the worth of 
 prayer are the people who are much in 
 solitary intercourse with God. Turn to 
 the biographies of the great men and 
 women of Christian times, and you will 
 discover the secret of their goodness and 
 influence in their prolonged hours of 
 spiritual communion. They knew them- 
 selves only when they were in the still 
 light of God. They found their strength 
 in His presence. 
 
 It is told of the late General Gordon 
 that each morning during his journey 
 in the Soudan country for half an hour 
 there lay outside his tent a white hand- 
 kerchief. The whole camp well knew 
 what it meant, and looked upon the little 
 signal with the utmost respect. No foot 
 dared to pass the threshold of that tent 
 while the white guard lay there. No 
 message, however pressing, was to be 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 59 
 
 delivered. Matters of life and death 
 must wait until that slight signal was 
 taken away. Every one in that camp 
 knew that God and Gordon were com- 
 muning together. No strength will come 
 to us for the battle of life, no enthusiasm, 
 or calm, or assurance will fill our soul, 
 unless we have such high and solitary 
 interviews with God. " Enter into thy 
 closet, and when thou hast shut thy door 
 pray to thy Father who is in secret, and 
 thy Father who seeth in secret will 
 reward thee openly." 
 
 Another condition of prayer is un- 
 reserved trust. 
 
 All prayer is based on faith. It is the 
 utterance of the soul's confidence. It is 
 the acknowledgment that weakness must 
 rest on infinite strength, and that that 
 strength will never fail. Do we always 
 understand the force of our own faith as 
 we pray? Do we remember that it 
 implies we are quite sure that God, being 
 truth, cannot lie, that He will keep His 
 word ; that, being a faithful Creator, He 
 
60 PRAYEB. 
 
 will not mock or deceive the creature 
 whom He has made ; that, being the only 
 wise God, it will be absolutely impossible 
 for Him to err; that, having infinite 
 power. He will never fail to accomplish 
 His will ; and that, being perfectly holy, 
 He will not be neglectful of the trustful 
 pleadings of the most sinful child who 
 seeks His face ? It costs us something 
 to surrender ourselves completely to the 
 guidance of God. We believe that He is 
 the rewarder of them that diligently seek 
 Him, but what if His reward comes to us 
 in some unexpected and painful form ? 
 Shall we continue to trust ? Is our con- 
 fidence in God almost always at the 
 breaking point when we do not get what 
 we ask ? Faith in any case is not for 
 the clear noontide, but for the midnight 
 of the soul. It is when we cannot see 
 that we grasp the strong leading hand. 
 Do we not too often test both our prayer 
 and our faith by the answer God gives, 
 and continue both to believe and pray so 
 long as we receive what we expect ? 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 61 
 
 The confusion which exists in the 
 minds of many Christian people with 
 respect to prayer arises very largely 
 from apparent inconsistencies in the 
 teaching of Scripture on the subject. 
 These inconsistencies, or rather diver- 
 gences, are not always observed by them. 
 We read in many passages of the Bible, 
 for example, that prayer to God is 
 absolutely certain to be answered : " Ask, 
 and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall 
 find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
 you." " If ye ask anything in My name, I 
 will give it you." " All things whatso- 
 ever ye shall ask in prayer believing ye 
 shall receive." We find other passages 
 which indicate that prayer is limited, and 
 that the promises that underlie it are 
 conditional. Only as we comply with 
 certain requirements can our prayer be 
 answered. " If ye abide in Me, and My 
 words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye 
 will, and it shall be done unto you." 
 " And whensoever ye stand praying, for- 
 give if ye have aught against any one, 
 
62 PRAYER. 
 
 that your Father also which is in heaven 
 may forgive you your trespasses." 
 
 Now, whatever may be the apparent 
 teaching of isolated verses, the general 
 drift of Scripture is in the direction of 
 showing that the answering of our 
 prayers is made conditional, first, on our 
 character as suppliants, and, second, on 
 the nature of our prayer itself. There 
 is nothing unreasonable in this. Clearly 
 enough, God cannot answer all prayers. 
 He is not a capricious unthinking Euler. 
 He is more concerned with the man who 
 prays than with his prayer. It is only 
 in our foolishness and haste we ourselves 
 give indiscriminately to all who beg. 
 Often a refusal is the best boon. The 
 broad principle on which we estimate the 
 worth of prayer is that, since God is eager 
 to secure our highest good, He will, if Ke 
 deems it necessary, deny our request or 
 accede to it. Trust has naturally a 
 drawing power upon the heart of God, 
 and He will honour the simplicity of our 
 trust. He will not violate the nature of 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 63 
 
 man. He made that nature, and made 
 it that it might be completely possessed 
 and controlled by Himself, but He wishes 
 that His method of training shall be 
 accepted by us as the best method. The 
 mother will not make herself unmotherly 
 by thrusting from her the weak clinging 
 hand of her child. She will hold it all 
 the more firmly that she cannot put 
 within his fingers the things the little 
 mouth has pleaded for. Her refusal is 
 educating the child to believe in a love 
 wiser, larger, than his own wishes. Our 
 prayers to God are part of the discipline 
 to which He is pleased to subject our 
 faith. Often those who have hoped most 
 in Him have been those whom He has 
 kept waiting long in the silence. 
 
 Our prayers, therefore, will move 
 within the limits of God's promises and 
 with a wise appreciation of our real 
 worth to God. We shall learn to ask 
 those things that are best for our spiritual 
 equipment as His children. We shall 
 recognise that all His promises have 
 
64 PRAYER. 
 
 conditions attached to them* Prayer 
 will never be used by us as a talisman, a 
 secret charm which is thought to win for 
 us what we wish, but a gateway into 
 God's heart, and thereby into our own. 
 We shall be more eager to find Him than 
 to enjoy His benefits. Our prayer will 
 be, as Augustine says it is, " our conver- 
 sation with God. When we read, God 
 speaks to us ; when we pray, we speak to 
 God." If we trusted less in the virtue 
 of our own prayer, and more in the 
 Father whose love encompasses our lives, 
 both our trust and our prayer would be a 
 richer joy to us than probably they are. 
 
 It is the overloaded hearts that are 
 apt to pray the least. Life can easily 
 be made to go down; our soul readily 
 cleaveth unto the dust. We cannot keep 
 ourselves up except by stretching out 
 to the unseen infinite Father. Prayer 
 therefore is the energy of the soul, a 
 passion of desire, an agony of entreaty, 
 a wrestling with God. Until we learn 
 that we are on His side, and our will is 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 65 
 
 completely His. The prayer of faith 
 saves by its very persistence, its un- 
 wearied and unrelaxing confidence in 
 God's willingness and love. It is that 
 prayer that has cleansed and renewed 
 the weakest and the worst of the 
 children of men. In this wise did the 
 saints and martyrs call on God in the 
 hour of their calamity. So mothers 
 have pleaded for their children when the 
 world was tempting their innocent feet 
 to stray into perilous ways. So men 
 and women everywhere have cried for 
 God's light and pity for the wanderer ; 
 and friends far away from the old home 
 for the hearts they have left behind. So 
 have repentant, shamed souls cried for 
 the Good Shepherd to come to their 
 bleak wilderness and lead them to rest 
 and God. So prayed the Holy Christ 
 when the pressure of the world's woe lay 
 painfully upon Him in Gethsemane. So 
 not infrequently must we call on God, 
 "battering the gates of Heaven with 
 storms of prayer." 
 
 P. ■ 
 
66 PRAYER. 
 
 When we reflect that a prayer is great 
 in proportion as its faith is simple, we 
 begin to suspect that we have not always 
 spoken to God with undoubting soul. If 
 this is not an age of much prayer, it is 
 because it is not an age of much faith. 
 We hurry and toil and fret, and are 
 overborne by our burdens. We think 
 we can live by bread alone, and we care 
 not to hear God's word. We lose in those 
 qualities most needed for living well, calm- 
 ness, depth and force. We grow shallow 
 in our thoughts about the great truths 
 of life ; we grow distracted in our aims ; 
 our labour is done half-heartedly ; there 
 is no ring in our message to our fellows, 
 and no victorious power within our life. 
 Cultivate the confiding mood. Look out 
 of yourself, for your heart makes but a 
 small world. Keep yourself in the love 
 of God by building up yourself on your 
 most holy faith, praying in the Holy 
 Ghost. Much lies within your own 
 power. You can make yourself trustful 
 or unbelieving, prayerful prayerless. 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 67 
 
 Your faith will inspire your prayer, and 
 your prayer will vitalise your faith. 
 
 " When I feel," says Luther, " that I 
 am become cold and indisposed to prayer 
 by reason of other business and thought, 
 I take my psalter and run into my 
 chamber, or if day and season serve, 
 into the Church to the multitude, and 
 begin to repeat to myself — just as 
 children use — the ten Commandments, 
 the Creed, and, according as I have time, 
 some sayings of Christ, or of Paul, or 
 some Psalms. Therefore it is well to let 
 prayer be the first employment in the 
 early morning and the last in the evening. 
 Avoid diligently those false and decep- 
 tive thoughts which say, ' Wait a little, 
 and I will pray an hour hence ; I must 
 perform this, or that.' For with such 
 thoughts a man quits prayer for busi- 
 ness, which lays hold of and entangles 
 him, so that he comes not to pray the 
 whole day long." 
 
 The completeness and vigour of our sur- 
 render to God will pass into our briefest 
 
 E 2 
 
68 PRAYER. 
 
 prayer. Our whole self will be in our cry. 
 What our prayers need is intensity of 
 conviction; steadiness of belief in God 
 our Father, not only as the hearer of 
 prayer, but as the rewarder of it. "God 
 fails not," says Jeremy Taylor, " to sow 
 blessings in the long furrows." Let us 
 go deep and far into our life, and our 
 prayers will never be lacking in strong 
 confidence. We shall remember we are 
 speaking to God, and we shall speak to 
 Him with all our heart. 
 
 " An arrow," says Bishop Hall, " if it 
 be drawn up but a little way goes not 
 far, but if it be pulled up to the head 
 flies swiftly and pierces deep. Thus 
 prayer, if it be only dribbled forth from 
 careless lips, falls at our feet. It is 
 not the arithmetic of our prayers, how 
 many they are ; nor the rhetoric of 
 our prayers, how eloquent they be; 
 nor the geometry of our prayers, how 
 long they be; nor the music of our 
 prayers, how sweet our voice may be; 
 nor the logic of our prayers, how argu- 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYEB. 69 
 
 mentative they may be ; nor the method 
 of our prayers, how orderly they may 
 be ; nor even the divinity of our prayers, 
 how good the doctrine may be — which 
 God cares for. He looks not for the 
 horny knees which James is said to have 
 had through the assiduity of prayer. We 
 might be like Bartholomew, who is said 
 to have had a hundred prayers for the 
 morning and as many for the evening, 
 and all might be of no avail. Fervency 
 of spirit is that which availeth much." 
 
 There are ocher conditions which can- 
 not be neglected. Humility is an accom- 
 paniment of all believing prayer, that 
 wholesome self-abasement which carries 
 with it not merely a strong sense of in- 
 dividual unworthiness and penitence, 
 but a recognition of God's surpassing 
 holiness, and hatred of all in human 
 character that wastes and degrades life. 
 Sincerity too is part of the life of 
 prayer. We put no more into our words 
 than they mean, and we put no less. 
 Truth in the inward parts will show itself 
 
70 PRAYER. 
 
 in truth in the outward expression. We 
 cannot pretend to pray and think we 
 pray acceptably. Nowhere more than at 
 the throne of grace ought a man to be 
 his real self. " Surely God will not hear 
 vanity ; neither will the Almighty regard 
 it. If I regard iniquity in my heart the 
 Lord will not hear me." We must exer- 
 cise keen mental vigilance while we pray. 
 It is so easy to become distracted. Prayer 
 is so much a customary act, a thing of 
 times and seasons, that it can quickly 
 degenerate into routine. Devout words 
 and phrases fall from our lips mechan- 
 ically ; our petitions take set forms ; we 
 ask for the same blessings day after day. 
 We have no wide spiritual outlook. Our 
 daily prayer is not much more than "the 
 sad mechanic exercise " of our lips. 
 We give little or no room for the play 
 of fresh faith and hope. We see no 
 wide expanse of promises. We drift 
 about the gate of heaven, moored indeed, 
 but by a loose and lengthening cable. 
 We are not fixed in a fast anchorage. 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER. 71 
 
 Our prayer aims at nothing and so gains 
 nothing. Our lack of spiritual self- 
 control destroys zest and faith in acts of 
 fellowship with God. 
 
 The truth is, prayer should not be an 
 isolated periodic act of the soul, but its 
 constant habit and way. Christ never 
 asks us to attempt the impossible. To 
 pray without ceasing simply means to 
 have God in all our thoughts, to 
 remember His watchful, fatherly care : 
 to believe that He works in the minutest 
 events of our daily life, as in our great out- 
 standing joys and full hours of prosperity. 
 To spiritualise commonplace incidents, 
 to see the wisdom of His mind in the 
 directions He gives to our careers, is to 
 feel that all about our life there is a 
 bracing, vital atmosphere of holiness. 
 A place and a time for shutting out the 
 world, and shutting ourselves in with 
 God, will constantly and increasingly 
 summon us to perform this necessary 
 work, and even compel us to do it. Are we 
 not often strangers to ourselves, simply 
 
72 PRAYER. 
 
 because we have made no stated appoint- 
 ments with our own minds and hearts ? 
 
 And if prayer is to be effectual, our 
 interviews with ourselves should be 
 characterised by simplicity and courage 
 — simplicity, that our minds may not 
 throw a dust of generalities over our 
 thinking, in the midst of which we retreat 
 from close encounters ; and courage, that 
 we may know the worst about our- 
 selves and place our finger on our weak- 
 nesses, and say, " thou ailest here, and 
 here." The truth is always sufficient 
 to unmask us, and disarm us, and give 
 us humility and growth in grace, if we 
 will but give it a chance. Hold your- 
 self, while you meditate, to simple ques- 
 tions about yourself. Do not confuse the 
 real issue of your life in the multitude or 
 obscurity of your own thoughts. You 
 have gained much — more indeed than 
 you can at once measure — when you have 
 learned to deal honestly with your own 
 heart, and to hold it firmly to simple 
 facts which admit of no argument and 
 
THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYEB. 73 
 
 no evasion. To whom am I, as a sinner, 
 speaking ? What is the unaffected and 
 genuine wish of my soul ? What value 
 does God place or ny life ? How do I 
 myself value it? Why am I praying 
 at all i^ 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 
 
 The difficulties of prayer are such as 
 belong to the relationship which the 
 finite holds to the infinite. It would be 
 surprising if, in his intercourse with God 
 questions did not arise in man's mind 
 regarding the significance and value of 
 it. " "What is man that Thou art mind- 
 ful of him ? " The very circumstance 
 that he can speak to the Unseen suggests 
 problems which he cannot solve. What 
 is the Unseen? Who is God? How 
 does He act with reference to the needs 
 of the human spirit ? Can He answer 
 conflicting prayers ? Does He so control 
 all things that nature and providence 
 become the servants of man ? 
 
 Notwithstanding his difficulties man 
 continues to pray. The instinct ol 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 75 
 
 prayer cannot be repressed even by its 
 embarrassments. When we are most 
 perplexed about prayer we still believe 
 prayer to be a power. The disciples saw 
 the force of prayer when they asked 
 their Master to teach them to pray. 
 We may be sure they were not without 
 their misgivings at times. The world 
 and life burdened them, so also did the 
 long silence of God. 
 
 The more personal difficulties that 
 gather round the subject of prayer 
 spring from our sense of doubt, and 
 the feeling that we are of so little 
 account that it is scarcely possible the 
 Almighty can take any interest in us. 
 This difficulty is very common and will 
 reappear with every generation. But it 
 may be said in answer to it, that it is our 
 own littleness that makes us pray. If 
 we knew more, we should seek less. It 
 is because we are ignorant that we want 
 to know. It is because we are poor and 
 needy that we are sure the Lord thinketh 
 upon us. 
 
76 PRAYER. 
 
 Some one has said that the theology of 
 the Old Testament lies in its personal 
 pronouns. When we lose the recognition 
 of our own individual value, we lose the 
 sense of our kinship with God. A child 
 is unnatural who never asks his father 
 for anything. The father is unnatural 
 who never attends to his child. If 
 man's prayer is the irrepressible utter- 
 ance of his soul, has God no heart to 
 listen to it ? Where should the physician 
 be but by the bedside of the weak? 
 Where should the lifeboat be but where 
 men are struggling for safety ? Where 
 should the shepherd be but in the 
 dangerous place where the lost lamb is ? 
 Where should God be but beside His 
 own in the hour of danger ? 
 
 Were He an impassive king, apathetic 
 and remote, you might well doubt both 
 the reality of His care for you and the 
 efficacy of your own prayer; but that 
 is not your conception of God, nor is it 
 the highest conception. God is your 
 Father, and if you believe this you will 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 77 
 
 understand that the relationship between 
 Him and you makes it impossible that 
 He should turn your prayer from Him- 
 self or His mercy from you. Whether 
 He answers your prayer or not, should 
 not, after all, be your main anxiety, but 
 whether you are keeping firmly and 
 clearly in your mind the truth that He 
 loves you as much as if there were no 
 others in His world to love. You can- 
 not exaggerate that love. It is special, 
 immediate, unsleeping, strong. If He 
 gave His best gift for your personal 
 salvation, He will with that gift also 
 freely give you all things. Trust His 
 knowledge : you will get from Him not 
 what you want but what you need. You 
 can never see through what divine 
 mysteries of refusal and compensation 
 and pain the great Father of us all may 
 be carrying out His vast plan : but the 
 words " God is love " ought to contain 
 to every doubting soul the solution of 
 all hard questions. 
 
 The difficulty most prominent In our 
 
78 PRAYER. 
 
 time is that which is founded on the 
 scientific conception of law. We can 
 scarcely estimate the injurious influence 
 of this conception. It has made people 
 narrow the range of prayer. It has 
 made them hesitate to pray. It has 
 restrained their liberty in prayer. It 
 has beclouded their vision of God. It 
 has materialised their faith and spiritual 
 outlook. " Nature," it is said, " is uni- 
 form in its working. Everything in the 
 universe is arranged in accordance with 
 fixed, unvarying laws. Effect follows 
 cause in regular, unbroken order. That 
 order cannot be violated at the wish of 
 man. To suppose that it can, is to say 
 that caprice rules all things. It is absurd 
 to think that God will alter the con- 
 stitution of the universe at the request 
 of any man or woman. The sun rises 
 and sets, the tides ebb and flow, dis- 
 ease results invariably from certain 
 specific physical conditions, the seasons 
 come in unchanging order, the great 
 machine of the universe moves on in 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 79 
 
 steady, undeviating course, and no human 
 power can avail to change it. Prayer 
 therefore is of no value beyond the 
 result which it produces in the thought 
 and feeling of him who prays." This is 
 an argument which will have no weight 
 with many people. Their faith is so 
 massive and so simple that they will 
 never limit their requests. They are 
 quite sure that to him that believeth all 
 things are possible. But the argument 
 disturbs the peace of other minds. And 
 yet, is it so very hurtful as it looks ? 
 Does it leave no room for prayer ? Does 
 it even limit the scope of our prayer ? 
 
 It is to beg the question to say that 
 we know that God governs this world by 
 fixed laws. That is just the truth om- 
 science is endeavouring to discover, and 
 it is very far from having thoroughly 
 explored the universe. What we have 
 found out is that there is a regular 
 recurrence of cause and effect in the 
 material phenomena of the world; but 
 it cannot be said that in the higher life 
 
80 PRiYER. 
 
 of mind and feeling there is the same 
 rigid procedure and manifestation of law. 
 What is law ? It is not, as some almost 
 seem to imagine, very much like a cast- 
 iron rod running straight through 
 material and moral things and holding 
 them together in definite and fixed 
 places ; something that you cannot bend 
 or break or in the least degree alter. A 
 law is the expression of the thought and 
 will of God. It is only a particular 
 method of working, not a power. Our 
 modern scientific belief in the unity of 
 nature and the reign of law is only 
 another way of stating the truth that 
 we recognise that this world is main- 
 tained and controlled, as it was created, 
 by a Being who is all-powerful and 
 everywhere present. In the last resort 
 science is only possible on the assump- 
 tion that God is constantly in touch with 
 Nature ; and although, as Jowett once 
 said, " we cannot see where the hand 
 or finger may be inserted as in a cracked 
 jar," yet our inability to perceive how 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 81 
 
 God CBD and does act, does not warrant 
 us in believing that He does not act. 
 
 As a matter of experience, nothing is 
 so variable as natural law. No scientific 
 man would sign his name to a weather 
 forecast and affirm that it would be 
 absolutely verified ere the day was done. 
 He can only conjecture and state what 
 is probable. We do not know all about 
 God's laws and His processes of work- 
 ing, and we may be silent until we know. 
 There is still large room for faith. We 
 can, and do, change these laws as we 
 wish. We use them for our good. Our 
 commerce, our industry, our civilisa- 
 tion, are made to depend on the service 
 which these laws render to us. W^e 
 touch the clouds and bring the lightning 
 down and ''put a girdle round about 
 the earth in forty minutes." We make 
 the laws of heat and light and electric 
 force obey us and do our will. We 
 combine and manipulate and so direct 
 these laws that they may minister to our 
 happiness and comfort. We can divert 
 
 p. F 
 
82 PRAYER. 
 
 a river from its course and cause a 
 barren wilderness to rejoice and blossom 
 as the rose. We can desolate a fertile 
 land and alter a thousand landscapes. 
 We can, by planting forests, bring down 
 clouds and rain, and so change a climate. 
 Human achievements now have almost 
 a supernatural look. 
 
 If we can do so much, can God do less 
 or more ? Is He the prisoner of His 
 own laws, held fast by the forces He 
 has made ? Is the world a vast machine 
 which its Maker cannot control ? Science 
 cannot explain what force is, nor how 
 its changes of form are brought about, 
 and is there any reason against our 
 supposing that God may employ the 
 forces of Nature to meet the changing 
 requirements of His moral government ? 
 May the divine mind not have other 
 purposes to fulfil than those that are 
 expressed in the works we see ? May 
 there not be laws higher than the laws 
 which we have discovered, and may not 
 the will of God, which is before and 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 83 
 
 beyond all things, make these, by pro- 
 cesses we cannot imagine, serve the 
 great ends of His providence ? He is a 
 living God and Nature is ever evolving, 
 and we may surely believe that His 
 relation to the thing He has made is 
 close and operative and constant. For 
 aught that we know to the contrary God 
 may employ the forces of Nature to carry 
 forward and complete the purposes He 
 has in view in His moral government 
 of His children. We know so little of 
 them that we dare not say He does not 
 so use them, and we are so sure of His 
 goodness and power that we shall hesitate 
 to disbelieve that He can do all things. 
 
 " Keligious people," says Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, " seem to be losing some of their 
 faith in prayer : they think it scientific 
 not to pray in the sense of simple 
 petition. They may be right : it may 
 be the highest attitude never to ask for 
 anything specific, only for acquiescence. 
 If saints feel it so they are doubtless 
 right, but so far as ordinary science has 
 
 F 2 
 
84 PRATER. 
 
 anything to say to the contrary a more 
 childlike attitude might turn out truer, 
 more in accordance with the total scheme. 
 Prayer for a fancied good that might 
 really be an injury would be foolish; 
 prayer for breach of law would be not 
 foolish only but profane: but who are 
 we to dogmatise too positively concerning 
 law? A martyr may have prayed that 
 he should not feel the fire. Can it be 
 doubted that, whether through what we 
 call hypnotic suggestion or by some 
 other name, the granting of it was at 
 least possible ? Prayer, we have been 
 told, is a mighty engine of achievement, 
 but we have ceased to believe it. Why 
 should we be so incredulous ? Even in 
 medicine, for instance, it is not really 
 absurd to suggest that drugs and no 
 prayer may be almost as foolish as prayer 
 and no drugs. The whole truth may be 
 completer and saner than the sectaries 
 dream : more things may be 
 
 '• Wrought by prayer 
 Iliaii this world dreams of.*' 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 85 
 
 On any hypothesis it must be to the 
 Lord that we pray — to the highest we 
 know or can conceive ; but the answer 
 shall come in ways we do not know, and 
 there must always be a far higher than 
 ever we can conceive."* 
 
 It is inspiriting to hear from this 
 distinguished man of science the 
 assurance that we may still continue 
 to pray, notwithstanding all we have 
 learned about the laws of Nature. The 
 Law-giver must needs be greater than 
 His laws, and in this case He is not only 
 the hearer of prayer but our Father in 
 heaven ; and our prayer is intended as 
 much to enable us to act with Him in 
 our life, as to make us sure that He 
 listens. 
 
 The difficulty which gathers round 
 this idea of fixed natural law was probably 
 accentuated by the well-known suggestion 
 which the late Professor Tyndall made in 
 connection with the value of prayer. He 
 proposed that the efficacy of prayer 
 
 * Hibhert Journal^ January, 190S. 
 
86 PKAYER. 
 
 should be scientifically tested in a 
 hospital. The test was to take this 
 form. Two wards were to be chosen and 
 placed under the care of able and known 
 physicians. The patients in these wards 
 were to be sufferers from those diseases 
 which are most thoroughly understood, 
 and the mortality rates of which are best 
 ascertained : the treatment in both wards 
 was to be precisely the same, and to 
 continue so during a period of not less 
 than three to five years. Por the inmates 
 of one ward prayers were to be offered, 
 for those of the other no prayers were 
 to be offered, and the rate of mortality 
 in both was to be compared at the close 
 of the fixed period. This scientific 
 experiment, it was declared, would con- 
 clusively prove whether prayer was of 
 use or not. The challenge was thought 
 by many to be a fair one, and the experi- 
 ment was regarded as offering a final 
 settlement of much of the difficulty 
 about prayer. 
 And in some form, more or less like 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OP PRAYER. 87 
 
 this, it is thought by many that the true 
 test of the utiHty of prayer must lie. 
 To begin with, is such an experiment 
 possible ? Is it within the power of the 
 most competent medical men to make 
 such a diagnosis of the condition of 
 certain sufferers as to say absolutely 
 that two sets of patients in a hospital 
 have precisely the same chances of 
 recovery or death ? Would it even be 
 possible to select out of a great multi- 
 tude of people a number of sufferers 
 whose environment, career, constitutional 
 peculiarities, hereditary tendencies, moral 
 conduct, physical sensitiveness, would in 
 the case of each be exactly similar ? 
 Could absolute accuracy with respect to 
 atmosphere, drugs, food, nursing, rest, 
 sleep, be secured during the whole pro- 
 cess of such an experiment? It is 
 beyond the resources of the best organised 
 hospital. 
 
 And there is another fact to be con- 
 sidered. 
 
 How would it be possible to prevent 
 
88 PRAYER. 
 
 prayer being offered for all these 
 patients ? Can we think of any sincere 
 Christian who was made aware of this 
 proposed experiment refusing to make 
 intercession for a certain number of these 
 sufferers, but not for others? Would 
 this not be treacherous to his own feeling 
 of brotherly love, not to say anything of 
 his loyalty to God? How could any 
 earnest-minded man submit to have his 
 faith so basely degraded, or his prayers 
 forbidden ? 
 
 Further, these patients would have to 
 be told of the experiment and the reason 
 for it. Think of the effect of the 
 announcement made to one of these 
 patients : " For three years you are not 
 to pray for yourself, nor any of your 
 fellow sufferers in this ward, and you 
 are not to ask anyone to pray for you." 
 If there was any devout heart in that 
 unprayed-for ward, one earnest word of 
 his to God would spoil the whole plan. 
 And knowing that he was not prayed 
 for, the very fact that another ward was 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 89 
 
 of set purpose within the scope of some 
 people's prayers would revive his own 
 longing, and he would be unable to stifle 
 his own desire for health and life. 
 
 The proposal from first to last was 
 sbsurd, and it is surprising that it 
 should ever have been entertained. It 
 showed not merely a wrong notion of 
 prayer, but also of God, and of the life 
 of faith in the heart of man. It was 
 the old temptation. Make these stones 
 bread. It implied that people would 
 only believe God when He did what 
 they insisted He should do : that they 
 had no faith in prayer or God now, but 
 were quite willing to leave it an open 
 question for five years at the most. Its 
 assumption that the power and truth of 
 God could be proved by experiment, and 
 that prayer could be made a subject of 
 materialistic law, only showed how com- 
 pletely the whole problem had been 
 misunderstood, and what a defective 
 idea its supporters had of spiritual life, 
 and the relationship berween a rrustful 
 
90 PRAYER. 
 
 soul and God. Yet the influence of 
 this suggestion went very far at the time 
 that it was made, and its effect can be 
 seen in the suspicion that is in many 
 people's minds still, that we can only 
 estimate the efficacy of prayer by its 
 visible and material results. 
 
 The mere fact that one has difficulties 
 with respect to prayer in no way invali- 
 dates the truthfulness or efficacy of 
 prayer. One can eiisily raise objections 
 against prayer, but be quite unable to 
 explain why that mother asks so eagerly 
 that God would save her fever- stricken 
 child. It is no soothing knowledge to 
 her to inform her that the life of her 
 little one depends on the action of fixed 
 laws, when she knows that her child's 
 recovery is within the power of God, and 
 it is worth her while to pray. Explain 
 her agony and you will find out why she 
 prays. There is not much indeed in our 
 knowledge and experience, that we can- 
 not at some time or other call in question. 
 And so far as the utility of prayer is 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OF PRAYER. 91 
 
 concerned the main objections to it have 
 arisen from an inadequate apprehension 
 of its nature and an incomplete induction 
 of facts. 
 
 That there are mysteries in prayer is 
 not an exceptional thing. All life is a 
 mystery. The ways of the human soul 
 are a mystery. Turn where we will we 
 find the universe more baffling than it 
 looks. For 
 
 *' All experience is an arch wlierethro' 
 Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin 
 
 fades 
 For ever and for ever when I move." 
 
 Our knowledge has its boundaries, our 
 ignorance has none. What we know of 
 any subject may be said to be very much 
 less than what we do not know. Our 
 minds do not carry us far through this 
 universe. There are roads yet unmade 
 and untrodden. The horizon is still as 
 distant as before. 
 
 To say that prayer is useless because 
 it seems to make no difference in our 
 life — it does not bring us health, or 
 
92 ^ PEAYER. 
 
 prosperity, when we ask for these, and 
 they who never ask at all get on as well 
 without praying as we do who pray — is a 
 short and unsatisfactory way of solving 
 the problem of prayer. No person, as we 
 have seen, who knows God and seeks 
 agreement with God's will, will ever 
 make prayer a test by which personal 
 success and comfort are to be measured. 
 Besides, there may be results which we 
 cannot see, and in saying that we have 
 prayed and failed, we may be confessing 
 that we have gone through a form that 
 had neither spiritual faith nor hope in 
 the heart of it. And farther, while you 
 cannc t prove the worth or worthlessness 
 of prayer by statistics, it remains true 
 that the Christian nations are the great 
 nations, and the people who live in com- 
 munion with Christ and pray in His 
 name are the people who have done 
 most for the world. The fact that 
 Christianity has infused a new life into 
 the world is just another way of saying 
 that prayer has changed and elevated 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES OP PRAYER. 93 
 
 character, and made men and women do 
 things in the strength of God they could 
 never have done without it. 
 
 The world is being blessed every day 
 in answer to human prayers. These 
 prayers are like the rain-clouds lying 
 across the sky, that we cannot well see 
 until the rain falls. There is abundant 
 moisture in that great cloudland above 
 us, but it is not visible until condensed. 
 The earnest, trustful supplications of the 
 million hearts all over the world that 
 love the Father and continually call 
 upon Him, break into showers of bless- 
 ing now, to-morrow, here, there, we 
 know not where or when. We toil and 
 suffer, we disbelieve and hope ; but all the 
 while, though we may not be conscious 
 of it, our lives are helped in answer to 
 the pleadings of God's praying folk, and 
 a blessing we never asked or sought 
 has come. 
 
 No true and honest prayer is ever lost. 
 For the wise Father of us all has woven 
 natural forces and human prayers into 
 
94 PRAYER. 
 
 the long web of His purpose so skilfully, 
 and makes the outcome of blessing so 
 habitual, that we forget to be grateful. 
 The response comes like the dawn or 
 the dew. We are not startled by sudden 
 displays of the work He is doing for us ; 
 but only guarded, fed, guided, sheltered, 
 comforted by means of a far-reaching, 
 gracious plan, a thousand times more 
 wonderful than any mere miracle. Yet 
 we so often forget to pray and so seldoitt 
 think of the Father 1 
 
V. 
 
 THE GAIN OF PRAYER. 
 
 It must always be impossible to re- 
 count the blessings that are derived 
 from private or public prayer. For 
 clearly enough the only real test of the 
 worth of prayer is that which tests the 
 character of our prayers themselves — 
 their sincerity, hopefulness, faith, or 
 their lack of these elements. The mood 
 makes the suppliant. If the essential 
 to all true prayer be our unconditional 
 surrender to the Father's will, then the 
 richest gain we reap from prayer will 
 be a closer agreement with the great 
 loving heart that wants to hear us speak. 
 This is the consummation of the earnest 
 life. We pray to be, not to get. Your 
 prayer has its richest, satisfaction in 
 bringing you close to (iod. it is noc tio 
 
96 PRAYER. 
 
 much gifts you seek, as Him. You 
 pray for very desirable things, for 
 money, success, health, ease, and there 
 is scarcely a supplication you make that 
 has not its personal ambition, but the 
 moment these wants become the domi- 
 nant forces in your prayer, His will 
 fades from your desire, and you must 
 expect to be sent empty away. 
 
 There is another common mistake. 
 Most of us have a very comfortable but not 
 very well sustained idea that our prayers 
 go straight to God, and that with respect 
 to the subject of our prayer He takes 
 into consideration nothing beyond our 
 own desires and petitions. We seldom 
 give room to the thought that some- 
 thing in ourselves may be actually 
 operating against the virtue of our own 
 requests. We may be hindering the ful- 
 filment of our own prayers. Augustine's 
 example has been repeated frequently 
 in prayer. " Lord, convert me, but 
 not yet.** It was said of some in the 
 later day? of the Old Testament that 
 
THE GAIN OF PRAYER. 97 
 
 ** they feared the Lord, but served 
 other gods." We may join in asking 
 for spiritual revival and enlightenment 
 in the Church, for fuller consecration of 
 ourselves to Christian duty among the 
 children, in our own homes, in our 
 congregation, and all the while may 
 allow to lie within us a reluctance which 
 says, " Not yet : to grant this petition 
 means self-denial, and I am not pre- 
 pared for it ; it means earnest effort to 
 equip ourselves for harder service ; it 
 means a strenuous watchful culture of the 
 soul, and I prefer to keep on at the present 
 rate, though I am far from satisfied with 
 it." Perhaps we should often be sur- 
 prised and pained if God took us always 
 at our word, and answered our prayers 
 in the exactness of their own terms. 
 
 ' ' We, ignorant of ourselves, 
 Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers 
 Deny us for our good ; so find we profit 
 By losing of our prayers." 
 
 Our weaknesses and selfishness, our 
 negligences and our half-heartedness, 
 P. o 
 
98 PRAYER, 
 
 have a voice as truly as have our 
 serious longings, and God hears these 
 and sometimes shows us how they 
 contradict our spoken prayers. We 
 pray our doubts as much as our 
 beliefs. 
 
 But are not some prayers unheard? 
 No, but there are some that are un- 
 answered. Why should we faint and 
 doubt because it is so ? " No " is as 
 much an answer as " Yes." There are 
 occasions in our life when God's best gift 
 to us is His silence. The only practical 
 difficulty is to know how to interpret a 
 refusal. You do not give your watch to 
 your child simply because he cries for it, 
 and your refusal is not prompted by the 
 feeling that your child is less precious to 
 you than your watch, but because he is 
 not capable of enjoying its use. When 
 he is ready to know its purpose, his 
 request will have a meaning. The virtue 
 of any prayer is seen in the patience 
 that underlies it, and that intelligent 
 hopefulness that through the long and 
 
THE GAIN OF PRATER. 99 
 
 often silent years is sure that God's 
 wisdom is unerring. 
 
 Probably, however, the objection to 
 the advantage of prayer which is most 
 felt is one which is so individual that it 
 cannot be met in any uniform way. It 
 is that which is grounded on the circum- 
 stance that many prayers earnestly 
 offered never seem to be answered. 
 A mother in the quiet night cries to God 
 to spare her sick child's life, and in the 
 morning she is looking through her 
 tears on her little sweet treasure, beautiful 
 in death. A father yearning for his long 
 absent son calls anxiously to God to save 
 him, but dies and neither sees him nor 
 has any knowledge of the fruit of all his 
 praying. A ship founders, and all on 
 board perish, though they call to Heaven 
 with a more piercing wail than the wind 
 makes in the rigging of their doomed 
 vessel. When the story is told us the 
 question at once arises : Is there a God 
 who sees, and hears, and rules ? Has He 
 any pity? Does His pity grow to a 
 
 a 2 
 
100 PBAYER. 
 
 sovereign power in the desperate moments 
 of human need? Such cases as these 
 are among the oppressive facts of human 
 history, and are made all the more per- 
 plexing to us by our ignorance both of 
 the nature and the extent of God's 
 designs. If we only knew God's will, and 
 the methods by which He carries it out, 
 and the range it covers, " the burden of 
 the mystery " would be less severe upon 
 our spirits. We can but cling in a dilBQ- 
 culty like this to the principle on which 
 we all more or less consciously act, that 
 if all our prayers were answered precisely 
 as we wished, this world would not be a 
 place of moral discipline, but merely a 
 playground for the ruinous game of self- 
 satisfaction. People would pray, not 
 because they wished to be close to 
 God's heart, but because they wished 
 an easy comfort. 
 
 God will not grant us everything we 
 ask, but all the same in nothing are we 
 to be anxious, but in everything by prayer 
 and supplication with thanksgiving we are 
 
THE GAIN OF PRAYER. 101 
 
 to let our requests be made known unto 
 God. He has not put His omnipotence 
 into the hands of every man who prays 
 to Him. The Bible is full of promises, 
 but it tells us of many unanswered 
 prayers. To listen to a promise is one 
 thing ; to see how it is to be fulfilled is 
 another. The one act requires faith, the 
 other patience ; and underneath and 
 through our prayer should be as much 
 patience as faith. The answer to your 
 prayer may come as certainly through 
 failure as through success, and bad fortune 
 may be as real a blessing to you as good 
 fortune. David fasted and prayed, but 
 his little child died. Paul wished freedom 
 from his thorn in the flesh, and eagerly 
 asked God to remove it, but it was not 
 removed. Our Lord Himself prayed in 
 Gethsemane that the cup of suffering 
 might be taken from Him undrained, but 
 it was not; He had to drink it to the 
 dregs. Our prayer has reached its fullest 
 strength when we prefer the Father's will 
 to the most imperious demand of our 
 
102 PRAYER. 
 
 wild desires. Parents seek that their 
 children should have those things that 
 build up their characters in goodness, 
 and purity, and honourable service. 
 They like to be asked to give them these. 
 Our homes are ruled and administered 
 on the principle that their right govern- 
 ment has a twofold end, one which is 
 seen and the other which is not seen. 
 One recognises present and immediate 
 gratification, the other a future and 
 permanent good. And so we give and 
 refuse in accordance with that principle. 
 If a human analogy can help us to 
 explain the divine method we may 
 reverently say that in some such way as 
 this does God deal with us when we pray. 
 Our little children in their ignorance 
 make many a foolish request, but we do 
 not insist they shall ask for nothing 
 again. We simply by our refusal train 
 them to ask better, and to confide in a 
 larger wisdom than their own. We 
 sometimes ask God to deliver us from 
 things that do not necessarily injure the 
 
THE GAIN OP PRATER. 103 
 
 soul, however unpleasant and dangerous 
 they look, such as illness, poverty, bad 
 business, loss, and death. And God does 
 not hear our prayer. It takes us long to 
 see that our prayer is best answered, not 
 by what it does for us externally, but by 
 what it effects in our mind and heart, in 
 the way we look at life, and the way we 
 trust God. We can never fail, however, 
 to have the answer to our prayer when 
 we ask to be delivered from sin, and 
 callousness of spirit, and pride, and un- 
 belief, for these touch us in our divinest 
 part and imperil the soul's beauty and 
 security. God loves our good more than 
 our happiness, and works more for the 
 sake of securing in us a childlike disposi- 
 tion than comfortable circumstances. 
 Some of us may have said with Jean 
 Ingelow : " I have lived to thank God 
 that all my prayers have not been 
 answered." 
 
 The more we wait on Him and persuade 
 ourselves of His unerring goodness the 
 more clearly will it appear to us that He 
 
104 PRAYER. 
 
 denies us nothing but with the view of 
 giving us something better. We cannot 
 say why in this particular instance and 
 in that He has not been pleased to answer 
 our earnest believing prayer, but there 
 is a significance in His refusal which, at 
 least, must be concerned with the spiritual 
 well-being of the heart that prayed. 
 Much goes to the education of the 
 children who trust Him, and not all of 
 them are apt disciples in His school. 
 As saintly Thomas Erskine says, "if it 
 has taken God untold ages to make a 
 piece of old red sandstone, how long will 
 it take Him to perfect a human soul." 
 With every true prayer God has more to 
 do than the person who prays, and there- 
 fore every true prayer carries part of its 
 own answer. " God," as the old mystics 
 loved to say, "is an unutterable sigh in 
 the innermost depth of the soul." What 
 God prompts within us He knows how to 
 meet. We learn slowly to put away 
 childish things from our mind when we 
 pray, and our main desire is that He 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYER. 105 
 
 will, in ways that He Himself deems 
 best, give us that which will more deeply 
 and visibly impress on our character the 
 strength and calm of Christ, and arm us 
 for the battle and make us more than 
 conquerors in it. 
 
 Besides, we do not always think when 
 we pray of the largeness of God's moral 
 kingdom and the variety and complicated 
 nature of the purposes that underlie 
 His education of the human race. The 
 answer to our prayer may lie beyond the 
 sphere of time, and may be concerned 
 as vitally with others' good as with our 
 own. I cannot prescribe the direction 
 in which God's response to my entreaty 
 is to come, and yet remain faithfully 
 acquiescent in His will. What I ask for 
 myself may be given in the case of 
 an( ther whose necessity is greater than 
 mine, and whose spirit, for aught I know, 
 needs larger discipline than mine. Who 
 made us to differ but the God who will 
 not fail to meet our different wants, and 
 so work out His design in the ultimate 
 
106 PRAYER. 
 
 good of all the earth? If my neighbour's 
 prayer seems to contradict my prayer, 
 he and I, if we sincerely love God, will 
 willingly rest in His unseen goodness, 
 though one request is denied while the 
 other is granted. It is those who think 
 greatly about God who pray greatly, 
 quite sure that never has God forgotten 
 to love, and He is too wise not to know. 
 For your faith in God, more especially in 
 your hours of prayer, is not something 
 for the daylight, when the weather is 
 sunny and clear, but for the dismal 
 night, when the fogs are out, and the 
 rain drips heavily, and you cannot see 
 and have to pause to make sure of your 
 way. That soul has risen to a great 
 height of confidence who through all the 
 years never doubts God's power and 
 knowledge and love, and who recognises 
 the difference between believing there 
 is no solution of his difficulties and 
 believing that in the mind of God there 
 is a thought for each child of His, and a 
 purpose, and a blessedness. 
 
THE GAIN OF PRAYER. 107 
 
 " The man who learns what life can teach 
 Shall see beyond his soul at last, 
 Shall mix with all that is, and reach 
 A secret hidden from the past. 
 
 •• For more than all we ask we find, 
 
 And more than triumph ends our strife ; 
 Seek on, for there are worlds behind, 
 Seek on, and reach the source of life. 
 
 •• At one with earth and heaven, turn 
 In widening circles, human soul. ; 
 Forget the Here and Now, and learn 
 At last to contemplate the whole." 
 
 And if we only remembered that even 
 a spiritual virtue for which we have 
 prayed grows but slowly in our life, we 
 should not be so ready to give up the 
 Christian struggle. The soul of man is 
 hard soil. The best things of God — the 
 fruits of the Spirit — grow in it fitfully. 
 You ask for peace, and likeness to Christ, 
 and love to your neighbour, and meek- 
 ness of speech and disposition, and 
 patience; but do you ever think of the 
 long road that lies between your prayer 
 and its answer, and how great the dis- 
 tance must needs be between the thing 
 
108 PEAYER. 
 
 you sow and the reaping of it ? Such a 
 prayer means that you are prepared for 
 conflict with a world which at every point 
 resists you and will not let God's things 
 grow within you ; that you are watchful 
 against sudden uprootings, and gusts of 
 temptation, and drowsy hours, and beset- 
 ting sins. It means that you have in large 
 part to answer your own prayer, to see 
 that your character is not adverse to 
 its spirit; that your private devotions 
 are not contradicted by your public 
 habits ; that your secular life is not kill- 
 ing your spiritual life ; that, in short, you 
 are not praying one way and living 
 another. You must work out your own 
 salvation in partnership with God, and 
 as the growth in you of any Christian 
 virtue is a complex unfolding, you must 
 constantly watch as well as unceasingly 
 pray. 
 
 Can we ever go wrong if, sitting at 
 Christ's feet, we learn of Him our lesson 
 of prayer ? Prayer constituted the most 
 impressive incident in His career. It 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYEB. 109 
 
 was the atmosphere of all His life. He 
 went up into a mountain apart to pray. 
 He prayed and healed ; He prayed and 
 taught ; He prayed and wept. Prayer 
 was the first and last act of every day. 
 Surely what was a necessity and joy to 
 Him can never be less than that to us. 
 All arguments against the utility of 
 prayer are dissipated by these two in- 
 disputable facts : God is our Father ; 
 Jesus Christ prayed. It almost looks as 
 if our Lord's quietest times were when 
 He was busy among the crowd, teaching 
 them, healing them, comforting them, 
 and that the times of agony and wrestling 
 came when the day's work was done, 
 and men had gone to rest, and He was 
 wakeful in the energy of supplication 
 and intercession " with strong cries and 
 tears." He was never so calm as when 
 He stood before Pilate and the priests. 
 He had gained that calmness in solitary 
 fellowship with God. 
 
 The servant in this regard is not 
 greater than his Lord. Christ has 
 
110 PRAYER. 
 
 shown us the way to pray as much as 
 the way to live. Prayer with Him was 
 an absolute and loving surrender to God's 
 will. He knows that hesitancy we so 
 often feel that shrinks from accepting 
 the cup. He knows how painful looks 
 the will of God when we are hoping for 
 happy things. He knows the burden 
 and perplexity of unanswered prayers. 
 He is touched in all points as we are, 
 and certainly in this point of persistent 
 and hopeful prayer. Have you lost your 
 faith in prayer ? Watch with Christ one 
 hour in Gethsemane. His is a conflict of 
 soul not less exhausting than yours. 
 He too has a fear that makes Him 
 almost step back from the sorrow He has 
 long foreseen. The victory He gained in 
 prayer He will share with you. 
 
 Our affection for our friend is not 
 shown by having confidence in him when 
 all appearances are in his favour. We 
 trust him when all suspect him. We 
 vindicate him when he is calumniated. 
 Can it be otherwise with our feeling and 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYEB. Ill 
 
 attitude to God? To be true to Him 
 when we never see Him ; through all the 
 slow years to trust Him strongly when 
 His ways seem strange ; to accept His 
 will when it lies athwart our fondest 
 wishes ; to speak to Him much in a long 
 distress though He seems only to listen, 
 and hardly that, and never a hand is 
 raised to help ; to confide in Him though 
 it looks as if He were slaying us, and no 
 explanation given of our pain — that is 
 the noblest heroism of the soul. It 
 brings out that which is the root of the 
 highest character and experience. " The 
 Lord lift up His countenance upon thee 
 and give thee peace," said one man to 
 another in a day of sore fatigue and 
 loneliness. " Thank you, my friend, for 
 your prayer," was the reply. " I hope 
 I have learned always to think and 
 speak kindly of Him behind His back." 
 They indeed have a great reward who 
 can hold to Him in loving constancy 
 though they see not the shining of His 
 fac6« 
 
112 PRAYER. 
 
 As the spirit of Christ's life passes 
 into our life our prayers come from our 
 heart with a steadier joy. Likeness to 
 Him must in the end make our weakest 
 prayer more like His will. We shall 
 learn to pray according to His mind. 
 " Thy will be done " will be in the heart 
 of every prayer. The closer our corre- 
 spondence with Him the less irksome will 
 gr w the tasks of the soul. To pray His 
 prayer, that which has in all the Christian 
 ages been repeated and loved as the Lord's 
 prayer, will be to pray our own. The 
 limits it imposes on selfish asking we shall 
 place upon our own desires, and the 
 first things of God's mind will be ac- 
 cepted as the first things of ours. We 
 shall discover how true it is, as Maurice 
 says, " the Lord's prayer is not, as some 
 fancy, the easiest and most natural of 
 all devout utterances. It may be com- 
 mitted to memory quickly, but it is 
 slowly learned by heart." 
 
 The early Christian evangelists of 
 Scotland, on their long missionary 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYER. 113 
 
 voyages from lona, found their burdens 
 grow lighter, and their fears become less 
 dismal, and their hopes break into a warm 
 enthusiasm, when they reached the most 
 difficult part of the way, and they said to 
 one another, " The secret prayers of our 
 aged master, Columba, meet us here at 
 the points where we need them most." 
 If we were but unchangeably confident 
 in God we should be conscious again and 
 again in our neediest hours of the in- 
 breathing into our feeble life of the 
 strength of Jesus Christ. Our faith 
 would fail not, because He prayed for us 
 when events seemed conspiring to make 
 it fail. Our life, hid with Him in God, 
 would be subdued, assured, devoted, 
 adding to its faith in Him a knowledge 
 of Him that would make all our way a 
 friendly walk with God. 
 
 It is told of Abraham Lincoln that 
 during the severest crisis of the civil 
 war in America a poor desolate widow 
 came to him to beg that she might have 
 restored to her a son out of the army 
 
 P. H 
 
114 PRAYER. 
 
 whom she needed. She pleaded her 
 sorrows, her fear, her poverty, the help 
 this son would be to her, and the good 
 President listened tenderly and patiently. 
 Then in a low gentle voice he said to her, 
 "My dear madam, it is true you suffer; 
 you never suffered so much. I suffer ; I 
 never suffered so much. We all suffer, 
 and have got to suffer until this nation 
 is brought through. We must all bear 
 our part." Then more privately he put 
 into her hand aid from his own purse, 
 and sent her away denied yet comforted. 
 She felt that there was no want of 
 sympathy, and she was roused by his 
 generous words to enter into the large 
 fellowship of suffering for a whole nation's 
 cause. Do we ever think that through 
 our ungranted prayers we sometimes are 
 being brought more into the conflicts 
 and painful advancement of the world ? 
 " The whole creation groaneth and 
 travaileth in pain, waiting for the mani- 
 festation of the sons of God" ; and if we 
 pray to the suffering Saviour for personal 
 
THE GAIN OF PKAYBR. 115 
 
 benefit we must sometimes receive this 
 sympathetic acquiescence, this uplift 
 into the fellowship of His sufferings, and 
 look forward to the more perfect day 
 when He shall have subdued all things 
 to Himself. 
 
 Christ Himself has described the ideal 
 life of prayer : " If ye abide in Me, and 
 My words abide in you, ye shall ask what 
 ye will, and it shall be done unto you." 
 Union to Him will give us the rule of 
 prayer. What is not in agreement with 
 His love of us cannot be for us. That 
 is what is meant by praying in Christ's 
 name. We rise for the moment to His 
 spiritual level, we kneel by His side, we 
 put ourselves in His place, and we so try 
 to think His thoughts that we, in rever- 
 ence and humility, may imagine what His 
 prayer would be. This too is the 
 Christian ideal of prayer, and it is 
 perhaps because we have but seldom 
 risen to it that our prayers have been 
 so often feeble and ineffective. To pray 
 in our own name would be to state our 
 
 H 2 
 
116 PRATER. 
 
 own feelings and base our wants upon 
 them ; to pray in Christ's name is to say 
 that we seek just what He seeks and 
 wish our life kept free from all that He 
 does not approve. 
 
 It is on the heights we see farthest, 
 and are freshened by the bracing winds. 
 Labour as we will, we cannot brush the 
 mists away that gather in the valleys. 
 By climbing upward we look over them 
 altogether. We struggle long and vigor- 
 ously with some wrong tendency in our 
 nature, some habit that is fettering us, 
 and we do not see that it would quickly 
 lose its hold upon us if we ascended into 
 a purer, stronger air. 
 
 It is a free life we must needs live if 
 we are to live worthily at all. We have 
 not so much as we ought to have of the 
 liberty of the children of God in praying. 
 There are chains about our feet. We 
 move slowly and often with a painful 
 halt. Our religious progress is fitful 
 and unsteady. We forecast too much, 
 and we trust too little. The promises 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYEB. 117 
 
 of God, remember, are not addressed to 
 our reason, but to our hope and affection. 
 They are not responses to our technical 
 definition of prayer, but are designed to 
 produce in us that filial spirit which will 
 enable us to approach God as children 
 without misgiving and disappointment. 
 He interprets our most halting prayer 
 aright. He never misreads our ignorance, 
 or is impatient at our importunity. 
 But the more intimately we know Him, 
 the more wisely shall we speak to Him. 
 Our danger to-day is, that we are doing 
 too much and praying too little. We 
 are tempted even to make our good 
 works a substitute for prayer. Some 
 people are so much occupied in serving 
 Christ, in teaching in Sunday-schools, 
 in labouring among the careless, in 
 combating the open evils of society, 
 that they have no time to pray, or very 
 little. Work, even religious work, is no 
 substitute for prayer. The omission in- 
 jures our best efforts. It is quite true 
 we can pray in ^ minute, and be sure of 
 
118 PRAYER. 
 
 God's answer, but there is a power that 
 we acquire by unhurried prolonged inter- 
 course with God which comes to us in no 
 other way, and in proportion as we fail to 
 secure that do we fail to do our best work. 
 " We bow to the man who kneels," says 
 Victor Hugo. Where is the holy ground 
 in our home, in our leisure, in our work ? 
 Once in a week doubtless we earnestly 
 ask God's forgiveness, and are perhaps 
 conscious of a rising within us towards a 
 better life and a desire to be more 
 spiritual and serious in our thoughts and 
 ways ; but we give God the moments, and 
 the world takes the hours. We exculpate 
 ourselves, we think, by saying work is 
 pressing, and the day is short, and en- 
 grossing duties fill it, and engagements 
 must be met, and letters written, and 
 journeys taken, and friends visited, and 
 in the necessary labour of life there is no 
 margin for devotion. Even our family 
 worship is curtailed, and our public 
 worship of God is more fitful than we 
 can justify. 
 
THE GAIN OP PliAYEB. 119 
 
 But in answer to such excuses may we 
 not ask if there is not a life which is life 
 indeed ? Can we live for the day by means 
 of bread alone? Busy, say we ; but are we 
 rather beasts of burden than children of 
 God ? The dross we toil for often stains 
 the soul, and poisons it to its undoing. 
 The wealth we get can be no equivalent 
 for the unsearchable riches of Christ. 
 The pleasures of a season are not the 
 same as those at the right hand of God. 
 The two most devotional men in the Old 
 Testament — David and Daniel — were 
 men constantly employed in business 
 and the cares of this world ; and the two 
 greatest hearts of the New Testament, 
 our Lord and Paul, were burdened with 
 the unremitting service of man; but 
 they gave themselves wholly to prayer. 
 Bernard of Clairvaux was wont to say 
 that on those days in which he spent 
 most time in prayer, waiting long upon 
 God in meditation and supplication 
 and the study of Scripture, his letters 
 were most quickly written and were most 
 
120 PRAYER. 
 
 IDersuasive, his work among his converts 
 and scholars most successfully done, and 
 his own schemes, about which he often 
 had his forebodings, were widened or lost 
 in the greater purposes of God. And 
 there is more in that mediaeval example 
 than we dream. We should be better 
 men and women in public were we more 
 with God in private. "A gift," says 
 Goethe, " shapes itself in stillness, but 
 a character in the tumult of the world." 
 The gift which we all need most is 
 spiritual power for living, enduring, 
 suffering, achieving, and that gift is the 
 child of solitude. Christ was alone pray- 
 ing. We ought not to be forgetful to 
 keep our spiritual capacities fresh and 
 strong. Whatever gives us higher motives 
 for living gives us higher spiritual power. 
 Our unrest, our sin, our grief, send us to 
 God, and again and again the feeling is 
 wakened within us by we know not what 
 that life without God is lost. " I have 
 been drawn many times," said Abraham 
 Lincoln, "to my knees by the over- 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYER. 121 
 
 whelming conviction that I had nowhere 
 else to go but God. My own wisdom, 
 and that of all about me, seemed in- 
 sufficient for that day." Surely there ii? 
 nothing incompatible between a life of 
 hard needful work and a life of habitual 
 prayer, and while it may be difficult to 
 harmonise these two sides of the religious 
 character, the contemplative and active, 
 there is no reason in the nature of 
 the case why a man should not be a 
 diligent merchant, or a woman a busy 
 housekeeper and servant, and at the same 
 time live constantly in God's presence, 
 and pray to Him without ceasing. " To 
 hem the day with prayer will keep it 
 from ravelling out into many a folly or 
 
 " Pray for us.** We may sometimes feel 
 more hopeful in God when we plead with 
 Him for others than when we ask any- 
 thing for ourselves. Paul's marvellous 
 greatness of heart was as much due to 
 the fact that he always bore so many upon 
 
122 PRAYER. 
 
 his spirit in intercession, as to any native 
 genius he may have had for friendship. 
 His letters have interesting catalogues of 
 names of people quite unknown for the 
 most part to the world of their time, but 
 very dear to him. Some he mentions by 
 way of remembrance, and some by way 
 of supplicating blessings upon them. 
 There are indications that he was accus- 
 tomed to pass in review before his mind 
 in prayer different communities and men 
 and women he knew, and a large part of 
 his time was spent, not in asking a good 
 for himself, but in imploring divine grace 
 for them, " praying with all prayer and 
 supplication in the Spirit and watching 
 thereunto with all perseverance and sup- 
 plication for all saints" (Eph. vi. 18), 
 " ye also helping together by prayer 
 for us, that for the gift bestowed upon 
 us by the means of many persons 
 thanks may be given by many on our 
 behalf." 
 
 What intercession did for him it does 
 for us all. It saves us from spiritual 
 
THE GAIN OF PRAYER. 123 
 
 selfishness, and keeps us childlike and 
 humble, and lifts us into the wide inte- 
 rests of God's family and kingdom. The 
 state of our own heart is revealed in 
 our efforts to think of the needs of other 
 hearts. And as prayer is love at work, 
 our intercessions are the evidence we offer 
 of our true devotion to Christ, our com- 
 mon Lord and Saviour. " By this shall 
 all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye 
 have love one to another" (John xiii. 35). 
 We cannot intercede for others unless our 
 heart has been given to God, and part of 
 the spiritual gain of intercessory prayer 
 is found in this, that it becomes a mark 
 of inward grace; it is a stimulus to a 
 larger and more Christlike love, and 
 makes firmer our union with Him who 
 intercedes for us all. 
 
 Prayer is both oiir duty and our privi- 
 lege. To be in conscious contact with 
 God our Father is our highest blessed- 
 ness. None of us can do without Him. 
 Our weakness needs His strength, our 
 
124 PKAYER. 
 
 evil His forgiveness, our fears His assur- 
 ance, our hopes His fulfilments. He 
 seeks to draw us nearer to Himself, and 
 the forces of the soul, love and hope 
 and faith, work their strongest when we 
 pray. 
 
 In his last picture Kaphael represents 
 our Lord at the time of His transfigura- 
 tion. Moses and Elias are reverently 
 looking on, and the astonished disciples 
 have just been roused from sleep by the 
 brightness of the light. Down the moun- 
 tain slope stands the pitiful victim of 
 Satanic possession whom the unbelieving 
 disciples were unable to heal. But the 
 artist, with a devout insight into the 
 meaning of the incident, represents our 
 Lord as having ascended a little distance 
 from the ground. The Evangelists say 
 nothing of this ; it is a stroke of imagina- 
 tion ; but is the moral meaning of it not 
 significant and true ? The transfiguration 
 took place during prayer, and the painter's 
 pious lesson for us is that prayer raises 
 us above the cares and anxieties and sins 
 
THE GAIN OP PRAYER. 125 
 
 of the world. " Wait on the Lord, and 
 He shall strengthen thine heart." " They 
 that wait on the Lord shall renew their 
 strength ; they shall mount up with 
 wings as eagles ; they shall run, and not 
 be weary ; they shall walk, and not faint." 
 We need this spiritual elevation. ** The 
 world is too much with us." 
 
 We may not always be able to speak. 
 Prayer is often inarticulate, but He who 
 inspires it can always interpret it. 
 When we call He will answer. When 
 we confide in Him He will honour our 
 faith. 
 
 Pray, therefore, what you feel, what 
 you think, what you need, and let your 
 prayer end when it ceases to be the real 
 expression of your need or thought and 
 feeling. Pray with Christ's idea of God 
 within your mind. Believe that He is 
 your Father ; that no law can limit Him, 
 for law is merely the manner of His 
 working ; that His unwillingness to give 
 is never the cause why you do not 
 receive ; that the purpose of His holy 
 
116 PRATER. 
 
 love in granting or denying your wishes 
 is to make you perfect ; that it is 
 impossible so wise and loving a heart 
 will ever be heedless of your prayer, and 
 be mistaken when He gives or withholds. 
 The measure in which you trust Christ 
 is the measure in which He helps you, 
 and your trust in Christ will give tone 
 and spirit to your prayer. He will trust 
 you with His blessing as you trust Him 
 for it. 
 
 The important thing is not the judg- 
 ment, but the will, with which you pray. 
 That will asserts itself in quiet asking, 
 in earnest and prolonged seeking, in 
 vigorous knocking, when the kingdom 
 of heaven suffereth violence, and the 
 violent take it by force ; but, in whatever 
 way you are obliged to pray, let your 
 will be unconditionally surrendered to 
 God. " If ye then, being evil, know how 
 to give good gifts unto your children, 
 how much more shall your Father who 
 is in heaven give good things to them 
 that ask Him." 
 
THE GAIN OF PRATER. 127 
 
 •* Three doors there are in the temple 
 Where men go up to pray, 
 And they that wait at the outer gate 
 May enter by either way. 
 
 " There are some that pray by asking ; 
 They lie on the Master's breast, 
 And shunning the strife of the lower life, 
 They utter their cry for rest. 
 
 •• There are some that pray by seeking ; 
 They doubt where their reason fails, 
 But their mind's despair is the ancient prayer 
 To touch the print of the nails. 
 
 •* There are some that pray by knocking ; 
 They put their strength to the wheel. 
 For they have not time for thoughts sublime, 
 They can only act what they feeL 
 
 •• Pather, give each his answer, 
 Each in his kindred way ; 
 Adapt Thy light to his form of night, 
 And grant him his needed day." 
 
 BRASBCRT, AGNKW, & CO. hD%, LONDON AND TOKURIDOB. 
 

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