i 
 
 ffl 
 
 
 
 WHAT 
 
 CAN PRAYER 
 ACCOMPLISH ? 
 
 im. 
 
 ’1ft 
 
 I 
 
 ‘Pro/. £du}ard I. ^osworth, D.D. 
 
 j LAYMEN’S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT i| 
 I Madison Avenue, New York 
 
 
Printed by permission from the Report 
 of the Constantinople Conference of the 
 World’s Student Christian Federation. 
 
What Can Prayer Accomplish? 
 
 W HEN a man prays, what actually 
 happens? If some kind of spiri¬ 
 tual photography could catch the 
 soul in the act of prayer, what would 
 be revealed? What is the environment 
 of the soul at prayer? Is the soul alone, 
 or is Another there, vast and enfolding? 
 If Another is there, what goes on in that 
 Other when the soul of the man prays? 
 Is there any change in the enfolding Other 
 when the soul of the man prays? 
 
 These are questions suggested by the topic. 
 In answering them we must of necessity 
 make one great assumption and proceed to 
 reason from it. In a previous address we 
 have seen the reasons for making this as¬ 
 sumption. We assume that there is Another, 
 a vast and enfolding personality, a parent 
 personality of which the human soul is an 
 offshoot. There is a personal environment 
 about the soul which is always saying to it: 
 “Oh heart I made, a heart heats here.” 
 
 That is, we assume the truthfulness of the 
 great teaching which came to its fulness in 
 the personal religious life of Jesus—^the near¬ 
 ness and the Fatherhood of God. 
 
Prayer Moves God 
 
 What does the soul of a man do when it 
 prays to the Heavenly Father? It rises up 
 in love to make conscious gift of itself to the 
 Heavenly Father and to take in return what¬ 
 ever the Heavenly Father may give. When 
 the soul prays thus does anything happen 
 apart from the praying soul? Is there move¬ 
 ment in the Heavenly Father? If there is 
 the slightest propriety in calling God our 
 Father, it is necessary to say that the heart 
 of the Father goes out in love to the soul 
 of His praying child and makes itself felt 
 there; the soul of the child touches the soul 
 of the Father in some special way, and the 
 soul of the Father touches the soul of the 
 child in some special way in response to the 
 prayer. This conception may seem to re¬ 
 present God as changeable in a certain sense. 
 God’s unchangeableness is an unehangeable- 
 ness of love, and not an absolute inertia. To 
 ascribe absolute inertia to God would involve 
 a denial of personality, for an essential ele¬ 
 ment of personality is varied activity. 
 
 Prayer Moves the One Who Prays 
 
 In prayer, then, something does happen 
 apart from the man who prays. The soul of 
 the Heavenly Father is stirred and sends 
 something back to the praying child. There 
 
 2 
 
is an inter-play of feeling between the human 
 child and his Heavenly Father. We shall 
 not easily over-estimate the value of prayer 
 so conceived. Such inter-play of feeling 
 purifies the human soul and must give satis¬ 
 faction to the Heavenly Father. A human 
 father is pleased when his children come to 
 him wanting nothing except to be with him 
 for a little time. As the relation between a 
 son and his father develops, the son cares 
 less and less for the things that he may re¬ 
 ceive from his father and more and more 
 for his father for his own sake. 
 
 Prayer Puts Thought Into the Mind of the 
 One Who Prays 
 
 Can anything besides feeling pass from 
 the heart of the Heavenly Father to the heart 
 of His human child? All that we know about 
 the relation of persons to each other gives 
 us reason to say that not simply feeling but 
 thought also can pass from the mind of God 
 to the mind of a man. Persons are able to 
 put thoughts into each other’s minds by the 
 use of words, by gestures, by the glance of 
 an eye. It seems probable that by tele¬ 
 pathic action they may even think thoughts 
 directly into each other’s minds without the 
 use of word, gesture, or look. In another 
 address, as has been said, we have seen rea- 
 
 3 
 
son for calling God in some vital sense a 
 personal being. It is necessary, therefore, 
 to conclude that God can do what other per¬ 
 sons can do, namely, put a thought into the 
 mind of a man. The Heavenly Father can 
 produce not only a feeling in the heart, but 
 also an idea in the mind of His human child. 
 
 Prayer Can Be Answered 
 
 This opens a wide door for answer to pray¬ 
 er, for it involves not only the power of God 
 to put a thought into the mind of the man 
 who prays but also into the mind of some 
 third person, or into the minds of many per¬ 
 sons. Have you need of guidance in some 
 emergency? In answer to your prayer God 
 may put a thought into your mind that will 
 give you the needed guidance. He may so 
 influence your mental processes that you 
 shall rightly reason out your course of act¬ 
 ion. Do you need money for some good 
 purpose? God, by putting a thought into 
 your mind, may show you how to get it, or 
 by putting a thought into the mind of some 
 other person He may lead him to send you 
 what you need. Here seems to be wide scope 
 for answer to prayer, because almost all of 
 the petitions we ever have occasion to make 
 to God are such as can be answered by His 
 producing feeling and thought in the mind 
 
 4 
 
• 
 
 of some man. The power to do this, as has 
 been said, is inherent in the very nature of 
 personality. We may therefore without 
 hesitation attribute this power to God, since 
 the assumption with which we started is that 
 God is, in some real sense, a personal being. 
 
 Objections to Prayer 
 
 There are, however, certain objections to 
 prayer felt by many earnest men, which are 
 not fully met by the position just taken. 
 The chief of these objections should be con¬ 
 sidered here. 
 
 Cause and Effect 
 
 First of all, it is often thought that since 
 we live in a world of law and order, where 
 an unvarying cause produces an unvarying 
 effect, there is no place left for God to make 
 things happen in answer to prayer. The 
 first word of reply to this objection should 
 be one of appreciation. We have reason for 
 gratitude that we live in a world of law and 
 not in a world of caprice or chance. We 
 must be able to count upon the steadfastness 
 of the so-called forces of nature if we are to 
 forecast results in a civilized way. There is, 
 however, one thing that becomes more and 
 more evident with every advance in human 
 experience, namely, that the so-called forces 
 
 5 
 
of nature which surround us are extremely 
 susceptible to the influence of a personal will. 
 The more we learn about the forces of nature 
 and the laws of their action, the more we 
 are able to do, not in spite of them, but by 
 means of them. Every advance in acquaints 
 ance with these forces increases our power 
 to answer the appeals of our fellow men for 
 help. Three thousand people are in immi¬ 
 nent peril in mid-ocean. Once there would 
 have been no hope for them, but since the 
 personal will of men has learned to mani¬ 
 pulate natural forces the wireless sends its 
 radiating appeal, great ships change their 
 courses and hurry thither from all points of 
 the compass to answer the cry for help. 
 Soon the air will be full of aeroplanes flying 
 swiftly to every point of need. The forces 
 of nature do not keep persons apart; they 
 facilitate intercourse. They are mighty de¬ 
 vices for enabling men to answer each other’s 
 calls for help. The unvarying regularity of 
 their action is what makes them serviceable 
 under the manipulation of a personal will. 
 Since men can so use them, much more can 
 God answer the prayers of His children by 
 means of them. 
 
 It seems evident, however, that God does 
 not intend frequently to answer prayer by 
 co-ordinating natural forces in unusual ways. 
 
 G 
 
If we were near to death for lack of water 
 in a desert, where it never rains, we should 
 not have faith to ask God so to co-ordinate 
 natural forces as to produce rain. We 
 should rather ask Him to put into the mind 
 of some man the thought of going out into 
 the desert on some errand that would inci¬ 
 dentally result in relief to the sufferers. God 
 has evidently purposed to leave the sphere 
 of natural forces to man for his investigation 
 and conquest. He has let men freeze to 
 death with undiscovered beds of coal beneath 
 their feet; He has let the generations suffer 
 pain for centuries with the elements of un¬ 
 discovered anaesthetics about them. We 
 would not have it otherwise. The zest of 
 life is in overcoming difficulties under the 
 spur of fearful necessity. A wise father 
 leaves his children to find out many things 
 for themselves. He does not intervene to 
 make life easy for them at every point. The 
 independence and self-respect essential to 
 character result from difficulties met and 
 overcome. 
 
 Ready Made Plans 
 
 A difficulty of a different sort is sometimes 
 raised by earnest minds wishing to pray; 
 God is supposed to have planned all things, 
 great and small, from the beginnine-. If the 
 
 7 
 
occurrence of the thing prayed for is in His 
 plan it will certainly occur and there is no 
 need to pray for it; if its ocurrence is not m 
 God’s plan, it will not occur and it is useless 
 to pray for it. The futility of this objection 
 to prayer appears sufficiently for practical 
 purposes when it is noted that if it proves 
 anything it proves too much, for it proves 
 that it is useless to ask any one for any thing. 
 I may not ask the simplest favour of my 
 friend because if God has planned that m^ 
 friend shall grant the favour, grant it He 
 will without my asking. If God has not 
 planned it, grant it my friend will not, no 
 matter how much I ask him. Such reason¬ 
 ing is recognized at once to be foolishness, 
 for we know perfectly well that we constant¬ 
 ly get things from each other by asking each 
 other for them. Even so we may get things 
 from God by asking Him, for He also is a 
 person. 
 
 God Will Give Without Being Asked 
 
 Another and more serious objection to 
 prayer that arises in many earnest minds is 
 this: since God is a good Father, He will 
 surely give good gifts to His children with¬ 
 out waiting to be asked. Certainly a good 
 father does give many good gifts to his chil¬ 
 dren without waiting to be asked. Does God 
 
 8 
 
ever wait for the prayer of His child be¬ 
 fore giving a good gift? Can He not al¬ 
 ways be left to do what is host without any 
 presentation of a human petition? Regard¬ 
 ing this, several things may be said. First 
 of all, it is abnormal for a child to suppress 
 all petition. In a free, spontaneous family 
 life, children ought to make all their wants 
 known without restraint. Furthermore, a 
 father often waits before doing a good thing 
 for a child, until the child cares enough 
 about it to ask for it. It might be unwise to 
 give it before the child cared enough for it 
 to ask for it. Still further, it is often the 
 policy of a father to do things in such a 
 way as to give the largest feasible share in 
 the achievement to his children. Character 
 is developed by giving them large and re¬ 
 sponsible part in the enterprise. Prayer is 
 a way of working together with God. Genu¬ 
 ine prayer is not mere words. It involves as 
 real an output of vital energy as is involved 
 in an act of the will of God. It is a normal, 
 wholesome way of working together with 
 God, and for such co-operation God might 
 sometimes wait before proceeding to action. 
 
 This objection asumes a more difficult form 
 when the prayer is in another s behalf. 
 Would God wait before doing a good thing 
 for one of His children until another child 
 
 9 
 
asked Him to do it? Certainly, God would 
 do many things for His child in need without 
 waiting for another child to ask Him. But 
 is it ever proper for a child to suggest to his 
 Heavenly Father the doing of a good thing 
 for one of the other children? Is so-called 
 intercessory prayer ever anything except an 
 impertinence? The answer to this question 
 appears clear when we stop to consider the 
 moral purpose that the institution of the 
 family serves. At least a large part of the 
 moral purpose of the family is accomplished 
 when the children become unselfishly inter¬ 
 ested in each other. The family is an ethical 
 success when each one of the children comes 
 to his father and says regarding some good 
 gift; “I wish you would give this to my 
 brother.” Therefore, it is not at all strange 
 that a father, for the sake of securing this 
 great ethical success, should sometimes wait 
 before doing a good thing for one of the chil¬ 
 dren until another child has time to realize 
 his brother’s need and to say: “I wish you 
 would do this for my brother.” It is not 
 inconceivable that God should sometimes 
 wait before doing a good thing for some of 
 His children in one country until some of 
 their brothers in another country should 
 have time to see what brotherhood means and 
 to pray for their brothers in a foreign land. 
 
 10 
 
Such waiting may sometimes contribute to 
 the accomplishment of God’s great purpose 
 to fill the earth with a race of brotherly men, 
 profoundly interested in each other. 
 
 Does Not Bend the Will of God 
 
 Prayer, then, is never an effort to bend 
 the will of God. It is never an effort to 
 persuade God to do something He would 
 rather not do. It is, instead, the normal, 
 reverent rising up of a son of God to inquire 
 whether there may not be some good thing 
 which the Heavenly Father wishes to do so 
 soon as He can have the co-operation of this 
 son through prayer. 
 
 There are three classes of things in an 
 ideal human family. First, the things that 
 the father does for his children without wait¬ 
 ing to be asked. They are many and of 
 fundamental importance. So God pours the 
 great gifts of His love lavishly into the lives 
 of His children without waiting to be asked 
 to do so. No one asked Him to send His 
 Son into the world. In the second place, 
 there are the things that the children ask 
 for and are refused. In the spontaneous 
 life of a happy family all requests ■\idse and 
 foolish may be freely made. Many of the 
 requests of little children are certain to be 
 foolish. In God’s great family the oldest of 
 
 11 
 
US are but little children in the eternal life 
 and certain to make many foolish prayers 
 that God is too good to grant. Because God 
 does so many things without waiting to be 
 asked and refuses to do so many things that 
 He is asked to do, we are sometimes inclined 
 to think that there is no place for the prayer 
 of specific petition. But in God’s great fa- 
 niily, as in any other, there is a third class 
 of things, namely, those that are given by 
 the Father only when and because the chil¬ 
 dren ask for them. 
 
 Prayer and Power 
 
 Some thing does happen, then, in prayer 
 apart from the man who prays. Prayer is 
 not the act of a deluded soul rising to make 
 conscious gift of itself to an imaginary 
 Father. Prayer is not lifting up pitiful 
 hands to brazen, unanswering skies. There 
 is a living God, a Heavenly Father. He is 
 near at hand, waiting to listen to His child’s 
 voice and ready to answer. His heart is 
 stirred by prayer. The heart of him who 
 prays is stirred in feeling by the answer. 
 The minds of men receive from God thoughts 
 as well as feeling in answer to their prayer. 
 All the mechanism of the world is so arrang¬ 
 ed as to enable the living God to act freely 
 upon the lives of men. 
 
 12 
 
“Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit 
 with Spirit can meet— 
 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than 
 hands and feet.” 
 
 Jesus was no false guide when He spoke 
 with full conviction out of the experience 
 of His oAvn life of answered prayer and said; 
 “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye 
 shall find; knock, and it shall be opened 
 unto you; for every one that asketh reeeiv- 
 eth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him 
 that knocketh it shall be opened.” 
 
 Prayer and the Golden Rule 
 
 But he who would be guided by Jesus into 
 the life of answered prayer must also let 
 himself be guided by Jesus into full accept¬ 
 ance of Jesus’ ideal of life. He must desire to 
 see every other man possess as fair a chance 
 at all good things as he feels ought to be 
 granted by others to himself. “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 ? All things 
 THEREFORE whatsoever ye would that 
 man should do unto you, even so do ye also 
 unto them.” 
 
 13 
 
Price 5c. each ; 25c. a dozen; 1.50 a 
 hundred, prepaid. 
 
 Catalogue of Publications 
 on request 
 
 Laymen’s Missionary Movement 
 1 Madison Ave., New York