'--_and not to faint_.'--ST. LUKE xviii. 1.
'How should any design of the All-wise be altered in response to prayer
of ours!' How are we to believe such a thing?
By reflecting that he is the All-wise, who sees before him, and will
not block his path. Such objection springs from poorest idea of God in
relation to us. It supposes him to have cares and plans and intentions
concerning our part of creation, irrespective of us. What is the whole
system of things for, but our education? Does God care for suns and
planets and satellites, for divine mathematics and ordered harmonies,
more than for his children? I venture to say he cares more for oxen
than for those. He lays no plans irrespective of his children; and, his
design being that they shall be free, active, live things, he sees that
space be kept for them: they need room to struggle out of their
chrysalis, to undergo the change that comes with the waking will, and
to enter upon the divine sports and labours of children in the house
and domain of their Father. Surely he may keep his plans in a measure
unfixed, waiting the free desire of the individual soul! Is not the
design of the first course of his children's education just to bring
them to the point where they shall pray? and shall his system appointed
to that end be then found hard and fast, tooth-fitted and inelastic, as
if informed of no live causing soul, but an unself-knowing force--so
that he cannot answer the prayer because of the system which has its
existence for the sake of the prayer? True, in many cases, the prayer,
far more than the opportunity of answering it, is God's end; but how
will the further end of the prayer be reached, which is oneness between
the heart of the child and of the Father? how will the child go on to
pray if he knows the Father cannot answer him? _Will not_ may be for
love, but how with a self-imposed _cannot_? How could he be Father, who
creating, would not make provision, would not keep room for the babbled
prayers of his children? Is his perfection a mechanical one? Has he
himself no room for choice--therefore can give none? There must be a
Godlike region of choice as there is a human, however little we may be
able to conceive it. It were a glory in such system that its suns
themselves wavered and throbbed at the pulse of a new child-life.
What perfection in a dwelling would it be that its furniture and the
paths between were fitted as the trays and pigeon-holes of a cabinet?
What stupidity of perfection would that be which left no margin about
God's work, no room for change of plan upon change of fact--yea, even
the mighty change that, behold now at length, his child is praying! See
the freedom of God in his sunsets--never a second like one of the
foregone!--in his moons and skies--in the ever-changing solid earth!--
all moving by no dead law, but in the harmony of the vital law of
liberty, God's creative perfection--all ordered from within. A divine
perfection that were indeed, where was no liberty! where there could be
but one way of a thing! I may move my arm as I please: shall God be
unable so to move his? If but for himself, God might well desire no
change, but he is God for the sake of his growing creatures; all his
making and doing is for them, and change is the necessity of their very
existence. They need a mighty law of liberty, into which shall never
intrude one atom of chance. Is the one idea of creation the begetting
of a free, grand, divine will in us? and shall that will, praying with
the will of the Father, find itself cramped, fettered, manacled by
foregone laws? Will it not rather be a new-born law itself, working new
things? No man is so tied by divine law that he can nowise modify his
work: shall God not modify his? Law is but mode of life-action. Is it
of his perfection that he should have no scope, no freedom? Is he but
the prisoned steam in the engine, pushing, escaping, stopped--his way
ordered by valve and piston? or is he an indwelling, willing, ordering
power? Law is the slave of Life. Is not a man's soul, as it dwells in
his body, a dim-shadowing type of God in and throughout his universe?
If you say, he has made things to go, set them going, and left them--
then I say, If his machine interfered with his answering the prayer of
a single child, he would sweep it from him--not to bring back chaos,
but to make room for his child. But order is divine, and cannot be
obstructive to its own higher ends; it must subserve them. Order, free
order, neither chaos, nor law unpossessed and senseless, is the home of
Thought. If you say There can be but one perfect way, I answer, Yet the
perfect way to bring a thing so far, to a certain crisis, can ill be
the perfect way to carry it on after that crisis: the plan will have to
change then. And as this crisis depends on a will, all cannot be in
exact, though in live preparation for it. We must remember that God is
not occupied with a grand toy of worlds and suns and planets, of
attractions and repulsions, of agglomerations and crystallizations, of
forces and waves; that these but constitute a portion of his workshops
and tools for the bringing out of righteous men and women to fill his
house of love withal. Would he have let his Son die for a law of
nature, as we call it? These doubtless are the outcome of willed laws
of his own being; but they take their relations in matter only for the
sake of the birth of sons and daughters, that they may yet again be
born from above, and into the higher region whence these things issue;
and many a modification of the ideal, rendering it less than complete,
must be given to those whose very doom being to grow or perish implies
their utter inability to lay hold of the perfect. The best _means_
cannot be the ideal Best. The embodiment of uplifting truth for the
low, cannot be equal to that for the higher, else it will fail, and
prove for its object not good; but, as the low ascend, their revelation
will ascend also.
That God cannot interfere to modify his plans, interfere without the
change of a single law of his world, is to me absurd. If we can change,
God can change, else is he less free than we--his plans, I say, not
principles, not ends: God himself forbid!--change them after divine
fashion, above our fashions as the heavens are higher than the earth.
And as in all his miracles Jesus did only in miniature what his Father
does ever in the great--in far wider, more elaborate, and beautiful
ways, I will adduce from them an instance of answer to prayer that has
in it a point bearing, it seems to me, most importantly on the thing I
am now trying to set forth. Poor, indeed, was the making of the wine in
the earthen pots of stone, compared with its making in the lovely
growth of the vine with its clusters of swelling grapes--the live roots
gathering from the earth the water that had to be borne in pitchers and
poured into the great vases; but it is precious as the interpreter of
the same, even in its being the outcome of our Lord's sympathy with
ordinary human rejoicing. There is however an element in its origin
that makes it yet more precious to me--the regard of our Lord to a wish
of his mother. Alas, how differently is the tale often received! how
misunderstood!
His mother had suggested to him that here was an opportunity for
appearing in his own greatness, the potent purveyor of wine for the
failing feast. It was not in his plan, as we gather from his words; for
the Lord never pretended anything, whether to his enemy or his mother;
he is The True. He lets her know that he and she have different
outlooks, different notions of his work: 'What to me and thee, woman?'
he said: 'my hour is not yet come;' but there was that in his look and
tone whence she knew that her desire, scarce half-fashioned into
request, was granted. What am I thence to conclude, worthy of the Son
of God, and the Son of Mary, but that, at the prayer of his mother, he
made room in his plans for the thing she desired? It was not his wish
then to work a miracle, but if his mother wished it, he would! He did
for his mother what for his own part he would rather have let alone.
Not always did he do as his mother would have him; but this was a case
in which he could do so, for it would interfere nowise with the will of
his Father. Was the perfect son, for, being perfect, he must be perfect
every way, to be the only son of man who needed do nothing to please
his mother--nothing but what fell in with his plan for the hour? Not so
could he be the root, the living heart of the great response of the
children to the Father of all! not so could the idea of the grand
family ever be made a reality! Alas for the son who would not willingly
for his mother do something which in itself he would rather not do! If
it would have hurt his mother, if it had been in any way turning from
the will of his Father in heaven, he would not have done it: that would
have been to answer her prayer against her. His yielding makes the
story doubly precious to my heart. The Son then could change his
intent, and spoil nothing: so, I say, can the Father; for the Son does
nothing but what he sees the Father do.
Finding it possible to understand, however, that God may answer prayers
to those who pray for themselves, what are we to think concerning
prayer for others? One may well say, It would surely be very selfish to
pray only for ourselves! but the question is of the use, not of the
character of the action: if there be any good in it, let us pray for
all for whom we feel we can pray; but is there to be found in regard to
prayer for others any such satisfaction as in regard to prayer for
ourselves? The ground is changed--if the fitness of answering prayer
lies in the praying of him who prays: the attitude necessary to
reception does not belong to those _for_ whom prayer is made, but to
him _by_ whom it is made. What fitness then can there be in praying for
others? Will God give to another for our asking what he would not give
without it? Would he not, if it could be done without the person's
self, do it without a second person? If God were a tyrant, one whose
heart might be softened by the sight of anxious love; or if he were one
who might be informed, enlightened, reasoned with; or one in whom a
setting forth of character, need, or claim might awake interest; then
would there be plain reason in prayer for another--which yet, however
disinterested and loving, must be degrading, as offered to one unworthy
of prayer. But if we believe that God is the one unselfish, the one
good being in the universe, and that his one design with his children
is to make them perfect as he is perfect; if we believe that he not
only would once give, but is always giving himself to us for our life;
if we believe--which once I heard a bishop decline to acknowledge--that
God does his best for _every_ man; if also we believe that God knows
every man's needs, and will, for love's sake, not spare one pang that
may serve to purify the soul of one of his children; if we believe all
this, how can we think he will in any sort alter his way with one
because another prays for him? The prayer would arise from nothing in
the person prayed for; why should it initiate a change in God's dealing
with him?
The argument I know not how to answer. I can only, in the face of it,
and feeling all the difficulty, say, and say again, 'Yet I believe I
may pray for my friend--for my enemy--for anybody! Yet and yet, there
is, there must be some genuine, essential good and power in the prayer
of one man for another to the maker of both--and that just because
their maker is perfect, not less than very God.' I shall not bring
authority to bear, for authority can at best but make us believe reason
there, it cannot make us see it. The difficulty remains the same even
when we hear the Lord himself pray to his Father for those the Father
loves because they have received his Son--loves therefore with a
special love, as the foremost in faith, the elect of the world--loves
not merely because they must die if he did not love them, but loves
from the deeps of divine approval. Those who believe in Jesus will be
satisfied, in the face of the incomprehensible, that in what he does
reason and right must lie; but not therefore do we understand. At the
same time, though I cannot explain, I can show some ground upon which,
even had he not been taught to do so, but left alone with his heart, a
man might yet, I think, pray for another.
If God has made us to love like himself, and like himself long to help;
if there are for whom we, like him, would give our lives to lift them
from the evil gulf of their ungodliness; if the love in us would, for
the very easing of the love he kindled, gift another--like himself who
chooses and cherishes even the love that pains him; if, in the midst of
a sore need to bless, to give, to help, we are aware of an utter
impotence; if the fire burns and cannot out; and if all our hope for
ourselves lies in God--what is there for us, what can we think of, what
do, but go to God?--what but go to him with this our own difficulty and
need? And where is the natural refuge, there must be the help. There
can be no need for which he has no supply. The best argument that he
has help, is that we have need. If I can be helped through my friend, I
think God will take the thing up, and do what I cannot do--help my
friend that I may be helped--perhaps help me to help him. You see, in
praying for another we pray for ourselves--for the relief of the needs
of our love; it is not prayer for another alone, and thus it comes
under the former kind. Would God give us love, the root of power, in
us, and leave that love, whereby he himself creates, altogether
helpless in us? May he not at least expedite something for our prayers?
Where he could not alter, he could perhaps expedite, in view of some
help we might then be able to give. If he desires that we should work
with him, that work surely helps him!
There are some things for which the very possibility of supposing them
are an argument; but I think I can go a little farther here, and
imagine at least the _where_ if not the _how_, the divine conditions in
which the help for another in answer to prayer is born, the divine
region in which its possibility must dwell.
God is ever seeking to lift us up into the sharing of his divine
nature; God's kings, such men, namely, as with Jesus have borne witness
to the truth, share his glory even on the throne of the Father. See the
grandeur of the creative love of the Holy! nothing less will serve it
than to have his children, through his and their suffering, share the
throne of his glory! If such be the perfection of the Infinite, should
that perfection bring him under bonds and difficulties, and not rather
set him freer to do the thing he would in the midst of opposing forces?
If his glory be in giving himself, and we must share therein, giving
ourselves, why should we not begin here and now? If he would have his
children fellow-workers with him; if he has desired and willed that not
only by the help of his eternal Son, but by the help also of the
children who through him have been born from above, other and still
other children shall be brought to his knee, to his fireside, to the
plenty of his house, why should he not have kept some margin of room
wherein their prayers may work for those whom they have to help, who
are of the same life as they? I cannot tell how, but may not those
prayers in some way increase God's opportunity for working his best and
highest will? Dealing with his children, the good ones may add to his
power with the not yet good--add to his means of helping them. One way
is clear: the prayer will react upon the mind that prays, its light
will grow, will shine the brighter, and draw and enlighten the more.
But there must be more in the thing. Prayer in its perfect idea being a
rising up into the will of the Eternal, may not the help of the Father
become one with the prayer of the child, and for the prayer of him he
holds in his arms, go forth for him who wills not yet to be lifted to
his embrace? To his bosom God himself cannot bring his children at
once, and not at all except through his own suffering and theirs. But
will not any good parent find some way of granting the prayer of the
child who comes to him, saying, 'Papa, this is my brother's birthday: I
have nothing to give him, and I do love him so! could you give me
something to give him, or give him something for me?'
'Still, could not God have given the gift without the prayer? And why
should the good of any one depend on the prayer of another?'
I can only answer with the return question, 'Why should my love be
powerless to help another?' But we must not tie God to our measures of
time, or think he has forgotten that prayer even which, apparently
unanswered, we have forgotten. Death is not an impervious wall; through
it, beyond it, go the prayers. It is possible we may have some to help
in the next world because we have prayed for them in this: will it not
be a boon to them to have an old friend to their service? I but
speculate and suggest. What I see and venture to say is this: If in God
we live and move and have our being; if the very possibility of loving
lies in this, that we exist in and by the live air of love, namely God
himself, we must in this very fact be nearer to each other than by any
bodily proximity or interchange of help; and if prayer is like a pulse
that sets this atmosphere in motion, we must then by prayer come closer
to each other than are the parts of our body by their complex
nerve-telegraphy. Surely, in the Eternal, hearts are never parted! surely,
through the Eternal, a heart that loves and seeks the good of another,
must hold that other within reach! Surely the system of things would
not be complete in relation to the best thing in it--love itself, if
love had no help in prayer. If I love and cannot help, does not my
heart move me to ask him to help who loves and can?--him without whom
life would be to me nothing, without whom I should neither love nor
care to pray!--will he answer, 'Child, do not trouble me; I am already
doing all I can'? If such answer came, who that loved would not be
content to be nowhere in the matter? But how if the eternal, limitless
Love, the unspeakable, self-forgetting God-devotion, which, demanding
all, gives all, should say, 'Child, I have been doing all I could; but
now you are come, I shall be able to do more! here is a corner for you,
my little one: push at this thing to get it out of the way'! How if he
should answer, 'Pray on, my child; I am hearing you; it goes through me
in help to him. We are of one mind about it; I help and you help. I
shall have you all safe home with me by and by! There is no fear, only
we must work, and not lose heart. Go, and let your light so shine
before men that they may see your good things, and glorify me by
knowing that I am light and no darkness'!--what then? Oh that lovely
picture by Michelangelo, with the young ones and the little ones come
to help God to make Adam!
But it may be that the answer to prayer will come in a shape that seems
a refusal. It may come even in an increase of that from which we seek
deliverance. I know of one who prayed to love better: a sore division
came between--out of which at length rose a dawn of tenderness.
Our vision is so circumscribed, our theories are so small--the garment
of them not large enough to wrap us in; our faith so continually
fashions itself to the fit of our dwarf intellect, that there is
endless room for rebellion against ourselves: we must not let our poor
knowledge limit our not so poor intellect, our intellect limit our
faith, our faith limit our divine hope; reason must humbly watch over
all--reason, the candle of the Lord.
There are some who would argue for prayer, not on the ground of any
possible answer to be looked for, but because of the good to be gained
in the spiritual attitude of the mind in praying. There are those even
who, not believing in any ear to hear, any heart to answer, will yet
pray. They say it does them good; they pray to nothing at all, but they
get spiritual benefit.
I will not contradict their testimony. So needful is prayer to the soul
that the mere attitude of it may encourage a good mood. Verily to pray
to that which is not, is in logic a folly; yet the good that, they say,
comes of it, may rebuke the worse folly of their unbelief, for it
indicates that prayer is natural, and how could it be natural if
inconsistent with the very mode of our being? Theirs is a better way
than that of those who, believing there is a God, but not believing
that he will give any answer to their prayers, yet pray to him; that is
more foolish and more immoral than praying to the No-god. Whatever the
God be to whom they pray, their prayer is a mockery of him, of
themselves, of the truth.
On the other hand, let God give no assent to the individual prayer, let
the prayer even be for something nowise good enough to be a gift of
God, yet the soul that prays will get good of its prayer, if only in
being thereby brought a little nearer to the Father, and making way for
coming again. Prayer does react in good upon the praying soul,
irrespective of answer. But to pray for the sake of the prayer, and
without regard to there being no one to hear, would to me indicate a
nature not merely illogical but morally false, did I not suspect a
vague undetected apprehension of a Something diffused through the All
of existence, and some sort of shadowiest communion therewith.
There are moods of such satisfaction in God that a man may feel as if
nothing were left to pray for, as if he had but to wait with patience
for what the Lord would work; there are moods of such hungering desire,
that petition is crushed into an inarticulate crying; and there is a
communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything. This
last is the very essence of prayer, though not petition. It is possible
for a man, not indeed to believe in God, but to believe that there is a
God, and yet not desire to enter into communion with him; but he that
prays and does not faint will come to recognize that to talk with God
is more than to have all prayers granted--that it is the end of all
prayer, granted or refused. And he who seeks the Father more than
anything he can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not
likely to ask amiss.
Even such as ask amiss may sometimes have their prayers answered. The
Father will never give the child a stone that asks for bread; but I am
not sure that he will never give the child a stone that asks for a
stone. If the Father say, 'My child, that is a stone; it is no bread;'
and the child answer, 'I am sure it is bread; I want it;' may it not be
well he should try his bread?
But now for another point in the parable, where I think I can give some
help--I mean the Lord's apparent recognition of delay in the answering
of prayer: in the very structure of the parable he seems to take delay
for granted, and says notwithstanding, 'He will avenge them speedily!'
The reconciling conclusion is, that God loses no time, though the
answer may not be immediate.
He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we
ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would
be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our
Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to
increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive
condition.
Again, not from any straitening in God, but either from our own
condition and capacity, or those of the friend for whom we pray, time
may be necessary to the working out of the answer. God is limited by
regard for our best; our best implies education; in this we must
ourselves have a large share; this share, being human, involves time.
And perhaps, indeed, the better the gift we pray for, the more time is
necessary to its arrival. To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God
may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and
do much work that we can be aware of only in the results; for our
consciousness is to the extent of our being but as the flame of the
volcano to the world-gulf whence it issues: in the gulf of our unknown
being God works behind our consciousness. With his holy influence, with
his own presence, the one thing for which most earnestly we cry, he may
be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through
regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be
aware that he is answering our request--has answered it, and is
visiting his child. To avenge speedily must mean to make no delay
beyond what is absolutely necessary, to begin the moment it is possible
to begin. Because the Son of Man did not appear for thousands of years
after men began to cry out for a Saviour, shall we imagine he did not
come the first moment it was well he should come? Can we doubt that to
come a moment sooner would have been to delay, not to expedite, his
kingdom? For anything that needs a process, to begin to act at once is
to be speedy. God does not put off like the unrighteous judge; he does
not delay until irritated by the prayers of the needy; he will hear
while they are yet speaking; yea, before they call he will answer.
The Lord uses words without anxiety as to the misuse of them by such as
do not search after his will in them; and the word _avenge_ may be
simply retained from the parable without its special meaning therein;
yet it suggests a remark or two.
Of course, no prayer for any revenge that would gratify the selfishness
of our nature, a thing to be burned out of us by the fire of God, needs
think to be heard. Be sure, when the Lord prayed his Father to forgive
those who crucified him, he uttered his own wish and his Father's will
at once: God will never punish according to the abstract abomination of
sin, as if men knew what they were doing. 'Vengeance is mine,' he says:
with a right understanding of it, we might as well pray for God's
vengeance as for his forgiveness; that vengeance is, to destroy the
sin--to make the sinner abjure and hate it; nor is there any
satisfaction in a vengeance that seeks or effects less. The man himself
must turn against himself, and so be for himself. If nothing else will
do, then hell-fire; if less will do, whatever brings repentance and
self-repudiation, is God's repayment.
Friends, if any prayers are offered against us; if the vengeance of God
be cried out for, because of some wrong you or I have done, God grant
us his vengeance! Let us not think that we shall get off!
But perhaps the Lord was here thinking, not of persecution, or any form
of human wrong, but of the troubles that most trouble his true
disciple; and the suggestion is comforting to those whose foes are
within them, for, if so, then he recognizes the evils of self, against
which we fight, not as parts of ourselves, but as our foes, on which he
will avenge the true self that is at strife with them. And certainly no
evil is, or ever could be, of the essential being and nature of the
creature God made! The thing that is not good, however associated with
our being, is against that being, not of it--is its enemy, on which we
need to be avenged. When we fight, he will avenge. Till we fight, evil
shall have dominion over us, a dominion to make us miserable; other
than miserable can no one be, under the yoke of a nature contrary to
his own. Comfort thyself then, who findest thine own heart and soul, or
rather the things that move therein, too much for thee: God will avenge
his own elect. He is not delaying; he is at work for thee. Only thou
must pray, and not faint. Ask, ask; it shall be given you. Seek most
the best things; to ask for the best things is to have them; the seed
of them is in you, or you could not ask for them.
But from whatever quarter come our troubles, whether from the world
outside or the world inside, still let us pray. In his own right way,
the only way that could satisfy us, for we are of his kind, will God
answer our prayers with help. He will avenge us of our adversaries, and
that speedily. Only let us take heed that we be adversaries to no man,
but fountains of love and forgiving tenderness to all. And from no
adversary, either on the way with us, or haunting the secret chamber of
our hearts, let us hope to be delivered till we _have paid the last
farthing_.