PROBLEMS OF PRAYER
In the opening chapters of this book we had occasion once or twice to ask
ourselves in passing how the new emphasis on the doctrine of Divine
immanence was likely to affect the question of prayer; in turning now to
a more direct treatment of the latter subject, this is again the first
and most important query we shall have to consider. Truth, as we all
know, is a "_mean_"--it represents a balance between opposing extremes;
what is, however, not always recognised is that the extremes are not
necessarily equidistant from the true centre, and there are cases when it
is of the greatest importance to discern which of them is nearer and
which more remote from the truth. In the present instance we have
insisted all along that of the two possible extremes of Deism and
Pantheism the former, with its exclusive insistance upon God's
transcendence, is not only more intelligible but far more true than the
latter, with its one-sided stress on His immanence; for, as we previously
expressed it, in the exercise of religion it is the transcendent God
{193} with whom we are concerned. In fact, Deism may be a very faulty
type of religion, theoretically considered; but Pantheism is religion's
practical annihilation. It is not for nothing that in Persia, _e.g._,
the name of _Sufi_--in theory a pantheistic believer in the identity of
the worshipper with his Deity--signifies in current use not a mystic, but
a freethinker!
So far as the religious _life_ is concerned, we repeat that Deism is the
lesser error and the lesser danger; and nowhere is this more closely
brought home to us than when we consider the reality and the meaning of
prayer. For however far-off God may be thought to be, it has never been
suggested that the voice of prayer is not able to travel across the
distance--He may "hear us in heaven, His dwelling-place, and when He
heareth, forgive;" but if His presence is so universally diffused that we
ourselves form part of it, we shall hardly know to whom or to what to
address ourselves in the act of adoration. We can pray to a Deity
conceived as solely transcendent, but not to a Deity conceived as solely
immanent, _i.e._, as the Sum of Being. A vague "cosmic emotion" differs
_toto coelo_ from worship; we cannot worship that which includes us, for
if we did we should be indulging in self-worship, and as for prayer, we
could no more seriously offer it to the universe than to the atmosphere.
This point cannot be too clearly realised. Prayer is the soul's
communion with God; but if the soul is an {194} integral constituent of
God, a mode or phase of the Divine Being, then this communion, being
already an accomplished and unalterable fact, cannot be so much as
desired, still less does it need to be brought about by prayer or any
other means whatsoever. Nothing could be more instructive in this
connection than what is apparently a favourite illustration with those
for whom immanence is only a synonym for Monism, and which likens the
relation of God to the individual soul to that subsisting between the
ocean and some individual bay: "the hundred bays and gulfs and creeks
that succeed each other round the island," we read, "_are in the ocean,
and the ocean is in them._" [1] Now let us see what this means. There
may be the most urgent necessity for digging channels to connect a
reservoir with the sea, so that it may be filled with its fulness; but it
would be absurd to speak of opening up or renewing communication between
bay and ocean--a communication whose uninterrupted nature is implied in
the very terms of the image. On such an interpretation of immanence,
prayer in any real sense is either superfluous or impossible; for if no
one hopeth for that which he {195} seeth, neither would any one in his
senses seek to bring to pass a condition of things which is thought to be
already existing. Here we see once more the unbridgeable gulf between
every form of "idealistic Monism"--Eastern or Western--and Christianity;
for while, _e.g._, "the central idea of Indian piety is meditation, the
absorption of the individual in the life-spirit, the experience of
identity with the universality and oneness of the Godhead," on the other
hand "Christianity is the religion of prayer--prayer is its crown and its
pearl." [2]
That is really the crux of the whole matter; prayer must be conceived as
an active intercourse between the worshipper and a Person other than
himself, who is the object of his worship. It is not a soliloquy--what
the Germans expressively call a _Selbstgespräch_, or "self-talk"; it is
not a monologue, but a dialogue; it is not a mere contemplation, but
addressed to Someone who is thought of as willing to listen and able to
answer. As Sabatier has well said, "_Prayer is religion in act; that is,
prayer is real religion_." Wherever men believe in a personal God, as
distinct from an "all-inclusive consciousness of being" of which they are
fleeting expressions--mere surface ripples on an infinite ocean--that
belief will attest itself by the prayerful life. On the other hand, a
prayerless religion is a contradiction in terms; it either has no needs
to express or {196} it will die from lack of self-expression. The
believer will pray from a sense of inner necessity, coupled with the
instinctive assurance that the need of which he is conscious will thus,
and thus only, meet with its satisfaction. "The genuineness of
religion"--to quote Professor William James--"is thus indissolubly bound
up with the question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not
deceitful. The conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this
consciousness is the very core of living religion." [3]
Is there, then, or is there not, something "genuinely transacted" in the
experience of prayer? A transaction, _ex hypothesi_, can only take place
between two parties; it implies two volitional centres. And,
furthermore, what is it that is transacted? Is prayer only a very noble
form of auto-suggestion--are its effects merely subjective, or are they
also objective? These are problems which could hardly be said to exist
for an earlier age; to the modern mind they are intensely real, and press
for answers. It must be recognised at once that the idea of God as
immanent in nature, expressing Himself in those observed uniformities to
which we give the name of natural laws, creates difficulties of its own
in regard to this subject; for if these laws show forth His will, is it
even thinkable that our formulated desires could move Him to depart from
what we might speak of as His original {197} intention? His will is
either the absolutely best or it is not; if it is, why pray that He may
modify it? If it is not, is He not less than perfectly good, since His
design admits of improvement? Can we conceive of Him as doing something
in answer to a human petition which He would not do apart from such a
petition? Can we think of Him as being prevailed upon by our assiduities
and importunities to alter His decrees--is not this whole notion rather
paltry and derogatory to His dignity? Everybody is familiar with these
questions and arguments; let us see in what proportion truth and error
are combined in them.
(1) A good deal of unnecessary difficulty arises in the first place from
the habitual failure of many people to bear in mind that though God is
immanent in the cosmos, He is not _only_ immanent; as soon as His
transcendence is realised, it is seen that there exists no _a priori_
reason against the possibility of what from our point of view would look
like Divine interpositions in the ordinary course of nature. We have, it
must be remembered, not the slightest grounds for assuming that there can
be no departures from the uniformities of nature, nor are we in a
position to state dogmatically that no imaginable conditions would ever
furnish an adequate reason for such a departure. Admitting that the
regular processes observed in the physical universe represent something
of the Divine mode of action, we have no {198} warrant for maintaining
that these are the only modes of such action; probability, in effect, is
all the other way. "Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways; and how
small a whisper do we hear of Him! _But the thunder of His power who can
understand?_" A transcendent God is _eo ipso_ not limited to such
methods as we happen to have caught a glimpse or a whisper of.
(2) But when this is clearly understood, it has on the other hand to be
as frankly admitted--indeed, it is stating the obvious to say--that in
modern times the idea of the uniformity of nature has obtained such a
hold upon the general educated mind as renders any breach of that order
far more improbable to us than it could have appeared to a pre-scientific
generation. All physical science rests, broadly speaking, upon the
assumption that nature acts uniformly; without saying that it must be so,
we are well assured that it is so, because all observation and experiment
are found to bear out the truth of the principle we have assumed. All we
have learned concerning nature excludes the notion that there is anything
haphazard or arbitrary in her ways. We do not feel at all as though the
action of natural forces might be suspended or modified for our
particular benefit, and hence certain ideas of the efficacy of
prayer--_e.g._, for rain or fine weather--have become impossible for us
to entertain with the ease of our ancestors. We start with a mental
attitude--hardly {199} to be called a prejudice, since it is based upon a
large body of experience--of profound assurance that in matters like
these the will of God finds its expression in the unbroken operation of
His ordinary laws, "without variableness or shadow of turning"; most
people, moreover, would acknowledge that it is better that these laws
should be stable and capable of being learned and depended upon than that
the Divine will should be incalculable--_ondoyant et divers_--a matter of
moods on His side and of importunity on ours. Tennyson's familiar lines
represent the typically modern outlook with the utmost accuracy and
conciseness:--
God is Law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice[1]
For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His Voice.
(3) And while the scientific temper of the present day could not fail to
affect our thoughts concerning prayer in some directions, the same has
surely to be said about the ethical temper of the age, as shown in our
enlarged conceptions of God. To put it bluntly, much of the language
about what used to be called "special providences" has become unreal and
ceased to be edifying for us. On this whole subject some words of
Principal Adeney's can hardly be bettered:--
Under the old theory God had His favourites who were saved by
hair-breadth escapes, in accidents that were fatal to persons who were
not the objects of "special providences"; this was supposed to account
for the fact that one man in particular found that somebody else {200}
had taken the last berth in the ship he had meant to sail by, and so
escaped the fate of the crew and passengers when it went down with all on
board--no "special providence" saving them. It looks like a reflection
of the pagan mythological tales about heroes rescued by the timely
interference of gods and goddesses in battles where thousands of common
mortals perish unheeded. It is the aristocratic idea of privilege
carried up to religion. The newer view is more democratic, and it seems
to agree better with our Lord's assurance that not a sparrow falls to the
ground without our Father's notice, that the very hairs of our heads are
all numbered.[4]
All this has its direct bearing upon the subject of prayer. We may still
be occasionally regaled with stories of one solitary sailor being
saved--Providence looking after him in response to his mother's
petitions--while every other soul on board was drowned; but these
narratives, once irresistible in the impression they created, are to-day
received with somewhat mixed feelings. The view of God's character which
they inculcate is apt to strike us as unsatisfactory; that He should
avert a great and presumedly unmerited physical calamity from one
individual simply and solely because He has been asked to do so by some
other individual, while allowing the same calamity to overtake numerous
others no more deserving of affliction, does not fit in with our
conception of Him. We are slowly learning to substitute for the notion
of any kind of preferential treatment at the hand of God a belief in the
unchanging goodness of His decrees, in the wisdom of His counsel, {201}
and in the reality of His abiding and enfolding love; by Providence we
mean something that is neither local nor personal, nor particular, but
universal--the Providence of unchanging law--that living and loving Will
which "knoweth altogether."
(4) But if, owing to such considerations as these, we are less inclined
to-day to frame certain kinds of petition, or to expect them to be
answered, it is also true that we are increasingly coming to re-discover
what should never have been forgotten, _viz._, that petition is not the
whole but only a part, and perhaps a subordinate part, of prayer. A
glance at our Lord's priceless bequest to humanity, the Model Prayer,
should suffice to place this beyond a doubt. If we study it clause by
clause, we find that the first place is assigned simply to _adoration_,
and the claiming of the supreme privilege of spiritual communion, with an
implicit, although not explicit, _thanksgiving_ for that privilege; next
we find two clauses expressive of _aspiration_ for the achievement of the
highest aims, with the implied vow to help on their realisation by our
own conduct and efforts; and not until then do we come upon a
_supplication_, which moreover prays only for the simplest of material
blessings--for bare sustenance, in fact. This is followed by
_confession_, with a prayer for mercy, and a promise to show ourselves
merciful to our brethren; and a prayer for deliverance {202} and guidance
brings us to the final act of _praise_. Thus, with one most modest
exception, the blessings which God is asked to bestow are spiritual
blessings; for a petition asking, _e.g._, that the operation of some
natural law may be temporarily suspended for our benefit we should look
altogether in vain. In any case we ought to learn from the one prayer
which our Lord expressly taught His disciples to give to mere petition a
much less prominent place than it usually occupies; adoration, confession
and thanksgiving should between them take the predominant share in our
communion with the Most High, thus correcting the tendency to make of
prayer a mere recital of wants more or less indiscriminately addressed to
the Divine bounty. The supreme object to be kept in view is that we
should become of God's way of thinking--not that we should attempt to
make Him of ours; in Matthew Henry's shrewd comparison, prayer is like
the boat-hook, which brings the boat to the land, not the land to the
boat.
But when we have clarified our ideas on the subject to this extent, we
must once more face the question suggested by Professor James--_What is
it that is transacted_? The effect of prayer upon those who offer it is
too well-attested to be called into doubt; what we have to ask ourselves,
however, is whether those effects are, in the strict sense of the term,
purely "subjective," _i.e._, as we {203} previously expressed it, in the
nature of a noble auto-suggestion. The answer to that query must in the
last resort be determined by our thought concerning God and our relation
to Him. Let it be said once more: if, with the pantheist, we assume that
we are essentially and inalienably one with the All--part of It, as the
bay is of the ocean--prayer, as the theist understands it, is a
self-contradiction; if offered at all, it will be, not the establishment
of a relation which is _ex hypothesi_ always in being, but at most a
clearer realisation by the particle of its fundamental identity with the
Whole. Prayer is founded upon the belief that the Deity is at least
interested in His worshipper--or else, why speak to the Unheeding? But
Spinozism distinctly denies the possibility of God's entertaining any
feelings towards individuals--indeed, Spinoza condemns the individual's
desire for God's personal love; at most he will admit that "'God,
inasmuch as He loves Himself, loves men,' because men are parts and
proportions of God. . . The complacency of the Universe in its
self-awareness, the love of God towards Himself, as Spinoza has it,
includes us in its embrace, and that is enough." [5] We reply that this
"complacency of the Universe in its self-awareness" may be enough for
Spinozists; but it is not enough to move men to prayer--and this is borne
out by Mr. Picton's total silence on this {204} topic in his exposition
of his Master's doctrine. Mr. Chesterton, with his usual felicity of
phrase, hits the nail on the head when he says that upon this principle
"the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person;" certainly it
should be clear that on this assumption, as there can be no return of
affection from a God whose love is only self-love, so the effect of
prayer can only be that which is produced upon the soul by its
consciousness--supposed to be elevating--of being an infinitesimal
fraction of an infinite totality. We say that this consciousness is
supposed to be elevating, though why it should be so is not quite
apparent; for whatever this heterogeneous sum-total of existences may be,
it is not, in our sense of the term, _good_, as the God of Christianity
is good.
But if, instead of losing ourselves in the fog-land of Pantheism,
Theosophy and their unavowed congeners, we take our stand upon the firm
belief in the otherness of God, the case alters altogether. Prayer at
once becomes rational instead of being a contradiction in terms; it is
the accomplishment of something which is not already accomplished; it
springs from the consciousness of a spiritual need, it is born of the
instinct of spiritual self-preservation. It sets up a connection between
two centres--man and God--which can only be connected because of a
fundamental likeness subsisting between them; but the _likeness_ is not
_oneness_--indeed, the latter would exclude {205} the former, for only
separates can be like each other. On this theory prayer is no mere
meditation, but an intense and strenuous endeavour to make actual
something that is only potential; to use the simile we previously
employed, it is a digging of channels along which the sea may pour of its
fulness into an inland reservoir. That this is what really takes place
in prayer--that there is such a real response from Him to whom it is
directed--we have no hesitation whatever in affirming; and this
notwithstanding the fact that such an experience cannot be proved to one
who has not shared it, any more than we can convey a sense of the
grandeur of Mont Blanc to one whose eye has never beheld its majestic
proportions. Evidently, in this as in every corresponding case the
testimony of those who say that they have had a certain experience must
be preferred to that of others who can only say that they have not had
it; and the witness to spiritual renewal, reinforcement, replenishing
received in prayer--to the entering in of a Presence when the doors were
thrown open; to a peace and blessedness which were not of the world's
giving--this witness is so strong and so uniform that we have no choice
but to pronounce it decisive. In every such case something had been
"genuinely transacted"; not only had man spoken, but God had
answered--the worshipper had not merely invoked, but in a very real sense
he had evoked, the Divine Presence.
{206}
But can we go any further than this? Can we, that is to say, maintain
that God answers prayer, not only by flooding the adoring soul with fresh
strength, gladness, confidence, but by bringing to pass events which
otherwise would not have come about? This "objective efficacy" of
prayer, in the narrower sense, is frequently doubted to-day; but, as we
shall attempt to show, upon grounds which, when examined, prove
untenable. The difficulty, as it is most generally stated, arises from a
misunderstanding; answers to prayer are regarded as interferences with
the uniformities of nature, as arbitrary--and therefore
unthinkable--interruptions of the chain of cause and effect, for which
there can be no room in an orderly universe. This, no doubt, was what
Turgenev meant when he asked, "Does not all prayer mean _au fond_ a wish
that in a given case two and two may not make four?" That Turgenev's
aphorism quite illegitimately narrows down the meaning of prayer to
petition, may pass; it is more important for us to investigate his
implied challenge--the grounds upon which he expresses his absolute
disbelief in the fulfilment of such petitions.[6]
A simple preliminary reflection should come to our aid. God is surely
always bringing things to pass on condition that we first do certain
other things, and on no other conditions {207} whatsoever. The seeking
has to go before the finding, the knocking to precede the opening of the
doors. He will give us waving corn, providing the ground is ploughed and
sown; that is to say, He answers our request, if we will make it in the
right manner--He lays down certain rules on compliance with which we may
secure certain blessings. Is it objected that ploughing and sowing,
unlike prayer, are physical exertions made for the purpose of bringing
about physical results? That would be a very superficial view; it is
certainly truer to say that they are acts of will, and even acts of
faith; and in the ultimate analysis the power which has produced the
harvest is not the power of matter, but of mind--the mind of man acting
in accordance with the Mind of God. Man has asked, God has answered; and
would not have answered in that particular manner but for the particular
manner of that request.
Let us go a step further, still keeping to the obvious. Most visitors to
Geneva have made the short excursion to the _Forces matrices_, the great
power-station where the swift waters of the Rhone are pressed into the
service of man and made to light the streets, propel the tramways and
drive all the machinery of the {208} city. Now these vast powers were
always there--no law of nature was broken, nor any new one introduced,
when they were utilised to lighten man's labours and multiply his
energies; all that has happened is that man has discovered existing laws
and harnessed them to his use, and once more the real _force motrice_
resides not in those silently-revolving engines that generate the
electric current, but in the mind that devised and controls them.
Thought, then--unseen, impalpable--is energy in its essence, the master
force which directs, subdues and uses matter; and in prayer we have
already seen that we place ourselves in communication with the Central
Force of the universe, acquiring power we should not otherwise possess,
and replenishing our emptiness from an inexhaustible store. But if
thought, mind, will, are that which lies behind all physical
accomplishment, from the simplest to the most wonderful; and if by an
exercise of the same faculty we may actually secure results of a
spiritual order, direct answering messages, from God: why should it be _a
priori_ unthinkable that we may by the same agency of prayer obtain more
"objective" responses, _viz._, the fulfilment of our petitions? Frankly,
we can discover no theoretical grounds on which such a possibility could
be merely waved on one side as not worth consideration. Shall we be told
that we cannot think that God would grant a certain wish only on
condition that we {209} expressed it to Him? But we have already found
that in the regular experience of life the Divine bounty seems to come in
response to human efforts which are ultimately efforts of the will. Once
more, everything depends upon our thought of God; if He is such as Jesus
taught us to regard Him, may it not well be that His Fatherly love goes
out to us in fullest measure when we call upon it with fullest and most
childlike trust? If it is urged that God would surely under all
circumstances grant His children whatever may contribute to their
happiness, we need only observe that every parent has had occasion to say
to a much-loved child, "You shall have this when you know how to ask for
it." The truth has been stated with characteristic simplicity and
insight by Dr. James Drummond, in the words, "If God has left certain
things dependent on the action of the human will, He may also have left
certain things dependent on human petition." [7]
So much is sure, that in all true prayer we set spiritual forces in
motion, to whose effects upon ourselves we can bear witness; and if their
action in one direction is an ascertained fact, however mysterious and
inexplicable, with what warrant shall we deny the possibility of their
acting in another? Certainly we shall not argue that such action
involves an "interference" with natural law; and if we have to admit our
ignorance as to {210} _how_ such a force would operate and bring results
to pass, let us remind ourselves that the ultimate "how?"--the bridge
between antecedent and consequent, and why the former should be followed
by the latter--always and inevitably escapes us. Why in the thousand and
more observed forms of snow-crystals the filaments of ice should always
be arranged at angles of 60 degrees or 120 degrees; why sulphate of
potash and sulphate of alumina should crystallise in octahedrons or in
cubes, but in no other forms; what is the real connection between
molecular changes in the brain-substance and states of consciousness--all
these, and a myriad more, are unsolved mysteries: we can only say that we
are dealing with facts of experience. And as in these and countless
other cases, so here also, in this matter of answers to prayer, the final
and only test is that of experience. That a vessel in distress should be
able to send a message to another vessel a hundred miles out of sight,
and summon it to its aid, would have struck an earlier generation as a
piece of wild romancing--but we know it is actually done; that a soul's
earnest prayer may avail to enlist mighty energies in its help and so to
bring about results which otherwise would not have come to pass, ought
hardly to strike the present age as an inherently incredible proposition.
But we shall be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi
apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it
worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet
who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met
with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed,
the very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply at
least a partial answer. For we understand that the success of wireless
messages being transmitted and received depends upon absolutely perfect
"tuning"; the electric waves set up, _i.e._, will only act upon a
receiver most delicately attuned to a particular rate of oscillations,
and when the difference between the rate of oscillation of the waves and
the receiver exceeds one per cent., resonance ceases altogether, so that
the message may be sent, but will not be received. It strikes us as
hardly a fanciful supposition that many prayers fail to obtain an answer
for a precisely analogous reason, _i.e._, for lack of attuning. The mere
uttering of devotional phraseology, or even the sending forth of
anguished appeals, does not of necessity constitute true prayer at all,
and hence remains ineffective, because the soul is not really _en
rapport_ with God. We suggest that the supplication which "availeth much
in its working" will be the outcome of a whole spiritual discipline,
whereby the individual spirit has become attuned to the Spirit whom it
seeks; if the majority of prayers go unanswered, it is because they are
mere recitals of a tale of wants, without even an attempt upon the {212}
part of those who utter them to put themselves into the attitude upon
which an answer depends. On the other hand, where the adjustment of
which we speak has reached a high state of perfection, the soul not only
transmits its message to God with the perfect assurance of being heard,
but it is also continually sensitive to the messages which incessantly
flash through the spiritual ether from God, but which only those can hear
who have learned the secret of listening for His word.
In dealing with this question of unanswered prayer, we have given the
first place to what seems to us the most important as well as the least
frequently regarded reason--the lack of spiritual discipline, which is
ultimately the lack of faith, with which we pray. When we remember,
moreover, that many of our petitions are framed in very natural and
inevitable ignorance of what is for our truest good, we realise another
and very obvious reason for the non-fulfilment of a large proportion of
the wishes we lay before the throne of God, whose goodness is as much
attested by what He denies to our foolishness as by what He grants to our
entreaties. And how numerous are the prayers which reflection and an
awakened moral sense rule out of court: prayers which ask God to do for
us by special intervention what we ought to do for ourselves by our own
effort and industry; prayer for success in dealings and enterprises which
in themselves are ethically {213} unjustifiable, and to which the only
answer could be, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as
thyself"; prayers which carry the spirit of egoism, of competition, of
bargaining even into our relations with the Most High; prayers of an
imprecatory character such as meet and shock us in some of the psalms.
How could these and their like possibly be granted by a just and merciful
Creator?
But apart from such presumptuous, foolish, or impious supplications as
are at once repulsed and rebuked by the Divine silence, what are the
objects we may lawfully pray for, asking for a response? It must be
confessed that with the exception of petitions for spiritual
blessings--for a deeper faith, for a more complete obedience, for a
humbler heart, for a wider sympathy--such as can never be out of place,
it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line; there is, indeed, a whole
vast category of possible objects of prayer which one cannot _a priori_
pronounce legitimate or otherwise. We can only humbly confess that "we
know not how to pray as we ought," nor what things it is in our best
interest to have granted or withheld from us; but with this proviso, and
with the clause, "Nevertheless, not my will but Thine," added to our
petitions, there can be no wrong in making our requests to God for every
manner of blessing, material or otherwise, and whether on our own behalf
or on behalf of others. Here we may surely with {214} all confidence and
with all reverence invoke the analogy of human parenthood. No true
earthly parent is offended or moved to impatience by his children
expressing to him all their wants and wishes with perfect unreserve, even
though his loving wisdom has anticipated their real needs, and will
decide which of their desires may be granted; indeed, as we already
hinted, the granting of those desires may depend to some extent upon the
children's attitude, upon the filial, trustful, affectionate disposition
they exhibit. So in regard to the supplications we address to our Father
in Heaven: we cannot think of His being moved by our mere importunity, or
by the mechanical repetition of set phrases; but that the fulfilment of
some wish of ours may be conditioned by our humility and confidence in
expressing it, presents no improbability. In any case, what is necessary
on our part is that we should have faith, not only in God's _power_ to
grant our petitions, but in His _wisdom_ in granting or refusing them as
may be most expedient for us. We ourselves can, within limits, fulfil
most of our children's requests; but a wise and loving parent will many a
time say "no," when his child may marvel at what to him must seem a mere
arbitrary or even unkind refusal of an innocent desire. That hapless man
of genius, the late John Davidson, condensed the truth into one
illuminating phrase when he spoke of prayer rightly uttered as {215}
"submissive aspiration"; it would be difficult to devise another form of
words equally brief yet containing so much of the essence of the matter.
Even short of actual fulfilment, it is an immeasurable privilege simply
to speak to God about all the things that weigh on our minds, assured of
His hearing, nor should the fact that He knows all about our troubles
before we open our lips concerning them restrain our utterance; for our
object is not to give Him information, but to place ourselves in
conscious communion with Him, and by viewing our affairs in His light to
see light.
This applies to all our petitions, and perhaps in an especial measure to
intercessory prayer, those touching requests which we send up for our
dear ones in sickness, peril, sorrow, need, or any other adversity. Of
course, all such intercessions ought to be mentally qualified by the
assurance that God will do what is best, even though we may be unable to
understand His decrees; but there is nothing unreasonable in the belief
that our prayers for others may be, and frequently are, directly
effective, setting energies in motion which might otherwise have remained
latent and inoperative. How these energies operate may be quite beyond
our power to ascertain or even to guess; but if--to say it once more--the
action of matter on matter, the "how" of chemical combinations, eludes
us, shall we complain because the action of mind on mind, spirit on
spirit, is no {216} less elusive? The final test--whether, _e.g._, a
mother's prayer that her absent son may be preserved from the snare of
some great temptation, is able to work a change in his mind--is, as we
said above, the test of experience; and unless we are dogmatically
determined to reject all testimony which bears on this subject, there
seems no escaping the conclusion that specific prayers have been
specifically, directly, and unmistakeably answered in instances too
numerous to admit of explanation by coincidence.[8] The volume of human
testimony bearing on this subject is too great to be swept aside by a
simple refusal to consider it; if there is no insurmountable logical
obstacle to the possibility of prayer proving objectively effective--and
we have tried to show that there are no such obstacles--we must examine
the alleged instances of such answers without prejudice; and if we do so,
then, after making all legitimate deductions, we shall still find a body
of residual fact which is not to be explained away.
By all means, then, we conclude, let us obey the instincts which urge us
to turn to God in {217} prayer; they lie deeper and are less
fallible--embodying as they do the experience of the race--than our
individual reasonings. We may tell our Father in all simplicity of
whatever desires we may cherish with an approving conscience, leaving the
fulfilment to His wise and steadfast love; it is not the ignorance of our
requests but the faithlessness of our spirits that we most stand in need
of guarding against. Let us here, as elsewhere, follow the example of
the Son of God, whose unique intimacy with the Father made Him only the
more earnest in communing with Him, least lonely when alone with God.
Above all, let us bear in mind that the best prayer is that which has
least of self-seeking in it, but is answered in the making, and so sends
us back to our tasks--perhaps to our trials--refreshed as by a draught
from some hidden and precious spring, renewed in manhood and nearer to
God. In the oft-quoted aphorism of George Meredith, "He who rises from
his prayer a better man, his prayer is answered." As a Greater than
Meredith said, "Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things; but seek ye first His Kingdom, and His righteousness, and
all these things shall be added unto you." The ideal prayer is that
which will ask little, aspire much, submit altogether; it is the soul's
complete surrender to and rest in God.
[1] The Rev. E. W. Lewis, M.A., B.D., in a paper on "The Divine
Immanence, its Meaning and its Implications." Compare also _The New
Theology_, p. 34. As Dr. William Adamson observes, "The illustration is
unfortunate. The supposed ocean is to be thought of as infinite, and the
bay is finite, but in their essence and existence they are essentially
one. There can be no bay where there is no boundary, and where in this
case could the boundary be found, for there can be nothing outside the
infinite?"
[2] Bousset, _Faith of a Modern Protestant_, p. 59.
[3] _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 466.
[4] _A Century's Progress_, p. 105-6.
[5] _Spinoza_, by J. Allanson Picton, p. 213.
[6] So far, of course, as such an attitude may be the outcome of an
antecedent disbelief in God, it is perfectly logical; only we have no
common ground with those who take that view. It is otherwise, however,
where an avowed acceptance of Theism is nevertheless accompanied by
doubts as regards any objective effects flowing from supplications
addressed to God; it is with such doubts as these that we are concerned.
[7] _Studies in Christian Doctrine_, p. 197.
[8] Precisely such an instance was brought under the notice of the
present writer by a correspondent, whose prayers that an absent one in
distant lands might be able to resist the power of strong temptation was
"heard" past all doubting--and that without the object of these petitions
being aware of the cause, as let a remark of his own attest: "I don't
know why, but sometimes I feel myself in some way held back from doing
certain things--how, I cannot explain; I only know that I should do as
others do, were it not for this compelling feeling."
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