_I judge that my prayer is more than the devil himself; if it were
otherwise, Luther would have fared differently long before this. Yet
men will not see and acknowledge the great wonders or miracles God
works in my behalf. If I should neglect prayer but a single day, I
should lose a great deal of the fire of faith._—MARTIN LUTHER.
Only glimpses of the great importance of prayer could the apostles get
before Pentecost. But the Spirit coming and filling at Pentecost
elevated prayer to its vital and all commanding position in the gospel
of Christ. The call now of prayer to every saint is the Spirit's loudest
and most exigent call. Sainthood's piety is made, refined, perfected, by
prayer. The gospel moves with slow and timid pace when the saints are
not at their prayers early and late and long.
Where are the Christly leaders who can teach the modern saints how to
pray and put them at it? Do we know we are raising up a prayerless set
of saints? Where are the apostolic leaders who can put God's people to
praying? Let them come to the front and do the work, and it will be the
greatest work which can be done. An increase of educational facilities
and a great increase of money force will be the direst curse to religion
if they are not sanctified by more and better praying than we are doing.
More praying will not come as a matter of course. The campaign for the
twentieth or thirtieth century fund will not help our praying but hinder
if we are not careful. Nothing but a specific effort from a praying
leadership will avail. The chief ones must lead in the apostolic effort
to radicate the vital importance and _fact_ of prayer in the heart and
life of the Church. None but praying leaders can have praying followers.
Praying apostles will beget praying saints. A praying pulpit will beget
praying pews. We do greatly need somebody who can set the saints to this
business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints.
Non-praying saints are a beggarly gang of saints who have neither the
ardour nor the beauty nor the power of saints. Who will restore this
breach? The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles, who can set
the Church to praying.
We put it as our most sober judgment that the great need of the Church
in this and all ages is men of such commanding faith, of such unsullied
holiness, of such marked spiritual vigour and consuming zeal, that their
prayers, faith, lives, and ministry will be of such a radical and
aggressive form as to work spiritual revolutions which will form eras in
individual and Church life.
We do not mean men who get up sensational stirs by novel devices, nor
those who attract by a pleasing entertainment; but men who can stir
things, and work revolutions by the preaching of God's Word and by the
power of the Holy Ghost, revolutions which change the whole current of
things.
Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in
this matter; but capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of
thorough consecration, the ability of self-littleness, an absolute
losing of one's self in God's glory and an ever-present and insatiable
yearning and seeking after all the fulness of God—men who can set the
Church ablaze for God; not in a noisy, showy way, but with an intense
and quiet heat that melts and moves everything for God.
God can work wonders if He can get a suitable man. Men can work wonders
if they can get God to lead them. The full endowment of the spirit that
turned the world upside down would be eminently useful in these latter
days. Men who can stir things mightily for God, whose spiritual
revolutions change the whole aspect of things, are the universal need of
the Church.
The Church has never been without these men; they adorn its history;
they are the standing miracles of the divinity of the Church; their
example and history are an unfailing inspiration and blessing. An
increase in their number and power should be our prayer.
That which has been done in spiritual matters can be done again, and be
better done. This was Christ's view. He said: "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father."
The past has not exhausted the possibilities nor the demands for doing
great things for God. The Church that is dependent on its past history
for its miracles of power and grace is a fallen Church.
God wants elect men—men out of whom self and the world have gone by a
severe crucifixion, by a bankruptcy which has so totally ruined self and
the world that there is neither hope nor desire of recovery; men who by
this insolvency and crucifixion have turned toward God perfect hearts.
Let us pray ardently that God's promise to prayer may be more than
realized.