The Bible presents us with the personality of a magnificent
Being--the only-begotten Son of God--who, being in the form of God
and without robbery equal with God, emptied himself of his glory and
took upon him the form of a servant; and, being found in fashion as
a man, humbled himself and became obedient to death--even the death
of the cross.
This great Being, we are told, entered the race of mortality,
divested of those advantages which came from his divine origin,
and assuming all those disadvantages of limitation and dependence
which belong to human beings. The Apostle says, "It behooved him
in all respects to be made like unto his brethren." His lot was
obedience--dependence upon the Father--and he gained victories by
just the means which are left to us--faith and prayer.
Now, there are many good people whose feeling about prayer is
something like this: "I pray because I am commanded to, not because
I feel a special need or find a special advantage in it. In my view
we are to use our intellect and our will in discovering duties and
overcoming temptations, quite sure that God will, of course, aid
those who aid themselves." This class of persons look upon all
protracted seasons of prayer and periods spent in devotion as so
much time taken from the active duties of life. A week devoted to
prayer, a convention of Christians meeting to spend eight or ten
days in exercises purely devotional, would strike them as something
excessive and unnecessary, and tending to fanaticism.
If ever there was a human being who could be supposed able to meet
the trials of life and overcome its temptations in his own strength,
it must have been Jesus Christ.
But his example stands out among all others, and he is shown to us
as peculiarly a man of prayer. The wonderful quietude and reticence
of spirit in which he awaited the call of his Father to begin his
great work has already been noticed. He waited patiently, living for
thirty years the life of a common human being of the lower grades
of society, and not making a single movement to display either
what may be called his natural gifts, of teaching, etc., or those
divine powers which were his birthright. Having taken the place of a
servant, as a servant he waited the divine call.
When that call came he consecrated himself to his great work by
submitting to the ordinance of baptism. We are told that as he went
up from the waters of baptism, praying, the heavens were opened and
the Holy Ghost descended upon him, and a voice from heaven said,
"Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased."
Might we not think that now the man Jesus Christ would feel fully
prepared to begin at once the work to which God so visibly called
him? But no. The divine Spirit within him led to a still farther
delay. More than a month's retreat from all the world's scenes and
ways, a period of unbroken solitude, was devoted to meditation and
prayer.
If Jesus Christ deemed so much time spent in prayer needful to his
work, what shall we say of ourselves? Feeble and earthly, with
hearts always prone to go astray, living in a world where everything
presses us downward to the lower regions of the senses and passions,
how can we afford to neglect that higher communion, those seasons of
divine solitude, which were thought necessary by our Master? It was
in those many days devoted entirely to communion with God that he
gained strength to resist the temptations of Satan, before which we
so often fall. Whatever we may think of the mode and manner of that
mysterious account of the temptations of Christ, it is evident that
they were met and overcome by the spiritual force gained by prayer
and the study of God's word.
But it was not merely in this retirement of forty days that our Lord
set us the example of the use of seasons of religious seclusion.
There is frequent mention made in the Gospels of his retiring for
purposes of secret prayer. In the midst of the popularity and
success that attended his first beneficent miracles, we are told by
St. Mark that, "rising up a great while before day, he went out into
a solitary place and there prayed." His disciples went to look for
him, and found him in his retirement, and brought him back with the
message, "All men are seeking for thee." In Luke v. 16, it is said:
"He withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed;" and on another
occasion (Luke iv. 42), he says: "And when it was day, he departed
and went into a desert place." Again, when preparing to take the
most important step in his ministry, the choice of his twelve
Apostles, we read in Luke vi. 12:
"And it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain
to pray, and continued _all night_ in prayer to God; and when it was
day, he called unto him his disciples; and of them he chose twelve,
whom also he named apostles."
It was when his disciples found him engaged in prayer, and listened
for a little while to his devotions, that they addressed to him the
petition, "Lord, teach _us_ to pray." Might we not all, in view of
his example, address to him the same prayer? Surely if there is
anything in which Christ's professed disciples need to learn of him
it is in prayer.
Not only in example but in teaching did he exhort to prayer. "Watch
and pray" were words so often upon his lips that they may seem to
be indeed the watchwords of our faith. He bids us retire to our
closets and with closed door pray to our Father in secret. He says
that men "ought always to pray and not to faint," though the answer
be delayed. He reasons from what all men feel of parental longings
in granting the requests of their little children, and says, "If
ye, being evil, are so ready to hear your children, how much more
ready will your Father in heaven be to give good things to them
that ask him." Nay, he uses a remarkable boldness in urging us to
be importunate in presenting our requests, again and again, in the
face of apparent delay and denial. He shows instances where even
indifferent or unjust people are overcome by sheer importunity, and
intimates how much greater must be the power of importunity--urgent,
pressing solicitation--on a Being always predisposed to benevolence.
By all these methods and illustrations our Lord incites us to follow
his prayerful example, and to overcome, as he overcame, by prayer.
The Christian Church felt so greatly the need of definite seasons
devoted to religious retirement that there grew up among them the
custom now so extensively observed in Christendom, of devoting
forty days in every year to a special retreat from the things of
earth, and a special devotion to the work of private and public
prayer. Like all customs, even those originating in deep spiritual
influences, this is too apt to degenerate into a mere form. Many
associate no ideas with "fasting" except a change in articles of
food. The true spiritual fasting, which consists in turning our eyes
and hearts from the engrossing cares and pleasures of earth and
fixing them on things divine, is lost sight of. Our "forty days"
are not like our Lord's, given to prayer and the study of God's
Word. Nothing could make the period of Lent so much of a reality as
to employ it in a systematic effort to fix the mind on Jesus. The
history in the Gospels is so well worn that it often slips through
the head without affecting the heart.
But if, retiring into solitude for a portion of each day, we should
select some one scene or trait or incident in the life of Jesus, and
with all the helps we can get seek to understand it fully, tracing
it in the other evangelists, comparing it with other passages of
Scripture, etc., we should find ourselves insensibly interested, and
might hope that in this effort of our souls to understand him, Jesus
himself would draw near, as he did of old to the disciples on the
way to Emmaus.
This looking unto Jesus and thinking about him is a better way to
meet and overcome sin than any physical austerities or spiritual
self-reproaches. It is by looking at him, the Apostle says, "as in a
glass," that we are "changed into the same image, as from glory to
glory."