I was walking about the garden on a wintry Sunday with Father Payne. He had
a particular mood on Sundays, I used to think, which made itself subtly
felt--a mood serious, restrained, and yet contented. I do not remember how
the subject came up, but he said something about prayer, and I replied:
"I wish you would tell me exactly what you feel about prayer, Father. I
never quite understand. You always speak as if it played a great part in
your life, and yet I never am sure what exactly it means to you."
"You might as well say," he said, smiling, "that you never felt quite sure
what breakfast meant to me."
He stopped and looked at me for a moment. "Do we know what anything
_means_? We know what prayer _is_, at any rate--one of the
commonest and most natural of instincts. What is your difficulty?"
"Oh, the usual one," I said, "that if the God to whom we pray is the Power
which puts into our minds good desires, and knows not only what is passing
in our thoughts, but the very direction which our thoughts are going to
take--reads us, in fact, like a book, as they say--what, then, is the
object or purpose of setting ourselves to pray to a Power that knows our
precise range of thoughts, and can disentangle them all far better than we
can ourselves?"
"Why," said Father Payne, "that is pure fatalism. If you carry that on a
little further it means all absence of effort. You might as well say, 'I
will take no steps to provide myself with food--if God is All-Powerful, and
sends me a good appetite, it is His business to satisfy it!"
"Oh," I said, "I see that. But if I set about providing myself with
breakfast, I know exactly what I want, and have a very fair chance of
obtaining it. But the essence of prayer is that you must not expect to get
your desires fulfilled."
"I certainly do not pretend," said he, "that prayer is a mechanical method
of getting things; it isn't a _substitute_ for effort and action. Nor
do I think that God simply withholds things unless you ask for them, as a
dog has to beg for a piece of biscuit. I don't look upon prayer as the mere
formulating of a list of requests; and I dislike very much the way some
good people have of getting a large number of men and women to pray for the
same thing, as if you were canvassing for votes. And yet I believe that
prayers have a way of being granted. Indeed, I think that both the strength
and the danger of prayer lies in the fact that people do very much tend to
get what they have set their hearts upon. A recurrent prayer for a definite
thing is often a sign that a man is working hard to secure it. It is rather
perilous to desire definite things too definitely, not because you are
disappointed, but because you are often successful in attaining them."
"Then that would be a reason for not praying," I said.
Father Payne gave one of his little frowns, which I knew well. "I'm not
arguing for the sake of arguing, Father," I said; "I really want to
understand. It seems to me such a muddle."
The little frown passed off in a smile. "Yes, it isn't a wholly rational
thing," said Father Payne, "but it's a natural and instinctive thing. To
forbid prayer seems to me like forbidding hope and love. Prayer seems to me
just a mingling of hope and desire and love and confidence. It is more like
talking over your plans and desires with God. It all depends upon whether
you say, 'My will be done,' which is the wrong sort of prayer, or 'Thy will
be done,' which is the right sort of prayer, and infinitely harder. I don't
mind telling you this, that my prayers are an attempt to put myself in
touch with the Spirit of God. I believe in God; I believe that He is trying
very hard to bring men and women to live in a certain way--the right,
joyful, beautiful way. He sees it clearly enough; but we are so tangled up
with material things that we don't see it clearly--we don't see where our
happiness lies; we mistake all kinds of things--pleasures, schemes,
successes, comforts, desires--for happiness; and prayer seems to me like
opening a sluice and letting a clear stream gush through. That's why I
believe one must set oneself to it. The sluice is not always open--we are
lazy, cowardly, timid; or again, we are confident, self-satisfied, proud of
our own inventiveness and resourcefulness. I don't know what the will is or
what its limitations are; but I believe it has a degree of liberty, and it
can exercise that liberty in welcoming God. Of course, if we think of God
as drearily moral, harsh, full of anger and disapproval, we are not likely
to welcome Him; but if we feel Him full of eagerness and sympathy, of
'comfort, light, and fire of love,' as the old hymn says, then we desire
His company. You have to prepare yourself for good company, you know. It is
a bit of a strain; and I feel that the people who won't pray are like the
lazy and sloppy people who won't put themselves out or forego their habits
or take any trouble to receive a splendid guest. The difference is that the
splendid guest is not to be got every day, while God is always glad of your
company, I think."
"Then with you prayer isn't a process of asking?" I said. "But isn't it a
way of changing yourself by simply trying to get your ideals clear?"
"No, no," said Father Payne; "it's just drawing water from a well when you
are thirsty. Of course you must go to the well, and let down the bucket. It
isn't a mere training of imagination; it is helping yourself to something
actually there. The more you pray, the less you ask for definite things.
You become ashamed to do that. Do you remember the story of Hans Andersen,
when he went to see the King of Denmark? The King made a pause at one point
and looked at Andersen, and Andersen said afterwards that the King had
evidently expected him to ask for a pension. 'But I could not,' he said. 'I
know I was a fool, but my heart would not let me.' One can trust God to
know one's desires, and one's heart will not let one ask for them. It is
His will that you want to know--your own will that you want to surrender.
Strength, clearsightedness, simplicity--those are what flow from contact
with God."
"But what do you make," I said, "of contemplative Orders of monks and nuns,
who say that they specialise in prayer, and give up their whole time and
energy to it?"
"Well," said Father Payne, "it's a harmless and beautiful life; but it
seems to me like abandoning yourself to one kind of rapture. Prayer seems
to me a part of life, not the whole of it. You have got to use the strength
given you. It is given you to do business with. It seems to me as if a man
argued that because eating gave him strength, it must be a good thing to
eat; and that he would therefore eat all day long. It isn't the gaining of
strength that is desirable, but the using of strength. You mustn't sponge
upon God, so to speak. And I don't honestly believe in any life which takes
you right away from life. Life is the duty of all of us; and prayer seems
to me just one of the things that help one to live."
"But intercession," I said, "is there nothing in the idea that you can pray
for those who cannot or will not pray for themselves?"
"I don't know," said Father Payne. "If you love people and wish them well,
and hate the thought of the evils which befall the innocent, and the
overflowings of ungodliness, you can't keep that out of your prayers, of
course. But I doubt very much whether one can do things vicariously. It
seems to land you in difficulties; if you say, for instance, 'I will
inflict sufferings upon myself, that others may be spared suffering,'
logically you might go on to say, 'I will enjoy myself that my enjoyment
may help those who cannot enjoy.' One doesn't really know how much one's
own experience does help other people. Living with others certainly does
affect them, but I don't feel sure that isolating oneself from others does.
I think, on the whole, that everyone must take his place in a circle. We
are limited by time and space and matter, you know. You can know and love a
dozen people; you can't know and love a hundred thousand to much purpose. I
remember when I was a boy that there was a run on a Bank where we lived.
Two of the partners went there, and did what they could. The third, a pious
fellow, shut himself up in his bedroom and prayed. The Bank was saved, and
he came down the next day and explained his absence by saying he had been
giving them the most effectual help in his power. He thought, I believe,
that he had saved the Bank; I don't think the other two men thought so, and
I am inclined to side with them. Mind, I am not deriding the idea of a
vocation for intercessory prayer. I don't know enough about the forces of
the world to do that. It's a harmless life, a beautiful life, and a hard
life too, and I won't say it is useless. But I am not convinced of its
usefulness. It seems to me on a par with the artistic life, a devotion to a
beautiful dream, I don't, on the whole, believe in art for art's sake, and
I don't think I believe in prayer for prayer's sake. But I don't propound
my ideas as final. I think it possible--I can't say more--that a life
devoted to the absorption of beautiful impressions may affect the
atmosphere of the world--we are bound up with each other behind the scenes
in mysterious ways--and similarly I think that lives of contemplative
prayer _may_ affect the world. I should not attempt to discourage
anyone from such a vocation. But it can't be taken for granted, and I think
that a man must show cause, apart from mere inclination, why he should not
live the common life of the world, and mingle with his fellows."
"Then prayer, you think," I said, "is to you just one of the natural
processes of life?"
"That's about it!" said Father Payne. "It seems to me as definite a way of
getting strength and clearness of view and hope and goodness, as eating and
sleeping are ways of getting strength of another kind. To neglect it is to
run the risk of living a hurried, muddled, self-absorbed life. I can't
explain it, any more than I can explain eating or breathing. It just seems
to me a condition of fine life, which we can practise to our help and
comfort, and neglect to our hurt. I don't think I can say more about it
than that, my boy!"