_CONCERNING PRAYER._
When the Greeks called man ὁ ανθρωπος, or the "uplooking
one," they did but crystallize in a word what is a universal fact, the
religious instinct of humanity. Everywhere, and through all times, man
has felt, as by a sort of intuition, that earth was no Ultima Thule,
with nothing beyond but oceans of vacancy and silence, but that it lay
in the over-shadow of other worlds, between which and their own were
subtle modes of correspondence. They felt themselves to be in the
presence of Powers other and higher than human, who somehow influenced
their destiny, whose favour they must win, and whose displeasure they
must avert. And so Paganism reared her altars, almost numberless,
dedicating them even to the "Unknown God," lest some anonymous deity
should be grieved at being omitted from the enumeration. The prevalence
of false religions in the world, the garrulous babble of mythology, does
but voice the religious instinct of man; it is but another Tower of
Babel, by which men hope to find and to scale the heavens which must be
somewhere overhead.
In the Old Testament, however, we find the clearer revelation. What to
the unaided eye of reason and of nature seemed but a wave of golden mist
athwart the sky--"a meeting of gentle lights without a name"--now
becomes a wide-reaching and shining realm, peopled with intelligences of
divers ranks and orders; while in the centre of all is the city and the
throne of the Invisible King, Jehovah, Lord of Sabaoth. In the breath of
the new morning the gossamer threads Polytheism had been spinning
through the night were swept away, and on the pillars of the New
Jerusalem, that celestial city of which their own Salem was a far-off
and broken type, they read the inscription, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord
our God is one Lord." But while the Old Testament revealed the unity of
the Godhead, it emphasized especially His sovereignty, the glories of
His holiness, and the thunders of His power. He is the great Creator,
arranging His universe, commanding evolutions and revolutions, and
giving to each molecule of matter its secret affinities and repulsions.
And again He is the Lawgiver, the great Judge, speaking out of the
cloudy pillar and the windy tempest, dividing the firmaments of Right
and Wrong, whose holiness hates sin with an infinite hatred, and whose
justice, with sword of flame, pursues the wrong-doer like an
unforgetting Nemesis. It is only natural, therefore, that with such
conceptions of God, the heavens should appear distant and somewhat cold.
The quiet that was upon the world was the hush of awe, of fear, rather
than of love; for while the goodness of God was a familiar and favourite
theme, and while the mercy of God, which "endureth for ever," was the
refrain, oft repeated, of their loftiest songs, the love of God was a
height the Old Dispensation had not explored, and the Fatherhood of God,
that new world of perpetual summer, lay all undiscovered, or but dimly
apprehended through the mist. The Divine love and the Divine Fatherhood
were truths which seemed to be held in reserve for the New Dispensation;
and as the light needs the subtle and sympathetic ether before it can
reach our outlying world, so the love and the Fatherhood of God are
borne in upon us by Him who was Himself the Divine Son and the
incarnation of the Divine love.
It is just here where the teaching of Jesus concerning prayer begins. He
does not seek to explain its philosophy; He does not give hints as to
any observance of time or place; but leaving these questions to adjust
themselves, He seeks to bring heaven into closer touch with earth. And
how can He do this so well as by revealing the Fatherhood of God? When
the electric wire linked the New with the Old World the distances were
annihilated, the thousand leagues of sea were as if they were not; and
when Jesus threw across, between earth and heaven, that word "Father,"
the wide distances vanished, and even the silences became vocal. In the
Psalms, those loftiest utterances of devotion, Religion only once
ventured to call God "Father;" and then, as if frightened at her own
temerity, she lapses into silence, and never speaks the familiar word
again. But how different the language of the Gospels! It is a name that
Jesus is never weary of repeating, striking its music upwards of seventy
times, as if by the frequent iteration He would lodge the heavenly word
deep within the world's heart. This is His first lesson in the science
of prayer: He drills them on the Divine Fatherhood, setting them on that
word, as it were, to practise the scales; for as he who has practised
well the scales has acquired the key to all harmonies, so he who has
learned well the "Father" has learned the secret of heaven, the sesame
that opens all its doors and unlocks all its treasures.
"When ye pray," said Jesus, replying to a disciple who sought
instruction in the heavenly language, "say, Father," thus giving us what
was His own pass-word to the courts of heaven. It is as if He said, "If
you would pray acceptably put yourself in the right position. Seek to
realize, and then to claim, your true relationship. Do not look upon God
as a distant and cold abstraction, or as some blind force; do not regard
Him as being hostile to you or as careless about you. Else your prayer
will be some wail of bitterness, a cry coming out of the dark, and
losing itself in the dark again. But look upon God as your Father, your
living, loving, heavenly Father; and then step up with a holy boldness
into the child-place, and all heaven opens before you there."
And not only does Jesus thus "show us the Father," but He takes pains to
show us that it is a real, and not some fictitious Fatherhood. He tells
us that the word means far more in its heavenly than in its earthly use;
that the earthly meaning, in fact, is but a shadow of the heavenly. For
"if ye then," He says, "being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask Him?" He thus sets us a problem in Divine
proportion. He gives us the human fatherhood, with all it implies, as
our known quantities, and from these He leaves us to work out the
unknown quantity, which is the Divine ability and willingness to give
good gifts to men; for the Holy Spirit includes in Himself all spiritual
gifts. It is a problem, however, which our earthly figures cannot solve.
The nearest that we can approach to the answer is that the Divine
Fatherhood is the human fatherhood multiplied by that "how much more"--a
factor which gives us an infinite series.
Again, Jesus teaches that character is an important condition of prayer,
and that in this realm heart is more than any art. Words alone do not
constitute prayer, for they may be only like the bubbles of the
children's play, iridescent but hollow, never climbing the sky, but
returning to the earth whence they came. And so when the scribes and
Pharisees make "long prayers," striking devotional attitudes, and
putting on airs of sanctity, Jesus could not endure them. They were a
weariness and abomination to Him; for He read their secret heart, and
found it vain and proud. In His parable (xviii. 11) He puts the genuine
and the counterfeit prayer side by side, drawing the sharp contrast
between them. He gives us that of the Pharisee wordy, inflated, full of
the self-eulogizing "I." It is the prayerless prayer, that had no need,
and which was simply an incense burned before the clayey image of
himself. Then He gives us the few brief words of the publican, the cry
of a broken heart, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," a prayer which
reached directly the highest heaven, and which came back freighted with
the peace of God. "If I regard iniquity in my heart," the Psalmist said,
"the Lord will not hear me." And it is true. If there be the least
unforgiven sin within the soul we spread forth our hands, we make many
prayers, in vain; we do but utter "wild, delirious cries" that Heaven
will not hear, or at any rate regard. The first cry of true prayer is
the cry for mercy, pardon; and until this is spoken, until we step up by
faith into the child-position, we do but offer vain oblations. Nay, even
in the regenerate heart, if there be a temporary lapse, and unholy
tempers brood within, the lips of prayer become paralyzed at once, or
they only stammer in incoherent speech. We may with filled hands
compass the altar of God, but neither gifts nor prayers can be accepted
if there be bitterness and jealousy within, or if our "brother has aught
against" us. The wrong must be righted with our brother, or we cannot be
right with God. How can we ask for forgiveness if we ourselves cannot
forgive? How can we ask for mercy if we are hard and merciless, gripping
the throat of each offender, as we demand the uttermost farthing? He who
can pray for them who despitefully use him is in the way of the Divine
commandment; he has climbed to the dome of the temple, where the
whispers of prayer, and even its inarticulate aspirations, are heard in
heaven. And so the connection is most close and constant between praying
and living, and they pray most and best who at the same time "make their
life a prayer."
Again, Jesus maps out for us the realm of prayer, showing the wide areas
it should cover. St. Luke gives us an abbreviated form of the prayer
recorded by St. Matthew, and which we call the "Lord's Prayer." It is a
disputed point, though not a material one, whether the two prayers are
but varied renderings of one and the same utterance, or whether Jesus
gave, on a later occasion, an epitomized form of the prayer He had
prescribed before, though from the circumstantial evidence of St. Luke
we incline to the latter view. The two forms, however, are identical in
substance. It is scarcely likely that Jesus intended it to be a rigid
formula, to which we should be slavishly bound; for the varied
renderings of the two Evangelists show plainly that Heaven does not lay
stress upon the _ipsissima verba_. We must take it rather as a Divine
model, laying down the lines on which our prayers should move. It is, in
fact, a sort of prayer-microcosm, giving a miniature reflection of the
whole world of prayer, as a drop of dew will give a reflection of the
encircling sky. It gives us what we may call the _species_ of prayer,
whose _genera_ branch off into infinite varieties; nor can we readily
conceive of any petition, however particular or private, whose root-stem
is not found in the few but comprehensive words of the Lord's Prayer. It
covers every want of man, just as it befits every place and time.
Running through the prayer are two marked divisions, the one general,
the other particular and personal; and in the Divine order, contrary to
our human wont, the general stands first, and the personal second. Our
prayers often move in narrow circles, like the homing birds coming back
to this "centred self" of ours, and sometimes we forget to give them the
wider sweeps over a redeemed humanity. But Jesus says, "When ye pray,
say, Father, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come." It is a temporary
erasure of self, as the soul of the worshipper is absorbed in God. In
its nearness to the throne it forgets for awhile its own little needs;
its low-flying thoughts are caught up into the higher currents of the
Divine thought and purpose, moving outwards with them. And this is the
first petition, that the name of God may be hallowed throughout the
world; that is, that men's conceptions of the Deity may become just and
holy, until earth gives back in echo the _Trisagion_ of the seraphim.
The second petition is a continuation of the first; for just in
proportion as men's conceptions of God are corrected and hallowed will
the kingdom of God be set up on earth. The first petition, like that of
the Psalmist, is for the sending out of "Thy light and Thy truth;" the
second is that humanity may be led to the "holy hill," praising God
upon the harp, and finding in God their "exceeding joy." To find God as
the Father-King is to step up within the kingdom.
The prayer now descends into the lower plane of personal wants, covering
(1) our physical, and (2) our spiritual needs. The former are met with
one petition, "Give us day by day our daily bread," a sentence
confessedly obscure, and which has given rise to much dispute. Some
interpret it in a spiritual sense alone, since, as they say, any other
interpretation would break in upon the uniformity of the prayer, whose
other terms are all spiritual. But if, as we have suggested, the whole
prayer must be regarded as an epitome of prayer in general, then it must
include somewhere our physical needs, or a large and important domain of
our life is left uncovered. As to the meaning of the singular adjective
επιουσιον we need not say much. That it can scarcely mean
"to-morrow's" bread is evident from the warning Jesus gives against
"taking thought" for the morrow, and we must not allow the prayer to
traverse the command. The most natural and likely interpretation is that
which the heart of mankind has always given it, as our "daily" bread, or
bread sufficient for the day. Jesus thus selects, what is the most
common of our physical wants, the bread which comes to us in such purely
natural, matter-of-course ways, as the specimen need of our physical
life. But when He thus lifts up this common, ever-recurring mercy into
the region of prayer He puts a halo of Divineness about it, and by
including this He teaches us that there is no want of even our physical
life which is excluded from the realm of prayer. If we are invited to
speak with God concerning our daily bread, then certainly we need not
be silent as to aught else.
Our spiritual needs are included in the two petitions, "And forgive us
our sins; for we ourselves also forgive everyone that is indebted to us.
And bring us not into temptation." The parenthesis does not imply that
all debts should be remitted, for payment of these is enjoined as one of
the duties of life. The indebtedness spoken of is rather the New
Testament indebtedness, the failure of duty or courtesy, the omission of
some "ought" of life or some injury or offence. It is that human
forgiveness, the opposite of resentment, which grows up under the shadow
of the Divine forgiveness. The former of these petitions, then, is for
the forgiveness of all past sin, while the latter is for deliverance
from present sinning; for when we pray, "Bring us not into temptation,"
it is a prayer that we may not be tempted "above that we are able,"
which, amplified, means that in all our temptations we may be
victorious, "kept by the power of God."
Such, then, is the wide realm of prayer, as indicated by Jesus. He
assures us that there is no department of our being, no circumstance of
our life, which does not lie within its range; that
"The whole round world is every way
Bound with gold chains about the feet of God,"
and that on these golden chains, as on a harp, the touch of prayer may
wake sweet music, far-off or near alike. And how much we miss through
restraining prayer, reserving it for special occasions, or for the
greater crises of life! But if we would only loop up with heaven each
successive hour, if we would only run the thread of prayer through the
common events and the common tasks, we should find the whole day and
the whole life swinging on a higher, calmer level. The common task would
cease to be common, and the earthly would be less earthly, if we only
threw a bit of heaven upon it, or we opened it out to heaven. If in
everything we could but make our requests known unto God--that is, if
prayer became the habitual act of life--we should find that heaven was
no longer the land "afar off," but that it was close upon us, with all
its proffered ministries.
Again, Jesus teaches the importance of earnestness and importunity in
prayer. He sketches the picture--for it is scarcely a parable--of the
man whose hospitality is claimed, late at night, by a passing friend,
but who has no provision made for the emergency. He goes over to another
friend, and rousing him up at midnight, he asks for the loan of three
loaves. And with what result? Does the man answer from within, "Trouble
me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I
cannot rise and give thee"? No, that would be an impossible answer; for
"though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet
because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he
needeth" (xi. 8). It is the unreasonableness, or at any rate the
untimeliness of the request Jesus seems to emphasize. The man himself is
thoughtless, improvident in his household management. He disturbs his
neighbour, waking up his whole family at midnight for such a trivial
matter as the loan of three loaves. But he gains his request, not,
either, on the ground of friendship, but through sheer audacity,
impudence; for such is the meaning of the word, rather than importunity.
The lesson is easily learned, for the suppressed comparison would be,
"If man, being evil, will put himself out of the way to serve a friend,
even at this untimely hour, filling up by his thoughtfulness his
friend's lack of thought, how much more will the heavenly Father give to
His child such things as are needful?"
We have the same lesson taught in the parable of the Unjust Judge
(xviii. 1), that "men ought always to pray, and not to faint." Here,
however, the characters are reversed. The suppliant is a poor and a
wronged widow, while the person addressed is a hard, selfish, godless
man, who boasts of his atheism. She asks, not for a favour, but for her
rights--that she may have due protection from some extortionate
adversary, who somehow has got her in his power; for justice rather than
vengeance is her demand. But "he would not for awhile," and all her
cries for pity and for help beat upon that callous heart only as the
surf upon a rocky shore, to be thrown back upon itself. But afterwards
he said within himself, "Though I fear not God, nor regard man, yet
because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest she wear me out
by her continual coming." And so he is moved to take her part against
her adversary, not for any motive of compassion or sense of justice, but
through mere selfishness, that he may escape the annoyance of her
frequent visits--lest her continual coming "worry" me, as the colloquial
expression might be rendered. Here the comparison, or contrast rather,
is expressed, at any rate in part. It is, "If an unjust and abandoned
judge grants a just petition at last, out of base motives, when it is
often urged, to a defenceless person for whom he cares nothing, how much
more shall a just and merciful God hear the cry and avenge the cause of
those whom He loves?"[1]
[1] Farrar
It is a resolute persistence in prayer the parable urges, the continued
asking, and seeking, and knocking that Jesus both commended and
commanded (xi. 9), and which has the promise of such certain answers,
and not the tantalizing mockeries of stones for bread, or scorpions for
fish. Some blessings lie near at hand; we have only to ask, and we
receive--receive even while we ask. But other blessings lie farther off,
and they can only be ours by a continuance in prayer, by a persistent
importunity. Not that our heavenly Father needs any wearying into mercy;
but the blessing may not be ripe, or we ourselves may not be fully
prepared to receive it. A blessing for which we are unprepared would
only be an untimely blessing, and like a December swallow, it would soon
die, without nest or brood. And sometimes the long delay is but a test
of faith, whetting and sharpening the desire, until our very life seems
to depend upon the granting of our prayer. So long as our prayers are
among the "may-be's" and "mights" there are fears and doubts alternating
with our hope and faith. But when the desires are intensified, and our
prayers rise into the "must-be's," then the answers are near at hand;
for that "must be" is the soul's Mahanaim, where the angels meet us, and
God Himself says "I will." Delays in our prayers are by no means
denials; they are often but the lengthened summer for the ripening of
our blessings, making them larger and more sweet.
And now we have only to consider, which we must do briefly, the practice
of Jesus, the place of prayer in His own life; and we shall find that in
every point it coincides exactly with His teaching. To us of the clouded
vision heaven is sometimes a hope more than a reality. It is an unseen
goal, luring us across the wilderness, and which one of these days we
may possess; but it is not to us as the wide-reaching, encircling sky,
throwing its sunshine into each day, and lighting up our nights with its
thousand lamps. To Jesus, heaven was more and nearer than it is to us.
He had left it behind; and yet He had not left it, for He speaks of
Himself, the Son of man, as being now in heaven. And so He was. His feet
were upon earth, at home amid its dust; but His heart, His truer life,
were all above. And how constant His correspondence, or rather
communion, with heaven! At first sight it appears strange to us that
Jesus should need the sustenance of prayer, or that He could even adopt
its language. But when He became the Son of man He voluntarily assumed
the needs of humanity; He emptied Himself, as the Apostle expresses a
great mystery, as if for the time divesting Himself of all Divine
prerogatives, choosing to live as man amongst men. And so Jesus prayed.
He was wont, even as we are, to refresh a wasted strength by draughts
from the celestial springs; and as Antæus, in his wrestling, recovered
himself as he touched the ground, so we find Jesus, in the great crises
of His life, falling back upon Heaven.
St. Luke, in his narrative of the Baptism, inserts one fact the other
Synoptists omit--that Jesus was in the act of prayer when the heavens
were opened, and the Holy Ghost descended, in the semblance of a dove,
upon Him. It is as if the opened heavens, the descending dove, and the
audible voice were but the answer to His prayer. And why not? Standing
on the threshold of His mission, would He not naturally ask that a
double portion of the Spirit might be His--that Heaven might put its
manifest seal upon that mission, if not for the confirmation of His own
faith, yet for that of His forerunner? At any rate, the fact is plain
that it was while He was in the act of prayer that He received that
second and higher baptism, even the baptism of the Spirit.
A second epoch in that Divine life was when Jesus formally instituted
the Apostleship, calling and initiating the Twelve into the closer
brotherhood. It was, so to speak, the appointment of a regency, who
should exercise authority and rule in the new kingdom, sitting, as Jesus
figuratively expresses it (xxii. 30), "on thrones, judging the twelve
tribes of Israel." It is easy to see what tremendous issues were
involved in this appointment; for were these foundation-stones untrue,
warped by jealousies and vain ambitions, the whole superstructure would
have been weakened, thrown out of the square. And so before the
selection is made, a selection demanding such insight and foresight,
such a balancing of complementary gifts, Jesus devotes the whole night
to prayer, seeking the solitude of the mountain-height, and in the early
dawn coming down, with the dews of night upon His garment and with the
dews of heaven upon His soul, which, like crystals or lenses of light,
made the invisible visible and the distant near.
A third crisis in that Divine life was at the Transfiguration, when the
summit was reached, the borderline between earth and heaven, where, amid
celestial greetings and overshadowing clouds of glory, that sinless life
would have had its natural transition into heaven. And here again we
find the same coincidence of prayer. Both St. Mark and St. Luke state
that the "high mountain" was climbed for the express purpose of
communion with Heaven; they "went up into the mountain to pray." It is
only St. Luke, however, who states that it was "as He was praying" the
fashion of His countenance was altered, thus making the vision an
answer, or at least a corollary, to the prayer. He is at a point where
two ways meet: the one passes into heaven at once, from that high level
to which by a sinless life He has attained; the other path sweeps
suddenly downward to a valley of agony, a cross of shame, a tomb of
death; and after this wide _détour_ the heavenly heights are reached
again. Which path will He choose? If He takes the one He passes solitary
into heaven; if He takes the other He brings with Him a redeemed
humanity. And does not this give us, in a sort of echo, the burden of
His prayer? He finds the shadow of the cross thrown over this
heaven-lighted summit--for when Moses and Elias appear they would not
introduce a subject altogether new; they would in their conversation
strike in with the theme with which His mind is already preoccupied,
that is the decease He should accomplish at Jerusalem--and as the chill
of that shadow settles upon Him, causing the flesh to shrink and quiver
for a while, would He not seek for the strength He needs? Would He not
ask, as later, in the garden, that the cup might pass from Him; or if
that should not be possible, that His will might not conflict with the
Father's will, even for a passing moment? At any rate we may suppose
that the vision was, in some way, Heaven's answer to His prayer, giving
Him the solace and strengthening that He sought, as the Father's voice
attested His Sonship, and celestials came forth to salute the
Well-beloved, and to hearten Him on towards His dark goal.
Just so was it when Jesus kept His fourth watch in Gethsemane. What
Gethsemane was, and what its fearful agony meant, we shall consider in
a later chapter. It is enough for our present purpose to see how Jesus
consecrated that deep valley, as before He had consecrated the
Transfiguration height, to prayer. Leaving the three outside the veil of
the darkness, He passes into Gethsemane, as into another Holy of holies,
there to offer up for His own and for Himself the sacrifice of prayer;
while as our High Priest He sprinkles with His own blood, that blood of
the everlasting covenant, the sacred ground. And what prayer was that!
how intensely fervent! That if it were possible the dread cup might pass
from Him, but that either way the Father's will might be done! And that
prayer was the prelude to victory; for as the first Adam fell by the
assertion of self, the clashing of his will with God's, the second Adam
conquers by the total surrender of His will to the will of the Father.
The agony was lost in the acquiescence.
But it was not alone in the great crises of His life that Jesus fell
back upon Heaven. Prayer with Him was habitual, the fragrant atmosphere
in which He lived, and moved, and spoke. His words glide as by a natural
transition into its language, as a bird whose feet have lightly touched
the ground suddenly takes to its wings; and again and again we find Him
pausing in the weaving of His speech, to throw across the earthward warp
the heavenward woof of prayer. It was a necessity of His life; and if
the intrusive crowds allowed Him no time for its exercise, He was wont
to elude them, to find upon the mountain or in the desert His
prayer-chamber beneath the stars. And how frequently we read of His
"looking up to heaven" amid the pauses of His daily task! stopping
before He breaks the bread, and on the mirror of His upturned glance
leading the thoughts and thanks of the multitude to the All-Father, who
giveth to all His creatures their meat in due season; or pausing as He
works some impromptu miracle, before speaking the omnipotent
"Ephphatha," that on His upward look He may signal to the skies! And
what a light is turned upon His life and His relation to His disciples
by a simple incident that occurs on the night of the betrayal! Reading
the sign of the times, in His forecast of the dark to-morrow, He sees
the terrible strain that will be put upon Peter's faith, and which He
likens to a Satanic sifting. With prescient eye He sees the temporary
collapse; how, in the fierce heat of the trial, the "rock" will be
thrown into a state of flux; so weak and pliant, it will be all rippled
by agitation and unrest, or driven back at the mere breath of a
servant-girl. He says mournfully, "Simon, Simon, behold. Satan asked to
have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for
thee, that thy faith fail not" (xxii. 31). So completely does Jesus
identify Himself with His own, making their separate needs His care (for
this doubtless was no solitary case); but just as the High Priest
carried on his breastplate the twelve tribal names, thus bringing all
Israel within the light of Urim and Thummim, so Jesus carries within His
heart both the name and the need of each separate disciple, asking for
them in prayer what, perhaps, they have failed to ask for themselves.
Nor are the prayers of Jesus limited by any such narrow circle; they
compassed the world, lighting up all horizons; and even upon the cross,
amid the jeers and laughter of the crowd, He forgets His own agonies, as
with parched lips He prays for His murderers, "Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do."
Thus, more than any son of man, did Jesus "pray without ceasing," "in
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving" making request
unto God. Shall we not copy His bright example? shall we not, too, live,
labour, and endure, as "seeing Him who is invisible"? He who lives a
life of prayer will never question its reality. He who sees God in
everything, and everything in God, will turn his life into a south land,
with upper and nether springs of blessing in ceaseless flow; for the
life that lies full heavenward lies in perpetual summer, in the eternal
noon.