It is with us as with infants, the first sign of whose awaking is a
cry. The mother's quick ear hears it through all the household noises,
and the poor little troubled life that woke to a scared consciousness
of loneliness and darkness, is taken up into tender arms, and comforted
and calmed. So, when we dimly perceive how torpid we have been, and
start to find that we have lost our Father's hand, the first instinct
of that waking, which must needs be partly painful, is to call to Him,
whose ear hears our feeble cry amid the sound of praise like the voice
of many waters, that billows round His throne, and whose folding arms
keep us 'as one whom his mother comforteth.' The beginning of all true
awaking must needs be prayer.
For every such stirring of quickened religious life must needs have in
it bitter penitence and pain at the discovery flashed upon us of the
wretched deadness of our past--and, as we gaze like some wakened
sleepwalker into the abyss where another step might have smashed us to
atoms, a shuddering terror seizes us that must cry, 'Hold Thou me up,
and I shall be safe.' And every such stirring of quickened life will
have in it, too, desire for more of His grace, and confidence in His
sure bestowal of it, which cannot but breathe itself in prayer.
Nor is Zion's cry to God only the beginning and sign of all true
awaking: it is also the condition and indispensable precursor of all
perfecting of recovery from spiritual languor.
I have already pointed out the relation between the waking of God and
the waking of His Church, from which that necessarily follows. God's
power flows into our weakness in the measure and on condition of our
desires. We are sometimes told that we err in praying for the
outpouring of His Holy Spirit, because ever since Pentecost His Church
has had the gift. The objection alleges an unquestioned fact, but the
conclusion drawn from it rests on an altogether false conception of the
manner of that abiding gift. The Spirit of God, and the power which
comes from Him, are not given as a purse of money might be put into a
man's hand once and for all, but they are given in a continuous
impartation and communication and are received and retained moment by
moment, according to the energy of our desires and the faithfulness of
our use. As well might we say, Why should I ask for natural life, I
received it half a century ago? Yes, and at every moment of that
half-century I have continued to live, not because of a past gift, but
because at each moment God is breathing into my nostrils the breath of
life. So is it with the life which comes from His Spirit. It is
maintained by constant efflux from the fountain of Life, by constant
impartation of His quickening breath. And as He must continually
impart, so must we continually receive, else we perish. Therefore,
brethren, the first step towards awaking, and the condition of all true
revival in our own souls and in our churches, is this earnest cry,
'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord.
Thank God for the outpouring of a long unwonted spirit of prayer in
many places. It is like the melting of the snows in the high Alps, at
once the sign of spring and the cause of filling the stony river beds
with flashing waters, that bring verdure and growth wherever they come.
The winter has been long and hard. We have all to confess that we have
been restraining prayer before God. Our work has been done with but
little sense of our need of His blessing, with but little ardour of
desire for His power. We have prayed lazily, scarcely believing that
answers would come; we have not watched for the reply, but have been
like some heartless marksman who draws his bow and does not care to
look whether his arrow strikes the target. These mechanical words,
these conventional petitions, these syllables winged by no real desire,
inspired by no faith, these expressions of devotion, far too wide for
their real contents, which rattle in them like a dried kernel in a nut,
are these prayers? Is there any wonder that they have been dispersed in
empty air, and that we have been put to shame before our enemies?
Brethren in the ministry, do we need to be surprised at our fruitless
work, when we think of our prayerless studies and of our faithless
prayers? Let _us_ remember that solemn word, 'The pastors have become
brutish, and have not sought the Lord, therefore they shall not
prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered.' And let us all,
brethren, betake ourselves, with penitence and lowly consciousness of
our sore need, to prayer, earnest and importunate, believing and
persistent, like this heaven-piercing cry which captive Israel sent up
from her weary bondage.
Look at the passionate earnestness of it--expressed in the short, sharp
cry, thrice repeated, as from one in mortal need; and see to it that
our drowsy prayers be like it. Look at the grand confidence with which
it founds itself on the past, recounting the mighty deeds of ancient
days, and looking back, not for despair but for joyful confidence, to
the generations of old; and let our faint-hearted faith be quickened by
the example, to expect great things of God. The age of miracles is not
gone. The mightiest manifestations of God's power in the spread of the
Gospel in the past remain as patterns for His future. We have not to
look back as from low-lying plains to the blue peaks on the horizon,
across which the Church's path once lay, and sigh over the changed
conditions of the journey. The highest watermark that the river in
flood has ever reached will be reached and overpassed again, though
to-day the waters may seem to have hopelessly subsided. Greater
triumphs and deliverances shall crown the future than have signalised
the past. Let our faithful prayer base itself on the prophecies of
history and on the unchangeableness of God.
Think, brethren, of the prayers of Christ. Even He, whose spirit needed
not to be purged from stains or calmed from excitement, who was ever in
His Father's house whilst He was about His Father's business, blending
in one, action and contemplation, had need to pray. The moments of His
life thus marked are very significant. When He began His ministry, the
close of the first day of toil and wonders saw Him, far from gratitude
and from want, in a desert place in prayer. When He would send forth
His apostles, that great step in advance, in which lay the germ of so
much, was preceded by solitary prayer. When the fickle crowd desired to
make Him the centre of political revolution, He passed from their hands
and beat back that earliest attempt to secularise His work, by prayer.
When the seventy brought the first tidings of mighty works done in His
name, He showed us how to repel the dangers of success, in that He
thanked the Lord of heaven and earth who had revealed these things to
babes. When He stood by the grave of Lazarus, the voice that waked the
dead was preceded by the voice of prayer, as it ever must be. When He
had said all that He could say to His disciples, He crowned all with
His wonderful prayer for Himself, for them, and for us all. When the
horror of great darkness fell upon His soul, the growing agony is
marked by His more fervent prayer, so wondrously compact of shrinking
fear and filial submission. When the cross was hid in the darkness of
eclipse, the only words from the gloom were words of prayer. When,
Godlike, He dismissed His spirit, manlike He commended it to His
Father, and sent the prayer from His dying lips before Him to herald
His coming into the unseen world. One instance remains, even more to
our present purpose than all these--'It came to pass, that Jesus also
being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him.' Mighty mystery! In
Him, too, the Son's desire is connected with the Father's gift, and the
unmeasured possession of the Spirit was an answer to _His_ prayer.
Then, brethren, let us lift our voices and our hearts. That which
ascends as prayer descends as blessing, like the vapour that is drawn
up by the kiss of the sun to fall in freshening rain. 'Call upon Me,
and I will answer thee, and show thee great and hidden things which
thou knowest not.'