SOME years ago I heard a minister, then widely known throughout the
country, say in a public address, "Prayer is the power that moves the
arm that moves the world." Can we accept that to-day as a definition of
a rational view of the relation in which we stand to God? Many of you
will remember that not long ago the churches and the scientific men of
England and America were much stirred and roused over a discussion
concerning the practical efficacy of prayer. There was much talk of
what was called the "prayer-gauge." I think it was Professor Tyndall
who proposed to test the question as to whether prayer was a real power
in the physical world; and his test, if I remember rightly, was
something like this. He said: You churchmen claim that prayer is able
to heal the sick. Now, he said, let us take a certain hospital. We will
divide it, a certain number of wards on one side, and a certain number
of wards on the other, equalizing so far as we can the nature of the
illnesses which afflict the patients. You now concentrate as much as
you please, and as many as you please, the prayers on certain wards in
the hospital, and we will commit the rest to the ordinary treatment of
the physicians; and we will see if you are able to produce any results.
Against a certain type and theory of prayer I suppose a test like that
is legitimate enough; and this type, this theory, is the one that has
prevailed throughout Christendom largely for a good many hundreds of
years. I suppose you can remember in your boyhood some of you are as
old as I that it was not an uncommon thing for the minister to pray
earnestly for certain things that intelligent men would hardly think of
praying for in the same fashion to-day. It was not an uncommon thing, a
few years ago, to have a special prayer- meeting during a drought in
the endeavor to prevail upon God to send the rain; and there was
certainly a Scriptural warrant for it; for Elijah is represented in the
Old Testament as having, by the power of prayer, shut up the heavens
for three years and a half, and then as bringing rain again as the
result of his petition. If you study the Book of James, and remember,
when you do study it, that it was not written by the apostle, but by
some unknown author towards the middle of the second century, you will
see that he teaches that, if any one is sick, you are not to send for a
physician. The brethren are to assemble, the invalid is to be anointed
with oil, they are to pray over him, and the explicit and unqualified
promise is given that the prayer of faith shall save the sick. And yet
we have been confronted for ages with the spectacle of people breaking
their hearts in pleading prayer for those that were sick, and seeing
them fade and vanish from their sight in spite of their petitions.
I have heard it said a good many times that the fame of the Cunard line
of steamships touching the matter of the safety of its passengers was
to be explained by the piety of the founders of the line, and the fact
that they prayed every time a ship sailed that it might safely cross
the seas and land its passengers without accident in the wished-for
haven. Are there no prayers for other lines? Has no one ever prayed on
behalf of a ship that did meet with an accident? But this would be
explained on this theory by saying that the prayer was not the prayer
of faith or that there was some defect in it somewhere.
I refer to these things simply by way of illustration to recall to your
mind that prayer used to be supposed to be a power touching the winds,
the waves, the prosperity of the crops, insuring safety during a
dangerous journey; that it was a power that was able to heal disease,
that could accomplish all sorts of strange and startling effects in the
physical realm.
And now I simply wish to call your attention to the naturalness of that
kind of prayer in the olden time. To some of us this thought may seem
strange, it may seem almost absurd, to-day; but remember it was not
strange, it was not absurd, in the times when the old theory of the
universe was thoroughly believed in, not only by church members, but by
scientific men as well.
What was that old conception? I have had occasion to refer to it in one
connection or another a good many times; and now I shall have to refer
to it again, so that you may clearly see what is involved in this
question of the efficacy of prayer. God was supposed to be up in
heaven, away from nature. Nature was a sort of mechanism, a machine
that ordinarily ran on after its own fashion. God had made it, indeed,
in some sense, God supported it continually; but it went on apart from
him, and he was away from it. He was, as Carlyle used to say, looked
upon as an absentee God. He was up in heaven. He ruled this world as
the Kaiser rules Germany, arbitrarily. He was not even always supposed
to know everything that was going on, at least, if you are to judge by
the tone of the prayers of a good many people such as I have heard. He
needed information concerning matters. He needed to be pleaded with,
that he might interfere and accomplish some results that would not
otherwise take place. He ruled the world arbitrarily and from a
distance.
Now, if any German wishes a certain thing accomplished that would not
happen in the ordinary course of nature and human life, he knows that
the Kaiser has almost unlimited power; and, if he can persuade him to
undertake it, it may be accomplished. So he will send a petition to the
Kaiser; and he will back that petition with all the influence that he
is able to bring to bear upon it. If there is a prime minister who
stands specially high in favor with the Kaiser, do you not see how much
might be accomplished by winning his ear, and getting him to intercede
on behalf of the petitioner? Do you not see right in there the parallel
to the old idea that used to dominate us in regard to the government of
the universe? If only we could get God interested in the matter, if we
could bring to bear upon him an adequate amount of influence, if we
could get Jesus to intercede with him, then something might be
accomplished.
Are these antiquated ideas? I received a letter only a little while
ago. It told me nothing new; but it came to me with a shock, roused me
to a recognition of ideas still dominant and popular in the common
mind. It was from a Catholic. He said: We do not worship Mary; but she
is in the spirit world, and she is in sympathetic relation with this
world's sorrow and trouble. We pray to her, asking her to intercede
with her son, because a mother's influence is efficacious. Think for a
moment of the implications of this theory of governing the universe.
God is away off, has forgotten us, or does not care, at any rate, is
not doing for us the things we need. If we can get Jesus to intercede!
But, according to this Catholic theory, Jesus had perhaps forgotten or
was not attentive. So he pleads with his mother, and gets the mother to
exert her influence on Jesus so he may exert his influence on God, and
at last something may be done. I confess to you, friends, that this
theory of things does not seem piety to me, but the precise opposite.
I ask you now to follow me while I attempt to point out some of the
difficulties that confront us in this old-time theory of prayer. Why is
it that we cannot pray to God to change the order of the natural world?
Why cannot we believe that prayer is the power that moves the arm that
moves the world??? Why cannot I consistently pray to God to heal my
disease or the disease of a friend, or to save the soul of some friend
who would otherwise be neglected by the divine care? Why cannot I any
longer pray to God to send his light and truth to the heathen world?
Why cannot I pray to him to insure my safety in mid-Atlantic, to do
something to prevent my colliding with a derelict, as the Van-dam has
done during the last few days? Do you think there was no one on that
ship that prayed? What is the difficulty in the mind of the
intelligent, modern thinker when he faces this conception of prayer?
Let us think a little clearly just a moment; and I imagine I can make
it plain. We no longer think of God we cannot think of him as outside
the system of nature, and as possibly interfering with it to produce a
result that would not otherwise take place. Why? Because God is the
soul, the mind, the heart of nature. The forces of the universe, acting
according to their changeless and eternal laws, are simply God at work.
And, when I pray to God to interfere, I am praying him to interfere
with himself, I am praying him to contradict his own wisely and
eternally and changelessly established methods of controlling the
world.
The question is sometimes asked, but a man can interfere with the
course of nature, and produce a result that would not be naturally
produced without it? Certainly, because man does not stand in this
relation to natural forces. But man, however, does not change any law,
he does not interfere with any law. He simply discovers some law and
obeys it, and in that way produces a result that would not otherwise be
produced. But man does not stand, I say, in this vital relation to the
forces of the universe and their laws. When you remember that these
forces working, as I said, changelessly, eternally, after their
methods, when you remember that these are God in his ceaseless and wise
and loving activity, then do you not see that he cannot contradict or
interfere with himself? Here is the great difficulty in regard to this
old method, this old conception of prayer which confronts the
intelligent, the educated, the thoughtfully devout man.
When I was first struggling out into the light? as it seems to me now
from my old theological training, I met another difficulty that I think
will appeal to you. It seemed to me an impertinence for me to be
telling God, as I heard so many people on every hand, all sorts of
things that he knew before. I reconsidered the words of Jesus, You are
not to give yourself to much speaking in your prayers, for your Father
knoweth what you have need of before you ask him. And then there was
another difficulty which troubled me more than any of the others, a
delightful, splendid difficulty it has seemed to me since those days.
It was connected with the thought of God's goodness and love. There are
heathen, they tell us, who have got a glimpse, from their point of
view, of this fact about God. It is said they do not bring any
offerings, except some flowers, to the deities they regard as good,
because, they say, they do not need to be persuaded. They bring all
their costly offerings to the bad gods, the ones they are afraid of;
and they attempt to buy their favor or buy off their anger.
When I waked up to the free and grand conception of the eternal love
and the boundless goodness of the Father, then it seemed to me that
many of my prayers in the past had been so far from reasonable that
they were absurd, and so far from piety that they were wrong. To
illustrate what I mean. When I was minister of an orthodox church in
the West, a lovely, faithful lady came to me to raise some question
touching this matter of prayer. It had been suggested, I suppose, by
something I had said; and I asked her this question: What would you
think of me if I should come to you, and with pathos in my voice, and
perhaps with tears in my eyes, plead with you to be kind to your own
children, beg you to give them something to eat, beseech you to furnish
them with clothes, entreat you to educate them, to do the best for them
that you knew how? What would you think of it? I asked. She said, I
should feel insulted. And I replied, Do you not think that God is
almost as good as you are?
If you are anxious and ready, do you think that God needs to be pleaded
with and entreated and besought in order to make him willing, in order
to make him kind, in order to bring some sort of pressure to bear upon
him so that he will do the things for his children of which they most
stand in need? No scientific difficulty, no question of theories of the
universe, has ever affected my practice in the matter of prayer so much
as this overwhelming, blessed thought of the loving-kindness and care
of the infinite Father. He does not need to be informed, he does not
need to be persuaded. Has not Jesus told us that your heavenly Father
is more ready to give the things which you need than you are to give
good gifts to your children?
And so I came to have a difficulty with the kind of prayer- meetings in
which I was brought up as a boy, and which I used to lead as a young
and earnest minister. I have heard kinds of prayers which have seemed
to me reflections on the goodness and the kindness of our Father in
heaven. I remember one man I used to hear him over and over again, week
by week who would pray, It is time for thee, O God, to work! And, as I
came to think of it, it hurt my sense of reverence. I shrank from it.
And I could not believe that God was going to let thousands of souls in
China or Africa perish merely because Christians in America did not
pray hard enough and long enough for their salvation. Why should they
meet with eternal doom on account of the lack of enthusiasm or devotion
of people of whom they have never heard?
So I used to find myself troubled about this question of praying so
hard for the salvation of other people's souls. If, as the old creeds
tell us, it is settled from all eternity as to just who is to be saved
and who is to be lost, there would hardly seem place for a vital
prayer; and if, as a friend of mine, a minister, and a very liberal and
broad one, though in one of the older churches, said to me, "I believe
that God will save every single soul that he can save," then do you not
see again that it touches this kind of prayer? If he cannot save them,
then why should I beg him to do it? If he can, and loves them better
than I do, again, why should I plead with him after that fashion to do
it?
These, frankly and freely spoken, are some of the difficulties
connected with a certain theory of prayer.
I gladly put all that now behind my back, and come to the grand and
positive side of my theme. I wish to tell you what I myself believe in
regard to this matter of prayer. And, in the first place, let me
suggest to you that prayers, even the prayers of the past, any of them,
the most objectionable types, are not made up only of petition; they
are not all begging, teasing for things. There enter into their
composition gratitude, adoration, reverence, aspiration, a sense of
communion with the spiritual Being, a longing for higher and finer
things; a sense of refuge in time of trouble, a sense of strength in
time of need, a sense of hope, uplift, and outlook as we glance towards
the future. A prayer, then, you see, is a very composite thing, not a
simple thing, not merely made up of the element of pleading with God to
give us certain things that we cannot come into possession of by
ordinary means.
Right here let me stop long enough to ask you to attend a little
carefully to the teaching of Jesus on the subject of prayer. You will
see he chimes in almost perfectly with the things I have been saying.
If we followed his directions literally, we should never pray in public
at all. He says, Enter into your chamber, and shut to the door, and
commune with the Father in secret. He does not advocate long prayers,
nor this kind of pleading, begging prayers that I have referred to. Do
you remember the story of the unjust judge? Jesus tells this parable on
purpose to enforce the point I have been speaking of. He says: Here is
an unjust judge: a widow brings her case before him. She pleads with
him until she tires him out; and at last he says, although I am an
unjust judge, and fear neither God nor men, because with her continual
praying she wearies me, I will grant her petition. Jesus does not say
you are to weary God out in order to get your petitions granted, but
just the opposite. How much more shall God give good gifts unto those
that ask him Read once more that other story of the man who rises at
night and goes to a neighbor for assistance. The neighbor, for the sake
of being gracious and kind, will rise, although it gives him trouble
and he does not wish to, and grant his request. But God is not like
that neighbor: he does not need to be wearied or roused to make him
care for our interests. This is the teaching, you will notice, of
Jesus. If there is anything that appears like contrary teaching, you
will find it in the supposed Gospel of John, written by an anonymous
author, in which quite different doctrines are taught in regard to a
good many things from those that are reported of Jesus in the other
gospels.
Now I wish to come to my own personal position concerning the subject
of prayer. It is fitting is it not that we should open our hearts with
gratitude to God, no matter what has come to us of good or bright, of
beautiful, sweet and true things, no matter through what channel, by
the ministry of what friend, as the result of the working of no matter
how many natural forces. Trace it to its source, and that source is
always of necessity the one fountain, the one eternal Giver. And, if
there be no more than courtesy in our hearts, ought it not to be easy
and fitting for us to think, at least, if we do not say, Thank you,
Father? Not only thanksgiving, but adoration.
Any uplook to something beautiful and high and fine above you partakes
of the nature of worship. So that prayer which is worship, is it not
altogether fitting and sweet and true? Only as we look up do we ever
rise up, do we ever attain to anything finer and better.
And then there is communion. Is it true that God is Spirit, and that he
is Father of his children, also spirit? Are we made in his likeness? Is
there community of nature between him and us? I believe that he is
human in all essential qualities, and that we are divine in all
essential qualities. I believe the only difference between God and man
is a difference not of kind, but of degree, and that there is,
possibility of constant interchange of thought, of feeling, communion,
between God and his children. Profound, wonderful truth it seems to me
is expressed in those beautiful words of Tennyson's:
"Speak to him thou, for he hears, And spirit with spirit may meet.
Closer is he than breathing, And nearer than hands and feet."
Communion then possible, the very life of that which is divine within
us!
Then I do not believe for one moment that prayer is only a sort of
spiritual gymnastics, that it produces results in us merely by the
exercise of spiritual feelings and emotions. I believe that in the
moral and spiritual realms prayer does produce actual results that
would not be produced in any other way. This, however, mark you
carefully, not by producing any change in God, only changing our
relations towards God. Can I illustrate it? I have a flower, for
example, a plant in a flower-pot in my room. It seems to be perishing
for the lack of something. It may be that the elements in the air do
not properly feed it: it may be that it is hungry for light. At any
rate, I try it: I take it out into the sunshine, I let the air breathe
upon it, the dews fall upon it, the rains touch it and revive it and
the plant brightens up, grows, blossoms, becomes beautiful and
fragrant. Have I changed natural laws any? Not to one parunticle. I
have changed the relation of my plant and the air; and I have produced
a result of life and beauty where would have been ugliness and death.
So I believe in prayer in that sense, that it may and does change the
spiritual attitude of the soul towards God so that we come into
entirely new relations with him, and the spiritual life in us grows,
unfolds, becomes beautiful and sweet, not because we have changed God,
but because we have got into a new set of relations with him.
If I thought that I could change God by a prayer, that I could
interfere in the slightest degree with the working of any of the
natural forces, I would never dare to open my lips in prayer again so
long as I live. We do not need to change God: we need simply to change
our attitude towards him, change our relations to him. Is not this true
in every department of human life? How is it that you produce results
anywhere? You wish a mountain stream to work for you. Do you change the
laws of motion? You adapt your machinery to those laws of motion, and
all the power of God becomes yours. You do not change him, you change
yourself, your attitude towards him. And so in every one of the
discoveries, in every one of the revolutions, that have come to the
world, simply by discovering God's methods, and humbly adapting our
ways to those methods Thus the forces of God, which are changeless and
eternal, produce for us results which they would not have produced but
for adapting our lives to the working of their ways.
A great many people do not think they ever pray. I have never seen a
man yet who did not pray. You cannot live, and not pray: you cannot
escape it if you try. Take Montgomery's famous old definition, "Prayer
is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed, The motion of a
hidden fir That trembles in the breast."
Soul's sincere desire. Yes, the body's desire, the mind's desire, the
heart's desire, any desire, any outreach of life, is a prayer, an
appeal for something that only the universe, that only God, can bestow.
So, no matter whether you think you are religious or not, you are a
praying man so long as you are a living man; and you cannot escape the
fact if you try. It is merely a question whether you are a loving praying
man or some other kind.
There is another aspect of prayer to which I wish to call your
attention. Prayer is the refuge of a soul in trouble. It does not mean
here, again, that you change God any. Can you not understand what it
means to go to God, as it were, and fling yourself, like a child,
against his breast and feel yourself folded in the everlasting arms?
Your sorrow may not be removed, the burden may not be taken away, the
life of your friend may not be saved, the sickness may not be healed;
but there is comfort, there is strength, there is peace, there is help.
Why, even in our human life do you not know how it is? You go to some
friend you trust and love with your trouble. Perhaps he cannot lift it
with one of his fingers; but he can tell you that he loves you, he
cares, he would help you if only he were able. He can put his arm
around you, he can say, God bless you; and you are stronger. You go
away with lifted shoulder and with head that fronts the heavens; and
you are able to bear the burden. Is there nothing akin to this in the
sense of coming into intimate relations with the eternal Father, when
troubled, pressed, when the outside world is dark, and feeling that
here is refuge in a love deeper, higher, unspeakably more tender than
that of the dearest friend that ever lived?
And this suggests another point. I have no doubt that sometimes, in my
attempts to lead the devotions of this congregation, I use words which,
if I were to sit down and critically analyze, I could not logically
justify. I do not mean to; but, perhaps, sometimes I do. What of it?
When my children were small, and my little boy came and climbed up in
my lap and expressed himself in all sorts of illogical and foolish
ways, telling me every sort of thing he wanted, impossible things,
unwise things, things I could not get for him, things I would not get
if I could, because I thought myself wiser than he, did these things
trouble me? I loved to have him pour out his whole little soul into
mine, because he was my child and because I did not expect him to be
over-wise. It was this simple touch of kinship, this simple communion
of father and child, which was sweet and tender and true.
So I believe with my whole soul that God loves us, his little children,
with an unspeakable tenderness, a tenderness infinitely beyond that
with which any earthly father ever loved a child, and that we can go to
him freely and pour out our hearts, whether it is wise in expression or
unwise; only let us do it with the feeling, "Not my will, Father, but
Thine, be done," not as though we were trying to persuade him to do
things for us that he would not otherwise do, but merely as the pouring
out of our gratitude, our tenderness, our love.
There is another thing that needs just a word of suggestion. I believe
that we ought to pray to God, not in the sense of begging for things,
but sympathetically bringing in the arms of our sympathy all those we
love and all those we hate, if there are any, and all things that live
on the face of the earth. There is a hint of what I mean in those
beautiful words of Tennyson's:
"For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life
within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands in prayer Both
for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round
earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
Let us reach out our arms of sympathy to all the world and bring the
world sympathetically into the presence of our Father. So our own
hearts and loves will broaden, until they, too, are divine.
And, then, there is one other thing. What a strength prayer has been to
the grandest souls of the ages! Never was truer, finer truth written
than those magnificent words of Isaiah: "Even the youths shall faint
and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with
wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and
not faint!"
Take Jesus in his hour of agony, take Savonarola with his struggle,
take Huss, Wyclif, Luther, take all the grand souls of the ages when
they have simply stood with the feeling, One with God is a majority,
and ready to face the world, if need be, in the conviction that they
spoke for and represented the truth. The times of which Lowell speaks:
"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that
scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God
within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
This sense that God is for the truth and right, and, if you are
standing for the truth and right, the Almighty Power is backing you up,
the ground you stand on impregnable, because of that position. You do
not expect God to work miracles, you do not expect him to do anything;
but simply the sense that you are in his presence, that you are on his
side, re- enforces you more than a thousand men could re-enforce an
army in the time of its need. This is the great sense of surety that
the poet Clough had in mind, when he wrote those wonderfully fine
words:
"It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so; That
howsoe'er I stray or range, Whate'er I do, thou dost not change. I
steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, thou dost not fall." Here
is the confidence, the strength, that comes from prayer, from communion
with God, from the sense of being in his presence, from a feeling of
fellowship with the Divine.
The truest and finest, the sweetest prayer must come oft of the loving,
the sympathetic, the tender soul. No selfish prayer can expect to enter
into the heart of God. You will note in the words that Jesus teaches
his disciples, it is not "My" Father, it is "Our" Father. And, if we
wish to pray in the divine spirit, we shall broaden that "Our" until it
includes not only our family, our church, our city, our State, our
nation, our humanity, but until it includes all life that swims or
walks or flies, feeling that it is the one life of the Father that is
in us all. For, as Coleridge has finely put it, He prayeth best who
loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who
loveth us, He made and loveth all.