"This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer."--ST. MARK ix.
29.
You remember the narrative from which I have taken this verse. Jesus, as
we read, had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and when
He was come to the multitude, a certain man besought him saying, "Have
mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed, and I brought him to
Thy disciples, but they could not cure him." Then Jesus rebuked the
devil, and the child was cured from that hour. Thereupon His disciples
came to Him with this inquiry--"Why could not we cast him out? And He
said to them, Because of your little faith. This kind can come forth by
nothing, but by prayer;" or, as our Authorised Version has it, "by prayer
and fasting."
Here, then, we have set before us a very striking and significant
contrast: the contrast between the spiritual power of Jesus fresh from
the Mount of Transfiguration, and the want of such power in His
disciples, who represent to us the common life of the multitude and the
plain. His reply to their question was clearly intended to suggest to
them the cause of their spiritual feebleness. Do you wonder at your lack
of power over the diseases of the soul? "This kind can come forth by
nothing, but by prayer." Now, this suggestive answer is very appropriate
for our consideration at the present time when we are approaching the
season of Lent, which has been observed century after century as a
special season of fasting, prayer, and penitence for sin, through all the
Christian Church.
When we think of these weeks, it is reasonable to believe that such
observance, so universal, so long continued, must have satisfied some
deep need of the heart, especially as it is not based on any particular
dogma. And this incident in the Saviour's life, and these emphatic words
of His, may help us to a clearer understanding of the value of such
times. They declare to us the principle of the spiritual harvest, that,
in the spiritual life as in all else, we reap as we sow. They are
intended to convey to us this plain lesson, that if any of us give little
thought, attention, or effort to that side of our life which we speak of
as the spiritual, if there is in our daily habit and practice little real
prayer or self-denial, or devotion, little communing with God, little
endeavour to live in the spirit of Christ, and if, this being so, we find
ourselves weak or vacillating in our struggle against sin or evil,
whether in our own life or in society, there is nothing surprising in
such a result.
It is in our religious life just as in everything else--spiritual
carelessness or neglect must mean spiritual weakness. In all other
matters we look for results in some proportion to our efforts. As we sow
we expect to reap.
Here, for instance, in your daily life, if you wish to excel in any
particular game or pursuit, you practise it with diligence. You know
that, without such practice or concentration of effort upon it, any
expectation of excellence is simply foolish.
In your school work you recognise the same conditions. Intellectual
growth may seem sometimes to come slowly, in spite of all your efforts;
but it comes with certainty if you persevere, and it is equally certain
that it hardly ever comes at all to those who use no effort.
If, then, you look for progress or distinction, you know that you must
fix your thoughts upon your work, and practise industry, and, above all,
that you must cultivate a love of learning, so that your mind lingers
over it with some sense of enjoyment.
You do not expect a harvest where you have not sown. And it is just this
same law which you recognise and accept in other matters that our Lord is
here declaring to us as the law of spiritual power.
Do we desire to cast any evil influence or any weakness out of our life?
Do we ask despairingly how it is that we have not been able to cast it
out? Our Lord's answer comes to us in these emphatic words--"This kind
can come forth by nothing, but by prayer."
In other words, if we really desire that our soul shall be cleansed and
strengthened, we must surrender it to Him in prayer and self-denial, in
spiritual exercises and communion, that He may cure it of its sin or its
weakness, and inspire us with new life.
Prayer and fasting are in this word of His the symbol of all special
exercises of the spirit, as it strives to get free from the burden of the
flesh and to come nearer to God; and without such exercises, He presses
it on us if we stand in need of such reminders, we cannot hope for any
harvest of spiritual strength.
And we can hardly have failed to notice how His own practice corresponds
with His warnings and injunctions.
Before He began His ministry we read of His forty days' fast in the
wilderness; and at every turn, in the course of it, we read again and
again incidentally of His constant withdrawals into privacy with God.
His short life on earth was a life of spiritual ministry. All the
common things of life were to Him so many illustrations of some spiritual
lesson of the Father's love and care, or of man's dependence on Him. In
every voice of the world there was the undertone of some spiritual
suggestion. So that we might say--Surely His days were one unbroken
course of spiritual work and communion, and He could need no special
seasons or exercises; but His example teaches us a different lesson.
As if to bring it home to us beyond all possibility of doubt or question,
that the most devoted, the most active, and most powerful spiritual
characters, will always be those whose communion with God in private
prayer and exercise is most constant and intense, He Himself was
continually withdrawing for such communion; and there are no more
suggestive passages in the Gospels for our guidance than those incidental
references which tell us, as if by chance, giving us passing glimpses
into the unrecorded portions of His life, how on one occasion He retired
into a mountain apart to pray, or how on another he spent the whole night
apart in prayer, or how he was in a desert place apart in prayer.
These withdrawals of Jesus into the solitude of the desert or the
mountain, these hours in which He was alone with the Father, are but
another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation,
communion with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text
I have read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those
influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength.
These withdrawals were His times of spiritual refreshment; and by His
practice He declares to us His need of them. And if in His case they
were necessary, much more are they necessary for you and me, entangled as
we are amidst all the varied influences of our common life, and with
natures prone to sin.
Hence it is that the Church has set apart this season of Lent to come
round to us year by year as a season of special thought and prayer and
self-denial. Many other times and seasons come to us laden with the same
spiritual influences, and to be used by us as times of reflection,
inspiration, purification, and strengthening. This is the purpose which
the quiet of these recurring Sundays should be fulfilling in our lives,
or our gatherings for Holy Communion.
And once and again there comes to us in the course of life some time or
season which is sure to make its impression upon our soul as having
brought us in a special sense into the presence of God, and within the
overshadowing influences of His Spirit.
So it may happen to us that some family bereavement, the death of father
or mother, of brother or sister, or child of our affections, draws us
away from the world into a closer communion with our Father in Heaven, a
communion which is never entirely lost again or forgotten. So, too,
comes the season of confirmation, as to many of you just now, with all
its thoughts, feelings, prayers, and resolutions.
And it is a happy thing for our life when any of these seasons leave an
indelible mark upon our memory and our spirit.
But as we think of these words of Jesus, "This kind goeth not out but by
prayer and fasting"--the question for each of us here to-day is, what
practical daily meaning we hope to give to this season of Lent which is
to begin on Wednesday.
Let us not fancy that we can allow such seasons to come and go, year by
year, giving them no thought or attention, without some corresponding
loss.
The voice of humanity, and the experience of centuries, the practice of
holy men, and the example and the words of Christ Himself, have all
testified to the need there is for the spiritual observance of such
times, if men are to keep their soul alive in them--and who are we that
we should venture to set ourselves against such overpowering testimony?
Let us rather address ourselves seriously to making these weeks a time of
some special exercise or discipline such as our life may need.
There is hardly one of us but will confess, if he thinks of the matter
at all, that the world is too much with us; that its influence is too
strong upon us; that we are too ready to conform to its ways and follow
its indulgences. And such a confession is equivalent to an
acknowledgment that we need these Lenten seasons. And if with this
feeling in our hearts we use the coming weeks with any definite purpose,
praying to be rid of some temptation or weakness, or to be endowed with
some strength, or to be supported in some good purpose, we are sure to
recognise with thankfulness, when the time is over, that it has indeed
proved a time of some dislodgment, that some temptation or habit has
fallen away from us and left us free, so that some new spirit or purpose
has begun to grow in us.
We shall, in fact, be conscious, as the weeks go on, that a new life of
new tastes and new satisfactions has sprung up, as the first fruits of
our prayer. If we doubt the need of such exhortations as these, let us
reflect for a moment--Does it not sometimes happen to us that our souls
are only too like the soul of that sick child in the Gospel?
Good instincts, and intentions, and tendencies, are clearly felt and
recognised, but they are fitful, weak, and intermittent. Another spirit
seems to lay hold of us and carry us whither it will.
If in any sense this can be said to be your case, then remember, that
just what the Saviour's healing word was to that child, sick and
possessed, as He met it on His way from the Hill of Transfiguration, and
breathed over it the spirit of the higher life, reducing the chaos of the
soul to harmony, and bringing reason out of madness, and freedom out of
demoniac possession, these holy seasons of time-honoured observance may
be to your soul, if you use them reverently, and as God's appointed means
for your growth in the Spirit.