_Friendship with God--Looking_
Yes, prayer is speech Godward, and worship is man's whole life of
friendship with God, flowing out, as it were, of all that tide of
emotion and service which is love's best speech. It is by thinking,
then, of the nature of fellowship between man and man, which is the most
beautiful thing in the world excepting only fellowship with God, that we
can get substantial help in developing the life of prayer. Consider the
Christian fellowship of two noble characters. It is "the greatest love
and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the
noblest sufferings, and the most exemplar faithfulness, and the severest
truth and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of
minds,"--Jeremy Taylor stops here only because he has exhausted his
stock of sublime phrases--"of which brave men and women are capable."[3]
Friendship is a full, steady stream, not intermittent or spasmodic. It
is not something which lasts only when each looks into the other's eyes;
for "distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it."
It moves and expands the life even when the mind is busied with matters
prosaic and vexatious, even when there is no inward contemplation of the
features or character of the absent friend. And yet, although friendship
does not consist in face-to-face communication one with another, it is
in this that it takes its rise, it is by this that it is fed. Fellowship
is not the same as friendship, but there can be no friendship without
fellowship. That is to say, there must be certain definite, formal acts,
acts not made once for all, but repeated as often as opportunity is
given; such form the cradle and nursery of friendship. In themselves
they are not much--a grasp of the hand, a smile, a simple gift, a
conventional salutation, a familiar talk about familiar things--but they
introduce soul to soul, and through them each gives to the other his
deepest self.
Friendship between man and man is no vague, intangible thing whose only
reality is its name. Much less can one think thus of friendship with
God. Friendship with God is the friendship of friendships. While it
lives on strong and true even when we are not in conscious fellowship
with Him, moments of conscious realization and contemplation of His
person, character and presence are as essential to friendship with Him
as food is necessary for the sustenance of life. There must be times of
prayer and occasions of definite, formal approach to Him, the more the
better, provided they be healthy and free. It is not an arbitrary
enactment that declares morning, noonday and evening to be the moments
of time when the soul of man should with peculiar intensity lift up its
gaze unto the hills.[4] One recognizes immediately the inherent fitness
of having conscious fellowship with God at the opening, in the middle
and at the close of day. In the morning,--because man's powers are then
replete with life, his will nerved to act, his eye clear to see; never
is he so well able to gain a vision of God, whether in the solitude of
his room or in the quiet of the Church at an early Eucharist, as in the
first hours of a new day. At noon,--because the soul like the body needs
a mid-day rest; the dust of activity and the distractions of business
will have dimmed the morning vision before the day is full gone, and it
is good to refresh the nature by again, if it be only for a brief
moment, looking straight up into the face of the Most High. At
night,--for the evening shadows find God's servant with soiled soul and
drooping aspirations in sore need of that cleansing and cheer which the
sight of God imparts.
And the life of prayer works in a circle. The devotions of the morning
give tone to those which come at noon and night, while the night prayers
in turn determine the quality of the morrow's. Men usually wake in the
temper of mind in which they went to sleep. It is all-important to gain
a clear vision of God as the last conscious act before going to rest.
The founder of French socialism was awakened every morning by a valet
who said: "Remember, Monsieur le Comte, that you have great things to
do." But it is not men who aspire only or chiefly in the morning that
achieve great things, but rather those who aspire at night. What is of
nature in the morning is of grace at night. The vision that comes easily
at the beginning of the unused stretch of a new day is harder to see
when disappointment and failure have clouded the eye of hope; but it
means more. The men who attain the highlands of the spiritual life never
"sleep with the wings of aspiration furled."
Of course God is always with us, always looking at us with searching
yet loving scrutiny. It would be impossible for us to be more completely
in His presence than we are; for in Him "we live, and move, and have our
being." But for the most part our lives are spent without much conscious
recognition of the fact. He will be no more present at the last day when
we stand before His throne than He is now. The only difference will be
that then we shall see Him as He sees us; we shall be so wholly absorbed
by that consciousness that there will be room for no other consideration
as, God grant, there will be no other desire. But before that moment
comes men must practise looking into His face by faith so that it will
not be unfamiliar as the face of a stranger when the last veil is swept
aside.
Among men contemplation of another's personality is the requisite
preliminary of fellowship with him. Fellowship can begin only when there
is a mutual recognition each of his fellow's presence. Personality is
the most powerful magnet the world knows; and the finer the personality
the more readily will all one's best impulses be set in motion and
attracted to it. How vain then is it to attempt to speak to God before
the consciousness of His living, loving presence has caught the
attention and absorbed the mind--or at any rate until we have done our
best to see Him, attentive, sympathetic, with His gaze fixed upon us.
Power to pray is proportionate to the vividness of our consciousness of
His presence and personality. When a man is talking to a companion his
mind is occupied with the sense of the presence of an attentive,
sympathetic personality rather than with the thought of the precise
words he is going to use. His fellow acts as a magnet to extract his
thoughts. An orator makes his finest appeal when he is least conscious
of himself and most conscious of his audience. Just so then is it with
speech Godward. The moment a man is assured that God's personality is
present and that His ear is opened earthward, speech heavenward is a
power and a joy, and only then. Many make prayer a fine intellectual
exercise or a training school for the attention--this and nothing more.
They strain their utmost, and doubtless they succeed well, to understand
each sentence uttered and to speak it intelligently. Their minds are on
what they are saying rather than on the Person to Whom they are saying
it. They reap about the same benefit as they would if they recited
attentively a scene from Shakespeare.
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills." The vision of God unseals
the lips of man. Herein lies strength for conflict with the common enemy
of the praying world known as wandering thoughts. Personality will
enchain attention when the most interesting intellectual, moral and
spiritual concerns will fail to attract. If the eye is fixed on God
thought may roam where it will without irreverence, for every thought is
then converted into a prayer. Some have found it a useful thing when
their minds have wandered off from devotion and been snared by some good
but irrelevant consideration, not to cast away the offending thought as
the eyes are again lifted to the Divine Face, but to take it captive,
carry it into the presence of God and weave it into a prayer before
putting it aside and resuming the original topic. This is to lead
captivity captive.
It is hard for those to see God's face who confine their contemplation
of spiritual things to moments of formal devotion, who, while occupied
with material things, do not explore what is beneath and beyond the
visible, who do not strive to discern the moral and religious aspect of
every phase of life. On the other hand the vision of God becomes
increasingly clear to such as look not at the things which are seen but
at the things which are not seen. These may be exceedingly practical
people, people ever active in the commonplace duties of life, but their
wont is to cast everything into the upward sweep of the Ascension of
Jesus and everything is seen by them with the glow of heaven upon it. Of
course they pray well.
After all "the sin of inattention" does not begin at the time of formal
approach to God. It only makes itself peculiarly manifest then. If a
person lives listlessly and does not put his full force into the
ordinary duties of his life where the aids to attention are plenty, how
can he expect to command his mind at those times when it is called upon
to make a supreme act of attentiveness and see Him Who is invisible? A
good man of our day[5] said of himself: "My greatest help in life has
been the blessed habit of intensity. I go at what I am about as if there
was nothing else in the world for the time being."
Here then are two obvious, simple and rational principles upon obedience
to which hinges the ability to make one's own the growing vision of
God--the habit of spiritualizing the commonplace and the habit of
attention in work. Whoever equips himself with them has made the best
possible preparation for approach to God. It is an indirect way of
getting at things, it is true; but often the method that is most
indirect is the most direct. It is certainly so in this case.
Of course in considering the subject of God's Being one cannot wholly
avoid the difficult question of personality. It would be aside from our
purpose, however, to discuss the matter philosophically. For all
practical purposes there is ample and secure footing near at hand. When
by faith we look toward God, it is not toward an immovable but beautiful
statue we turn, not to an abstract quality or a tendency that makes for
righteousness, but to One Who looks with responsive gaze, Who notes our
desires, Who heeds our words, Who lives, Who loves, Who acts. It is a
horrible and deadening travesty of the truth to conceive of God as a
great, impassive Being, seated on a throne of majesty, drinking in all
the life and worship that flow from the service of His myriad creatures,
Himself receiving all and giving none. Though probably no one believes
this as a matter of theory, when men look for God in the practice of
prayer too often it is such a God they find. And many can say with
Augustine as they review moments of fruitless devotional effort in the
past: "My error was my God."[6] The truth is that though a great tide
of energy moves ceaselessly toward God, it is but the shadow of what
comes from Him. Indeed He is the Source of the life which flows inward
toward Him as much as of that which flows outward from Him. He is
undying energy, with unerring purpose, moving swiftly and noiselessly
among men, striving to burn eternal life into their lame, stained,
meagre souls. He is the Father that goes out to meet the returning
profligate, the Shepherd that follows the track of the wandering sheep.
Man has never yet had to wait for Him. He has always been as close to
man as man would let Him come. His hands have never ceased to beat upon
the bars of man's self-will to force an entrance into starved human
nature. All this must be in man's conception of God as he approaches
Him.
What above all gives to God that which enables man to see Him is the
Incarnation. In the Godhead is a familiar figure--the figure of Man. It
was this that absorbed the attention of the dying Stephen. The Son of
Man standing on God's right hand, was the vision that enthralled him as
the stones battered out his life. And it is this same vision that makes
the unseen world a reality to men now. Humanity is there at its centre,
the pledge of sympathy, the promise of victory. Not by a flight of
imagination but by the exercise of insight we can look and see the
sympathetic face of the Son of Man, who is also the Son of God; and with
the sight fellowship with God becomes possible, the string of the tongue
is loosed and we are ready to pray.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] _Works: Vol. i. 72._
[4] _Ps. lv_: 17.
[5] _Charles Kingsley._
[6] _For thou wert not thyself, but a mere phantom, and my error was my
God. Confessions, Bk. iv. 7._