Part 11 (1/2)

If you are anxious and ready, do you think that G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pet.i.tion; they are not all begging, teasing for things. There enter into their composition grat.i.tude, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d nor men, because with her continual praying she wearies me, I will grant her pet.i.tion. Jesus does not say you are to weary G.o.d out in order to get your pet.i.tions granted, but just the opposite. How much more shall G.o.d 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 a.s.sistance. 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 G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude to G.o.d, 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 wors.h.i.+p. So that prayer which is wors.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, only changing our relations towards G.o.d. Can I ill.u.s.trate it? I have a flower, for example, a plant in a flower-pot in my room. It seems to be peris.h.i.+ng 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 att.i.tude of the soul towards G.o.d 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 G.o.d, but because we have got into a new set of relations with him.

If I thought that I could change G.o.d 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 G.o.d: we need simply to change our att.i.tude 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 G.o.d becomes yours. You do not change him, you change yourself, your att.i.tude 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 G.o.d's methods, and humbly adapting our ways to those methods Thus the forces of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d any. Can you not understand what it means to go to G.o.d, 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, G.o.d 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 a.n.a.lyze, 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 kins.h.i.+p, this simple communion of father and child, which was sweet and tender and true.

So I believe with my whole soul that G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude, our tenderness, our love.

There is another thing that needs just a word of suggestion. I believe that we ought to pray to G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.”