Part 7 (1/2)

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 G.o.d; 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 G.o.d.

His short life on earth was a life of spiritual ministry. All the common things of life were to Him so many ill.u.s.trations 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 G.o.d in private prayer and exercise is most constant and intense, He Himself was continually withdrawing for such communion; and there are no more suggestive pa.s.sages in the Gospels for our guidance than those incidental references which tell us, as if by chance, giving us pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d's appointed means for your growth in the Spirit.

XIV. G.o.d'S CURSE ON SIN.

”Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord G.o.d. Repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.”--EZEKIEL xviii. 30.

These words of Ezekiel may be understood as expressing in the prophet's language what the Book of Deuteronomy expresses in such denunciations as those which were read to us the other day in the Commination Service.