Part 3 (2/2)
The materials sustaining that conclusion were abundant in the early years of my ministry; notably in one case I can never forget. On the first Sabbath evening of my ministry I was preaching on the words ”Be ye reconciled to G.o.d.” Amongst the listeners was one who had entered the house of prayer without any sense of alienation from G.o.d or hunger for His revelation, and, as she afterwards confessed, merely to please her sister. But ”the Lord opened her heart to give heed to the things that were spoken,” so that she forthwith sought and found peace with G.o.d through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Nor did she only obtain peace. With Wordsworth she could say:
”I bent before Thy gracious throne And asked for peace with suppliant knee, And peace was given, nor peace alone, But faith and hope and ecstasy.”
Faith and hope, ecstasy and prayer, were the outstanding features of her new life. She had little time for special acts of Christian service, and scant means wherewith to enrich the Church; but, according to the witness of those who had known her longest, her character was clad in entirely new charms, and her spirit was fired and filled with new energies. She grew in experience of the grace and love of G.o.d, and became at home with G.o.d in the deepest sense, and seemed rarely, if ever, absent from her chosen dwelling-place. Her strongest feeling was for G.o.d, all investing, all encircling; and with reverent freedom and sweet security she lived and moved and had her being in communion with the eternal Father. Prayer was not a task for specific occasions; it was the breath of her life. It was not a wrestle or a struggle; it was an uplifting of her being into a fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d. It did not shrivel into a litany of pet.i.tions; it was sustained aspiration; and aspiration is a large part of achievement; it was deepest satisfaction with G.o.d, and His will and His work: and such satisfaction is itself a source of patient strength and a preparation for victory.
Nor was the effect limited. Her nature received a refinement, an elevation, a beauty that triumphed over the physical features, and shone out with a glory that is not seen on sea or sh.o.r.e. The expression of her face seemed to be from G.o.d. A transfiguring radiance came from within as she thought on the wonders and delighted in the treasures of the gospel of G.o.d. Hers was a n.o.ble life. Like Martha, she was engaged in ”much serving;” but yet was never c.u.mbered and worn with it, because, like Mary, she sat daily at the Master's feet, and listened to His words, and received His sustaining strength. She was as sweetly unselfish as the flowers, and gave herself and her ”all” to Christ, like the widow of the gospels. Meekness and humility clothed her with their loveliest robes. I never knew a purer spirit. She always breathed the softness and gentleness of the Saviour, and yet I have seen her weak body quiver and throb with its anguish of desire for the salvation of the lost. Faithful unto death, she realised the support and joy of the Christian's hope, and gently as leaves are shed by the flower that has finished its course, she fell into the arms of Jesus; and as Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, was buried under the ”oak of weeping” amid affectionate regrets and sweet memories, so this Christian servant was laid in the grave with tears of real sorrow from those whom she had served so faithfully and long, as well as from friends who had been gladdened and fortified in the faith of Christ by her sweet, earnest, and beautiful Christian life.
That day is now far off, but the influence of her prayer-filled life still feeds faith in G.o.d as the Hearer and the Answerer of Prayer.
About the same time and in the same spiritual laboratory I was called to observe the following processes. A woman, the wife of a blacksmith, was led by the gospel of Christ into the joy of salvation. Her experience of the grace of G.o.d in Christ was vivid and full. She knew little of doubt concerning herself, but she was full of solicitude for her husband and children; for she had a very heavy burden to carry, and her heart was sore stricken. Her husband was a drunkard. When sober he was true, devoted, and loving; but when he fell into intemperance he became hard, harsh, and even violent. But never did the brave and trustful wife cease to hope or cease to pray. In the darkest hours she begged for the conversion of her husband, and felt sure that G.o.d would respond to her supplications. That was her habitual mood, her supreme desire, her living prayer; and I could see that this very disposition developed her saintliness, deepened her affection for her husband, and gave increased beauty to her family life, as well as added to her usefulness in the Church.
One day, in the course of my pastoral visits, I called at the blacksmith's home. Scarcely was the threshold crossed when the husband rushed in, wild, angry, and violent, the prey of intoxicants. But before he had proceeded far the wife approached him, flung her arms around him, called him by name, and said: ”Ah, G.o.d will give you to me yet.” Saint Ambrose told Monica, when she went to him, sad and desponding about her son, ”G.o.d would not forget the prayers of such a mother,” and Augustine came, though late in his young manhood, into the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. So I felt the earnest pleadings of this true wife and mother would not be forgotten of G.o.d, but that, according to her own beautiful saying, G.o.d would ”give her husband to her;” for she did not think he was completely hers whilst he was under the dominion of intoxicants,--give him to her freed from that depraving and desolating slavery. And it was so. For he, too, became a Christian, and they together effectively served their generation according to the will of G.o.d, ”turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto G.o.d.”
There recurs to me the image of a visitor who called one Sunday evening in 1862, and who wished to know what he was to do in order to control and suppress an ungovernable temper. For years it had tortured him past all bearing, and, what was worse, for years it had been a source of pain and discomfort in his home. When his anger was kindled he was by his own confession a terror to wife and children, and, seeing that he had recently become a Christian, he felt acutely the stain such actions fixed on garments that should have been unspotted by the world. ”What must I do? I can't go on in this way, and yet though I feel it is wrong I can't help myself.”
The first suggestion I ventured was based on the regard he had expressed for his pastor. ”What would be the effect,” said I, ”on you, if I were to appear at the moment the storm was about to burst? Think!”
He thought, and then said, ”It wouldn't burst I should stop it.”
”Well, then, try this plan. Force yourself at the moment of peril into the conscious presence of G.o.d, and say, as you feel the uprising pa.s.sion, 'O G.o.d, make me master of myself.' Pray that prayer; and pray, morning by morning, that you may so pray in your time of need; and in due season you will obtain the perfect mastery of yourself you seek.” He promised. I watched. He prayed. He conquered; once, twice, thrice, and then failed; but he renewed the attempt, and triumphed again, and years afterwards I knew him as one of the most serene of men; and when he died, no phase of his character stood out more distinctively than his perfect self-control, and no fact in his life was remembered with deeper grat.i.tude by his bereaved wife than that memorable victory won by prayer in the early days of his disciples.h.i.+p to the Lord Jesus.
From the beginning of my ministry I have made it my business to offer advice and aid to young men and maidens a.s.sailed with doubts and fears concerning the revelation of G.o.d in Christ, hindered at the outset by misconceptions of the ”way of salvation,” and perplexed by confused and contradictory teaching. Hundreds of young men (and within the last ten years especially, many young women) have described to me their difficulties as they have reached the stage described by Roscoe in the words, ”There are times when faith is weak and the heart yearns for knowledge.”
Here is a ”case” chosen from a large number of similar facts. A young man came to tell me the somewhat familiar story, that the first fervours of his religious life had cooled down, his early raptures were gone, and the sense of peace and bounding freedom, and of all-sufficing strength in G.o.d, had departed with them. The certainties of the opening months or years of the Christian pilgrimage had given place to torturing questions, such as, ”Am I not deceived? After all, is Christianity true?
What are its real contents? What is inspiration? Did miracles happen?”
etc., etc. Week after week we reasoned and argued, and months pa.s.sed in a struggle whose usefulness no one could register, and whose issue no one could forecast.
But it ”happened,” as these conversations were going on, that he was ”drawn” into what I may call a ”prayer circle,” privately carried on by a small group of young men who were not unacquainted with such conflicts as those which then engaged his powers. He joined it, and by-and-by felt its influence. He was lifted into another atmosphere, and breathed a clearer, sunnier air. His misgivings were slowly displaced by missionary enthusiasm, and his fears by a stronger faith; and yet he had not solved the problems suggested by the person of Christ, or found the secret of the Incarnation, or explained the mystery of the Atonement. But he had been led to set the full force of his nature on communion with G.o.d; and prayer had quickened the sense for spiritual realities, for the recognition of the infinite value of the human soul, and for the wonder and splendour of G.o.d's salvation. In that realm of prayer, character was altered, the aim of life was altered, the will had a new goal, and so the questions of the intellect fell into their true place in reference to the whole of the questions of life. Emerson writes, ”When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician.” It is he who thinks the most sanely and dwells nearest the central truths of life and being. It is he who becomes serenely acquiescent in the agnosticism of the Bible, and realises that revelation must contain many things past finding out, whilst the Spirit, who is the revealer, gives us the best a.s.surances of the cert.i.tude and clearness of what it is most important for us to know.
So often have I seen this rest-giving effect on the intellect, of the lifting of the life into communion with G.o.d, that I cannot hesitate to regard it as a law of the life of man, and yet I must add that I do not think it wise to meet those who ask our aid in the treatment of their mental perplexities merely, or at _first_, with the counsel to pray.
Most likely they will misunderstand it, and it will become to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. We had better, if we are able, meet them first on their own ground, that of the intellect, and meet them with frankness and sympathy, with knowledge and tact; and yet seek by the spirit we breathe, and the a.s.sociations into which we introduce them, to raise them where the Saviour's beat.i.tude shall become an experience: ”Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see G.o.d.”
Prayer has often proved itself an infallible recipe for dejection. A man of culture and wealth was for a long time pursued by what seemed to him an intolerable and invariable melancholy. He sought relief near and far, and sought in vain. He became a source of anxiety to his friends. He went away to Bellagio, goaded by the same restlessness, but its lovely surroundings did not heal, its soft airs did not soothe. No! All was dark and repellent. Even prayer seemed of no use. G.o.d had forgotten him. He was cast off as reprobate. His soul was disquieted within him.
The burden of his misery was more than he could carry. He threatened to take away his life. But in his despair he still clung to his G.o.d; and at last, as in this desperate, and yet not altogether hopeless or prayerless mood, he read a sermon on ”Elijah as a brave prophet tired of life;” hope was reborn and joy restored, and as Bunyan's pilgrim lost his burden at the cross, so this Elijah escaped from his tormentors, and came forth and dwelt in the light of G.o.d's countenance. It was the prayer of a weak and struggling faith; but G.o.d did not turn it away, nor reject the voice of his supplication.
What abundant witness that
”More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of”
could be supplied by pastors and elders who have visited the widow and the fatherless, the sick and suffering in their afflictions. One picture comes to me from the crowded past, of a strong and victorious, though much enduring saint. Crippled by disease, she did not rise from her bed unaided for more than seven years. She was always in pain, sometimes heavy and dull, but not infrequently keen and sharp. Yet through all these years, she not only did not complain, but she had such an overflow of quiet cheerfulness and of deep interest in life that she distributed her gladness to others and made them partakers of her serenity. You could not detain her in talk about herself, her ailments, her broken plans, her manifold disappointments. No! she would compel you to talk of the Church, its schools, its missions, its various activities; of societies and movements for getting rid of social evils, such as intemperance and impurity. Sometimes the theme was last Sunday's sermons, or those in preparation for the next; but rarely herself. There she lay with a patience that was never ruffled, a serenity rarely if ever disturbed, a forgetfulness of self bright and fresh, a solicitude for others deep and full, and a fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d not only unbroken, but so inspiring as to make the sick-room a sanctuary radiant with His presence. Prayer led her to the fountains of divine joy, daily she drank and was refreshed.
So I set down a few tested, verified facts from the early part of a ministry of over thirty-eight years; facts chosen from amongst many, and in substance repeated again and again during recent, but not yet reportable years.
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