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“Ask, and it shall be given you.” — Matthew vii. 7
The subject of prayer deeply concerns the vital interests of every
human being. There is embodied in man's nature a tendency to look to the
source of his life, which creates a necessity for prayer. If man had
retained his original perfection it would be as natural for him to pray
as it is to eat when he is hungry, to seek relief when he is in
distress, or to communicate his thoughts and affections to those whom he
loves. There is a sense in which every creature prays. But how prayer
helps us, and in what way the good attained by it comes, remains one of
those open secrets about which there is much discussion, and but little
generally known.
When the opinion prevailed that the Lord acted in an arbitrary way like
an irresponsible sovereign, there was no difficulty in believing that He
could be moved by entreaty, and give a direct and immediate answer to
any petition that pleased Him. But as men learned that the universe was
governed according to immutable law, that all things are related, and
that effects are dependent upon their causes, questions began to arise
about the efficacy of prayer for special objects.
There are other causes of doubt, also, about the use of prayer. If the
Lord is a being of infinite love and desires to confer blessings upon
His children, why should He withhold them until He is asked, and even
importuned? If He will only give us what seems to Him to be best however
fervently we may pray, and will give it whether we ask Him or not, what
is the use of praying?
These questions cannot be answered without some knowledge of our
relations to the Lord. We must know what asking is. Millions of prayers
are spoken in which no good is asked. They are merely the mechanical
actions of the memory, repeated from habit without any thought of their
meaning.
If we desire a rational answer, we must go beneath appearances, and gain
a broad and comprehensive idea of prayer. We must know something of the
state of the soul in the act of prayer, and of its attitude towards the
Lord. We must have some knowledge of the Lord’s purpose in our creation,
and how His purposes and our purposes can be united. We must see how
life is received, or repelled. In the measure and degree we can
understand our true relations to the Lord we may be able to discover the
essential uses of prayer. To get the subject fairly before us, however,
it may be necessary to clear away some false ideas which have prevailed
with regard to the nature and efficacy of prayer, by considering what
they are not.
1. It is not the use of prayer to give the Lord information or to remind
Him of His knowledge or promises. He knows our sins, and how vile and
false we are. He knows how blind and ignorant and foolish we are better
than we do. He knows what hindrances lie in our path to heaven, how poor
and miserable and weary and faint-hearted we are. He knows our spiritual
condition in all its causes and relations. Our knowledge of ourselves is
as nothing compared with His. It is useful to us to confess our sins but
not for the purpose of giving the Lord information. We cannot tell Him
anything He does not know infinitely better than we do, or ever can.
2. It is not the use of prayer to change His feelings or purpose towards
us. If it were possible to do that, it would harm rather than help us.
He has only one purpose with regard to every human being, and that is to
do him all the good in His power. What the Lord can do for us, however,
depends upon our willingness and ability to receive good from Him. If
the Lord seems to be hostile to us, it is because we propose to
ourselves ends of life which are selfish and worldly, and, therefore,
destructive of our highest good. We identify ourselves with those
purposes, and think our happiness depends upon our success in effecting
them. The Lord opposes them because He knows how harmful they are, and
we conclude that He must be hostile to us because He opposes our selfish
and worldly desires. But this is a fatal fallacy, which has caused the
most unjust and cruel misconceptions of the Lord’s character, and of His
attitude towards sinful men. We regard the infinitely perfect and
merciful Lord through the perverting medium of our false principles and
evil passions, and attribute to Him the distortions caused by them. But
“The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His
works.”
3. It is not a use of prayer to persuade the Lord by our importunities
to grant our requests. There is a feeling, if not a clearly defined
belief by Christians, that the Lord is somewhat reluctant to bestow
blessings upon men; that He regards them with some degree of
indifference, and even aversion, and that His indifference can only be
overcome, and His ear gained, by the most urgent and importunate
entreaties. But this is a mistake. While the Lord regards every human
being with infinite and unchanging love, He has none of the weaknesses
of natural parents, who yield to the importunities of their children,
and grant requests which are hurtful to them. Swedenborg says the Lord
does not hear prayer in temptation on account of the end. He means that
the Lord does not remove the temptation and save us from the conflict
and suffering at our request while we are in it, but permits us to go
through it, and sustains us in it, that we may see the evil which causes
the conflict, learn its true nature, and voluntarily overcome it. The
prayers of the universe could not change the purposes of infinite love,
the methods of infinite wisdom, or win a more prompt and favorable
regard or tender and helpful service from the Lord than He constantly
accords us.
If prayer has no avail in giving information to the Omniscient, if it
cannot change the purpose or methods of the Immutable, if it has no
power of suasion to win a more favorable regard, and gain more efficient
help in time of need from infinite love and wisdom, what is the use of
it? What does it effect? Whom does it affect? How are its effects
produced? Mere assertions in regard to these questions are of no special
value. They may be true, or they may be false. We need some rational
knowledge upon the subject; we must regard these questions from some
central point of view; we must see them in the light of our relations to
the Lord. Let us, therefore, consider, for a moment, what those
relations are.
Man is primarily and essentially related to the Lord as a recipient of
life to the source of life. He has other relations which are important,
but they are secondary. This one is primary. Man is related to the Lord
as the stream to the fountain, as the motions of an engine to the force
which propels it. This relation is constant. “In Him we live and move
and have our being.” We have no inherent, underived power of any kind,
spiritual, mental, or physical. All the prevalent theories of man’s
relation to the Lord are based on the assumption that man has some
powers of his own. They may have been the gift of the Lord to the first
man, but they are not constantly given to every man. They are like money
or an estate bequeathed by a father to his sons. The act of transfer was
a simple one, and when once completed, needed no repetition. The father
dispossessed himself and his sons came into absolute ownership and
control of the inheritance.
But this is not a true idea of our relations to the Lord. Everything we
possess is a constant gift, a constant transfer. It is like the gift of
a fountain to a stream. If the fountain withholds its gift, the stream
disappears. It is like the gift of the sun to the plant. The plant has
no power stored up in itself to grow independently of the action of the
sun. If the sun should withhold his light and heat, the growth of every
plant would be instantly arrested.
Look at another fact. The quantity of life, or power, or substance of
any kind a vessel or an organic form receives, is measured by its
capacity. It is impossible to put into any vessel more than it will
contain, or a substance which it cannot hold. The effect of a constant
cause will vary, therefore, with the nature and capacity of the
recipient form, and will always be determined by it. Let me illustrate.
Take the atmosphere as one example.
When it flows into the lungs it produces a very different effect from
what it does when it flows into the ear, or into the pipe of an organ.
The air is a constant cause. It must act every moment or the effect
ceases. The effect, also, varies with the recipient form. Take the light
as another example. The colors of all objects are caused by the light
constantly acting. Put out the light and color is annihilated. The color
varies, also, with the quality of the object which reflects it. In all
these cases the cause is constant, but the effects are various, and the
variety depends upon the recipient vessel.
Let us apply these analogies to man. The Lord is the constant cause. All
life, all power to exist, to grow, to feel, think, love, act, comes from
the Lord, as light and heat from the sun, by a constant inflowing. But
it is variously received, according to the capacity and organic form of
the mind, for the mind is an organic form in the same sense that the
lungs and the heart are.
As no change in the plant increases or diminishes the heat and light of
the sun, as the air remains the same whether the lungs are sound or
diseased, whether the pipes of an organ are large or small, few or many,
so the Lord remains the same whether men are good or evil, whether they
receive life in large or small measures. The use of all means for the
improvement of human character, and the increase of human happiness,
must, therefore, consist in its effect upon men. If we desire to improve
the quality of a plant we do it by better culture, not by changing the
quality of the sun; if we desire to get richer harmonies from an organ,
we change its pipes and not the air. So we can only remove human
imperfections, improve the quality of human character, and gain larger
measures of human happiness by acting upon man himself. All changes must
be made in the recipients of life, none in the life itself. It is from
this central, organic, substantial, and constant relation of man to the
Lord that we can discover the use of prayer, and see whom it helps, and
how it renders its service. Let us consider the subject from this point
of view.
Prayer is asking. Can you not think of any other kind of asking than
with the lips? The eye can ask, the face can ask, the hands can ask, the
whole body can ask. A dumb man can ask, a dog can ask, even a plant can
ask. The postures of the body and vocal utterance only express the real
prayer within. Everything that receives asks, and it only receives what
it asks, and it does receive what it asks. Every one that asketh
receiveth. Asking is not merely making known a want; it is an effort to
gain the means of supplying it. But what a man is will determine his
prayer and the answer.
Prayer is converse with the Lord. Take the lowest and most external form
of it. It is an expression of some thought or affection, if it is not
wholly mechanical. In this act we do think of the Lord. We turn, for the
moment, at least, to Him. There is some acknowledgment of Him. Is there
no use in that? Take the prayer of a little child, for example, who has
only the most natural conceptions of the Lord. Is it not of some use to
the child to turn its thoughts to a being above itself? Does it not turn
its face and set its tender feet in the right direction? Does it not
have some effect in making its nature, while it is soft and yielding,
pliant to the sweet attractions of the Divine love? The influence may be
very slight, it may be no more than a tendency; but it must have some
effect, and that effect must be useful. It must tend to place the child
in a state to receive more and richer blessings from the Lord.
Is there no relief and no help in expressing our thoughts and affections
to others? We go to dear friends and tell them our difficulties, trials,
wants, sorrows; not, it may be, with any expectation of getting direct
help from them. We unburden our souls. What does that mean,— unburden?
It means to cast off our burden. Does it not lighten the weight a
little? Even if our friends cannot remove it, we get strength from their
sympathy to support it. How many sorrowing souls would have given up in
despair, their life crushed out of them, if it had not been for the
sympathy and encouragement of friends? If we find such help from
converse with our fellow-men, shall we get none from the Lord when we
“pour out our souls” to Him?
Here it is important to observe that the use does not consist in giving
information, even to our friends, much less to the Lord. The use
consists in its effect upon us. It loosens the hold of sorrow upon us;
it lifts up the burden and throws it from our shoulders. It brings us
into a state in which the Lord in some measure can help us.
All genuine prayer is attended with humiliation. It has a tendency to
humble us, and it does it in the degree that we have any true feeling
and conception of our condition and needs. As the true light begins to
shine into our understandings and hearts, it reveals the darkness which
prevails there. It shows our ignorance, our stupidity, our deformities,
our enmities, and impurities, and no man or woman can see their own
evils and falsities without some degree of shame and humiliation. The
more clearly we see them in heavenly light the deeper must be our
self-abasement. Our alienation from the Lord, and our spiritual
deformities are too great for utterance. We feel more like putting our
“hands upon our mouths, and our mouths in the dust.” Instead of
justifying ourselves, we cannot lift our eyes to heaven. We can only
smite upon our breast and cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” We come
as prodigals, and our prayer is, “I am no longer worthy to be called thy
son, make me as one of thy hired servants.”
This is a state of surrender to the Lord. So far as we come into it, we
yield ourselves to His guidance and power. We cease to dictate to Him;
we cease to claim anything for ourselves; we give up our wills and
understandings to be governed and moulded by the Divine Wisdom. In this
denial of our own self-derived intelligence, and surrender of ourselves
to the Lord, consists the use of humiliation. The Lord has no desire to
see us prostrate and terrified like slaves before Him. On the contrary,
He desires to make us sons, and not slaves or hired servants. He desires
to have us stand upon our feet and act like free men. Humiliation is the
abasement of the natural man; it is putting the sensual desires and
passions under our feet; it is the denial of our love of self and the
world, and abhorrence of error and sin. So far as we do that we come
into a state in which the Lord can help us; we remove the obstacles to
the reception of those forces which give us life. Humiliation is really
the effect of some true knowledge and love of the Lord; it is due to
heavenly principles and powers. They drive out the vile, disorderly,
corrupt inhabitants of our mental house, and open the door for the Lord
to come in and “sup with us and we with Him.”
Prayer has a tendency to cause this humiliation. It brings us face to
face with the Lord on the one hand and our own corrupt natures on the
other. We see the contrast, and in the degree we see it we must abhor
the evil, we must be humbled at the thought that we have loved and
cherished and become the embodiment of principles which are repugnant to
everything which is good and true. So prayer tends to bring us into such
relations to the Lord that He can forgive our sins, wash us and make us
clean, and remove all obstacles to the full possession of our souls.
Prayer is lifting up the eyes and turning the heart to the Lord. The
natural plane of our natures, in which resides our consciousness, and
which is the theatre of our acquired and habitual life has become
inverted. It has been turned away from heaven and the Lord, and bent
downward to the earth; it has been closed to the direct and orderly
influx of Divine, sanctifying, and living forces, and opened to the
world. The mind is an organized form, and is subject to all the laws of
organization. When I speak of it as inverted, bent from its original
uprightness, its vessels closed to the inflowing of the pure water of
life, and opened to the standing pools and polluted streams of sensual
and worldly influences, I do not use a figure. I utter a fact. Prayer is
an effort to restore it to its original order; to lift it up from the
earth; to open its closed and withered vessels to the vivifying power of
the Holy Spirit. This is a slow and painful process. It can only be
gradually effected, especially when the natural mind has become hard and
fixed by habit. It must be bent, not broken. We could not bear the
strain of a sudden conversion.
Is there no use in this effort? If we can turn our thoughts towards the
Lord and raise them from the earth a little, is there no use in that? If
we can catch a glimpse of the heavenly light; if we can inhale a
vivifying breath of the heavenly atmosphere; if we can even get a taste
of the pure water of the river of life; if we can get a drop of its
water on our parched tongues to cool the fever of earthly, passions even
for a moment is there no saving efficacy, no gain in that?
If we consider the source of the influence which leads us to the closet
and bends our knees in prayer, we may see some possibility of its use.
The prayer is due to Divine influence. The moving cause in the soul is
the Divine life working there in its secret closets, brooding over the
chaos of worldly affections struggling through the dense clouds of
sensual illusions. The prayer we voice comes from the Lord, and is given
to us to make our own. It is His voice speaking with our lips. He
teaches us how to pray, and we cannot pray without His teaching. How
faint the voice from within is! It is almost drowned in the clamors of
our worldly passions. It may come from the fading memories of childhood;
it may seem to be an echo from a mother’s influence; it may seem to come
from without; but it is the Divine love calling to us; it is the power
of His Spirit working in us, to mould our distorted natures into the
Divine likeness; it is the attraction of His power lifting us up and
bending us towards Him. Every true prayer voices the working of the Lord
in us. Do we say “Our Father” with any filial affection, we cooperate
with the Lord in making Him more fully our father. Do we implore with
any sincerity, “Forgive us our debts,” we express what He is trying to
do, and by the expression help Him in His work. Do we pray, “Thy kingdom
come,” with an honest desire. It is coming. We could not ask it if it
were not, and by asking we hasten its coming. Prayer is a revelation; it
shows what the Lord is doing, or trying to do in us and for us. Prayer
welcomes His coming, prepares a place to lay His Divine head, and helps
Him in His work of saving and blessing us.
Prayer is communion with the Lord. This is something more than speech.
It may exist without it. Communion is exchange of gifts; it is the
sharing of a common blessing; it is the blending of the life of one
being with another while each preserves its distinct personality. This
is the relation of the branch and the vine. This is what our Lord means
when He says, “Abide in me, and I in you.” “If ye abide in me and my
words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto
you.” There is an actual opening of the inmost vessels of the affections
to the Divine forces which give us life. Those forces, which are in
reality the substances of which our spiritual bodies are woven, are
received and appropriated; they are taken up and become a part of our
being, as the substances of which the blood is composed are taken up by
the various organs of the body and become a part of them. This communion
is eating the Lord’s flesh and drinking His blood by which we have
eternal life. The Divine life is communicated to us. It penetrates our
life, softens the hardness of our spiritual natures; imbues them with
some of its own qualities; finites in them some of its infinite
perfections; tends to impart its motions and order to their activities,
and to bring their forms and movements into voluntary accord with its
infinite harmonies. So far as we yield to the brooding warmth of these
influent Divine forces, we receive refreshment and vigor from them. They
vitalize our affections and clarify our understandings, and we carry
this renewal of our strength into all our duties and relations of life.
We get help in resisting evil and power to overcome in temptation; our
understanding becomes so luminous and true that we can see the path
which leads to eternal life through all the labyrinths of worldly
interests and the illusions of sensual desires. The Lord has gained such
a powerful hold upon us that He can raise us up by the attractions of
His love and draw us towards Himself, as the magnet separates the
particles of iron from the sand and draws them to its own embrace.
This communion may come to our consciousness as a calm, inward joy, as
peace and rest. But the effect may not be discernible immediately. These
Divine forces, received when we open our hearts to the Lord in sincere
prayer, may require many years before they can speak loud enough to be
heard amid the discords and clamors of worldly passions; before they can
soften the hardness of our natures sufficiently to make an impression
upon them which can be felt. But every sincere prayer is a yielding to
them; gives them a little advantage; and the ground they gain they hold.
As they advance in bringing our natures into harmony with the Divine
nature, the seasons of peace and rest become more frequent and of longer
continuance, the rest is more complete, and the peace sinks into
blessedness. This is the rest and peace of heaven. It comes by communion
with the Lord. We taste, and we do see that the Lord is good. We
experience the great peace which those enjoy who love the law of the
Lord. It is a rest, and a peace, and a joy, which fills the soul when it
comes into the harmonies of the Divine order.
If prayer puts us into the proper attitude to receive such influences,
to obtain such help in our conflicts with evil, and opens the door of
entrance into such pure and endless blessings, is it not a most powerful
means of our regeneration, and of inestimable use in gaining heaven? It
prepares the way and leads to the end for which all other things are
given us. In answering the prayer that our sins may be forgiven and that
we may become one with the Lord, does He not answer all prayers?
These are the real uses of prayer. They comprehend all particulars. They
accord with the Lord’s purpose in our creation. Their real effect is not
upon the Lord, but upon ourselves. They tend to put us into such
relations to the Lord that He can do more for us than He could if we did
not pray. They may cause such a change in us that those around us, both
on the spiritual and the natural side of life, can help us. The Lord
provides everything possible for our highest good. But what He can do
for us depends our capacity of receiving good from Him. He cannot do for
the infant just born so much as He can for the youth. He cannot give to
the youth the affections and thoughts and physical strength of an adult
man. He cannot give to a rock the virtues and graces, the transcendent
beauty and glowing love of an angel. He cannot give to a false,
perverted, corrupt nature the sweetness and purity, the wisdom, joy, and
peace which He can bestow upon those who bear His own image and
likeness. Any act or attainment by man which removes the obstacles to
the reception of the Divine life, or enlarges his capacities, is of
great use to him.
As man is the only one who requires to be changed, it is not difficult
to see that it may be far more useful to man that his prayers should be
answered through his instrumentality than directly without it. The
answer may be more effective and lasting. Take a pestilence as an
example. The belief was once general that plagues and cholera were
scourges sent by the Lord in anger as a punishment for man’s sins, and
prayers were offered up in all churches that they might be stayed by a
direct interposition of almighty power. Suppose such prayers could have
been, and had been answered. It would have caused a thousand-fold more
suffering and death than the pestilence. It would have prevented men
from looking for the natural causes of disease, and removing them.
Thousands of lives are gradually destroyed by filth and the violation of
the laws of health to one which is swept away by pestilence. Carry out
the principle into all human relations, and it would take away from man
all prudence, all foresight, all motives to obtain knowledge, all
stimulus to human effort. If the Lord will stay a pestilence at the
request of men, why should he not heal all diseases? or prevent them in
the beginning? If He will send rain, moved by the prayers of Christians,
why will He not regulate the seasons with special reference to every
location and every want? Why will He not keep all men in perfect health,
and supply all human needs and desires without any effort or thought on
man's part? Why will He not correct all wrong, save from all suffering,
however unwise and sinful men may act?
The answer is evident. If the Lord made such special provisions for
every human want, and protected man from the consequences of ignorance,
error, and sin, He would destroy all the pleasures of activity, all the
rewards of conduct. He would reduce every man to the same level, and all
to the condition of the brute.
Our prayers and the Lord’s method of answering them are apart of this
universal method of the Divine order. He incites us to ask that we may
come into a state to receive an answer. But He answers us through our
own efforts when those efforts are of such a nature that He can grant
our request by means of them. Millions of prayers are offered every day
for the salvation of men. The Lord is answering them as fast and as
fully as He can. We pray that the “Lord’s will may be done on the earth
as it is in heaven.” It is useful to us to make the prayer, because if
we offer it in sincerity, it will lead us to do what we can to aid in
the establishment of the Lord’s kingdom upon the earth. He is answering
the prayer as fast as possible; but He can only do it by means of the
men and women who constitute that kingdom.
From these considerations we conclude that the use of prayer consists in
awakening our own interests in the object of our petition, in calling
forth our efforts to obtain it, and in bringing us into such orderly and
intimate relations with the Lord, who is the source of all power and
life, that He can work through us and bless us in granting our requests.
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