1. Notwithstanding the importance of prayer in religion and life, it finds little place in theology. The largest treatises are at one with the smallest manuals of systematic theology in giving but a very subordinate place to the discussion of its problems, if they give any place at all. Why is this? “It seems to me,” says Professor Everett, “not to enter naturally and fittingly into theological discussion. For prayer should be simply the natural expression of the spiritual life at that stage, whatever it may be, at which the soul finds itself. Whatever the religious standpoint of a man may be, he should be left to himself to express his spiritual life naturally. If his religion does not impel him to pray, then prayer will be for him artificial unless indeed it be the prayer for prayer.”
There is then, properly speaking, no possibility of one person proving to another that prayer is of any value. In a remarkable sermon preached to the Wakefield Church Congress in 1886, on the “Reasonableness and Efficacy of Prayer,” Bishop Reichel boldly asserted that “we can have no knowledge of the hearing and answering of prayer, such as shall be capable of being proved to others. All attempts to demonstrate the efficacy of prayer must fail.” “But,” he added, “certainly one thing may be said with perfect truth, and that is, that no one who has been in the habit of praying in the way in which a creature ought to pray to his Creator, with the due measure of commingled reverence and awe, will say that his doing so has been useless and ineffective.”
There is a certain amount of evidence which may be produced, but the external evidence for the success of particular prayers may not be decisive. It is capable of being explained until it is virtually explained away. With our very limited and uncertain understanding of historical antecedents, it is generally open to us to make several conjectures as to the causes which have led to an event; and consequently it must always be difficult, if not impossible, to secure agreement as to the nature of the forces which have been at work in any specified case. Tests that at one time might have been deemed satisfactory, at another would be distrusted and disallowed. Thus, for example, it may safely be predicted that the hospital-ward test will never again be proposed, as it was in 1872. In view of our extending knowledge of what can be effected by telepathy, it could no longer be regarded as conclusive. It would not now be doubted that a number of persons who directed their thoughts and wishes in prayer towards a group of sufferers might be the means of producing a remarkable change in their condition. What might be questioned would be the inference that anything more than human intervention was necessary in any instance to explain the result.
Our present day seems full of question, of urgency on all points connected with prayer. It seems disposed to put it to the proof, to ask what it can effect or alter; it appears inclined, as regards this great subject, to ask for a sign from heaven; but what sign can be given it but the sign of the Son of Man in heaven? The warfare of prayer and its accomplishment is the warfare, the accomplishment, of the Cross, a conquest through apparent defeat. Its work is one with that great effectual Work in which its strength lies wrapped and hidden. It is, like it, a real work and an effectual work, though one of which the believer, with his Lord, must sometimes be content to say—“I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength in vain, yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God”. [Note: Dora Greenwell, Essays, 147.]
2. But we are not dependent on external evidence. Who that has prayed diligently, and experienced an answer, does not know that that one experience has done more for the life of religion in his or her soul than a great deal of reading or thinking? That consciousness of our relation to God is a thing which will develop through all eternity; but it has its beginning here, and the reason why God makes things depend upon our asking for them is that we may be thus educated into such personal intercourse with Him that that truth of sonship may never be merged and lost as it is merged and lost in all that direction of life which, unconsecrated by prayer, moves away from God.
Prayer is reasonable because it works. How many men have had some terrible temptation, and have lifted up their minds to God and prayed for helping grace in times of necessity, and have felt in their deepest self the answer given in the strength by which they have been sustained. Or our light has been low, a flickering taper, a smoking flax; we have looked at little things as though they were big, and at big things as though they were little, and there has been no desire to pray or move in the higher and outer space at all. Then we have suddenly prayed, and, like John Wesley, have felt our hearts “strangely warmed”. The blessed power of old truths has been resuscitated, and we have waited on the Lord and renewed our strength. The sense of God’s presence brings with it the desire, the right, the power, to approach the throne of grace at any time, for anything, about anyone. The more God’s nearness is enjoyed, the oftener can He be gone to. No holy place need prepare one, no service-book need prompt one. No priest need lead one, no saint or angel intercede for one. The “assurance of God’s love” is the great atmosphere, the charter, and the exemplar of believing prayer. One answered prayer is a greater proof of God’s presence than many apologies. God’s presence realized makes one as sensitive and tender to others’ needs as to his own. No one can be near God and not desire forgiveness for his brother as well as himself. And God’s felt presence—which is assurance—brings not only the desire for this, but strong confidence in asking it. [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 29.]
Prayer the Churche’s banquet, Angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-daies-world transposing in an houre,
A kind of tune which all things heare and fear;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the soul’s blond,
The land of spices, something understood. [Note: George Herbert.]
