The proof of prayer is the practice of it. The practice is everything. However little we may be able to prove to others the efficacy of prayer, we know that all is well if we pray.
1. But here is the difficulty. We know but we do not. We know that nothing too glorious can be claimed for prayer and yet we are slow to pray. That contrast between the ideal and the actual, which often impresses us so painfully, is, perhaps, never more apparent than when we come to make a comparison between the theory and the practice of prayer. In theory, prayer is a thing sacred and glorious beyond the power of words to describe. No privilege possible to men is worthy to be put by the side of the privilege of communion with God. No joy can thrill the heart like the joy of the man who knows that he is in the presence of the Creator and Ruler of all, and is conscious that his appeal is heard. No peace can be so profound or so holy as the peace which possesses the minds of those who have entered into the meaning of this mystery, and, by an act of faith or in a moment of vision, have claimed for themselves the unspeakable blessing which it brings. It is surely impossible to say too much of the glory and honour with which that man is crowned, of the grace, the power, the tranquillity, and the gladness, which have become his portion who has learned how to pray. That must be acknowledged by all who have ever had any religious instinct or aspiration.
And yet, when we consider the practice of men, and begin to inquire into their actual experience, we are apt to find that prayer does not by any means appear to be in reality what it is in theory. We find that it is approached as a duty rather than valued as a privilege, and often as a duty not of the most attractive kind. Men ought to pray; and they pray, or try to pray, sometimes with poor success, because they ought. But the time and the strength which are given to the work are given, if the truth must be confessed, but grudgingly. The complaint has become common in our churches that the meeting for prayer is scantily attended, and that, on the whole, small interest is taken in it. The charm of music may give to the service an attractiveness in the eyes of some, and sermons and addresses may serve to commend it, or to make it endurable to others. But the mere praying would seem to have little fascination for many minds. There is little beauty in it that men should desire it, little sacredness in it that it should be held in honour. It is counted almost a strange thing that a gentleman, and a man of education and resources, should frequent prayer-meetings. “How odd,” it is said,” that a man like that should go to such places, when there must be so many things to interest and occupy his thoughts, and claim his attention.” That a feeling like this, of distaste and almost of quiet scorn for the prayer-meeting, prevails in many quarters will scarcely be disputed.
And though we must speak with greater reserve of private prayer, seeing that we know little of the habits of men in this respect, yet there are not wanting signs and testimonies that the prayers which are made in the closet to the Father, which seeth in secret, are very far indeed from being what they might be expected to be, or from bringing to those who offer them what they might be expected to bring.
2. The only remedy is to pray, and by praying to encourage others to pray. If we pray sincerely once, we will pray again. If we pray as we can today, tomorrow we shall pray better. If we wait to pray till prayer shall be less difficult, we shall never pray. The voice of God is calling to us, “Seek ye my face”. That voice calls to us in many ways, in Scripture, in conscience, in providence, in every event, common or special, glad or grave, welcome or sorrowful. Let us see that, when God says, “Seek ye my face,” we are ready, every one to answer with the Psalmist, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek”. There is a piece of shrewd philosophy in the Book of Proverbs (Pro_4:7, R.V. margin), which applies to our learning to pray successfully, as well as to many other works and devices under the sun. It reads: “The beginning of wisdom is, Get wisdom”. That is to say, in colloquial English: The way to learn to do a thing is to “go at it”. We can learn to swim only by getting into the water and striking out. We can learn to play the piano or violin only by playing it. Practice is the chief item in all the arts, and in none more than in the art of prayer.
By praying, prayer is proved. No argument establishes it apart from practice, while the practice renders argument unnecessary. [Note: R. F. Horton, The Prayer-House of God, 7.]
Thou wilt say that I speak too high on this matter of prayer which is indeed no mastery nor difficulty for me to write, but it were a great mastery for a man to practise it. [Note: Walter Hilton.]
If I try to set forth something of the reasonableness of all prayer, I beg my readers to remember that it is for the sake of action and not speculation; if prayer be anything at all, it is a thing to be done: what matter whether you agree with me or not, if you do not pray? I would not spend my labour for that; I desire it to serve for help to pray, not to understand how a man might pray and yet be a reasonable soul. [Note: George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, 2: 58.]
Fletcher of Madeley, a great teacher of a century and a half ago, used to lecture to the young theological students. He was one of the fellow-workers with Wesley, and a man of most saintly character. When he had lectured on one of the great topics of the Word of God, such as the Fulness of God’s Holy Spirit or on the power and blessing that He meant His people to have, he would close the lecture, and say, “That is the theory; now will those who want the practice come along up to my room?” And again and again they closed their books and went away to his room, where the hour’s theory would be followed by one or two hours of prayer. [Note: Hubert Brooke, One Faith and One Family, 30.]
3. Of what does an act of prayer consist? It consists always of three separate forms of activity which, in the case of different persons, co-exist in very varying degrees of intensity, but which are found, in some degree, in all who pray, whenever they pray.
(1) To pray is, first of all, to put the affections in motion; it is to open the heart. The object of prayer is the Untreated Love, the Eternal Beauty—He of whose beauty all that moves love and admiration here is at best a pale reflection. To be in His presence in prayer is to be conscious of an expansion of the heart, and of the pleasure that accompanies it, which we feel, in another sense, when speaking with an intimate and loved friend or relative. And this movement of the affections is sustained throughout the act of prayer. It is invigorated by the spiritual sight of God, but it is also the original impulse which leads us to draw near to Him. In true prayer, as in teaching, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”.
Prayer is the utterance before God of emotion. The deep and secret emotions of the heart are in worship uttered or poured out before God. Thus in worship we act on the invitation, “Pour out your hearts before him”. Now this applies to all the varieties of true worship. It applies even to supplication. A large proportion of our worship, sometimes too large a proportion, consists of requests. Request is the lowest form of worship, for it turns the thoughts towards self. We ask that we may receive, and that which we hope to receive is the great object of our prayer. But even these requests are all of them the expressions of emotion; for is it not an earnest desire that prompts them, and what is that desire but a strong emotion? When, e.g., we pray, “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,” does not the prayer arise from the strong, earnest desire after a spotless holiness, and is not that desire one of the most sacred emotions that the Holy Spirit ever draws forth from the heart of the regenerate man? But if it applies to supplication or request, how much more does it apply to adoration!
But prayer also kindles emotion. If love prompts worship, it must surely follow that worship will kindle love. We see this in a comparison of Psalms 18 and Psalms 116. In both is declared love for Jehovah, and in both is it connected with His worship. But there is this difference: in Psalms 18 the love leads to the worship, and in Psalms 116 the worship calls forth the love. In Psalms 18 the Psalmist says, “I will love thee, O Lord” (Psa_18:1), and then adds, as a consequence of that love (Psa_18:3), “I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised”; whereas, in Psa_116:1, he says, “I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications”. He loved as he went in, but he loved still more as he came out.
(2) To pray is, next, to put the understanding in motion, and to direct it upon the highest object to which it can possibly address itself, the Infinite God. In our private prayers, as in our public liturgies, we generally preface the petition itself by naming one or more of His attributes. Almighty and Everlasting God If the understanding is really at work at all, how overwhelming are the ideas, the truths, which pass thus before it: a boundless Power, an Existence which knows neither beginning nor end. Then the substance of the petition, the motives which are alleged for urging it, the issues which depend upon its being granted or being refused, present themselves to the eye of the understanding. And when prayer is not addressed to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the fact that it is addressed to the Father through Him, and in reliance on His merits and mediation, opens upon Christian thought the inmost mysteries before the Eternal Throne. And thus any common act of real prayer keeps, not the imagination, but the understanding, occupied earnestly, absorbingly, under the guidance of faith, from first to last.
The first ingredient in prayer is, not intelligence, but movement of the spirit—of the soul. The raw material of prayer, so to put it, is a vague aspiration of the soul towards its true Object.
“Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,
So longeth my soul after thee, O God.
My soul is athirst for God;
Yea even for the living God.
When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”
The motive of this movement is a sense of need, a sense of weakness, a sense of dependence. It is perfectly compatible with very shadowy perceptions of God; it is the cry of a child towards its parent, whom it sees only indistinctly in the distance or in the twilight; it is an impulse, an enthusiasm, an emotion; it is a breathing, an aspiration. The raw material of prayer is not its intellectual element; it is its element of impulse, of love, of moral movement, vigorous and resolute in its endeavour, yet vague and indeterminate as to its course and its Object. Undoubtedly, very earnest prayer is often compatible with a slight exercise of the understanding. “I will pray with the spirit” is a resolution which can be carried into practice, if it stands alone, more easily than “I will pray with the understanding,” if it stands alone. The understanding alone does not pray—it only thinks; and thought is a very different thing from prayer. Thought about God or about ourselves is not of itself that inward movement towards God which is at bottom an impulse from on high, and which is the first and the essential step in real prayer. The uninstructed, the young, the very ill, the almost despairing, the broken-hearted, can say, after the Apostle, when they can say little else, “I will pray with the spirit”.
But although the understanding cannot give the first impulse to prayer, it can supply guidance to it. It is very needful, if the original impulse, which is the essence of prayer, is to be brought into shape and made permanently serviceable to the soul. The original energy of prayer is supplied by emotion; its regulation is secured by the understanding, that is, the understanding illuminated by Divine grace. Without this understanding, the spirit of prayer is like fluid metal which runs into irregular forms from want of a mould. Without the understanding, the spirit of prayer is like great natural ability which is wasted or misused from want of good training. Without the understanding, devotional impulse will easily pass into boisterous and even irreverent rhapsody, or shrink back to the lifeless monotony of mere form.
The understanding takes the devotional impulse or spirit in hand, rouses it to jealous and vigorous consciousness, bids it consider who He is who is the real Object of prayer, what is sought of Him, why He is applied to for this particular benefit, what are the fitting steps in the application.
The understanding thus secures a double result. It introduces point, purpose, order, into what, without it, would be aimless and unregulated impulse; and it does more—it secures reverence. Without injuring the tenderness of the relations which bind a living soul to its God and its Redeemer, it is there as a perpetual reminder of His Unapproachable Majesty, and of the nothingness of all creatures before Him.
A man’s religious life must keep pace with the growth of his knowledge and powers of reflection, or he will learn to think of it as a thing divided from all practical interests, as a mere reminiscence of his childhood; he will gradually drop if he does not deliberately reject it. A man’s prayers must prompt and accompany his most deliberate actions; they must, if it may be, keep abreast of the entire range of his mental and moral effort. New subjects will constantly crowd for recognition; new forms of occupation, new friendships, new materials for thought and speculation, new difficulties, anxieties, trials; new hopes and fears; the varying fortunes of our families; the course of public events; the conduct of our rulers; the failures or triumphs of the Church; the constant departure—one after another—of those whom we have known and loved, to another world, and the sense, which each day that passes must deepen, that our own turn must come ere long—all this is material for prayer, which is constantly accumulating. [Note: H. P. Liddon, Sermons on Some Words of St. Paul, 136]
A prayer must have thought in it. The thought may overburden it so that its wings of devotion are fastened down to its sides and it cannot ascend. Then it is no prayer, only a meditation or a contemplation. But to take the thought out of a prayer does not insure its going up to God. It may be too light as well as too heavy to ascend. I saw once in a shop-window in London a placard which simply announced “Limp Prayers”. It described, I believe, a kind of Prayer Book in a certain sort of binding which was for sale within; but it brought to mind many a prayer to which one had listened, in which he could not join, out of which had been left the whole backbone of thought, and to which he could attach none of his own heart’s desires. [Note: Phillips Brooks, Lectures on Preaching, 243.]
(3) Once more, to pray is to put the will in motion, just as decidedly as we do when we sit down to read hard, or when we walk up a steep hill against time. That sovereign power in the soul which we name the will does not merely, in prayer, impel us to make the first necessary mental effort, but it also enters most penetratingly and vitally into the very action of the prayer itself. It is the will which presses the petition; it is the will which struggles with the reluctance of sloth or with the secret opposition of sinful passion; it is the will which perseveres; it is the will which exclaims: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me”. The amount of will which we severally carry into the act of prayer is the ratio of its sincerity; and where prayer is at once real and prolonged, the demands which it makes upon our power of concentrating determination into a specific and continuous act are very considerable indeed.
There has been much debate among the learned concerning the psychology of religion; and scholars have compared the reason, the emotions, and the will as elements in religious experience. Do we in religion, first of all, think, or feel, or act? Some teachers have urged that the essence of religion must be found in thought. Right thinking is the foundation of a saving faith. The truth makes one free. Who is the Christian? It is he who has been taught the truth about God, Christ, the Church, and the Christian creed. Other teachers have regarded the emotions as the fundamental element in religious experience. Behind all doctrines of theology, they say, lies the religious sentiment itself, and this feeling of dependence supplants all necessity of proof. Who is the Christian? It is he who has been thus deeply stirred by the emotion of religion. “The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” Now, no doubt, there is much to say in behalf of both rationalism and mysticism.
A definite theology and a profound emotion are essential parts of a complete religious life. Yet when we turn to the teaching of Jesus, we observe an extraordinary emphasis on the third element of consciousness, the will. “My meat,” He says, “is to do the will of him that sent me.” “Whosoever shall do the will of God . . . the same is my brother, and my sister; “and still more strongly in this verse from the Fourth Gospel: “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching”. However important it may be to have a creed that is sound or an emotion that is warm, the Christian life, according to the Gospels, is primarily determined by the direction of the will, the fixing of the desire, the habit of obedience, the faculty of decision. When a modern psychologist says that “The willing-department of life dominates both the thinking-department and the feeling-department,” he is in fact but repeating the great words: “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching”. Here is the aspect of the religious life which gives courage and hope to many a consciously imperfect experience. You are not sure about your creed? That is a pity. You do not respond to the emotion of the revivalist or the poet? That also is a loss. But, after all, the fundamental question concerns the discipline of your will. Are you determined in your purpose? Have you the will to do the will? Then, even with half a creed and less than half a pious ecstasy, you are at least in the line of the purpose of Jesus Christ and, as you will to do the will, may come some day to know the teaching. “Obedience,” said Frederick Robertson, “is the organ of spiritual knowledge.”First the discipline of the will, then the truth which lies beyond that ethical decision. Our thoughts may grow breathless as they climb; our emotions may ebb as they flow; but our wills may march steadily up the heights of life, or flow steadily through the experiences of life as a river seeks the sea. The profoundest modern statement of Christian faith is the confession of Tennyson:—
Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 200.]
The three ingredients of prayer—emotion, intellect, will—are also ingredients in all real work, whether of the brains or of the hands. The sustained effort of the intelligence and of the will must be seconded in work no less than in prayer by a movement of the affections, if work is to be really successful. A man must love his work to do it well. The difference between prayer and ordinary work is that in prayer the three ingredients are more equally balanced. Study may in time become intellectual habit, which scarcely demands any effort of will: handiwork may in time become so mechanical as to require little or no guidance from thought: each may exist in a considerable, although not in the highest, degree of excellence, without any co-operation of the affections. Not so prayer. It is always the joint act of the will and the understanding, impelled by the affections; and when either will or intelligence is wanting, prayer at once ceases to be itself, by degenerating into a barren intellectual exercise, or into a mechanical and unspiritual routine. [Note: H. P. Liddon.]
