1. “AND there were also with him other little ships” (Mar_4:36). Our attention, as we read the story of the stilling of the storm, is given to the ship in which Christ and the disciples were. We do not notice that there were also with Him other little ships. But it is worth noticing. For if they suffered from the storm, they also got the benefit of the “great calm”. And they never knew how it came to pass. They were out on the Sea of Galilee, along with the ship in which were Christ and the disciples. When the storm came down so violently, they too were tossed by the waves and in danger of being swamped. And then when He said, “Peace, be still,” and there was a great calm, they enjoyed the benefit of the calm. How did it come about? How was it so sudden and so complete? It is probable that they never knew.
Tennyson says:—
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.
And the wonder of it is that the things which are wrought by prayer are often wrought on those who have not themselves prayed, and they may never know how their blessings came to them. Have we been rescued out of keen temptations? Have we been able to do some things for God, and to stand? Have we sometimes felt the peace of God which passeth understanding keep our heart and mind? We believe that it was in answer to prayer. But whose prayer? Not our own. A mother’s prayer, perhaps. We cannot always tell. In all prayer there is mystery. But the mystery centres in intercessory prayer. That we should be blessed because of some other’s prayer of faith; that our prayer of faith should be able to bless others—that is the mystery. But the examples of it are undeniable.
Four men carried a paralytic into the presence of Jesus, and when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the sick of the palsy, “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee”. A woman came out of the Syrophoenician country and cried, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil”. He answered and said unto her, “O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt”.
(1) What is the secret? It is sympathy. The prayer that saves is the prayer that sympathizes. The boat in which Christ was and the other little boats were all suffering alike from the storm, and to sympathize is to suffer along with. The four friends of the paralytic felt with him as they felt for him. The Syrophoenician woman carried her daughter’s illness as if it were her own. “Lord save me,”was her cry. Why have we a Saviour who is able to save unto the uttermost? Because “himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases”.
(2) And the prayer of sympathy, if it is to be entirely successful, must be a prayer of faith. That is the other condition. We must believe that He is able to do this, and that He is willing.
More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.. . .
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
To God man is first an objective point, and then, without ceasing to be that, he further becomes a distributing centre, God ever thinks of a man doubly: first for his own self, and then for his possible use in reaching others. Communion and petition fix and continue one’s relation to God, and so prepare for the great out-reaching form of prayer-intercession. Prayer must begin in the first two but reaches its climax in the third. Communion and petition are of necessity self-wide. Intercession is worldwide in its reach. And all true rounded prayer will ever have all three elements in it. There must be the touch with God. One’s constant needs make constant petition. But the heart of the true follower has caught the warm contagion of the heart of God and reaches out hungrily for the world. Intercession is the climax of prayer. [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 40.]
I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession and call upon God for his soul. I cannot see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I fall into supplication for him, who perhaps is no more than a common nature. [Note: Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici.]
I.
1. Intercession has, in every age, been the cherished practice of the people of God, cherished because it was felt to be a duty. “I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men. . . . This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth.” In these familiar words St. Paul seems to speak with all the force and authority of one who has been allowed to enjoy a clear revelation of the Divine will on this most important topic. His exhortation is rendered all the more impressive by the reference to the Divine desire for the salvation of all that immediately follows it. If it is the will of God that all men should be saved—and He, through His servant, exhorts us to intercede for all—it is clear that intercession must be, at least, one amongst the many means that God employs for the carrying out of His beneficent purpose. If, indeed, no such exhortation had been addressed to us, our natural instincts of Christian benevolence would have disposed us to intercede for our fellow-men. If we believe that it is right to pray for ourselves, we are inclined, almost without a second thought, to conclude that it must be equally right to plead for other people, and to take it for granted that if our prayers are to our own advantage, they must be equally effective and beneficial when offered for others.
When we find that, from the days of Abraham downwards, God’s people have interceded for others, and have been encouraged to do so; when we notice that our Lord Himself prayed for others, and taught His disciples to do so, yes, even for those who despitefully used them; when we find St. Paul exhorting us, in the most emphatic way, to engage in intercession, the weight of a Divine authority in favour of the practice of intercession overbears all the objections to such a course that reason may present, and we conclude that our truest wisdom lies in doing just what we are told to do, even though our taking this course may seem to involve certain anomalies.
My father was most thoroughly a man of prayer. He was often supplicating for himself; and, as for his intercourse with others, he was in the habit, as far as possible, of leaving no one with whom he felt himself in communion without praying with him. Never did he set out from home; never did he see any of us, or even a friend, set out, without assembling all the household to commend to the Supreme Head those who, however they might be separated from one another, were still one under His eye. So, too, the first thing he did on his return from a journey, after he had embraced us all round, was to return thanks to God for the protection He had vouchsafed to him and us, and for His mercy in reuniting us. Never did he sit down to table, were it only to take a basin of broth, without first bending his head a few moments to return thanks, whether he were in his room, or among his family, or at a table d’hôte surrounded by strangers. It was in this necessity which lay upon him to ask God’s help in everything that he illustrated his view of the principle, “all things of God,” his dogmatic expression of which has pained so many people. “We must go to God at once,” he used to say to us, “and not wait till we have exhausted all other means. Before deciding on, or undertaking anything, whatever it be, we should never forget to ask counsel of the Lord.” [Note: The Life, Labours, and Writings of Caesar Malan, 334.]
2. The prayers of the Bible are a singularly interesting and instructive study. They are more numerous than can well be imagined by those of us who have not devoted to them any special attention. One circumstance of special interest in such a study is this, that so large a proportion of the great prayers of the Bible are intercessions. Surely this feature in the great Bible prayers is noteworthy. It would seem that while all prayer is welcome in heaven—all true prayer, that is—a special welcome awaits the prayers we offer, not for ourselves, but for others.
(1) In the Old Testament prayers of intercession are not very numerous, but they are of great significance. It would not be unfair to estimate a man’s religion by the earnestness with which he longs for the welfare of others; and love of the brethren will express itself, in normal circumstances, in prayer for them. Those who love them most and those who are most responsible for their spiritual welfare will be likely to pray most for them. It is, therefore, very fitting that the prophets, who in a special sense were charged with the religious welfare of Israel, should so often appear as intercessors. We think of them pre-eminently as preachers, but they had first pleaded with God for the men to whom they afterwards appealed in His name. Most of them must have been powerful, or at least impressive speakers. Their gifts and temperaments differ widely, but the passionate sincerity of such men as Elijah and Jeremiah must have produced a stupendous impression even upon audiences that were not disposed to accept their message; and we can well believe that a special efficacy was supposed to attach to their prayers.
Practically all the intercessory prayers of the Old Testament are offered either by prophets or by men—such as Abraham and Job—whom later ages idealized as prophets. Abraham’s intercession for Sodom and for King Abimelech, and Job’s intercession for his friends are characteristic: and their prayers are efficacious. “Abraham is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live.” “My servant Job shall pray for you,” that is, for the “orthodox” friends, who had not spoken of God the thing that was right. The historical prophets from Elijah onwards appear frequently as intercessors. Elijah prays for the restoration of the widow’s son. Amos the stern, from whom one would expect little pity, pleaded twice that the blow should not fall upon Israel. King Hezekiah after the insulting message of the Rabshakeh, entreats Isaiah through the priests and two court officials to “lift up his prayer for the remnant that is left”; and the chronicler puts into the mouth of Hezekiah himself a very beautiful prayer to “Jehovah the good” for pardon for those who had earnestly sought their God, even though their conduct had not been ceremonially correct.
The praying of others for us is a force to be reckoned—when we account for the startling variations of our life, its deflections, its unexpected reinforcements. In the prologue to the Book of Job we read: “And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said: It may be that my sons have sinned and renounced God in their hearts”. It is the anxious prayer of Job that we hear, but what followed upon that vicarious prayer? This only experience can teach. Other fathers have prayed for their children since that day, and their sons and daughters have been held back as by an Unseen Hand from the excesses and the stains of the world—they have been brought through their perilous journey unscathed, not alone because they prayed themselves, but because their father and mother rose up early and sanctified them and offered burnt-offerings for them. They have had great allies, and all about them the unseen “dynamic agencies of heaven”. [Note: Edward Shillito, Looking Inwards, 50.]
(2) In the Old Testament, intercessory prayer is usually offered for forfeited or imperilled lives; in the New Testament its object is usually the spiritual welfare of those for whom it is offered, as when Jesus prays that Peter’s faith fail not; or Paul, that his Ephesian converts be strengthened with power in the inward man, or that the Philippians may abound more and more in love. There are occasional prayers for blessings of a more material sort. The elders of the church are to pray for a sick member, and Peter prays for the restoration of the dead Tabitha. The “great Prophet that should come into the world,” like the ancient prophets, was great in intercession. He poured out His heart not only for His disciples, but for His murderers.
Jesus, who has entire command of His time, chooses the Intercession as that on which He can best spend it, and ever liveth to make intercession for us. [Note: F. W. Crossley, in Life, by J. Rendel Harris, 174]
As intercession for others, how prayer rises and swells into moral grandeur and moral worth! Jesus standing with His disciples about the table on which the sacrament of the last supper was yet to be celebrated, and as they were about to start for the garden across the brook Kedron, lifts His eyes to heaven. But He has already looked down through the ages, far across continents then unknown, and sees the fast gathering throng of His disciples; sees them toiling, witnessing, suffering for His sake; sees the faithful leaders in one generation die, and those of the next run to take their places; sees all the dreadful corruptions, all the stern conflicts, all the sad heresies and schisms, all the triumphs too, and growths as the blessed leaven slowly leavens the whole lump; and as He looks on the whole up to the very end, He prays for all those who should believe on Him through the word of His apostles. And from this scene on earth we look reverently up to His throne in heaven, where He ever liveth to make intercession for us. [Note: J. O. Murray, in Princeton Sermons, 206.]
(3) Intercessory prayer plays a great part in the life of St. Paul. It is the old story: the true prophet, the preacher who means what he says, will be an intercessor. The man who loves the truth and who also loves the men to whom he preaches it, will plead for them. So not only Paul’s heart’s desire, but also his supplication to God for the Jews, was that they should be saved. And once men have been won for Jesus, he prays that they may be sustained in the good life, and enabled to bring forth much fruit, and this to the ultimate end “that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified”. He prays not only that they may do no evil, but that they may, in a spirit of blameless sincerity, do much good, especially that they may put into practice the Master’s royal lesson of love to one another, and to all men.
So St. Paul tells us that Epaphras was always striving and labouring in prayer for the Colossians that they might be perfect and fully convinced in all the will of God. While Epaphras prayed, what happened at Colossae? This the New Testament leaves untold. It would be little good to tell us; we must learn from experience what happened at Colossae. While Epaphras prayed! Who, in the light of Christian experience, can doubt that souls in Colossae found the shadows strangely lifted? They were led into a deeper insight into the will of God; they received a new power to preach Christ; they were made brave who before had been timid; they were made quick with the love of Christ who had almost lost their faith. All this and more took place, while in Rome their friend and Apostle strove with God in prayer and worked mightily for their salvation.
While Epaphras prays today, what happens? He may be thousands of miles away; he may be in China and his Colossae in London. But we must not forget him when in a certain church some harassed soul finds rest; when this man is dragged with the fire on his garments from destruction; when this one passes into the joy of his Lord by the way of the Cross; when underneath some fellowship of Christians there is a strange arm outstretched. That arm is the intercession of the redeemed taken into the intercession of the Redeemer. For He takes for Himself the “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints”. All this we shall not know until we
In that brief but all-embracing intercession with which the Bible closes we have intercession at its highest level: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.” Notice the combination, the threefold cord which cannot be broken. There is the prayer of the Spirit. St. John, like St. Paul, brings the action of the Spirit into close relation with the prayers of the Christian faithful “The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”. “Through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”—it is by this that outward events are turned to our salvation. Just as the true life for the Christian means to walk in the Spirit, so true Christian prayer is prayer in the Spirit. The Spirit prays, and the Bride, the Church, the Spirit-bearing body, prays too. And the individual disciple contributes his voice to theirs; “he that heareth,” he has his part in the threefold strain of intercession. “Come, Lord Jesus.” The prayer is short, but it covers all that we can pray for. [Note: G. A. Cooke, The Progress of Revelation, 160.]
3. With such examples before us, we cannot afford to neglect intercession. Indeed, we may well ask whether we have given anything like an adequate place to this most blessed and wonderful gift from God. The Rev. J. R. Miller has in one of his books a chapter entitled “The Sin of Not Praying for Others,” and he writes: “Perhaps we are not accustomed to think of praying for others in just this way as a duty, the omission of which is a sin against God. We think of it as a privilege, but scarcely as a part of love’s solemn duty. We are in danger of narrowing our prayers to ourselves and our own wants. We think of our own sorrows and trials, our own duties, our own work, our own spiritual growth, and too often do not look out of the window upon our friend’s rough path or sore struggle. But selfishness in praying is one of the worst forms of selfishness. If ever love reaches its best and purest, it ought to be when we are standing before God.” Not praying for others is a sin of omission which should be sincerely repented of, and of which no Christian should be guilty again.
Suppose you are interested in a case of sickness, and you believe your prayer has had an effect which otherwise could not have been achieved, does not this commit into your hands an awful responsibility? What if you forgot to pray? Or suppose that there is another sick person for whom there is no one to pray, and that person therefore dies. Is it either wise or fair for God to allow such things to depend upon such precarious conditions? But, taking this argument on its own merits, it could be pressed much further. Is it also wise or fair that such matters as procreation, education, and the administration of justice should be so largely committed to the will and power of man? These great things are in our hands, that we should learn to realize both our dependence and our responsibility.
What about those who have practically none to pray for them, or to pray for them in particular? What of those for whom we should have prayed and have neglected to do so or to pray with perseverance and love? Do they suffer loss—unending loss—through our neglect? This, of course, is really but one of the problems suggested by the consideration of what is clearly a fact —the solidarity of the human race, our dependence one upon another in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of purposes. As a matter of experience, we do suffer by reason of one another’s faults of omission, and this not only in lesser and external matters but also in the more serious concerns of the moral and spiritual life. How far such losses may be irremediable we are not told. The Judge of all the earth, we know, will most assuredly do right. He will certainly take into consideration all the circumstances of each individual soul. None, we may be sure, will finally be lost who has not deliberately and persistently rejected God. The losses short of final ruin which any may suffer through others’ failure to give brotherly help of any kind would suggest matter for self-examination and humiliation before God rather than for speculation as to His dealings.
When Bacon fell, and when Andrewes had to sit in judgment upon the Lord Chancellor’s distractingly sad case, he remembered how that great man had been used to call him his inquisitor, but Andrewes had secret remorse to the day of his death that he had not early enough and often enough been Bacon’s intercessor. [Note: Whyte, Lancelot Andrewes and his Private Devotions, 44.]
II.
1. But what is the worth of intercessory prayer? Its worth is manifold, and, like mercy, “it is twice bless’d; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes”.
If there be no other result of our prayer, it will certainly have its effect in a changed attitude on our own part. No one can pray honestly for another without working for him, and so helping to answer his own prayer. The case of the Apostle Paul is a conspicuous example. Yet there is no reason for confining the influence of our prayers to such reflex action. As the Father of spirits, God has direct access to the spirits of all men; and we know not what part in the complex system of spiritual influences through which His Kingdom is advanced may be played by the prayers offered in faith and love by Christians on behalf of their fellows who are in need. Here the example of Jesus is full of instruction. No one knew so well as He the loving purpose of the Father towards His children; yet this did not prevent Him from praying for them. If we pray for men in the spirit of Jesus, we may be sure that our prayers will not be in vain. Intercession is love at prayer. Every true exercise of it deepens our interest in others, and develops in us a sympathy which must have its ultimate effect upon the happiness and well-being of the world. As William Law has said, “Intercession is the best arbitrator of all differences, the best promoter of true friendship, the best cure and preservative against all unkind tempers, all angry and haughty passions”. Besides, the interest in men which lies behind intercessory prayer will, if it be genuine, also be likely to express itself practically. “He who prays to God to make men happy will do what he can to make them happy himself.” He will hope, bear, believe, and do all for the man for whom he prays; and so its influence upon himself in restraining impatient and uncharitable tempers, and its influence, through him upon the world, will be very great.
Intercessory Prayer is a powerful means of grace to the praying man. Martyn observes that, at times of inward spiritual dryness and depression, he had often found a delightful revival in the act of praying for others, for their conversion, or sanctification, or prosperity in the work of the Lord. His dealings with God for them about these gifts and blessings were for himself the divinely natural channel of a renewed insight into his own part and lot in Christ, into Christ as his own rest and power, into the “perfect freedom” of an entire yielding of himself to his Master for His work. [Note: H. C. G. Moule, All in Christ, 100.]
(1) First of all, in intercessory prayer we find an outlet for those cares and anxieties which we cannot help entertaining with regard to others—and often the only outlet. There is, for instance, distance. He or she in whom we are interested may be in another hemisphere. We cannot stretch out our hand to their assistance. Our voice will not reach them. Any assistance we might be able to furnish them with would be too late ere it could find them. But we have in intercessory prayer a mode of communication swifter than the telegraph or the telephone. God is near to us, and equally near to them. We can send them our message through Him, and that with the certainty that no time will be lost on the way, and that it will infallibly reach the ears for which it was intended.
Intercession is perhaps the easiest branch of prayer. It is no uncommon complaint among religious people that they can pray far more earnestly for others than for themselves. Many a one has been able to pour out the whole heart in an agony of intercession for some beloved one in an hour of danger—a parent or child, or a brother or sister—who has been staggered and dismayed at the coldness and deadness of his heart in his ordinary prayers for himself. This is, however, not really a matter of surprise. The fervour and intensity of the intercession is the fruit of the human love which prompts it. The feelings are stirred in a degree which is perhaps impossible in the more purely spiritual act of the communing of the soul with God as to its own needs and condition. No doubt it is a witness to the infirmity of our fallen nature that our own spiritual wants stir our feeling so languidly. But we must not be cast down because we find that the element of human love can give a life and fervour to our prayers which nothing else can. It is probably a necessity of our present state that it should be so. And if such is our own experience, we should simply bow our heads, and confess with shame how little our own soul’s needs affect us, thanking God that He has shown us what true fervent prayer may be, and asking Him to pardon the lack of warmth we mourn over in our devotions, and to accept them for Jesus Christ’s sake. After all, love is a grace which is of God, who “is Love,” and He who has planted this fair plant of love in our hearts will not scorn the prayer to which it lends its fragrance.
(2) Not only so, but as the habit of praise intensifies our love of God, so the habit of intercession intensifies our love of man. The more we pray for our fellow-men, the more inevitably we yearn to help them; and this yearning quickens our energies and enlarges our capacities for helpfulness in a way and to an extent that we cannot fail to recognize as part of the answer to our prayer.
(3) Intercession for others is often the easiest way to break up the stupor, the insensibility, of our own hearts. We are not always in the spirit of prayer. Sometimes the wheels drag heavily, and it is a labour and a task. Let us, however, only turn aside from the consideration of our own wants and desires, and contemplate the necessities of others and pour out our supplications for them, and the soul will awake from its torpor; faith will find its wings, and will soar joyfully towards God. That which cramps the soul and drags it to the earth is its selfishness. Now selfishness is both unhappiness and feebleness. Let selfishness depart, and the heart glows with a generous affection, and the spirit is stronger to grasp for another than when it grasps for itself. When intercession is Divinely inspired and controlled, and directed towards those ready to benefit by it, it will naturally be free from all taint of selfishness, and will be prompted purely by the love of souls and a desire for God’s glory. Where our own interests or our happiness in life is involved by the actions of others, it is easy to see that there is a danger of our being actuated in our prayers for these by the desire to escape from annoyance or actual suffering and distress, and he would be a harsh critic who stigmatized such prayers as selfish in their character. Still, it is possible, no doubt, that in offering such prayers we may be thinking more of the relief that a favourable answer might bring to us than of the value of the human soul for which we pray, or of the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ.
In the life of Frank Crossley it is told how one day in 1888 he had said good-bye at the station to his friends, General and Mrs. Booth; but before they steamed out he handed a letter to them giving details of a sacrifice he had resolved to make for the Army. He came home, and was praying alone. “As I was praying,” he said, “there came over me the most extraordinary sense of joy. It was not exactly in my head, nor in my heart, it was almost a grasping of my chest by some strange hand, that filled me with an ecstasy I never had before. It was borne in on me that this was the joy of the Lord.” So this servant of God made in his pilgrimage to God an advance from which he never fell back. He thought it likely at the time that the Booths had read this letter in the train and this was an answer to prayer of theirs; afterwards he heard they had prayed for him in the train just after getting well out of Manchester. [Note: Edward Shillito, Looking Inwards, 51.]
(4) Intercession brings with it one further result. Our moral rights over men, our influence, our power, if need be, to rebuke, our power to guide and teach and help, depend on our intercession on their behalf. Amos the prophet, taken “from following the flock,” goes forth in quiet confidence on his mission of judgment and restoration, but he has prayed first of all that the threatened judgment may be turned away: “O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee: how shall Jacob stand? for he is small”. With his fellow-countrymen Amos suffers the agony of the judgment which it is his duty, as a prophet, to proclaim. And it is only when we have thus entreated for men, when we have represented them before the throne, when we come forth from intercession at the mercy-seat, that we can exercise over them the moral rights with which we are entrusted.
It was a remark of General Gordon’s that it makes a great difference in our feeling towards a stranger if before we meet him we have prayed for him. And we may with equal truth say that it makes a great difference in the feelings of others towards us if they have reason to believe that we have prayed for them. St. Paul, therefore, gives himself this advantage. He says, “God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers”. Then he goes on to tell them that he not only prays for their welfare, but prays that he may have the advantage of seeing them face to face and knowing them. And here he puts his desire to see them on the true ground. He wants to visit them because he has something of the utmost value to give them—that he may “impart unto them some spiritual gift”. [Note: Bishop Gore, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, i. 54.]
If you should always change and alter your intercessions according as the needs and necessities of your neighbours or acquaintance seem to require, beseeching God to deliver them from such and such particular evils, or to grant them this or that particular gift or blessing, such intercessions, besides the great charity of them, would have a mighty effect upon your own heart, as disposing you to every other good office, and to the exercise of every other virtue towards such persons as have so often a place in your prayers. This would make it pleasant to you to be courteous, civil, and condescending to all about you, and make you unable to say or do a rude or hard thing to those for whom you had used yourself to be so kind and compassionate in your prayers. For there is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him; and when you can once do this sincerely for any man you have fitted your soul for the performance of everything that is kind and civil towards him. This will fill your heart with a generosity and tenderness that will give you a better and sweeter behaviour than anything that is called fine breeding and good manners. By considering yourself as an advocate with God for your neighbours and acquaintance you would never find it hard to be at peace with them yourself. It would be easy to you to bear with and forgive those for whom you particularly implored the Divine mercy and forgiveness. Such prayers as these amongst neighbours and acquaintance would unite them to one another in the strongest bonds of love and tenderness. It would exalt and ennoble their souls, and teach them to consider one another in a higher state, as members of a spiritual society, that are created for the enjoyment of the common blessings of God, and fellow-heirs of the same future glory. [Note: William Law, A Serious Call, chap. xxi]
2. It is hard to conceive of an influence more likely to preserve in temptation and to strengthen for duty than the knowledge that prayers are offered on our behalf, or even the memory of prayers once offered. The voices, some hushed, that once pleaded with God for us—voices of father or mother or some faithful friend—plead with us still, and it is hard to resist such a plea. It can awaken old and blessed memories, stir a long-slumbering conscience, stifle the incipient passion, quicken the better nature, brace, strengthen, and purify. Jesus interceded for Peter that his faith should not fail, and, in a crucial moment, it failed: he denied and cursed and swore. Nevertheless the prayer bore fruit; for afterwards he wept bitterly and became one of the Master’s mightiest servants. Verily great is the power of intercession.
Oh, if our ears were opened
To hear as angels do
The Intercession-chorus
Arising full and true,
We should hear it soft up-welling
In morning’s pearly light,
Through evening’s shadows swelling
In grandly gathering might,
The sultry silence filling
Of noontide’s thunderous glow,
And the solemn starlight thrilling
With ever-deepening flow.
We should hear it through the rushing
Of the city’s restless roar,
And trace its gentle gushing
O’er ocean’s crystal floor;
We should hear it far up-floating
Beneath the Orient moon,
And catch the golden noting
From the busy Western noon,
And pine-robed heights would echo
As the mystic chant up-floats,
And the sunny plain resound again
With the myriad-mingling notes.
There are hands too often weary
With the business of the day,
With God-entrusted duties,
Who are toiling while they pray.
They bear the golden vials,
And the golden harps of praise,
Through all the daily trials,
Through all the dusty ways.
These hands, so tired, so faithful,
With odours sweet are filled,
And in the ministry of prayer
Are wonderfully skilled.
There are noble Christian workers
The men of faith and power,
The overcoming wrestlers
Of many a midnight hour;
Prevailing princes with their God,
Who will not be denied,
Who bring down showers of blessing
To swell the rising tide.
The Prince of Darkness quaileth
At their triumphant way,
Their fervent prayer availeth
To sap his subtle sway.
And evermore the Father
Sends radiantly down
All-marvellous responses,
His ministers to crown;
The incense-cloud returning
As golden blessing-showers,
We in each drop discerning
Some feeble prayer of ours,
Transmuted into wealth unpriced,
By Him who giveth thus
The glory all to Jesus Christ,
The gladness all to us! [Note: Frances Ridley Havergal.]
(1) Intercessory prayer presents to us one of the profoundest mysteries of the spiritual life. Our character and destiny are open to the influence of the prayers of others, as theirs are to ours. At first sight it is an appalling thought that we should be exposed to the prayer-influence of our short-sighted fellow-creatures; that their prayers should be capable of giving new form and direction to our lives, and that we likewise should have such influence by prayer over them. It is thus we are beset before and behind by unseen powers, whose action we cannot prognosticate or control, and life passes largely into the hands of others. This may be accepted as part of the Divine order. Prayer can never be confined to petitions for the desires of self; and immediately it passes beyond, it becomes intercession, and intercession from its very nature ceases to be prayer if faith in its efficacy be evacuated by the suspicion that those for whom we pray are not affected by God through our prayers. The great intercessory prayer of Jesus for His disciples and for the world would lose its significance if prayer made no change in their or the world’s condition. It would be nothing more than a pious delusion.
No one can visit a children’s hospital without seeing in the most touching form that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children. Some people seem to imagine that that saying in the Bible is an arbitrary command imposing an arbitrary punishment on the human race; but one hour spent in that children’s hospital will show that it simply states a fact of human nature. As you see the poor little child die in front of you for no fault of its own, as you see the illness brought on it by its father’s sins kill it before your eyes, you see, in a way which you will never forget and can never efface from your mind, that God has disallowed the claim of the individual man to stand on his own base. He shows us that He has bound us together by such ties of brotherhood that no man can live to himself, and no man can die to himself. It is a monstrous injustice that that little one should die for the sins of its parents, unless in the brotherhood of man, in the solidarity of humanity, God was preparing some better thing for us which more than counterbalanced the terrible mischief which comes from it. And in intercession, in the death of Christ upon the cross, and His ceaseless intercession, we see what the good was. If a man claims to stand on his own base, then he must give up speaking of being saved by Jesus Christ. It is because we are a brotherhood that we can be saved by Another.
And we see that God’s great plan was this: to send through the channels of brotherhood the freshening, reviving grace to press back that poisonous mischief which had come through the same channels. And it is a man’s sense of fairness, his belief in the justice of God, that makes him believe that, if mischief comes through the brotherhood to one another, then intercession, joined to the intercession of Jesus Christ, is one of the means by which the influence of others can tell upon the human race. [Note: A. F. W. Ingram, Banners of the Christian Faith, 78.]
(2) Intercession is apt at first sight to seem more mysterious than other prayer, because, while we can readily understand that the co-operation of each man’s own free-will is an essential condition of his personal ability to receive grace from God, it is not so easy to conceive how or why the action of one man’s freewill should influence God’s blessing of another. But mysterious though the subject is, there are analogies that at least throw light upon it. For it is a fact of experience that God’s government of man is partly effected through human mediation. The man who uses his faculties and capacities aright thereby helps his fellow-men; while the man who misuses them deprives his fellow-men of the help that they might otherwise have had. Nor does this hold good only in secular affairs; on the contrary, it is nowhere more apparent than in spiritual things. The prophet, preacher, teacher, artist who “stirs up the gift that is in him” advances the spiritual life of his fellows by the fact; while the man who might have been such an one, yet wraps his talent in a napkin, leaves his fellows spiritually the poorer. And God allows it to be so. If, then, prayer be the powerful force which we believe it to be, its intercessory operation would be strictly analogous to the other actions of human free-will, and the use of it a part of that general responsibility which our freedom entails.
Such is the love of God towards us, such the dignity which He bestows upon us, to be co-operators with Himself, that man’s fervent cry for others who never pray for themselves, inspired by Himself, upheld by His own grace of “hope against hope,” obtains that last first grace which won the hitherto obdurate rebel to Himself. God’s word guarantees this, when it bids us pray “for all men,” because God” will have all men to be saved”. God’s word is justified in act by the known instances of those whose souls He has saved through prayers which He Himself inspired. Witness he, the great teacher of the Church till now, of whom, though unknown in the flesh and known only through the eminence of his rebellion, it was said: “it is not possible that the son of those tears should perish”; who himself, when converted, owned himself to be the fruit of those nine years’ unbroken, unfaltering prayers of his mother St. Monica, who lived for his conversion and, when this object of her being was accomplished, yielded up her own soul to God. [Note: E. B. Puny, Occasional Sermons, 298.]
I remember speaking in the Boston noonday meeting, in the old Broomfield Street M. E. Church on this subject one week. Perhaps I was speaking rather positively. And at the close of the meeting one day a keen, cultured Christian woman whom I knew came up for a word. She said, “I do not think we can pray like that”. And I said, “Why not?” She paused a moment, and her well-controlled agitation revealed in eye and lip told me how deeply her thoughts were stirred. Then she said quietly “I have a brother. He is not a Christian. The theatre, the wine, the club, the cards—that is his life. And he laughs at me. I would rather than anything else that my brother were a Christian. But,” she said, and here both her keenness and the training of her early teaching came in, “I do not think I can pray positively for his conversion, for he is a free agent, is he not? And God will not save a man against his will.” I said to her: “Man is a free agent, to use the old phrase, so far as God is concerned; utterly, wholly free. And he is the most enslaved agent on the earth, so far as sin and selfishness and prejudice are concerned. The purpose of our praying is not to force or coerce his will; never that. It is to free his will of the warping influences that now twist it awry. It is to get the dust out of his eyes so that his sight shall be clear. And once he is free, able to see aright, to balance things without prejudice, the whole probability is in favour of his using his will to choose the only right.” [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Prayer, 192.]
(3) Unless we are dogmatically determined to reject all testimony which bears on this subject, there seems no escaping the conclusion that specific prayers have been specifically, directly, and unmistakably answered in instances too numerous to admit of explanation by coincidence. The volume of human testimony bearing on this subject is too great to be swept aside by a simple refusal to consider it; if there is no insurmountable logical obstacle to the possibility of prayer proving objectively effective — and we have tried to show that there are no such obstacles—we must examine the alleged instances of such answers without prejudice; and if we do so, then, after making all legitimate deductions, we shall still find a body of residual fact which is not to be explained away.
He who prays much for individuals and keeps a record of intercession has a vast accumulation of evidence that for affecting others nothing we do is so potent as prayer. The hidden lines of communication running between soul and soul are insufficiently explored. But telepathy is a convenient name for a fact which every intercessor has frequently experienced. It seems as if something of this kind happens: when you begin to pray, you get quickly on to a plane of being where distance does not count; you are at once by the side of the person you pray for, in the next room or on the other side of the globe. But your influence on the person in that region of experience is much more powerful than it is in the more superficial intercourse of early life. You reach the soul. And you bring with you co-operant forces. To your amazement you find afterwards that your prayer has brought miraculously, as it seems, comfort and strength; it has stirred the will, at that distance, to act; it has set in motion helpers or directors who come to the aid of the distracted or the suffering or the sinful.
Some close observers of the Lord’s ways have recorded it as their experience that their intercessory prayers have been answered more distinctly and palpably than their prayers for themselves. [Note: W. Binnie, Sermons, 117.]
You never know where a prayer’s power will land—in a human heart that needs it, or with God who hears it. Norman Macleod tells of a boy’s cry to Heaven for the sake of a drunken man who used to come to see him as he lay sick and dying. When he had drink, he used to pass the door softly, ashamed to look the little one in the face. But one night he heard the thin voice beating at Heaven’s door with its cry, “Oh, Father! don’t let him be drunken any more, he is so good and kind, and I love him”. The strong man listened, caught at the heart, and when he entered he went down upon his knees beside the dying child, and said through big, bitter tears, “Were you praying for a waif like me?” “Yes,” said the boy, “I was praying for you. I aye do that. You’re no a waif”—he didn’t know the word “you’re a man.” Many a night, as he drove his cab along the weary streets, out of the grave came that pinched face, lit by love, to his heart, and the haunting, “You’re no a waif, you’re a man,” made him at last stand firm, rooted in manhood through a child’s weak dying prayer, heard in a city stair by night. [Note: 2 L. Maclean Watt, God’s Altar Stairs, 9.]
I have myself experienced what is recorded of Spurgeon, though I prefer to hint at the fact as it is recorded by him. There came into his vestry a woman who had believed in Christ, but the trouble was the indifference or unbelief of her husband. Spurgeon without a moment’s hesitation proposed that they should pray for him. They knelt down and asked that he might seek Christ and be saved. As they prayed in the vestry, the man was reached in his home. When the woman returned she found her husband seeking salvation. [Note: R. F. Horton, My Belief, 185.]
Some years ago, the record of a wonderful work of grace in connexion with one of the stations of the China Inland Mission attracted a good deal of attention. Both the number and spiritual character of the converts had been far greater than at other stations where the consecration of the missionaries had been just as great as at the more fruitful place. This rich harvest of souls remained a mystery until Hudson Taylor on a visit to England discovered the secret. At the close of one of his addresses a gentleman came forward to make his acquaintance. In the conversation which followed, Mr. Taylor was surprised at the accurate knowledge the man possessed concerning this Inland China Station. “But how is it,” Mr. Taylor asked, “that you are so conversant with the conditions of that work?” “Oh!” he replied, “the missionary there and I are old college mates; for years we have regularly corresponded; he has sent me names of enquirers and converts, and these I have daily taken to God in prayer.” At last the secret was found! A praying man at home, praying definitely, praying daily, for specific cases among the heathen. That is the real intercessory missionary. [Note: E. M. Bounds, Purpose in Prayer, 130.]
As for myself I do esteem nothing out of Heaven, and next to a communion with Jesus Christ, more than to be in the hearts and prayers of the saints. [Note: Letters of Samuel Rutherford.]
And as for ourselves, may we not more and more rejoice to be borne onward by the arm of Christ? Time was when we girded ourselves; but one day we shall submit with joy to be girded by Another. Once we were proud to choose our way; then it will be our one desire that He will keep our feet from straying. And at last we shall cry in our weariness—
Carry me over the long last mile,
Man of Nazareth, Christ for me.
In Christ we shall know that there meet, fused in one awful energy of love, all that we have ever prayed ourselves, all that others have prayed for us during the long years of life, all the prayers of the dead and of the living, and the eternal intercessions of Him who loved us even until death. All are answered in the Unseen Arm that upholds us—in the pierced hands “which are lifting us over the ford”. [Note: Edward Shillito, Looking Inwards, 53.]
