“After all,” we say, “do we not depend on our own efforts for being what we are, and for doing what we do?” Whatever God may see fit to do for us, our best form of prayer is work; it is the determination to secure what we want by personal efforts to get it. The indolent or the imaginative may be left to lengthen out their litanies; but practical men will fall back upon the wise proverb that “God helps those who help themselves”.
1. The first answer is that the supposed incompatibility of prayer with self-reliance is a good deal grounded on the belief that prayer is to be used alone. Of course, there have been fanatics—there are some in our own day—who will not, for instance, employ a physician in a child’s sickness, lest they should be supposed to be trusting in other help than in God’s answer to prayer. They might be asked, very pertinently, whether they carry out this principle in reference to seeking for food and clothing for themselves; whether prayer is the only means to which they resort for daily bread. But it would be ridiculous to found an argument against prayer on such a delusion. The truer maxim is “Ora et labora”—Pray, that your labour may be blessed; labour, lest your very prayer be an excuse for inactivity. If you value prayer do not let it be brought into disrepute by your sluggishness. No promise is given to those who neglect ordinary means. If you will not vaccinate your child, if you will not drain and ventilate your dwelling, if you will not attach lightning conductors to the tall chimneys of your factory, if you will not lay up provision for your old age, what will be the result? The unpraying, who in these practical matters have been, in their generation, wiser than yourself, will appear more prosperous than you who profess to have prayed. And not merely will your misfortunes obtain little sympathy, but prayer, through your abuse of it, will incur contempt. Remember those weighty, though quaint, words of Dr. Donne:—
Hands are of double office; for the ground
We till with them, and them to Heaven we raise:
Who prayerless labours, or without this prays,
Doth but one half, that’s none.
Nor are prayer and work connected by any arbitrary link, but as different aspects of the same man. “Ora et labora,” writes Dr. Wichern in one of his pleasant papers,” is carved on a peasant’s house in the Vierland. ‘It must be French,’ said a neighbour’s wife, as I stood looking at the legend, but you know it just means:—
With this hand work, and with the other pray,
And God will bless them both from day today. [Note: W. F. Stevenson, Praying and Working, 5.]
One of the best-known pictures of the last half-century is Millet’s “Angelus”. The scene is a potato field, in the midst of which, and occupying the foreground of the picture, are two figures, a young man and a young woman. Against the distant sky-line is the steeple of a church. It is the evening hour, and as the bell rings which calls the villagers to worship, the workers in the field lay aside the implements of their toil and, with folded hands and bowed heads, stand for a moment in silent prayer. It is a picture of what every life should be, of what every life must be, which has taken as its pattern the Perfect Life in which work and prayer are blent like bells of sweet accord. [Note: G. Jackson, The Teaching of Jesus, 151.]
2. In the second place there may be cases where labour ordinarily so-called is ineffectual. A ship is foundering, the boats have been dashed in pieces, the pumps are powerless, and no friendly vessel is nigh. Then prayer and labour are synonymous. The sinking crew can only pray for resignation and preparedness for their end. A child is at the point of death, all remedies have been tried—tried prayerfully, we will believe—in vain. Then, too, prayer and labour become most clearly synonymous. Nothing can be carried on but prayer that God will receive the departing soul, and comfort and sustain the bereaved survivors. And the following fact has been frequently noticed as a proof that prayer is a labour, is a bringing out of latent power into energy, is a means to some result: the most self-reliant persons, as they are called, in life, have bethought themselves in their dying hour of a hitherto unexercised part of self. To this effect spoke Wolsey:—
O Cromwell, Cromwell,
Had I but serv’d my God with half the zeal
I serv’d my king, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
Now, what is this but an acknowledgment that prayer had not been duly used hitherto?
Such is our weakness that we constantly tend to a one-sided use of God’s gifts. We are either exclusively speculative and contemplative on the one hand, or we are absorbingly practical and men of action on the other. Either exaggeration is fatal to the true life of religion, which binds the soul to God by faith as well as by love; by love not less than by faith; by a life of energetic service not less truly than by a life of communion with light and truth. It is in prayer that each element is at once quickened in itself and balanced by the presence of the other. The great masters and teachers of Christian doctrine have always found in prayer their highest source of illumination. The greatest practical resolves that have enriched and beautified human life in Christian times have been arrived at in prayer, ever since the day when, at the most solemn service of the Apostolic Church, the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them”.
Mr. Blatchford says that he thinks that even if there be any benefit in prayer, “it is bought too dearly at the price of a decrease in our self-reliance. I do not think it is good for a man to be always asking for help, or for benefits, or for pardon. It seems to me that such a habit must tend to weaken character.”Will, then, any doctor affirm that to breathe deeply in pure air, as a habit, is to weaken the lungs? If he will say Yes to that, we may accept such a statement as is here quoted. But never until then. Rather, to look at this notion carefully, but for a moment, is to see how misrepresenting it is. Indeed it is not only absurd in itself, but flatly contradictory to history, diametrically opposed to observation, utterly at variance with experience, and contradicted entirely by the writer himself. For what does he acknowledge? “The act of prayer gives courage and confidence in proportion to the faith of him who prays.” When he prays “he is rousing up his dormant faculty of resistance and desire for righteousness”. Is that weakening character? So far as we know anything of human nature and human life, surely that is the kind of influence upon character which, above all else, in modern England and indeed throughout Europe, this generation needs. And as to the past, what is the name of the strongest man in English history? Does any one hesitate? Surely not for more than two seconds. Is it not one to whom we owe our most glorious liberties, Oliver Cromwell? It may be questioned whether any stronger man is to be found in the whole history of civilization. But what do we read concerning him? I refer you to Green’s History of the English People. Listen to what is there said about Cromwell: “Cromwell spent much time with God in prayer before the storm’ of Basing House”.
This, we know, was typical of his general procedure. And what about his men? “The regiment of a thousand men which Cromwell raised for the Association of the Eastern Counties, was formed strictly of ‘men of religion’. ‘A lovely company’ he tells his friends with soldierly pride. No blasphemy, drinking, disorder, or impiety were suffered in their ranks.” [Note: Green, A Short History of the English People, 554.] Were they, then, weaklings? If one may discern the signs of the times, what is wanted more than ever in modern England on the side of truth and righteousness is a host of men as “weak” as Cromwell’s Ironsides and their leader. For verily if these our valiant forefathers were made what they were by prayer, and you and I have the social as well as the spiritual weal of our land at heart, then I submit that on the testimony of history the very best thing we could do would be to turn all England into one vast assembly for genuine prayer. Prayer the weakener of character! Well, indeed, may we avow that such a thought is contrary alike to experience and to observation. [Note: F. Ballard, in Is Christianity True? 229.]
True prayer (if they complained and sought help either for themselves, or for their neighbours, and trusted in the promise of God) would so comfort the soul and courage the heart, that the body, though it were half dead and more, would revive and be lusty again, and the labour would be short and easy: as for an example; if thou were so oppressed that thou were weary of thy life, and wentest to the king for help, and haddest sped, thy spirits would so rejoice, that thy body would receive her strength again, and be as lusty as ever it was; even so the promises of God work joy above all measure, where they be believed in the heart. [Note: William Tindale, Expositions and Notes (ed. of 1849), 80.]
