1. To suppose that God can answer individual prayers for specific blessings is inconsistent, we are told, with any serious appreciation of human interests. One man or nation asks for that which may be an injury to another. The Spaniards prayed for the success of their Armada: the English prayed against it. Both could not be listened to. The weather cannot consult the convenience of everybody at once; and therefore the specific prayers of well-meaning villagers, if they could be attended to, could be attended to only by a God who, instead of being the Father of all His creatures, reserved special indulgences for His favourites.
AEsop was only a Pagan, yet he taught many truths in his homely fashion which Christians may profitably lay to heart. Here is one of his Fables: “A certain man had two daughters, and he married one to a gardener and the other to a potter. After a while he went to the gardener’s wife and asked her how she was, and how they were thriving. She said they had everything, but there was one thing that they were praying for—rain to refresh the plants. By and by he visited the potter’s wife, and asked her likewise how she was; and she said they had everything else that they needed, and there was only one thing that they were praying for—a continuance of fair weather and sunshine to dry the clay. ‘If,’ said he, ‘you are seeking for fair weather and your sister for rain, which of you am I to join with in prayer?’ ” [Note: D. Smith, Christian Counsel, 201.]
2. But every prayer for specific blessings in a Christian soul is tacitly, if not expressly, conditioned. The three conditions which are always understood are given at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer—“Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done”. In effect these three conditions are only one. If a change of weather, or a restoration to health, or any blessing whatever be prayed for, a Christian petitioner deliberately wills that his prayer should be refused, supposing that to grant it should in any way obscure God’s glory in other minds, or hinder the advance of His Kingdom, and so contravene what must be His will. Every Christian tacitly adds to every prayer, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”.
Two sides are praying for victory—how can God answer both? Why, by bringing to pass what is right. There is only one will of God. The will of God is right, whatever it is, and there is one right. We do not know which the right is. We may be quite conscientiously fighting for what we think right, but as both sides pray to God, God answers with the right answer, which is best for both. [Note: Bishop Winnington Ingram, The Call of the Father, 74.]
The criterion of true prayer is that it should be the expression of nobleness in the man who prays. It is the spiritual nature reaching upward. Anything that falls below this level is not prayer. Agamemnon, in the Iliad, asks of Zeus that he may
the haughty walls of Priam’s house
Lay prostrate in the dust; and burn with fire
His lofty gates; and strip from Hector’s breast
His sword-rent tunic, while around his corpse
Many brave comrades, prostrate, bite the dust.
While Achilles persuades his goddess-mother, Thetis, to intercede with the king of the gods that
the routed Greeks
Back to their ships with slaughter may be driven;
That all may taste the folly of their king,
And Agamemnon’s haughty self may mourn
The slight on Grecia’s bravest warrior cast.
Here are two conflicting prayers. Zeus cannot honour both, and we feel that he ought not to honour either. They are not the expressions of nobleness in the men who prayed. They are no more than the natural desires of imperfect natures, yet they are petitions addressed to deity. [Note: B. J. Campbell, A Faith for Today, 310. ]
How we, poor players on Life’s little stage,
Thrust blindly at each other in our rage,
Quarrel and fret, and rashly dare to pray
To God to help us on our selfish way.
We think to move Him with our prayer and praise,
To serve our needs; as in the old Greek days
Their gods came down and mingled in the fight
With mightier arms the flying foe to smite.
The laughter of those gods pealed down to men,
For heaven was but earth’s upper story then,
Where goddesses about an apple strove,
And the high gods fell humanly in love.
We own a God whose presence fills the sky,—
Whose sleepless eyes behold the worlds roll by;
Shall not His memory number, one by one,
The sons of men, who call them each His son? [Note: Louise Chandler Moulton.]
3. If God should think fit to grant a large proportion of the particular requests which would be found among the daily prayers of an earnest Christian, He would not, to say the least, thereby do any injury to others, whether they were Christians or not.
Prayer for the highest well-being of any human being may be granted without damaging other human beings. If God should condescend in answer to prayer to teach one of His servants more humility, purity, or love, this would not oblige Him to withdraw spiritual graces from any others in order to do it.
Nor are other persons the worse for coming into contact with one whom God has made loving, or pure, or humble, in answer to prayer. Is it not near the truth to say that they are likely to be much better, and therefore that a large number of answers to prayer for personal blessings necessarily extend in their effects beyond those who are immediately blessed?
“Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God” (Act_10:4)—“Thy prayers and thine alms”. What a singular combination! Are not these two contrary things? Is not prayer a desire to get; is not the offer of alms a desire to give? How can a man receive a monument for opposing qualities? My brother, these are not opposing qualities. All prayer must be a giving of something. You are not justified in making it a mere desire to get. When you are about to ask anything of your Father, you ought to pause for a moment. Before making a request to your Father, you should give your sympathy to your fellow-man; you should say—“How would the granting of this to me affect him? Let me remember his wants ere I satisfy my own!” That is what I understand our Lord to mean by the command—“When thou bringest thine offering to the altar and thou rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave thine offering unsurrendered; first be reconciled to thy brother!” When you come to the altar of worship to offer up your prayer, ask yourself first of all whether the granting of your wish would be against the interest of your neighbour; and if your heart says “Yes,” do not present that prayer today. Leave it on the steps of the altar. Go back to secular life again. Seek a meeting with your neighbour. Adjust your respective claims. Try if his interest can be made compatible with yours. If it can, you may go forward to the altar once more. Your prayer will then be unsullied, pure. There will be nothing mean in it, nothing sordid, nothing self-seeking. It will be such a prayer as you can present without shame in the presence of the ministrant angels, in the presence of redeeming Love. [Note: G. Matheson, Times of Retirement, 242.]
