The life that in prayer habitually lets itself be searched by the Divine gaze cannot continue in conscious, deliberate sin. As some one has said, either the sin will kill the prayer or the prayer the sin. The purifying influence of sincere prayer is undeniable. One cannot court temptation who has earnestly prayed that he be not led into it: he cannot pamper his baser nature if he has prayed for deliverance from evil. In the world into which his prayer introduces him, these desires stand rebuked and abashed; and, when the prayer is over, and he faces the world again, and meets there and in his own heart a thousand unsought solicitations to evil, there will lie upon him the holy obligation to become a co-worker with God in the answering of his own prayer.
1. Here then is the unanswerable argument for prayer. It is a cause which operates in the world of facts. It works like other substantial realities of experience. In the ethical region it has power to transform character, making bad persons good and turning the conventionally good into heroes and heroines of the spirit. There is not a mission hall in the slums of any of our great cities which cannot boast of the moral achievements of prayer, some of them dramatic and spectacular enough. Under the influence of mystic contact with the Unseen, sinful habits fall away from men and women, and their lives are lifted to new planes of experience, where even the face of nature seems transfigured as with an ideal glory. Unsuspected spiritual possibilities leap into activity, and the subjects of this wonderful experience speak of themselves henceforth as “new-born”. In psychological language, the social relation implied in prayer is realized and a larger and better self than the self hitherto known has become a fact.
Mr. Harold Begbie, in his well-known book, Twice-born Men, tells the story of a habitual criminal who passed through such a spiritual crisis. This man began his career of crime by committing a burglary when he was thirteen years of age. Not only was he a criminal, but he rejoiced in his anti-social deeds. Most of his time was spent in prison. During one of these periods of enforced seclusion the thought occurred to him that there was something wrong with his life and that prayer might set it right. For the first time in his life he prayed. It was a very unconventional prayer. He besought Heaven to send him a good woman who would marry him, and give him a chance to live a respectable life. On getting out of prison he continued to pray, until at last the crisis came at a religious meeting, when the desire to steal passed from him never to return. He has shown, by an honoured and useful life since then, that the change was absolute and complete. [Note: S. McComb, Prayer: What it Is and What it Does, 15.]
In the Old Testament we find prayers for moral strength, and victory over soul-besetments, specimen prayers, doubtless, of a vast number that are unreported. “Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me” (Psa_19:12). “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psa_139:23-24). “My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken me according to thy word” (Psa_119:25). “Order my footsteps in thy word: and let not any iniquity have dominion over me” (Psa_119:133). “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments” (Psa_119:176). Then, the response to such prayers. “He restoreth my soul: he guideth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psa_23:3). “He will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities” (Mic_7:19). “Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name. In the day that I called, thou answeredst me, thou didst encourage me with strength in my soul” (Psa_138:2-3). [Note: W. A. Cornaby, Prayer and the Human Problem, 111.]
Father, I pray Thee, cleanse me through Thy word. Let it search out and bring to light all that is of self and the flesh in my religion. Let it cut away every root of self-confidence, that the Vine may find me wholly free to receive His life and Spirit. 0 my Holy Husbandman, I trust Thee to care for the Branch as much as for the Vine. Thou only art my hope. [Note: Andrew Murray, The Mystery of the True Vine, 49.]
2. Prayer counteracts earthly-mindedness. So long as we remain subject to our present conditions of education and development by trial, we shall ever be conscious in our spiritual experiences of the downward pull, the gravitating force of earthly influences. How many, alas! succumb altogether to these, and become of the earth earthy! Against this danger the mere habit of prayer, not to speak of the power that comes by prayer, is a great and continuous assistance. How helpful it is, as the season set apart for prayer comes round, to lay aside for a time all the thronging cares and interests of life, save in so far as one remembers them for purposes of intercession or supplication, and to find one’s self, for a few moments at least, in a calmer, holier region, dealing with the realities of the inner world, and holding hallowed intercourse with Him whose presence fills it.
Surely the more profoundly we are impressed with the reality of that spiritual environment, the more we “taste the power of the world to come,” the less able are earth and the things of earth to hold us down; and while the grosser element in our nature is, one may almost say, for the time being in abeyance, the higher claims its own proper rights, and finds its powers increase by exercise. The first thing that happens to those who wait upon the Lord is that they “renew their strength” and “mount up with wings as eagles”. No wonder if, after such higher flights of the soul, we find ourselves possessed of a holy enthusiasm that enables us to run on errands of mercy and not grow weary, and in the practical and sober routine of daily life, “to walk, and not faint”.
It may well be questioned whether we should be able to retain our spirituality at all if there were no such thing as prayer. Does it not seem as if without this we should be fairly mastered by our material environment? We remember how the Apostle sums up the case against the enemies of the cross of Christ in the words, “who mind earthly things,” and he goes on to affirm that “our citizenship is in the heavens”. But unless we claim our privileges as citizens of that higher kingdom and exercise the functions of citizenship, how easily do we fall into the habit which St. Paul so strongly condemns, and set our mind on earthly things
Prayer, if it be real and spiritual, raises us to our proper plane, and counteracts the earthward tendency against which we have so carefully to guard. The privilege of access to the King of kings is the birthright of all true citizens of the heavenly country: and they who value their birthright will learn to be thankful for the very needs which lead them to seek an audience of Him whom to know with the reverent intimacy of adoring love is, indeed, eternal life.
It In prayer, earnest prayer, we exist, for the time, even now, in the things of eternity and of heaven. We form the habit, and practise the habit, of realizing and communicating with a world not seen. We learn to disconnect the two ideas, real and visible. We should not kneel thus, nor thus speak, nor thus confess and praise and pray, if there were not some Orie out of sight who is all-wise and all-mighty and all-good; if there were not interests more engrossing, and works more important, and pleasures more satisfying, than those of earth and time; if there were not counsels formed, and plans laid, and powers operating, quite apart from and above the relations of human society and the arrangements of confederate kings, nor if we ourselves had no part nor lot in those everlasting realities of which the shadows only and the phantoms are here. [Note: C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, 230.]
“If I try to pray, I must make an effort to realize the presence, the nearness, the accessibleness, of the Most High God. A necessity is laid upon me, and for a little while at least I must deal with spiritual things. If I would pray, I must break some of the fetters that bind me, must dash out of the narrow confines of sense into the world of changeless reality, out of the confused region of seeming into that of being.” [Note: H. R. Reynolds, The Philosophy of Prayer, 14.]
