1. THERE is no prayer at all without a conscience speaking to God. The act of saying words of prayer without this conscious speaking to God is simply the shell without the kernel. Who would not tremble to offer to God such a hollow mockery? But while that is no prayer at all which is not spoken to God, it is plainly of vast importance to our prayers to have true and clear notions of that God to whom we speak. The character of our prayers will be greatly affected by the way in which we think of God.
In his Varieties of Religious Experience, Professor W. James quotes the following amazing sentences from a private letter written by F. W. H. Myers, and quotes them with approval: “Prayer is the general name for that attitude of open and earnest expectancy. If we then ask to whom to pray, the answer (strangely enough) must be that that does not much matter. The prayer is not indeed a purely subjective thing; it means a real increase in intensity of absorption of spiritual power or grace; but we do not know enough of what takes place in the spiritual world to know how the prayer operates; who is cognizant of it, or through what channel the grace is given. Better let children pray to Christ, who is at any rate the highest individual spirit of whom we have any knowledge. But it would be rash to say that Christ Himself hears us; while to say that God hears us, is merely to restate the first principle—that grace flows in from the infinite spiritual world.” [Note: W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 467.]
See that you “direct” your prayer. You would not drop a letter into the postbox without directing it; yet people sometimes do something like this with prayer; they forget the Lord they are praying to. Aim at nothing, and you shall hit it; but aim at something, and you may hit it too. [Note: J. Reid Hewett, A Year’s Addresses to the Young, 4.]
2. How are we to think of God? “As a Spirit,” answers Bishop Walsham How: “ ‘God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.’ There must be no picturing of God to ourselves in any form or likeness. There must be no thinking of Him as in one particular place. It is true we look up to heaven, and often address our prayers to God as dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. This is perfectly lawful and right, for there is a place where God displays His glorious majesty, and to which our hopes and aims, as well as our prayers, are pointed.” [Note: W. W. How, Plain Words, iv. 11.]
But, says Dr. McComb, “the spiritual world seems so remote, intangible, unreal, as compared with our external environment, this solid and substantial frame of things. We go forth to meet Nature, and she responds to us through eye and ear and touch. We speak with our fellow men, and at once communion of minds is established, and all the joys of human intercourse are ours. But when we try to speak to God and hear Him speak to us, it is as though we were in a vacuum, a soundless silence that paralyses utterance. What we miss is the concrete and personal. When we try to think of the Infinite Spirit our thoughts lose themselves, and we wander in the immense vague and feel the bewilderment of him who cried:—
‘O that I knew where I might find him!
Behold I go forward but he is not there;
And backward but I cannot perceive him;
On the left hand, where he doth work,
But I cannot behold him;
He hideth himself on the right hand That I cannot see him. [Note: McComb, Christianity and the Modern Mind, 203.]
We try to think of Him as infinitely wise and powerful. But goodness, wisdom, power, are themselves impersonal things, and in them the heart can find no rest. Now, it goes without saying that, without a sense of the reality of God, prayer is utterly worthless.”
3. Accordingly Dr. McComb pleads for the recognition of the Person of Christ in prayer: God will become more real and more personal to us if when we ‘pray we recall the figure of one whom we have known and loved, and brood on the beauty and grace of word and deed which the memory will never let die, and then say within ourselves: “This is God, only grander, more gracious, more beautiful by far”. And from the imperfect embodiments of Divine grace we can turn betimes to the pages of the New Testament and look at the picture of the Son of Man as there portrayed. We cannot look at Him without feeling that in Him God comes to us, in Him God’s love assumes visible embodiment, God’s holiness ceases to be an ideal abstraction, takes to itself hands and feet and moves before us in a familiar and irresistible beauty. Putting ourselves face to face with Jesus Christ, the Infinite and the Absolute confront us, as it were, within the limits of space and time. The whole history of Jesus is but a parable of God’s attitude towards us. Our prayers, therefore, will not lack definiteness or spiritual satisfaction if while we pray we imagine the figure of Christ in some characteristic moment of His career. As He places His hand on the sick and lifts disease from body and soul, we see, as in a mirror, the true character of God, as the Source from which all healing, health, and happiness come. When we see Him ascending Mount Olivet to weep the tears of pity over His beloved Jerusalem, what is this but a sign of something still more wonderful—the vision of God, who from His heavenly Olivet is vexed by the sins and touched by the sorrows of His children? When we follow Him to His last great sacrifice, wherein He lays down His life for the sinful, we see through the temporal drama into the eternal passion of God who, in some mysterious way, is afflicted in all our affliction, and bears vicariously the burden of human guilt, and loves every creature He has made with a love that works through death and disease and agony to final redemption. If, then, we let such thoughts as these fill the mind as we pray, the fire of devotion will not long remain unkindled, because God will no longer be silent unto us, but will become at once supremely real and supremely lovable.
But this seems to Bishop How dangerous and in any case unnecessary. We may realize God’s presence, he says, without fixing our thoughts on Christ’s human life. When we are about to pray, we should try to bring before our minds the sense of God’s presence as well as of His listening ear. Perhaps this sense of God’s presence is sometimes injured and weakened by the language so constantly used as to prayers ascending up to His throne in the highest heavens. For instance, how often have we heard such a sentence as this: “The prayer that starts from a lowly heart stops not till it reaches the ear of God”? Is there not something misleading in this idea of a long journey which prayer has to make in passing from earth to heaven? Is it not more true to think of God as quite close to us when we pray—to try to realize and feel His presence as surrounding us, enclosing us? Is even this enough? Or must we not rather believe this Presence to be not only around us, but within us, so that God is closer to us than the very air we breathe, and that in speaking to Him we are holding communion with One who in His wonderful lovingkindness makes His very abode with us? If we sometimes think of God in His dwelling-place of heavenly glory, yet let us often try to feel the awful closeness of His presence, and speak to Him as we might to a friend at our side.
The first thing that you are to do when you are upon your knees is to shut your eyes, and, with a short silence, let your soul place itself in the presence of God; that is, you are to use this or some other better method, to separate yourself from all common thoughts, and make your heart as sensible as you can of the Divine presence. [Note: William Law, A Serious Call.]
4. The difficulty of realizing the presence of God in prayer is, however, a real one. And it is probably due most of all to our habit of thinking of God as distinct from Christ, as omnipotent, omniscient, and afar off, Christ being near and very loving. But God is our Father. This is the first thought with which to approach Him in prayer. And the second thought is that His Fatherhood is not only revealed to us by Christ but made ours in Christ. The manifestation of God which the Bible records is the revelation not of arbitrary omnipotence but of loving personality. The Being whom to know is life eternal is not a God extraneous to the order of the universe, whose leading attribute is the power of doing anything He pleases, but the soul, the life, the pulse of this mysterious universe.
There is a story told of an old North Carolina preacher and backwoodsman that has interested me many a time. For years as a young man he trembled on account of his sins. He was afraid of God. He would go to church and hear the man of God and it would send a chill all over his body. Ofttimes he could not stay in the place. He had to get up and go out. He was so afraid of God. He felt that God was hunting for him everywhere he went, and he was running from God all the time. Years passed by. When he would attempt to pray he would see an angry God. But finally, out by the side of a log in the woods one night, where he had gone after making up his mind to get peace, he came in touch with Jesus; just the process I do not remember, but he came in touch with Jesus, and for a moment he forgot God and began to talk with Jesus. He told Jesus his troubles and implored Him to help him. Instantly Jesus passed from his mind and he began to think of God; not a God that was out of patience—He was a God loving, a God yearning, a God seeking that He might save and bless; and He was not afraid of Him; he was right with Him, closer than ever before, and he was perfectly at ease in His presence. [Note: L. G. Broughton, The Prayers of Jesus, 53.]
It I have no wish to transfer Ben Nevis to the Atlantic Ocean. It is only a dull imagination that can interpret our Saviour’s words about the faith that removes mountains in a sense so destitute alike of true poetry and of genuine power. I am no mathematician, but I doubt whether even a Senior Wrangler has much enthusiasm for infinity. It may be true that the undisciplined or indolent mind finds comfort in the thought of a benevolent Omnipotence which, to use Matthew Arnold’s celebrated phrase, can turn a pen into a pen-wiper. But of this we may be certain, that for serious thought such speculations have no significance. The cry of suffering humanity is expressed in the wistful challenge of St. Philip, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us”. And the response of eternal Love is the assurance of a Personal Being whose presence overshadows the homeless lives of men. “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.” “O heart I made, a heart beats here.” [Note: J. G. Simpson, The Spirit and the Bride, 168.]
