The Moral Place Of Prayer
Vans
THE MORAL PLACE OF PRAYER.
In the previous chapter we arrived at the conclusion that Christian Faith is the sight of an ideal.
That which immediately follows the sight of an ideal is the desire to realise it, and hence in the Christian system faith is the root of prayer.
By the study of the one we are led by direct logical sequence to the contemplation of the other:
" Whatsoever things ye have need of, believe that ye receive them, and ye have received them."
The moral place of prayer is one of the distinctive features of Christian ethics, and could not by any process be eliminated from a scientific view of the subject.
And yet when we look at the matter from any standpoint outside of Christianity itself, it is not very easy to see what prayer has to do with morality.
Prayer in its most elementary meaning signifies the expression—of—a wish, whether that wish be expressed to God or to man.
A wish is itself the expression of a need; it is the proof that something is wanting to our nature.
Is there, then, anything suggestive of virtue in the experience of
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want, or in the expression of that want, if it be experienced?
Or, can it be said that it makes any moral difference to the nature of a wish whether it be addressed to a human or to a Divine Intelligence?
IfIam hungry, I ask food from the first human being that passes by; in doing so I have proved myself a natural man, because I have followed the call of nature.
But no one would say that the act proves me to be a moral man.
I may or I may not be so; the deed leaves it still an open question.
Now, suppose that in my physical distress, instead of appealing to the first human being who passed by, I utter my need aloud to a Being whom I believe to be Omnipotent, and in whose
Divine power and sympathy I feel the most implicit confidence, in what respect does this act belong more to the moral sphere than the other?
In the latter case, as in the former, am I not simply making an effort to realise my physical necessities, and appealing to such sources of help as seem to me to be most valuable ?
Let us not imagine that the question here suggested is one either of pagan scepticism or of modern neology.
So far as known to us, it is a question which never arose until it was proposed by the Christian Founder Himself.
The question of the moral efficacy of prayer is a problem which may be said to owe its origin to the very ideal of goodness which Christ created.
It is He Himself who first points out that the mere fact of prayer is
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1 ge) not a virtue, and that the virtue of prayer depends on something else than the asking.
He declares that there are two kinds of prayer—that which He teaches, and that which is taught by the Gentiles.
Let us mark carefully the distinction which, in the view of the Christian Founder, subsists between these two orders of petition.
The instinct of prayer is universal; it is a part of natural religion.
But Christ says that in Him, and in that system which He has come to inaugurate, the instinct of prayer has entered on a new departure.
It has passed through a complete transformation, which has made it no more like the old instinct than the intuition of the man resembles the bias of the animal.
Christ claims to have made this doctrine of natural theology a new and original doctrine, so 'new that the Gentiles would not recognise it, so original as to involve the entrance into humanity of a moral force which has linked the creature with the Uncreated, and changed an act of servile supplication into an experience of Divine communion.
What has produced the change?
Wherein lies the distinction between the prayer of the Gentile and the prayer of the Christian?
What makes the difference between the act in the order of nature and the act in the order of grace ?—that is the question we have now to consider.
To answer this question we must begin by asking, Wherein to the view of the Gentile world consisted the value of prayer?
Now on this subject our
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Gospels give us a very decided and a very explicit statement.
'Ihey tell us that to the Gentiles the thing which made prayer valuable in the sight of God was the fact of supplication: "They think they will be heard for their much speaking."
Their prayers are marked by the use of "vain repetition."
They give emphasis to the fact that they are suppliants.
They seek to intensify the labour of lancuage.
They feel that their prayer is more acceptable above, in proportion as it is disagreeable below, that God likes it in proportion as man finds it irksome.
Hence the penance of words is multiplied, and the interest of words is minimised.
The value lies not in them, but in that sense of prostration of which they are the unintelligent sign.
The prayer is pleasing to God because it is a prayer.
It is here that Christianity steps in with a direct negative.
It declares that the value of prayer lies not in the fact of the supplication, but in the nature of the thing supplicated.
That which sanctifies the prayer in the Christian system is not its abjectness, nor its prolongedness, nor even, strictly speaking, its sincerity, but its object; the proof of this is that in Christianity there is a prayer which teaches to pray.
Now, we think it will be found that within the compass of the New Testament there are three degrees of prayer—a prayer that is evil, a prayer that is natural or legitimate, and a prayer that is moral or saintly.
Let us look at each of these.
"Ye ask and ye receive not, because ye ask amiss,
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Tet that ye may consume it upon your lusts."
In these words of St. James there is adduced the starthng statement that there may be an irreligious prayer—that a man may offer up to God a petition which is perfectly sincere, and which yet has no higher source than a disguised selfishness.
We should doubt the possibility of such a thing in an act of professed religious worship, did we not remember that a man's notion of God is just the shadow of himself.
He gives to the object of his worship, in an intensified degree, that element which to him constitutes the ideal of earthly happiness and of human greatness.
If his ideal of these things be high, his thought of God will be sublime; if it be low, his thought of God will be ignoble.
The selfish man cannot rise above his selfishness, even in his religion.
His very conception of prayer is an image of himself.
His God is pleased with prayer, because great kings love flattery and homage.
If he were in God's place, he would like to be praised, he would feel it sweet to receive the plaudits of creation.
Hence, when he is told that God does all things for His own glory, he has no hesitation in attaching to these words a purely personal or selfish meaning.
He comes to persuade himself that the homage involved in his prayer is a kind of reward which God would miss if it were not given: "If Thou wilt keep me in the way in which I go, so that I have bread to eat, and raiment to put on, then wilt Thou be my God."
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And the character of the prayer will be proportionate to the view entertained of its value.
A selfish man, praying to a selfish God, cannot ask unselfish things.
He will not consider the problem whether his prayer could be granted without injuring the interests of another; nay, he will not scruple to pray for the injury of another, provided that other be an enemy.
'Two armies, on the eve of battle, have often engaged in separate religious services, that each might petition the Deity for the extermination of its opponent.
We have no hesitation in saying that the New Testament would not endorse such a form of prayer.
The most it would authorise in such circumstances would be the petition: "Thy kingdom come"—let that cause triumph whose triumph would least disturb the balance of the empire of the King of Kings!
If a man believes his cause to be the right, then, however erroneous his judgment may be, his desire for its prosperity is a moral desire; but he must not seek the extermination of anenemy as anenemy.
Nay, there is a wider principle still; it is not enough that there be no enmity—there must be no isolation.
Man must not ignore the interest of his brother-man.
He cannot, with moral purity, view himself as an unit, or contemplate the universe as existing for himself alone.
I have no right to offer up a prayer for universal rain, if I am cognisant of the fact that there is only a partial want of rain.
The universal rain will indeed cover my want, but
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it will intensify the want of others—the want of prolonged fair weather.
Here, again, as in the case of the opposing armies, Christianity comes forward asamediator.
'Give us this day our daily bread" is the form of petition which it puts into the mouth of the farmer.
It tells him to consider, not the want of his own district alone, but the want of his own district in its relation to the wants of the universe.
It bids him seek such a distribution of good to him as will not detract from the good of all.
It commands him to remember that his interest lies in the fact that he is not an isolated unit, but the member of a body corporate, to whose development his life is necessary, and whose united welfare is necessary to the development of his life.
In a word, what Canon Liddon says is profoundly true—that in the ethics of Christian prayer all petitions for merely personal good must be conditioned by the three earliest petitions in the prayer of the Christian Founder—petitions which are themselves reducible to the one supplication for the whole universe:
" 'Thy will be done." * Here, then, is the first or lowest order of prayer enumerated in the New Testament.
It 1s pointed out that we may avoid it, and that we may not imagine the mere fact of supplication to be in itself a sanctifying power.
But there is a second and superior order of prayer suggested by Christianity.
If the first class comprehends things which we are * See Liddon's Some Elements of Religion, p. 197.
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not to seek at all, the second includes things which we are not to "seek first," 2.e., not until we have sought something else.
" 'Take no anxious thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed, for after all these things do the Gentiles seek ; but seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, for your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things."
In these words we are introduced to an order of prayer which is neither immoral on the one hand, nor yet saintly on the other.
It is not immoral, because it is admitted to be the expression of a natural and legitimate want: "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things."
It is not saintly because the need which is felt is as yet only natural, and does not express the measure of the true wants of man.
It is an order of prayer which is specificaly described as Gentile—level with the height of heathendom.
And indeed it may be said that in the pre-Christian or Gentile world the standpoint of the popular masses was an epicurean attitude.
It was so both in their religion and in their want of religion.
In their want of religion they lived for the gratification of their physical desires ; in the exercise of their religion they prayed for that gratification.
No one will say that they were immoral in doing so.
They were sensible, they were prudent, they were duly impressed with the historical fact that no man has proved adequate to
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the supply of his own wants, and to that extent they are worthy of commendation.
But then that extent is very small, and does not nearly. touch the boundaries of human nature.
It is at best but a recognition of man's secular need and _ secular dependence, and to recognize these things there is wanted only a secular faculty.
If the child ask his earthly father for a fish it would be malignant in the father to give him a stone, but so far as the child were concerned it could morally make no difference whether he had asked a fish or a stone.
He might desire the fish to-day from hunger, and the stone to-morrow from curiosity.
If it be asked, Which of these requests is the more legitimate ? the answer is easy: they are both equally legitimate.
If it be asked, Which of them is the more moral ? the question is absolutely without meaning.
They are neither of them either moral or immoral; they are simply non-moral.
They have nothing to do with the sphere of duty; they belong exclusively to the region of secular desire.
They are natural but not spiritual, legitimate but not saintly, evidences of healthy physical growth and normal mental development, but not yet the sign or prophecy of a growth beyond the physical, or of a development higher than the merely normal powers.
Nor ean the case in any sense be altered by transferring the scene of supplication from the house of an earthly father to the house of God.
The character of a man's prayer is determined not by
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whom he asks, but by what he asks.
He may supplicate God day and night in sackcloth and ashes, and may repeat his request with endless reiterations ; it will not bring him a step nearer towards saintship if his request itself be not saintly.
If he ask God fora fish or a stone, he is no more to be praised than he is to be condemned; he has performed a secular act which, from a worldly point of view, may be prudent or imprudent, which in the result it achieves may be successful or unsuccessful, but which, in itself and by itself, has no reference to his moral character either in the past or in the future.
Now, let us understand why this second kind of prayer which Christ calls distinctively Gente does not reach higher than the natural or legitimate.
It is not because it deals with material things—what we shall eat or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be clothed ; it is the kind of thought given to these things that lessens the value of the prayer.
It is quite possible, for instance, that such prosaic concerns as eating and drinking and clothing may be made the materials of a richly spiritual prayer.
The prayer of a philanthropist, if it be complete and comprehensive, must embrace these things.
He cannot desire the welfare of humanity without desiring its temporal or bodily comfort.
His desire for the temporal comfort of humanity is one of the things which spiritualise his prayer, make it a Christian prayer.
What is it that here constitutes the differ-
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127, ence between the Gentile and the Christian supplication?
What makes the one only legitimate, the other saintly?
Itcannot be the dwelling in the mind of material images, for in this case the two kinds of prayer are both concerned with such images.
It lies in a difference of thought.
In the one case the material image is an end; in the other it is only a means to an end.
To the philanthropist the old earthly elements remain, but they are transfigured into chariots of helpfulness.
He sees in them the instruments through which his own unselfishness may work, and he values them because they are instruments.
If he has any personal care for the -morrow, it is no longer an anxious care, for the very weight of the burden of others has caused his own burden to drop into the sea.
The truth is, we are here on the lines of the grand transition which Christ Himself has indicated—the transition from the lower into the higher form of prayer: "Seck ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you."
It is as if He had said: I do not ask you to despise the things which the Gentiles seek ; I ask you to value them more than they really do.
You can never perfectly value them until you find their spiritual use, their power to help in the cause of humanity.
Get. first the spirit of unselfishness—the kingdom of the Father's righteousness, and then you will know how grand are these outward influences of the universe ; all these things shall be added unto you.
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In passing to this third and highest kind of prayer, we are called at once to notice the unqualified measure of certainty which is attached to it.
In no respect does Christianity stand in a more marked contrast to Gentilism than in the confidence of its affirmations regarding the efficacy of prayer.
The Pagan goes to his Oracle to learn the issue of a coming battle, and he commonly receives an answer so ambiguous as to point equally to either result.
The Christian, on the other hand, claims for his prayer an unlimited promise of success, an answer of whose positive comfort there can exist no dubiety.
" Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do," 'If ye ask anything in My name, I will do it,"'.
"All things are possible to him that believeth,"
"Ask, and ye shall receive," "' Whatsoever things ye have need of, believe that ye receive them, and ye have received them."
These are weighty words, and to many they have been as starthng as they are weighty.
They will only cease to be starthng when we remember that the Christian Founder is there speaking of a distinctively Christian prayer— that new form of prayer which Himself had come to inaugurate.
When He says, '' Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name," He means whatsoever ye shall ask in My line of character.
The name, with the Jew, was always meant to be descriptive of the nature ; to ask in the name of Jesus was not only to ask in conformity with His nature, but to ask
His nature itself.
It was to aspire to the possession
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of those things which appeared lovely in the Son of Man.
It was to pray for holiness, justice, goodness, truth.
It was to desire a clean heart and a right spirit.
It was to petition God for a communication of His own will—not a communication of what He willed, but of His will itself.
It was the request to be made able to desire nothing which God did not desire, to be empowered to wish everything which declared itself to be the will of God.
Above all, it was the prayer to be made unselfishly human —the petition for humanity to man, and it was here that it came into contact again with those same material elements which stimulated the prayer of the Gentile world.
The Christian was again authorised to take up these elements, but to take them up transfigured, glorified.
He, like the Gentile, was permitted to take an interest in the physical wants of life—in the breaking of the daily bread, and the mitigation of the temporal pain.
But then the breaking of the bread was no longer a merely personal act, the mitigation of the pain no longer a purely individual thing.
The follower of Christ was to become impressed with a sense of universal hunger.
He was to recognise himself as the member of a vast body whose every pain and want made itself felt within his own being.
That sense of union with humanity, of participation in its joys, of identification with its sorrows, of sympathy with its wants in every sphere, whether of nature, mind, or spirit, is the true goal of c
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Christian aspiration, the true object of Christian prayer.
The disciple of the Son of Man seeks th things of the Spirit, but he finds the things of th
Spirit in the unselfish ministration of the things o the body.
He puts no fence around the field o Gentile materialism ; he claims the liberty to wall in that field at will.
To him the outer man doe not mean the material man, but the selfish man and selfishness may exist as powerfully in th world of mind as in the world of matter.
Tha which makes him free from the dominion of th Gentiles is not emancipation either from matter o spirit, but emancipation from self; to a Gentil community, which had realised this goal, a Christia:
Apostle was not afraid to say: "All things ar yours."
Now, it is not difficult to see not only that suc a prayer must be answered, but that in point « fact it is answered in the very act of asking
—" Be lieve that you receive them, and ye have receive them."
Ifa man who is outwardly poor shoul offer up a prayer for outward riches and succeed i persuading himself that his petition will be grantec it could not in any sense be said of him that bh riches had already come.
Of no material possessic can it be affirmed, " Believe that ye receive it, an ye have received it."
But the reason is obviou If I desire any form of physical beauty, that do not prove me to be myself physically beautifu
But, as we have already pointed out, it is impossib
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to desire any form of spiritual beauty unless the elements of that beauty are already to some extent present in my soul.
He who prays to be made good, and upright, and true, is in germ even now possessed of goodness, truth, and uprightness.
It is the possession of these things that itself has prompted his prayer.
It is the possession of these things that gives a moral value to his prayer.
A man can no more wish to be made religious without being religious in germ than he can desire to live to-morrow without having life to-day.
It is only by the things of the Spirit that a man can seek the things of the Spirit, and it is that which in the Christian system has made the act of seeking an act of greatness.
All spiritual search is spiritual aspiration, and all spiritual aspiration is spiritual life begun.
We reverence the man of Christian prayer because we reverence the things that he prays for.
We hold love, meekness, mercy, purity of heart, to be saintly things, and we feel that the spirit which desires them must already be in sympathy with them; the soul's ideal is the forecast shadow that predicts its coming self.
, It will be seen from the foregoing explanations 'that Christian prayer is not an act, not even a series of acts; it is essentially an attitude of mind.
To pray, in the Christian sense, is to aspire, and aspiration is not limited to times or seasons.
In no case is a man's aspiration a separate deed of his life; it is a spirit which breathes through all his
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deeds.
It breaks out wherever he goes, involuntarily, spontaneously.
It shows itself in his most commonplace action, in his every word, look, and gesture.
It prompts whatever he does, it pervades whatever he says, it gives shape to his waking hours, it gives colour even to his dreams.
It is in this light alone that the singular Christian precept, "Pray without ceasing," becomes clear, and how it can be uttered by the same religion which says,
"Use not vain repetitions."
In any other faith these commands would be mutual contradictories ; the one would negative the other.
But in Christianity there may be an unceasing prayer where there is a constant change of action, because in Christianity the prayer is not the action.
Just as the same tune may subsist beneath endless variations, so the same Christian prayer may be breathed through endless acts, through periods of life infinitely varied, through circumstances of life infinitely diverse.
'' Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened," are the striking words in which that diversity is indicated.
They tell us that, in the Christian system, the same prayer may be expressed either in devotion, in thought, or in practice, by asking, by seeking, or by knocking.
It may be uttered by the mystical mind desirous only of being a passive recipient of the light of God; it may be breathed by the intellectual mind, whose very struggles are the voice of a prayer; last, and not least, it may be
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expressed by the working mind in the very act of its practical working, its knocking at life's door.
Kivery labour of the philanthropist in behalf of his fellow-men, every deed of charity, every act of love must, consciously or unconsciously, end in a prayer.
We say end, because it is not till the work is done that the true philanthropist feels its inadequacy, becomes aware how little it can really do to mitigate the woes of humanity.
The man's ideal of what ought to be done bursts into view just at that point where his actual work has failed.
And the man's ideal is his prayer, his aspiration.
It is at once his act of faith and his confession of impotence, his promise of help and his ery for succour.
It expresses what he cannot do, what he would like to do if he could, what he hopes to do some day.
It is from the daily toils of life that the aspiration crows.
So far from being suspended until the burden and heat of the day be past, it is the burden and heat of the day that give it wings.
It rises from the dust of death, from the weight of human cares, from the din of human strife.
It is contemporaneous with all struggle, it is associated with all effort, it is compatible with all duty ; if it exist at all it must exist persistently: it is a prayer without ceasing.
We have not here professed to do more than to vindicate the moral efficacy of Christian prayer— its efficacy for the heart of him who offersit.
There is a vast region which remains untraversed—the
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sphere of Christian prayer in its claim to exert an efficacy outside the soul of the petitioner.
That region, however, is not to be traversed by us; it lies beyond our province.
Our province is the domain of Christian morals, and that is the domain of Christian theology.
It may be, as one of our leading scientists suggests, that there is a connection between the moral motive of the prayer in the heart, and its influence when it passes beyond the heart.*
The study is one of great speculative interest, and _ of high theological value, but it touches a side of the Christian faith with which we have here no concern.
It deals with the relation of Christianity to God; we are here only considering the relation of Christianity to man.
No one who accepts the supernatural claim of Christianity can for a moment refuse his assent to the objective power of prayer ; but it is equally true that he who admits that claim is bound to recognise the fact that the value of - Christian prayer is not its objective power.
The value of Christian prayer, from a moral point of view, is not the getting, but the asking, or rather, to speak more correctly, the power to on is itself a getting—a good and perfect gift of the Spirit of Christ.
'The prayer of faith shall save the sick," says St. James.
That is a theological thesis, and must be established on theological premises, It is the announcement of a physical effect in prayer.
But that which makes such a prayer a subject for * Alfred Wallace, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 209.
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our study is the element in it that is not physical, the thing which transcends the Gentiles.
That which makes it a distinctively Christian prayer, is the spirit of unselfishness which it breathes—the fact that it 7s a prayer of faith.
Nay, we shall go further.
The highest effect of the petition would, in the eye of Christianity, be its moral effect.
Should it lift up the man from a mere bed of physical sickness to resume an old life of sin, its success, in the view of Christ's religion, would indeed be small.
But should it infect the man with its own spirit, should it touch him with somewhat of its own fire, should it wake within him some regret for a misspent past, and some resolve for a desired future, then, whether, physically speaking, he should live or die, the verdict of Christianity still would be that the prayer of the righteous man availed much.