01.01. The Efficacy of Prayer

Chapter I. The Efficacy of Prayer.

IF a man regards the thought of Christ and His apostles as in any way representing spiritual truth, he cannot but own that among the most powerful and rich of human faculties is the faculty of prayer. It is not necessary to quote passages from the New Testament to prove this. But certainly if it be true that the faculty of prayer to God is thus powerful and rich, it is also sadly true that, in our modern world, the pains bestowed upon it are not at all proportionate to its value. Nor can it be said to be properly appreciated in our ordinary estimate of things. We think of the men and women of scientific intellect, of eloquence, of artistic genius, of political and social activity, as being our powerful men and women, rather than the diligent and constant offerers of prayer. Truly from this point of view the world knows nothing of its greatest men. And our Lord at least hints to us that so it would turn out. He describes under a startling figure the effectiveness of importunate prayer, and at the same time forecasts the strains it will involve on human faith. The effect of importunate prayer upon God is compared to the effect of the widow’s importunity upon the unjust judge. The conclusion is drawn. Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry to him day and night, and he is long-suffering over them? I say unto you, that he will avenge them speedily. Howbeit, when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? *

I repeat the question and apply it. Does He find faith, the faith which shows itself in systematic prayer for the coming of His kingdom, now in our time, on our earth?

If He does not, who can express the peril and the loss? Who can deny that we are ignoring one of the three constant elements in normal human life?

We look at human life broadly, in the long reaches of history, and you observe it moving in three different directions. It moves out toward nature to appropriate its resources, and the history of this movement is the history of civilization. It begins where the savage feeds on berries, or hunts his prey, or scratches the surface of the soil to throw in his seed; and it advances to the point of almost inconceivable power, skill, elaborateness,

1 Luke 18:1-8. and subtle balancing of forces, which characterizes our modern industrial system.

Secondly, we watch man moving out to develop his relations to his fellow-men. It is the history of society, beginning with the tribe and the family, and reaching up to the social organization of to-day, with its breadth of range and intricacy of relationship.

Thirdly, we watch mankind moving out towards God. The movement, looked at in the broad, is quite as perceptible and as important as the other two movements. It occupies, like the others, a large share of human effort and attention. It passes through similar stages. It has its rude beginnings in savage religions, as men * ignorantly worship or seek after God, if haply they may feel after him, and find him. Like civilization and society, it has taken many different developments. But the aim of all these different developments of religion, and of prayer, which is the most characteristic act of religion, is realized in the religion and the prayers of the Son of Man, and of that great catholic brotherhood which in His name worships the Father in Spirit and in truth.

We are the heirs of the ages in the matter of prayer, no less than in the matters of civilization and society. But the question is, whether our zeal is in proportion to our knowledge.

I remember once, in the early summer of 1884, seeing a sight in India which made a permanent impression on my mind. In the modern busy street in Calcutta, called Bow Bazaar, in which the Oxford Mission House used to stand, I saw by the side of the tram-line a man, stark naked, with chains round feet and hands. He was lying flat in the dust, measuring his length on the ground.

He rose as I was looking, advanced a few paces, and standing upright, with his feet where his nose had marked the dust, he prostrated himself again, and proceeded to go through the same motions. He was a fakir or devotee of some sort, and I was assured that he was going to travel in this manner all the hundreds of weary miles which intervene between Calcutta and the sacred city of Benares. My first feeling was, I fear, one of disgust and contempt at the superstitious folly of the man. But I hope it was soon overtaken and checked by a consideration both worthier and with more of humility in it the consideration, I mean, that he, in his belated ignorance of the character of God and of the way to serve Him, was taking a great deal more pains about his devotions than I was in the habit of doing with my better knowledge. This is the question for us: Do we, with our superior knowledge of God, take trouble about our devotion to Him, or put real effort of will and heart and head into it, at all proportionate to the true know ledge granted to us, at all proportionate to the amount of effort we put into our businesses or our social duties and pleasures? Or is our life of business and our life of pleasure organized and real, and our life of prayer limited to a rather perfunctory hour on Sundays and a few of the sleepiest moments of our day?

Undoubtedly, if we have the privilege of intercourse with God, we must take pains to realize it. Undoubtedly, if there is a life of prayer, it will not be experienced or developed without real effort and system and thought and perseverance. But to justify us in taking pains about prayer, we must believe in its efficacy. I cannot seriously train myself to hold intercourse with God, or make request to Him, unless I really believe both that God exists and that He hears and grants the prayers of men. Now comparatively very few people doubt the existence of God, but a great many people doubt whether He really hears and answers human prayer, and accordingly, whether it is worth while taking pains about prayer. The difficulties most commonly experienced areperhaps these

1. It seems inconceivable to our common sense that God, the ruler of the vast universe, should have a personal relation to each individual, such as the belief in prayer requires a personal relation implying a particular care and a particular providence. Like the man whom the son of Sirach reproves, we mutter, Who shall remember me from on high? I shall not be known among so many people; for what is my soul in a boundless creation? l And no doubt to conceive how 1 Sir 16:17 (R. V.). the mind of God can attend to every one of the innumerable individuals who make up the universe of men (to say nothing of other existences) is impossible to us: that is, it is impossible to imagine it or form a picture of it in our mind. But our imagination is very far indeed from being the limit of our reason. There are many facts forced upon us by the science of astronomy, or physics, or chemistry, which we cannot imagine, but which we are rationally compelled to believe. So it is with regard to this difficulty. Our reason demands it, though our imagination is baffled. For let us think. To get to know anything better is to get to know it more widely, but also more in detail. The school-master not only knows boys, but knows his own class of boys better than another because he knows them individually. The great generals are distinguished like Napoleon for nothing more than this their combination of widest conceptions and plans with attention to the smallest details. To know well, therefore, is to know both broadly and in detail. And to act well is to act with a wide grasp, and also an insight into each individual case. So we must grant that the absolute perfection of the knowledge and action of God must mean that the universal range or scope of the divine attributes, over all creatures what soever, diminishes nothing from their perfectly individual application. God our reason assures us, though our imagination is baffled must know each of us and love each of us as if there were no other in the world to know and love, and deals with each of us with an individual providence, in which His universal laws or methods of action are not violated but expressed and exemplified. That is the verdict of reason, and it is also the assurance of Christ. The very hairs of your head are all numbered.

2. But, granted that God knows all we want, and wills to give us what is best for us, what is the use of praying? To ask this question shows indeed a fundamental mistake as to the purpose of prayer. No doubt it is the judgment of reason, as it is again the assurance of our Lord, that our Father knoweth the things we have need of before we ask him, and knows them a great deal better than we do. The object of prayer is not to inform God or to correct His methods to drag down His wisdom to the level of our folly: the object of prayer is to educate us in intercourse with God. We are sons of God, capable of something better than mechanical obedience; capable of intelligent correspondence with our Father, capable of fellowship and communion with Him in one Spirit. There is to be what the New Testament calls freedom of speech, 1 and an open avenue of inquiry towards God. 2 That is our highest function; and that is the glory of our eternal occupation. To train us for it now, in the child 1 The word translated boldness in Ephesians 3:12; Hebrews 4:16; 1 John 3:21, etc.

2 1 Peter 3:21 (R. V. margin). hood of our immortal life, even though we babble with half-inarticulate sounds, we are to be practised to pray.

We are to ask persistently and regularly, and according to the loving wisdom of God, to receive in response to our prayers, and so to be educated into personal relations with God. Who can deny that the end is worthy? and who that has ever taken pains about prayer, or got an answer, can deny that the method is wisely chosen?

3. Ah! this kind of argument was all very well before it was known that the world was governed by fixed laws; but now that the universal reign of law is recognized, we cannot believe that our prayer can have power to alter it, or affect the course of nature as it moves on in its inexorable order? This is an objection which it is better to press a little further; and, as in many like cases, if we press it to its consequences we may be enabled to see that it will not hold. So far as it implies that we cannot hope to alter the universal laws of nature, it is certainly valid. Any prayer which is an attempt to alter the laws of God’s natural government, or to drag down His wisdom to the level of our short-sightedness, must undoubtedly fail of its purpose. We do know that the world is governed by fixed laws, that is, that God’s method in governing the world is a method of universal law or order. But because the world is governed by fixed laws, does it follow that nothing is left to our action? That the laws work on without any possibility of fruitful effort or co-operation on our part? It is in accordance with fixed laws that gold is extracted from the earth and turned into coin. But will this happen unless we discover it and extract it, and put it through all the processes of manufacture? Needless to say it will not. Here we touch the mystery of free will: namely, the fact that within certain limits the way the world shall go depends on our action or inaction. I make here no kind of attempt to solve this mystery. I only insist that the responsibility involved in our freedom is a practical truth that though the world is governed by fixed laws, a vast deal of the utmost importance to us depends on our co-operation and correspondence with the system of nature. As the great Francis Bacon taught the world, the secret of power in nature is correspondence with its laws. It was exactly the same lesson which Jesus Christ taught the world in relation to prayer. Prayer is fruitful, and is offered in spirit and in truth/ exactly in proportion as it is not an attempt to fight against the laws of God’s good government, but an attempt to correspond or co-operate with His purpose. Christian prayer is one way of correspondence with God. And there is I say it with perfect confidence no greater difficulty in believing that God intends to give us whole classes of good things for soul and body, but will not give us them unless we correspond with His purpose by diligent prayer, than in believing that whole classes of good things are stored up for us in nature, which will not be our own unless we seek them by diligent hard work. There is no more difficulty to our intellects in one kind of co-operation than in the other.

We accept the fact that if we want wealth we must work for it, though we cannot explain how inexorable laws leave room for human freedom. We can, with exactly the same reasonableness, accept the fact as practically true, that there are multitudes of things which God means to give us, but will not give us unless we pray for them. This fact of the efficacy of prayer rests on common human experience, on the witness of experts, that is, of especially spiritual men and women, and, most of all, on the authority of the Son of Man. But here we touch the question of the grounds for praying, and of the difference between ignorant and enlightened praying the praying which is in the name of Christ; and we must leave the matter for another paper.