05.10. CHAPTER X. Unselfishness in Prayer

CHAPTER X. Unselfishness in Prayer

DAILY READINGS First Day, Tenth Week And straightway he constrained the disciples to enter into the boat, and to go before him unto the other side, till he should send the multitudes away. And after he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into the mountain apart to pray: and when even was come, he was there alone. Matthew 14:22-23.

We are surely right in saying that the dominant motive of the Master’s life was service. Yet we find him here sending away multitudes, some of whom he might never have another chance to address, and retiring into the solitude of the hills to pray. Was this selfish? Must we not suppose that he sent away the people, sought solitude, and gave himself to prayer, because he believed that by so doing he was rendering the largest service to others. Make real in your thought the truth of this; consider the increased power for usefulness that came to the Master in his prayer, the recovery from spiritual exhaustion and the fresh sense of God’s companionship that he there secured. Are we not often shallow in our service and superficial in our influence, just because we do not escape the multitude long enough for the ministry of unselfish praying alone?

O Merciful Lord, who hast made of one Blood and redeemed by one Ransome all Nations of Men, let me never harden my heart against any that partake of the same Nature and Redemption with me, but grant me an Universal Charity towards all Men. Give me, O Thou Father of Compassions, such a tenderness and tneltingness of Heart that I may be deeply affected with all the Miseries and Calamities outward or inward of my Brethren, and diligently keep them in Love: Grant that I may not only seek my own things, but also the things of others. O that this mind may be in us all, which was in the Lord Jesus, that we may love as Brethren, be Pitiful and Courteous, and endeavour heartily and vigorously to keep the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace, and the God of Grace, Mercy and Peace be with us all. Amen. Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471).

Second Day, Tenth Week And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him: and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee? I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give him as many as he needeth. Luke 11:5-8.

Notice the suggestive situation which the Master here describes. The one who prays is asking for bread, not for his own sake, but for his friend s. The need of another has made him feel the poverty of his own life; "I have nothing to set before him." How much such praying ought to be done! by parents who feel their insufficiency in meeting their children’s deepest needs, by friends who take seriously the fine possibilities of mutual service, by every teacher or minister or physician who deals intimately with human lives, by all in responsible positions in the social or political life of a community. Many of us, like the man in the parable, do not see how empty our cupboards are until a friend "comes to us from a journey," and then our barren uselessness, our ill-equipped spirits, our meager souls shame us. Such persistent importunity as this belongs rightfully to a man who is praying unselfishly whose cry is motived by desire to have plenty to set before his friend.

Grant unto us, O Lord God, that we may love one another unfeignedly; for where love is, there art Thou; and he that loveth his brother is born of Thee, and dwelleth in Thee, and Thou in him. And where brethren do glorify Thee with one accord, there dost Thou pour out Thy blessing upon them. Love us, therefore, O Lord, and shed Thy love into our hearts, that we may love Thee, and our brethren in Thee and for Thee, as all children to Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Anonymous (1578).

Third Day, Tenth Week For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; it is not therefore not of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the mem bers each one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now they are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. . . . And whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof. 1 Corinthians 12:12-21, 1 Corinthians 12:26-27. Is not the truth which Paul here puts into his classic figure of body and members, the basis of intercessory prayer? "No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him." A man’s bare individuality is like the piece of grit that gets into an oyster shell, but the pearl of his life is made by the relationships that are built up around it. Let a man endeavor to abstract from his life all the meaning that has come from friends, family, and social relationships, and he will soon see how very small his narrow self is, and how his true and greater self is inconceivable without the social body of which he is a member. "In such a kingdom," says Professor Jones of Haverford "an or ganic fellowship of interrelated persons prayer is as normal an activity as gravitation is in a world of matter. Personal spirits experience spiritual gravitation, soul reaches after soul, hearts draw toward each other. We are no longer in the net of blind fate, in the realm of impersonal force, we are in a love-system where the aspiration of one member heightens the entire group, and the need of one even the least draws upon the resources of the whole even the Infinite. We are in actual Divine-human fellowship."

O God, Thou great Redeemer of mankind, our hearts are tender in the thought of Thee, for in all the afflictions of our race Thou hast been afflicted, and in the sufferings of Thy people it was Thy body that was crucified. Thou hast been wounded by our transgressions and bruised by our iniquities, and all our sins are laid at last on Thee. Amid the groaning of creation we behold Thy spirit in travail till the sons of God shall be born in freedom and holiness.

We pray Thee, O Lord, for the graces of a pure and holy life, that we may no longer add to the dark weight of the world’s sin that is laid upon Thee, but may share with Thee in Thy redemptive work. As we have thirsted with evil passions to the destruction of men, do Thou fill us now with hunger and thirst for justice that we may bear glad tidings to the poor and set at liberty all who are in the prison-house of want and sin. Lay Thy spirit upon us and inspire us with a passion of Christ-like love, that we may join our lives to the weak and oppressed and may strengthen their cause by bearing their sorrows. And if the evil that is threatened turns to smite us and if we must learn the dark malignity of sinful power, comfort us by the thought that thus we are bearing in our body the marks of Jesus, and that only those who share in His free sacrifice shall feel the plenitude of Thy life. Help us in patience to carry forward the eternal cross of Thy Christ, counting it joy if we, too, are sown as grains of wheat in the furrows of the world, for only by the agony of the righteous comes redemption. Walter Rauschenbusch.

Fourth Day, Tenth Week And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye*. Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matthew 6:7-15.

"When ye pray," said Jesus, "say, Our" "our Father," "our daily bread," "our debts," "our debtors." Mark the fact that this prayer is not given simply for public use when many are praying together; it is directly related with the injunc tion to go into one’s closet, shut the door, and pray in secret (Matthew 6:5-6). Even when in solitude an individual is communing with God, he is to say not merely I and my, but our. The degree to which this social spirit in prayer will take possession of us depends on the vividness with which we perceive the intimate relationships that bind all men together, until each individual is seen not simply as a separate thread but as an inseparable element in the closely woven fabric of human life. "One man," said an old Latin proverb, "is no man at all!" To be sure, he is not. Rather every acquaintanceship is a live-wire connection between one life and another. Suppose that each one of us has a thousand acquaintances, and each one of those a thousand more, and so on over all the earth. Then we are completely intermeshed with one another. No two persons can be selected though one lived on Fifth Avenue, New York, and the other on the plains of Arabia, between whom, by many a circuitous route, live-wire connections might not conceivably be traced by a mind sufficient for the task. Subtle influences run out from each and sooner or later come to all; no blessing and no disaster ever can be strictly private; common needs, common perils, and common possibilities bind all mankind together. "When ye pray, say, Our."

Once more a new day lies before us, our Father. As we go out among men to do our work, touching the hands and lives of our fellows, make us, we pray Thee, friends of all the world. Save us from blighting the fresh flower of any heart by the flare of sudden anger or secret hate. May we not bruise the rightful self-respect of any by contempt or malice. Help us to cheer the suffering by our sympathy, to freshen the drooping by our hopefulness, and to strengthen in all the wholesome sense of worth and the joy of life. Save us from the deadly poison of class-pride. Grant that we may look all men in the face with the eyes of a brother. If any one needs us, make us ready to yield our help un grudgingly, unless higher duties claim us, and may we rejoice that we have it in us to be helpful to our fellow-men. Walter Rauschenbusch.

Fifth Day, Tenth Week

Another parable set he before them, saying, The king dom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof. Matthew 13:31-32. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it. Matthew 13:44-46.

Read these words of the Master in the light of our thought about prayer as dominant desire. How plainly the petition, "Thy kingdom come" represented the controlling passion of Jesus! Prayer at its best always refuses the impossible task of separating the from the we, and in its supplications gathers up the common needs of all mankind to carry them in earnest sympathy to God. It thanks God for communal blessings in which all share; it repents for communal sins in which every one of us who has thought selfishly or acted grossly has had some part; and it strives in earnest entreaty for social justice, international peace, the brotherhood of man, the triumph of Christ every cause on which the welfare of all of us depends. As the Talmud puts it, "A prayer that makes not mention of the Kingdom is no prayer at all."

O Christ, Thou hast bidden us pray for the coming of Thy Father’s kingdom, in which His righteous will shall be done on earth. We have treasured Thy words, but we have for gotten their meaning, and Thy great hope has grown dim in Thy Church. We bless Thee for the inspired souls of all ages who saw afar the shining city of God, and by faith left the profit of the present to follow their vision. We rejoice that to-day the hope of these lonely hearts is becoming the clear faith of millions. Help us, O Lord, in the courage of faith to seize "what has now come so near, that the glad day of God may dawn at last. As we have mastered Nature that we might gain wealth, help us now to master the social relations of mankind that we may gain justice and a world of brothers. For what shall it profit our nation if it gain numbers and riches, and lose the sense of the living God and the joy of human brotherhood?

Make us determined to live by truth and not by lies, to found our common life on the eternal foundations of righteousness and love, and no longer to prop the tottering house of wrong by legalised cruelty and force. Help us to make the welfare of all the supreme law of our land, that so our commonwealth may be built strong and secure on the love of all its citizens. Cast down the throne of Mammon who ever grinds the life of men, and set up Thy throne, O Christ, for Thou didst die that men might live. Show Thy erring children at last the way to the City of Love, and fulfil the longings of the prophets of humanity. Our Master, once more we make Thy faith our prayer: "Thy Kingdom Come! Thy will be done on earth!" Walter Rauschenbusch.

Sixth Day, Tenth Week

Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 18:18-19. Jesus words about praying together are quite as positive as his words about praying alone. We often quote this reference to "two or three," as though the contrast were between a few and a multitude; but in fact the contrast lies between social and solitary prayer. Christ means to stress the fact that he is especially present in a praying group. Praying for another, especially an unfriendly man, is a searching test of our relationship with him. But praying with another how much more intimate and penetrating a test is that! If there is unforgiven grudge or impenitent unkindness or secret disloyalty, we cannot do it. As Jesus said, we must "agree." Prayer is a most effective cleanser of personal relationships when in the home, for example, people kneel amid the familiar scenes of daily life. The bitter word and the neglected kindness will quarrel with the mutual prayer; people must really be loyal to one another to pray well together. This is one of the fundamental reasons for public prayer, and in the family circle, the college group, or the church, the sincere and habitual practice of it will help any who genuinely catch its spirit to say Our our blessings, our sins, our needs, and our Father.

Eternal, Holy, Almighty, whose name is Love; we are met in solemn company to seek Thy face, and in spirit and truth to worship Thy name. We come in deep humility, since Thou art so high and exalted, and because Thou beholdest the proud afar off. We come in tender penitence, for the contrite heart is Thy only dwelling. We come in the name and spirit of Jesus to make our wills one with Thine; to abandon our lonely and selfish walk for solemn communion with Thee, to put an end to sin by welcoming to our hearts Thy Holy Presence. Deeper than we have known, enter, Thou Maker of our souls; clearer than we have ever seen, dawn Thy glory on our sight. Light the flame upon the altar, call forth the incense of prayer, waken the song of praise, and manifest Thyself to all. Amen. W. E. Orchard.

Seventh Day, Tenth Week

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: I made supplication for tnee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, until thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Luke 22:31-34.

Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. Matthew 5:43-45.

Look through these two passages as through open windows into the habitual intercessions of the Master. We have been noting this week different forms which unselfish pray ing takes: praying for our own need that we may serve others better; pleading the common wants which belong to all of us; offering our entreaty for the coming Kingdom; and praying together in a social group. But in addition to these the Master prayed for individual people, both his enemies and his friends. His love was personal and con crete; when he prayed, he used names. Think of different tests by which we can measure the reality of love such as willingness to render costly service or daily thoughtfulness in little matters. Consider then the quality and depth of love that are revealed by this further test a care profound enough to express itself in sincere and habitual intercession. When a man prays in secret for another, and does it genu inely, he must really care. Put yourself in Peter’s place and see what the revelation of the Master’s love, expressed in secret intercession, must have meant to him. At the death of Robert McCheyne, the Scotch preacher, some one said, "Perhaps the heaviest blow to his brethren, his people, and the land, is the loss of his intercession."

Two or three days before Cromwell died, the Chronicler tells us, his heart was "carried out for God and his people yea, indeed, for some who had added no little sorrow to him." This was his prayer:

Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in Covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I will, come to Thee, for Thy People. Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death; Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver then:, and with the work of reformation; and make the Name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on Thy instruments, to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy People too. And pardon the folly of this short Prayer: even for Jesus Christ’s sake. And give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658).

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK Of all forces in human life that go to the making of dominant desire, none is more powerful than love. Love in the family circle makes the mother’s dominant desires center about the children, until no words can tell how cheap she holds her own life and how dear she holds theirs. In the nation such devotion makes patriots, consuming in them selfishness and fear, until they endure for their country’s sake what they would never endure for their own. When one ranges through biography to see what desire has meant in men, he finds not only the sordid Ahab, the avaricious Judas, the licentious Herod, the ambitious Felix; he finds also men in whom devotion to people and to causes has made dominant desire utterly unselfish. A young lad named Miiller, who was picked up from the river after the burning of the "General Slocum," bore this testimony: "My mother gave me a life preserver, that’s how I got saved. 1 guess she didn t have none herself, cause they can t find her." Trace in this testimony the direction of that mother’s dominant desire! So the controlling wants of the world’s devotees, from mothers to martyrs, have been unselfish. Said Gordon in the Soudan, "I declare, if I could stop this slave traffic, I would willingly be shot this night." Cried John Knox, "God, give rae Scotland, or I die!" Indeed, what expression of dominant desire could be more natural than this prayer of Knox? The tendency to pray is shaken into action, not alone by crises of individual need, but by hours of masterful love. Men who do not pray for themselves will sometimes pray for others; fathers who do not think to ask God’s grace on their own lives, find themselves exclaiming, "God bless my son!" If, as in Paul, vital trust in God is combined with devotion to a cause, the result is always urgent, intercessory prayer. "Unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers" (Romans 1:9); "Always in every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my supplication with joy" (Php 1:4); "I . . . cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers" (Ephesians 1:15-16) these are windows through which we look into Paul’s habitual intercession. He prays for the Jews "My heart’s desire and my supplication to God is for them, that they may be saved" (Romans 10:1); for new con verts "To the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness" (1 Thessalonians 3:13); for the church that they may "walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work" (Colossians 1:10). When dominant desire becomes unselfish the result is truly represented in these prayers of Paul.

II In considering the meaning of this sort of praying we may well note, first, that a man can pray unselfishly for him self. Sir Edward Burne-Jones put significant truth into his saying, "There is only one religion: Make the most of your best for the sake of others is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." All that we have said about the service of prayer to individual character may be reaffirmed here as part of the unselfish aspect of prayer’s ministry. When the Master said, "I sanctify my self," he was not selfish. A very unselfish motive was behind his care for his own life. "For their sakes I sanctify myself." The vividness with which this motive in prayer will appeal to any man depends on his clear perception of the intimate ways in which his friends welfare and happiness depend on him. Many a young man, rebuked for an evil in his life, has answered in effect, "My habits are my private affair." The reply which ought to be made to such a statement is obvious: a private affair is precisely what your habits are not. Your habits are the interest of everybody else. They are as truly a matter of social concern, if not of social control, as is the tariff, or the conflict between capital and labor. No man can keep the consequences of any evil to himself. They seep through his individual life, and run out into the community. When the Scripture says, "Be sure your sin will find you out," it does not mean "will be found out." It means what it says, "will find you out," track you down, spoil your char acter, destroy your happiness, ruin your influence; and be cause it does that, it will find your friends out, will tend to pull them down with you, will surely make goodness harder for them, and within your family circle will roll upon those who love you a burden of vicarious suffering. If a man could sin privately, he might allow himself the ignoble self-indulgence. But he cannot. Somebody else always is involved. The whole world is involved, for the man has deprived the world of a good life and given it a bad life instead. Sinning, even in its most private forms, is putting poison into the public reservoir, and sooner or later everybody is the worse for the pollution. A man then has the choice between two prayers. Either he will pray for his friends sake and his family s, for the sake of the girl he may marry and the children he may beget, for the sake of the commonwealth and the Kingdom which he may help or hinder, that he may defeat his temptations and live a godly, righteous, and useful life; or else some day he will be driven to a petition of the sort which Shakespeare put on the lips of Richard:

"O God! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute thy wrath on me alone!" The latter is always a hopeless request. God cannot grant it. No man ever yet bore all the consequences of his own sin. The cross is a universal fact symbol of the suffering brought on those who have not done the wrong by those who have. To pray for one’s life in the light of this fact is to pray unselfishly.

Moreover, even when the fight with definite sin does not occupy the center of attention, a man for his friends sake may well pray against the emptiness and uselessness of his life, and may well seek power to be worth as much as pos sible to others. Unselfishness is clearly the motive of such a cry for blessing as we have in the sixty-seventh Psalm: "God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause his face to shine upon us; that thy way may be known upon earth, thy salvation among all nations" Wherever real friendship and devotion come, prayer takes on this quality. When Quintin Hogg, with his Polytechnic Institute on his heart, during his last illness, wrote, "I would that I could be of some use to my boys, instead of the barren, dried up old scarecrow that I am!" he revealed the inevitable result of true friendliness. His desire to be at his best was motived by his love for "his boys." Here we face the real trouble with our prayers. Not for lack of a satisfying philosophy do our prayers run dry, but for lack of love. We do not care enough about people and causes to pray for ourselves on their account. Let any one be possessed by a genuine devotion, and necessarily he will rise toward that union of love and prayer which Mrs. Browning put into remember- able words:

"And when I sue God for myself He hears that name of thine And sees within my eyes The tears of two."

III

Unselfishness in prayer, however, never has been and never can be fully satisfied with praying for ourselves for others sakes. It involves specifically praying for others, and the more deep and constraining the love, the more natural is the definite entreaty for God’s blessing upon our friends. The Master is our example here. The prayers of Jesus verbally reported in the Gospels, are not many in number and are few in words; but the indications of his habit of intercession are abundant and convincing. He prays for the children "Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should lay his hands on them, and pray" (Matthew 19:13); for the sick when a blind man is to be healed, we find the Master "looking up to heaven" (Mark 7:34); for his disciples "Simon ... I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not" (Luke 22:31-32); for his enemies "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34); for laborers in the harvest, since he must have practiced his own injunction "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest" (Luke 10:2); and for the whole community of his followers to the end of time "For them also that shall believe on me through their word" (John 17:20). That the most unselfish life ever lived would be unselfish in prayer was to have been expected, and the evidence that he was so is clear. When one, endeavoring to catch the Master’s spirit, considers the various effects that may be expected from this kind of praying, he sees immediately that such intercession sincerely and habitually practiced, will have notable result in the one who prays. How much experience with vicarious prayer is summed up in that revealing verse with which the book of Job draws toward its close, "Jehovah turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends" (Job 42:10). Such prayer does liberate. It carries a man out of himself; it brings to mind the names and needs of many friends, making the heart ready for service and the imagina tion apt to perceive ways of helping those else forgotten and neglected; it purges a man’s spirit of vindictive moods and awakens every gracious and fraternal impulse. As William Law put it, "Intercession is the best arbitrator of all differ ences, the best promoter of true friendship, the best cure and preservative against all unkind tempers, all angry and haughty passions." For another thing intercession will often have effect in the lives of those on whose behalf the prayer is made, if only for this reason, that the knowledge that his friends are praying for him is one of the finest and most empowering influences that can surround any man. For Peter to know that the Master was interceding for him was in itself what a source of sustenance and strength! They say that Luther when he felt particularly strong would exclaim, "I feel as if I were being prayed for"; and in illustration of the same truth, John G. Paton, the missionary to the New Hebrides, writes in his autobiography, "I have heard that in long after years the worst woman in the village of Torthorwald, then leading an immoral life but since changed by the grace of God, was known to declare that the only thing that kept her from despair and from the hell of the suicide, was when in the dark winter nights she crept close up underneath my father’s window, and heard him pleading in family worship that God would convert the sinner from the error of wicked ways and polish him as a jewel for the Redeemer’s crown. ... I felt, said she, that I was a burden on that good man’s heart, and I knew that God would not disappoint him. That thought kept me. "

Many lives have been kept by knowledge of intercessions continually offered for them; and one need know only a little of Christian leaders, with their urgent requests for the support of their friends prayers, to see what encouragement they always have found in the assurance that supplications were offered on their behalf. Melanchthon here is typical, rejoicing over his accidental discovery that children were praying for the Reformation. Paul writes, "Brethren, pray for us" (1 Thessalonians 5:25); "Ye also helping together on our behalf by your supplication" (2 Corinthians 1:11); "I beseech you, brethren, . . . that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me" (Romans 15:30). Cromwell writes to his admirals at sea: "You have, as I verily believe and am persuaded, a plentiful stock of prayers going for you daily, sent up by the soberest and most approved ministers and Christians in this nation; and, notwithstanding some discouragements, very much wrestling of faith for you; which is to us and I trust will be to you, a matter of great encouragement."

IV In addition to these two effects, however, Christians have looked to intercession for a far more vital consequence. When trust in God and love for men co-exist in any life, prayer for others inevitably follows. Deepening intimacy with God, by itself, may find expression in quiet communion; enlarging love for men, alone, may utter itself in serviceable deeds; but these two cannot live together in the same life without sometimes combining in vicarious prayer. Now, such prayer always has been offered, not as a formal expression of well-wishing, but as a vital, creative contribution to God’s good purposes for men. The genuine intercessors, who in costly praying have thrown their personal love alongside God’s and have earnestly claimed blessings for their friends, have felt that they were not playing with a toy, but that they were somehow using the creative power of personality in opening ways for God to work his will. They have been convinced that their intercessions wrought consequences for their friends. In this generation, however, with its searching doubts, its honest unwillingness to act without knowledge, its refusal even when faith would be a comfort to accept faith without good reason, this projectile power of intercession has to many become dubious. One reason for this doubt lies in the in adequate way in which intercession has been conceived and preached. To some people it seems to mean that one person may persuade a thoughtless or unwilling God to do something for another person. A popular analogy has tended to keep alive this misconception. God in many ways, so runs the analogy, refuses to work his will save as some man co operates with him. The home life suffers, the government becomes corrupt, the non-Christian world goes unevangelized until men come to God’s help. So intercessory prayer may be another way in which God waits for our assistance. If he will not do some things for my friend until I work, it may be that he will not do other things until I pray.

There is an element of truth in this analogy, but the limited application of the comparison is clear. God cannot save my family life without my cooperation, because he cannot take my place as son or husband or father; he must work through me. He cannot save the government without men, because he cannot take the voter’s place; he must work through the citizens. And in the evangelizing of China, he cannot go as a missionary; he must find some man to go. There is nothing artificial about this necessity of human cooperation; it belongs to the nature of the case. But that God should deliberately withhold from a man in China some thing that he is free to give to him, and should continue to withhold it until it occurs to me to ask him to bestow it, looks like an arbitrary proceeding. It argues imperfect good ness in God. No true father would keep from one child a blessing that the child has a right to and that the father is free to give, simply because he waits for another child to ask for its bestowal. The trouble with such an idea of intercession is not simply intellectual; it is moral. That one individual, myself, should try to persuade another individual, God, to do for a third individual, my friend, something which the second individual, God, had not thought of, or was intending otherwise, or was arbitrarily withholding until I asked to have it given, plainly involves a thought of deity with pagan elements in it. And many people feeling this have given up intercession as unreasonable.

V This surrender of reality, however, because it is explained in an inadequate form of thought, is never a solution of any problem. With or without adequate interpretations of vicarious prayer, earnest Christians in their intercessions are about a serious and reasonable business, whose sources lie deep in the needs of human life. A clear and rational belief in intercession must start with two truths: first, the Christian Gospel about God; and second, the intimate relationships that make the world of persons an organic whole. As to the first, the Christian God desires the welfare of all men everywhere; his love is boundless in extent and individual in application; his purpose of good sweeps through creation, comprehending every child of his and laboring for a transformed society on earth and in the heavens. This, as Paul says, is "the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ." Nothing that we ever dreamed of good for any man or for the race has touched the garment’s hem of the good which he purposes and toward which he works. He is not an individual after the fashion of a pagan deity, who, like Baal, must be awakened from his sleep and besought to do good deeds for men. Rather every dim and flickering desire our hearts ever have known for mankind’s good has been lighted at the central fire of his eternal passion for the salvation of his children. As Whittier sang it:

"All that I feel of pity thou hast known Before I was; my best is all thy own. From thy great heart of goodness mine but drew Wishes and prayers; but thou, O Lord, wilt do, In thine own time, by ways I cannot see, All that I feel when I am nearest thee!"

Such is the Christian God. When men go up to such a God in vicarious prayer, their intercession must mean casting themselves in with the eternal purpose of the Father for his children, "laying hold on God," not to call him to ministry, as though he needed that, but to be carried along with him in his desire for all men’s good. Nothing is more wanted in the world than such intercession. The title of Dr. Mott’s address "Intercessors the Primary Need," is clearly the statement of a fact. God wants men to lay hold on him in inward prayer, aligning their dominant desires with his, until their intercession be comes the effective ally of his will. As in an irrigation system, with its many reticulated channels, the sluice-gate would not plead with the reservoir to remember its for gotten power of doing good, but rather, feeling the urge of the ready water, would desire to be opened, that through it the waiting stream might find an entrance into all the fields and the will of the reservoir be done so men should pray to God. As to the second truth which underlies the reasonableness of intercession persons are not separate individuals merely, like grains of sand in a bag, but, as Paul says, are "mem bers one of another." The ganglia of a nervous system are hardly more intimately related and more interdependent than are people in this closely reticulated system of personal life. As Professor Everett once put it: "We ask the leaf, are you complete in yourself? and the leaf answers, No! my life is in the branches. We ask the branch, and the branch answers, No, my life is in the trunk. We ask the trunk, and it answers, No, my life is in the root. We ask the root, and it answers, No, my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves and I shall die. So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual." The more we know about personality, the less possible it is to draw clear circles about each of us, partitioning us off from one another. We all run into each other, like interflowing rivu lets, with open channels, above ground and subterranean connecting all of us. Even telepathy may prove to be true bo that if a man believes in God, in whom all live and move and have their being, there is no basis for denying the possibility that prayer may open ways of personal influence even at a distance. Personality, at its best, in its thinking and working is creative, and when in this love-system of persons, a soul throws in its dominant desire alongside God s, no one easily can set boundaries to that prayer’s influence.

Indeed, there are certain aspects of intercessory praying where the consequences are plain. It is not a theory but a fact empirically demonstrable, that if in any community a large number of earnest Christians unite in unselfish praying for a revival of religious interest, that revival is sure to come. This can be tested anywhere at any time, if earnest men and women are there to do the praying. To say that this effect is simply psychological, is only another way of saying that God has so ordained psychological laws that vicarious praying by a group of earnest people does bring results. So far from depreciating the value of intercession, this fact gives to it the stability of a universal law. It names the conditions under which God does his most effective work through men. "For many years," says Dr. Mott, "it has been my practice in traveling among the nations to make a study of the sources of the spiritual movements which are doing most to vitalize and transform individuals and communities. At times it has been difficult to discover the hidden spring, but invariably where I have had the time and patience to do so, I have found it in an intercessory prayer- life of great reality."

While our minds are insufficient for the task of seeing to its end the explanation of intercession’s power, our experience is clear that something creative is being done when in this unitary system of personal life human souls take on themselves God’s burden for men, and in vicarious prayer throw themselves in with his sacrificial purpose. "Surely the man who joins himself with God," writes Professor Coe, "does not leave the universe just where it was before. All things are bound together into unity. I drop a pebble from my hand; it falls to earth, but the great earth rises to meet it. They seek a common center of gravity, determined by the mass of one as truly as by that of the other. You cannot change any one thing without changing something else also. The man who prays changes the center of gravity of the world of persons. Other persons will be different as well as himself, and he could not have produced this difference by any other means than this union of himself with God." But no explanation, however reasonable, can do justice to the experience of vicarious praying. To feel that, we must turn to life. When a mother prays for her wayward son, no words can make clear the vivid reality of her supplications. Her love pours itself out in insistent demand that her boy must not be lost. She is sure of his value, with which no outward thing is worthy to be compared, and of his possibilities which no sin of his can ever make her doubt. She will not give him up. She follows him through his abandonment down to the gates of death; and if she loses him through death into the mystery beyond, she still prays on in secret, with intercessions which she may not dare to utter, that wherever in the moral universe he may be, God will reclaim him. As one considers such an experience of vicarious praying, he sees that it is not merely resignation to the will of God; it is urgent assertion of a great desire. She does not really think that she is persuading God to be good to her son, for the courage in her prayer is due to her certain faith that God also must wish that boy to be recovered from his sin. She rather is taking on her heart the same burden that God has on his; is joining her demand with the divine desire. In this system of personal life -which makes up the moral universe, she is taking her place alongside God in an urgent, creative outpouring of sacrificial love.

Now, this mother does not know and cannot know just what she is accomplishing by her prayers. But we know that such mothers save their sons when all others fail. The mystery of prayer’s projectile force is great, but the certainty of such prayer’s influence, one way or another, in working redemption for needy lives, is greater still. It may be, as we have said, that God has so ordained the laws of human interrelationship that we can help one another not alone by our deeds but also directly by our thoughts, and that earnest prayer may be the exercise of this power in its highest terms. But whether that mother has ever argued out the theory or not, she still prays on. Her intercession is the utterance of her life; it is love on its knees.

VI

Let any man of prayerless life, or of a life in which prayer, an untrained tendency, is nothing more than an occasional cry of selfish need, consider himself in the light of this ideal of unselfish praying. To pray for himself for the sake of others, and to pray in vicarious entreaty for his friends, his enemies, and all mankind this ministry he has denied. Let him not hide his real and inward lack of the intercessory spirit behind any confusion of mind about the theory. If a man honestly seeks the reason why a prayer like that of Moses is not easily conceivable upon his own lips, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin. . . . Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written" (Exodus 32:31-32), he sees that the difference between Moses and himself is mainly one of moral passion. We have no such high and commanding desires as Moses had; our wishes are lame and weak and petty compared with his; if every mental perplexity were overcome, we still should lack the spirit out of which such prayers spontaneously pour. Supposing that we knew exactly and held completely the Master’s theory of prayer; is there any man for whom we care enough to pray as Jesus did for Peter? Is there any cause that could call from us his cry: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" The chief obstacles to intercession are moral. We live for what we can get; our dominant desires are selfish. The main current of us runs in the channel of our mean ambi tions, and our thoughts of other people and of great causes are but occasional eddies on the surface of the stream. Even when we do succeed in praying for our friends, our country, or the Kingdom, we are often giving lip-service to conventionality; we are not expressing our urgent and continual demand on life. Our prayers are hypocrites. If the cause we pray for should suddenly take form and ask of us our share in the achievement of our own entreaty, we would dodge and run. All such intercession is clanging brass. "Our prayers must mean something to us," said Maltbie Babcock, "if they are to mean anything to God."

Before a man therefore blames his lack of intercession on intellectual perplexities, he well may ask whether, if all his questions were fully answered, he has the spirit that would pour itself out in vicarious praying. Is his heart really surcharged with pent devotion waiting to find vent in prayer as soon as the logic of intercession is made evident? Rather, it is highly probable that if his last interrogation point were laid low by a strong answer, he would intercede not one whit more than he does now. Intercession is the result of generous devotion, not of logical analysis. When such devo tion comes into the life of any man who vitally believes in God, like a rising stream in a dry river bed it lifts the obstacles at whose removal he had tugged in vain, and floats them off. The unselfish prayer of dominant desire clears its own channel. We put our lives into other people and into great causes; and our prayers follow after, voicing our love, with theory or without it. We lay hold on God’s alliance for the sake of the folk we care for and the aims we serve. We do it because love makes us, and we con tinue it because the validity of our praying is proved in our experience. St. Anthony spoke to the point, "We pray as much as we desire, and we desire as much as we love." Of such intercession it is true,

"More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep and goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION

How far can a man say: "It is nobody else’s concern what I do"?
Is there a person so far away that no act of mine can touch him?
Is there anything which a person can ask for in prayer which concerns nobody but himself?
When can a person really pray the Lord’s Prayer?
When is a prayer for personal needs an unselfish prayer? What are the results of unselfish prayer? What does prayer accomplish for the man who prays? {193}Why does the knowledge that others are praying for him help a man? How far is this a sufficient reason for unselfish prayer?
"Can prayer accomplish anything apart from the man who prays?" What kind of answers have we a right to expect?
Why is it necessary to intercede with a loving God for human needs?
What is really accomplished by intercessory prayer?
What place has reason and what place experiment in deter mining the results of prayer?
Why do men fail to practice intercession?