03.23. THE UNJUST JUDGE

THE UNJUST JUDGE Luke 18:1-8; Luke 11:5-13. The two Parables of the Importunate Friend at midnight and the Importunate Widow illustrate the same idea, that importunity prevails irrespective of the character or disposition of the person on whom it is practised. Alike in this, the Parables differ inasmuch as the one has a genera], the other a special reference. The successful importunity of the midnight petitioner is a sample of the success that attends all persevering prayer. The widow’s conquest of the surly judge is intended to encourage the disciples of Christ to the persistent expectation of His second coming, and to unwearied prayer for that good time when all their desires shall be fulfilled. All prayer is trying to the character, and few persons there are who can perseveringly offer the “effectual fervent “prayer which avails: but there is special temptation to faint in prayer for the coming of the Son of man. Wrongs are so slowly righted; wisdom, justice, and righteousness make such little way upon earth; misery and wickedness renew themselves with a vigor so unabated, that the most sanguine are often tempted to refer this to indifference on the part of Him who reigns and has all power. It is not easy to reconcile the meagre, unsatisfactory results of Christianity in the world with the claims and promises of Christ, and under the pressure of this difficulty many cease to hope and pray and sink into a bewildered or quite unbelieving habit.

These Parables, then, are meant to afford us effectual encouragement in prayer. Those who first faint in prayer and then cease to pray commonly do so from some kind of latent feeling that God does not regard them. Well, says our Lord, even supposing He does not regard you, do not give up asking, for even in the most unpromising circumstances persevering and importunate entreaty gets what it seeks. Take the most sluggish and selfish nature, the man who won’t so much as get out of bed to do a friend a good turn, — you can make him do what you want by the very simple device of going on knocking till you cause it to dawn upon his slumbering brain that the only way to get the sleep he so much desires is first of all to satisfy you. Or take the other most unpromising case you can think of, that of a thoroughly and unscrupulously unjust judge. The man who, of all living Englishmen, knows the East best, says that “there are three ways of treating Asiatic officials — by bribe, by bullying, or by bothering them with a dogged perseverance into attending to you and your concerns,” The two former methods being out of the question with a poor widow, she adopts the third. She does not go home and wail to her children, she does not content herself with regretfully wishing that a just judge occupied the judgment seat; she merely makes up her mind: “I will have justice. I will annoy, pester, harass, torment, plague him, until he sees that the easier course for himself is to look into my matters. I am but a poor, desolate, weak creature; but as the small insect can madden the hugest beast of the forest, so will I fix upon him until he shall be glad to get quit of me at any price.” The principle which these Parables illustrate is well understood — the principle that importunity succeeds in wringing consent from the reluctant, relief from the niggardly, its own way from all. The dog that is driven from following his master understands that, if he only continue, his master will yield and give him his way. Never a child grew up ignorant of this, that prolonged, persistent crying can wring from a parent what has been absolutely refused at first. It is to this principle the beggar trusts when he obstinately shuts his ears to denial, and follows supplicating till an alms is given, not to relieve him, but to relieve the giver. And it was on this principle the widow of the Parable acted, not counting at all on the charity of the judge, but still confident that she would get from him what he had no desire nor intention to give her; knowing that, if she only held to him, the time would come when he should be forced to say, “Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” There was nothing in the judge the widow could count upon. There was no influence, human or Divine, which this poor woman could bring to bear upon him. Would she threaten him with Divine vengeance and call heaven to I witness against his injustice? He would like it, he would count it a treat; he would call in his companions to help him to enjoy the widow’s anguish. Would she come meekly, piteously, and fall at his feet, pointing to her sackcloth and her train of helpless children? Would she hold up to him the little infant to smile in his face and melt the hard heart? He would drive her from his judgment seat with a curse, or he would jest with her, or turn to other business. Would she inform against him or expose him? He was already exposed, and had nothing to hide. Would she get help against him? But he was the man of whom all others were afraid. Here, in short, was a man of whom the description is intended to convey to us the idea that he was thoroughly impracticable, — that if in any circumstances a person might seem warranted in turning away hopeless, this widow was in such circumstances, and yet she obtained her request. The argument our Lord builds on these instances is very intelligible and very cogent. Reckon on finding in God no more readiness to hear and to help than you can count on in the most hardened and illiberal and selfish of men, and yet do not rest till you obtain your request from Him. Though you have not yet succeeded, and though you are beginning to think prayer utterly useless and a mere waste of time and of feeling, follow Him, cry after Him, lay hold on His skirt, and weary Him into compliance. Though, so far from indicating the slightest willingness to help and bless you, God had again and again repulsed you; though He had given you every reason to believe that He would never grant your request nor raise a finger to help you, yet the course which reason and your own interest approve is to persist in presenting your suit before Him. To do otherwise would be to prove yourselves bereft of the wit of this poor untrained widow, and even of the instinct of the inferior creatures. Though you had reason to believe that God has no love, no interest in you, that you are as unlikely to move Him as this widow who had none to speak a word for her to the judge, though all the world is saying, “There is no help for him in God,” and though your own soul is saying, “I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind,” yet you may have your desire. Only when you can say, There is nothing God can give me; only when you can say that already you have in actual and secure possession what you are ready to spend eternity with; only then can you reasonably cease to pray.

This, however, by no means exhausts the force of our Lord’s argument in the Parable. There is a “how much more” in it. The argument is not merely, If the unjust judge was thus coerced, you may also expect God to yield; but rather, If persistent entreaty prevailed with one who was resolved not to give, how much more will it prevail with one who is more anxious than the petitioner himself that justice be done. Suppose that the wisdom and integrity of the judge had never been questioned; that his name had become the synonym for righteous and equitable judgment; that every man who had a just cause rejoiced when appeal could be made to him; and that he was especially regarded by the poor and oppressed as their champion and defender; nothing but unpardonable weakness could have made the widow despair of being heard by such a man. Suppose that her case required delay, and that the judge had assured her of this in the tenderest and most encouraging terms that could be used from his seat of office — would she not have been almost worthy of misery had she gone from court grumbling or fearful? Suppose still further that during the whole term of her suit the judge was doing her many acts of kindness, providing for her children, reminding her of his friendship for her deceased husband, assuring her on his oath of the ultimate success of her appeal, sending her every morning some little token to keep her heart up — can you conceive any one so unreasonable as to cherish suspicion in such circumstances? But even such a state of matters does not represent our own relation to God in prayer. For it is absolute justice, absolute faithfulness, absolute simplicity of purpose to bless us, with which we have to do. In our day fainting in prayer arises not from any direct doubt of God’s goodness so much as from the belief that, however much He was concerned in setting this world in motion at the first. He has retired from any active interference in its affairs, and allows it to be regulated solely by laws inherent in things themselves, or at any rate actually in existence and inexorable. We all find that this world, with ourselves and all else that is in it, is under certain laws — laws of nature, as we call them. We find that a certain never-failing order of things is established. The sun rises every morning without fail, without fail it shines on us more in summer than in winter; the tides ebb and flow in unaltering and calculable order; certain diseases have a course that can be predicted. Wherever we recognize this inflexible course of things, we accept it as the order established by God’s will and submit ourselves to it. A man may know that the rising of to-morrow’s sun will bring with it death or misery worse than death, but he does not pray that the sun may not rise. He knows that, pray as he may, the sun will rise. The godly maiden, who for her faith was bound to a stake within reach of the tide, did not pray that the tide might be stayed in its flow; or, whether she prayed or not, the tide, gradually and precisely in its usual manner, came in, making no recognition of her prayers or of her condition. The most believing of men ceases to pray for the life of a friend who is declared and seen to be drawing near to death. In such cases it becomes apparent to the petitioner that his desires are not consistent with the will of God, and he feels that to continue to pray would be not reverent but irreverent. But it is argued, and with much plausibility, that every future event, every occurrence of any kind that may in any way affect us, is already as certain as the death of a man incurably diseased. The storm which wrecks the ill-fated ship is not aroused by chance, but by definite though sometimes obscure and complicated causes. And if the wife or mother who prays for those at sea saw these causes, would not prayer die from her lips, and the chill of despair freeze the warm utterances of faith? The prayer is uttered because the event is not seen to be certain; the effect is not seen in the cause; but an enlarged knowledge of the laws of nature, a j deeper insight into the connection of one thing with another, would see that only one event is possible, and that it is useless hoping for any other. Every man ceases to pray when he sees what is going to happen. But everything is as certainly produced by causes already in existence, as that effect which he distinctly foresees. We pray because we are ignorant of what is going to take place; but if our knowledge of all the laws of nature were as accurate as our knowledge of some of them is, we should altogether cease to pray.

Many persons, moved by such representations, do abandon the practise of prayer. We may suppose one of their number stating his case in this way: I believe in God. I believe that every law which regulates the course of things in this world is of His appointment, and is therefore the best possible. I am perfectly satisfied with what I receive from the operation of these laws; any suffering I have to endure I recognize as perfectly just. I am aware that the government under which I should have been perfectly happy could not have been a just government. I am content to live on under these laws, and I resign myself to them. But when you ask me to pray, you perplex me. I can worship God: I can come to Him morning and evening and acknowledge Him and delight in Him. But when you ask me to be continually laying before Him some request for His interference with the natural result of those very laws He has appointed as the best; when you bid me ask Him for anything which would not come to me by the operation of natural laws, you perplex me wholly. Prayer, instead of being the strength and joy of my religion, has been my permanent difficulty, an insoluble puzzle. I seem to have more faith in God when I do not pray. I find it easier to believe in God when I think of Him as the Author of nature who knows that “we have need of all these things,” than when I am asked to supplicate His interference with the established order of things. And yet the reasoning which results in prayerlessness is not so conclusive as it seems. This reverence for the order of nature, on which it proceeds, does not prevent its devotees from resisting its laws to the utmost and from endeavoring to manipulate them to their own advantage. They check the natural course of a disease, and thwart the operation of the laws which govern disease, by the skill that comes of accumulated observation and experiment. They do not allow nature to take its course, but guide it so as to avert threatening danger. May not God do the same? May not the subtle, incomprehensible Intelligence that resides in nature and upholds it, guide it in ways and to issues unattainable by our puny efforts?

There are two powers which we ourselves possess and which we cannot but ascribe to God also. We have, first, a power in our own wills to move our own bodies. This power is mysterious and not as yet understood. We cannot understand how a spiritual force such as that of the will can become a physical force, lifting the arm, moving the lips, and so forth. But, understood or not understood, the power exists. God, though unseen and spiritual, has the same power directly to move material things and effect His will in them. To this power the limit can only be in God Himself, not in any external obstacle.

We have also a power to play off one law of nature against another; to make a balloon rise, e.g. by using the law of the levity of gas to counteract the law of gravitation. We can make one ingredient in nature counterwork another, and so use its right hand against its left as to make it harmless where otherwise it would be hurtful. The law that guides a disease to a fatal issue we can defeat by the help of another law which gives to certain remedies power to check and remove the disease. By adjusting one law of nature to another, by bringing together things naturally separate, and by directing the course of natural law into channels of our own devising, we can bring about results of the most surprising kind, and which could never be brought about by nature herself. The telescope, the hydraulic press, the railway, the telegraph — these are not natural results, but they are results of natural laws manipulated by human ingenuity. This power to use nature for purposes she could never of herself accomplish, we cannot but ascribe to God as well as to ourselves. We cannot but believe that if there be a God, a conscious, intelligent, individual existence at the root of all that is, He must have this power of playing off one law of nature against another, and of so guiding, controlling, and adapting the whole of nature and every part of it as to work out His own purposes. He has this power, not in the measure we have it so that we can produce results which seem miraculous to the uninitiated, but absolutely and without measure so that He can produce results inconceivable and incomprehensible. But even though God’s power to answer prayer be not questioned, it may still be doubted whether He can be expected to depart from His purpose or “plan” of all that is to be. It is sometimes said to be impious, irreverent, blasphemous, to ask God to allow our wills to influence His, our wisdom to instruct His, our interests to counterbalance the interests of the universe. But it is obvious that God’s plan may have included this very thing, that certain results are to be brought about by prayer. God’s eternal will and knowledge embrace not only certain ends that are to be accomplished, but all that is to bring about these ends. His design is not an outline or skeleton draft of the future, but an outline filled in with every detail. It is very conceivable that God may have ordained that such and such things take place in connection with and as the result of the prayers of those who wait upon Him; and if so, prayer cannot be considered an interference with His plan, but a fulfilment of it. But that which too frequently gives force to all objections is our own experience of the slender results of prayer. We faint in prayer, and gradually become formal and remiss, because our own prayers have so often been apparently in vain. We believe in hard work, because what we work for we get. We can see in our life the results of hard work; but some of us are ready to say we can see in our possession not one thing which we might not equally have had, had we never prayed. This is the temptation not only of the individual, but of the Church. All Christian people have been praying for eighteen centuries that the kingdom of God might come, and how small an appearance of answer has there been. But convincing as the evidence of experience IS, we may misconstrue experience, and must balance it by considerations which also have weight. We must consider that there may be good reason for not answering some prayers, and also that our Lord foresaw that it would be difficult to maintain faith and therefore encourages us to do so. That there may be reason for not answering some prayers we cannot but admit. We are aware that we have uttered unseasonable, ill-considered, petulant, unholy prayers. It cannot but make us ashamed to reflect how frequently we have besought God to pander to the most unworthy feelings, to make provision for the flesh, to satisfy our own petty ambition, to gratify some earthly passion. Prayers which at bottom are dictated by mere self-love, sensuality, ambition, envy, revenge, covetousness, are not heard. And if in our conscience we know that the disappointment of our desires was calculated to do us more good than their gratification; if, that is, we recognize that the consideration which refused our petitions was really deeper than that which should have granted them; then we see how right and reasonable has been the delay in answering us. And such delays are teaching us more and more that it is when we “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness “that we are answered speedily; it is when we get up above what is merely selfish, individual, and earthly, and rise to the region in which we begin to see what it is God is aiming at and counts worthy of His effort, it is when our hearts are enlarged by a knowledge of His purposes, and we begin to seek the common good and blessings that are eternal, that we feel confidence in prayer and know it must prevail.

Answers are delayed, too, because the prayer was not hearty. God has made no promise to answer insincere prayer; and that prayer is insincere which is not followed up by hearty efforts to obtain the thing sought. Or it is so formal that, though the answer came, we should not recognize it. Angels are at our gates, but because their wings are folded and we have not traced their descent from heaven, we do not notice them nor invite them to abide with us. We lose thus a thousand of God’s gifts, not recognizing that the very thing we need is brought within our reach. We see the change of circumstances, not the fresh opportunity; we feel the disappointment, not the hand of God giving us humility; we recognize the bitterness and the sorrow, but not the heavenly mind and abandonment of worldly ambitions which they enfold.

Again, there is an order in God’s gifts, and we cannot have the greater unless first we have the less. We ask God to give us this or that grace, as if it could be suddenly conferred upon us, irrespective of our present character; and we ask it without considering how much we ourselves may have to do and to suffer before we can attain it. Character has an organic Integrity and a consecutive growth as a tree has. You cannot expect fruit if there has been no blossom. No power can cause fruit to grow before a branch has grown to bear it. But in many of our petitions we ask God to give us fruit without either branch, blossom, or time. We ask Him to build the top story of our house before the lower story is begun. We wish ability to accomplish certain objects before we have the fundamental graces out of which that ability can alone spring. Your child asks you to give him your skill in calculating or your knowledge of a language; what can you do? You can only say to him, “My boy, these things cannot be immediately given. I can only see that you are educated and help you to persevere, and one day you will have the knowledge you ask. But it cannot be given; it must grow. You cannot get it without me, but neither can you get it without much hard work of your own.” So when we are suddenly put to shame by our lack of Christian temper, or courage, or charity, or sobriety of mind, or unworldliness, we as suddenly ask Christ for the grace we need, apparently supposing that it is as easily manufactured and assumed as a new suit of clothes; that we have just to give the order and put on the readymade habit. Let us deal reasonably with God. Let us bear in mind that many of the gifts we are in the habit of asking are such qualities of soul as can be produced only by long and painful processes. You ask for humility. Do you consider that in so doing you ask for that which makes humility humiliation; for failure, mortified vanity disappointed hopes? You ask for a heavenly mind. Do you consider that in so doing you ask to be led forward to those painful times which compel men to feel that here they have no permanent home? You ask to be near Christ and like Him. Can you be baptized with His baptism, can you drink of His cup? But undoubtedly that on which we chiefly and wisely fall back is the plain command of our Lord, that we should continue praying. Very often we have just to own we do not see all round this matter, and abide by the unmistakable promise which built up our Lord’s own strength, “Ask, and ye shall receive.” If there was one thing more than another He taught about God, it was just this, that He answers prayer; if there is any truth, any meaning in His plain assertion that He knew God, and that by having been in heaven He understood how heavenly things are managed, then there can be no doubt that if we go on asking we shall receive, and that if we go on knocking at that door which now is shut we shall one day find entrance to the light we crave, and pass through all that bars our progress. This is the time of seeking, this is the time when we may reasonably say, “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing;” it becomes us, therefore, to believe, to inquire, to be diligent in seeking what our highest instincts prompt us to, assured that one day the door shall be open to those who have besieged it, and that we shall have what we now crave and enter on the fruit of all honest effort.