The Christian doctrine of prayer

Preface

There are two kinds of Prayer, the Prayer of Faith and the Prayer of Form. Men must either pray in earnest, because they expect their prayer to accomplish something, and ask God for what they want just as they would ask any one else,

— expecting to get it ; and this kind of prayer 1 call the Prayer of Faith. Or they must pray as a matter of propriety, and from a sense of duty, — because prayer is beautiful, or because prayer is commanded ; and this kind of prayer I call the Prayer *of Form.

Now when people get to praying as a form,

— a proper, beautiful, excellent form though it be, — they will soon leave off praying at all. A certain insincerity is felt in such a work. We cannot go on with it. 'To speak to God, and ask him to give us this and that, — when we all the time believe that we shall get it not a whit the iv PREFACE.

sooner for asking, but merely shall put ourselves into a better frame of mind, — is not sincere. It is not truthful, and honest men cannot do it, nor pretend to do it.

Little children pray the Prayer of Faith. They ask God to give them toys and playthings, audi they bring their little wants and notions up ir their prayers very artlessly and honestly. We smile, and sigh that we cannot pray so too. B} and by they grow too wise to continue the child ish prayer, and, like us, leave off prayer wholly.

Our ancestors prayed the Prayer of Faith. When the wind howled around their lowly huts, and the storm rushed darkly from the forests, — when the fierce Pequot and the savage Philip with his wild tribes of Indians lurked in every shaded dell of this fair New England, — when the crops failed and they were about to starve, — then they wrestled with God in prayer. They labored as men labor in ploughing a field, till in their agony of supplication they fainted. And when the help came, and the full-freighted ship sailed up the bay with its white sails spread wide like some broad-winged bird, then they believed most surely that God sent her in answer to their prayer, and no sceptic among them all asked concerning the time when she sailed from port.

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V

But some time in the last century there arose wise men, — disciples not of Plato nor of St Paul, but of Lord Bacon, — men who believed in science more than in inspiration, — and they could not pray any longer the Prayer of Faith. They studied the laws of nature, — they reasoned by induction from effect to cause, — they were experimental philosophers. Bishop Berkeley called them in his vexation minute philosophers. But they were good Christian men, and had not the least intention of denying what was in the Bible. The Bible said, Pray^ and they said, Pray. Moreover, they had learnt to pray at their mother's knee, and felt the happiness of communing with God, and did not wish to leave off prayer. So they said, — "Pray. Not that prayer will give you anything you could not have had without it. But it will do you good. It will give you submission to God's will, patience, devout habits, and so forth. Pray, by all means, for spiritual things ; for God will give you those readily in answer to prayer. But above all. Pray without ceasing ; that is, be in a spirit of prayer always. Christ uses Oriental figures, figures of speech ; he must not be taken too literally when he says, ' Believe that ye shall receive it, and ye shall have it.' God gives or

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withholds according to wise providential laws, and not according to our prayers."

After this doctrine had been laid down, and the Prayer of Propriety or Duty or Sentiment had taken the place of the Prayer of Faith, men, as we said, ceased to pray. They could not continue using solemn words to which they attached no real importance. " No," said they. " To work is to pray. Do your duty ; that is the effectual prayer of the righteous man. Visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction. Keep yourself unspotted from the world. That is true Christianity ; better than many Sabbath-days full of worship ; better than knees stiffened by long hours of devotion. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, not he who for a pretence makes long prayers."

We live at present in an age saturated with these ideas. We live in an age turned wholly outward, — an age of science, of steam, of rails, and of telegraphs, — an age of cheap postage, and of all sorts of devices to make our outward life comfortable and joyous. Many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased. The Christianity of the world bears good fruit in attempts to mitigate the horrors of barbarous customs, which come down unmitigated and unrelieved through

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vii the ages of faith, — slavery, and war, and popular ignorance, pauperism, intemperance, and manifold evils. Strong, wise, and good men do not now go on their knees and wrestle all night with God in prayer ; but they sit up all night by their study-table, and marshal hosts of facts into such shape as shall convince mankind what a mountain of ills they labor under, and how they shall throw them off. Good men of to-day — the saints of our day — do not dream dreams, see visions, commune with angels, they are caught up into no third, nor even second heaven ; but they visit prisons and penitentiaries, they establish hospitals for the blind, deaf, lame, dumb, and insane, they labor to elevate public instruction, they struggle to make the laws more equitable. And for all these labors let us be thankful to God, for in them is surely to be found the Christian seed ; they are Christ-like works.

But the effect of these doctrines as regards prayer, we see all around in other forms, not so good as those. It appears in our empty church^ es ; in young men and women deserting the house of God, where whole generations used to bend together in awe and love, the old man with white hair kneeling humbly by the little child with silky curls, — where they used to pray in viii

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earnest^ and go away refreshed at heart and stronger for any work, happier for any joy. We see it in sermons changed to popular lectures, — no longer earnest arguments, -appeals from dying men to dying men, but rhetorical essays on some theme of philosophy, taste, politics, or social utility. We feel it, moreover, in the emptiness of our own hearts, in our secret consciousness that we are not acting out our highest nature, not living for the great end of our being, not growing into all that God desires and intends for us. We give ourselves to the world, though the world does not satisfy us. We labor to do good in some way to those about us, but we feel that, while we are ourselves empty of spiritual life, we can do them no real, no lasting good.

And look, too, at our philanthropic efforts. They are efforts, all of them, in the right direction. This age applies Christianity as Christ himself would have it applied, and as those ages of Faith and Prayer never applied it. I therefore am not looking for salvation in the past. I thank God for the immense advances we are making, and have made, in a true understanding of the Gospel. But with all this light, where is the heat ? Where is the energy which once bore men from land to land, and heaped them by

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ix myriads around an empty grave in Palestine ? I stood myself in a pulpit from which Bernard ot Clairvaux in 1150 preached the second Crusade, " And is it possible," I thought, " that there was a power of faith which could carry Europe to perish on the hot sands of Asia for such an object as that, six several times, and that we cannot raise a Christian crusade to-day against our own great social evils ? There, for example, is slavery, which turns our fellow-men into things, which threatens us with disunion, which tramples on the rights of men, which disgraces us before the civilized world. We, Philanthropists, when all our religion has run into philanthropy, and we say to work is to pray^ — what do we ? The most we do is to make a few antislavery speeches, hold a few antislavery fairs and picnics, circulate a few newspapers and tracts, and throw a small vote here and there for antislavery representatives. Luther, by himself, a man of faith and prayer, shook with his single arm the vast power of Rome, till its foundations trembled in every country, and its battlements came down in ruins through half of Europe. Loyola, another man of prayer, came forth, and by his smgle voice called out an army of tens of thousands to man those broken walls and rebuild those shat-

X

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tered bulwarks. Xavier, and Henry Martyn, and Swartz, and Marquette, men of prayer, circle the earth in their flaming zeal, and preach the Gospel to tens of thousands. How poor a thing is our Philanthropy beside their Religion ! But let our philanthropy be animated by a religion like theirs, — let us not merely say, To work is to 'pray^'^ but Fray that we may work^"* — and all their exploits, compared with what we may do, will be as nothing.

Every human being is an immortal soul in a mortal body. That mortal body in a few years will be laid aside, and will have gone to the earth whence it came. It is an organ, for a few years, through which the undying spiritual force within it shall be manifested and shall be developed. That spiritual force, that immortal soul, can draw its life only from God, its fount of being. Without a constant, steady communion with him, it is drawn down by its fleshly instrument, it is immersed in sense, it is buried already in the body which itself is to be buried in the grave. Inward, toward God, we must go continually for spiritual force, — outward, toward man and life, to exercise it. We must come to know and love God, the sum and substance of all spiritual life, or it is idle to talk of loving man or doing anything for

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xi him. We must have, to give. We mjsl drain from an eternal fountain, from a well that never becomes dry, in order to water the smallest garden or plot of ground.

Now, in order to have a real energy of spiritual life, we must have actual intercourse with God himself. To think about him, to meditate upon his works and ways, is one thing ; to commune with him, another. And to commune with him, we must have something to say to him ; and that something must be somethincr out of our actual life, something which really interests us, not something which we think ought to interest us. We m.ust say to God something we wish to say, and not something we think we ought to say. Our prayer must not be made of supposed proprieties ; it must be the souPs sincere desire." Therefore, God, in order that men may come into real communion with him and so receive real vital energy, — faith, love, peace, joy, — has ordered it so that we may speak to him of our real wants, and of all of them, and by an earnest petition do something towards realizing those wants. Just as, when a man ploughs the ground and plants his seed, he cooperates with divine^ laws, the natural result of which is a harvest ; so when a man prays for any thing he really wants, b xii

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and while he prays endeavors to abide in the spirit of Christ and pray out of that, he cooperates with other divine laws, the natural result of which is the receiving what he asks. Not always, not always, in either case. The man may plough and sow, and no crop come ; still, there is a tendency in ploughing and sowing to make the crop come. A man may pray for his sick child's recovery, and the child die nevertheless. But there was a tendency in Ms prayer to save his child's life. And in many cases, we may reasonably believe the power of prayer will accomplish what otherwise would not come to pass. We may believe that, if all those who are laboring for the downfall of social evils would work as much, and pray for their downfall too, — pray for wisdom, courage, faith, humility, with which to combat them, — they would speedily yield before this union of work and prayer.

One thing only is to be noticed. There are two conditions on which the full answer to prayer depends. One is Faith, — that is, to ask in earnest ; and the other is to abide in Christ, — that is, to ask in a Christian spirit. The men who have lived in believing ages have not usually prayed in a Christian spirit, or with the Christian purpose. It was not the kingdom of God they

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xlii prayed for, but their own success, the triumph of their own party, the extermination of heretics. Therefore their prayers, not being of those who abode in Christ, and his words not abiding in them, were ineffectual in obtaining their ends. The heretics were not conquered, the tomb of Christ did not remain in Christian hands. But because they asked in faith, they were themselves filled with energy which enabled them to grapple with all the powers of the world, or to stand amid flames, praising God.

But when the day comes that with their faith we shall also° ask in the spirit of Christ, with his words abiding in our minds and hearts, then not only shall we have new powers of soul given to us, but we shall see God's kingdom come. We shall see' war and slavery and cruelty, all selfish institutions and all wicked customs, crumbling away. We shall see Christ coming to reign over a world subdued by the power of Faith and Goodness.

In this treatise v/hich follows, we have attempted to set forth some of the reasons of this belief; we have v/ished to promote and revive the spirit of prayer, by showing the truth concerning it ; we have endeavored to show how Divine xiv

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Grace can be paired with Human Freedom, and Love be at one witTi Law. We have thus done something, we trust,

" to overrule the hard divorce Which parts things Natural and Divine.**

Chapter I. Peeliminaey

B£CT. PAGS

1. General Survey of the Subject. — Importance of

Prayer to the Life of the Soul .... 1

2. Present Tendency to undervalue Prayer . . 5

3. Spirit of this Age goes "to produce the Sense of

Obligation rather than of Dependence, and so weakens the Spirit of Prayer .... 7

4. Science, Phrenology, Ethics, and Spiritualism see

God rather as Law than as Love, and so weaken the Spirit of Prayer .... 9

5. Two Theories concerning Prayer which weaken

its Spirit ; — Eirst, that we ought not to pray for Temporal Things ; Second, that the only Answer to Prayer is its own Peaction . . 14

6. But the Sight of Divine Law may be united, with

that of Divine Love, as it was in Jesus Christ 16

7. To contribute toward this Reconciliation of Faith

in Order with Eaith in Love, is the Object of this Essay . 22 xvi

CONTENTS.

CHAPTEK n.

DOCTRINE OF JESUS AND THE APOSTLES CON- CERNING PRAYER.

8. " Pray in Secret ^ . . . . • .25

9. " Use no vain Kepetitions " .... 29

10. Prayer of Faith . . . . . . .35

11. Persevering Prayer 43

12. Prayer in the Name of Christ . . . .47

13. Prayer without ceasing 55

14. The Lord's Prayer 57

15. Prayers of Jesus 71

16. Prayer of Jesus in John xvii 73

17. The Prayer at Gethsemane .... 78

CHAPTER m.

OBJECTIONS TO PRATER.

18. Metaphysical and Abstract. — The Divine Attri-

butes 86

19. Scientific Objections. — Laws of Nature. —

Combe's Constitution of Man ... 88

20. Psychological Objections. — Human Freedom . 100

21. Transcendental Objections . . . . 102

22. Prayer a Reaction. — Objections to this Theory 105

23. Prayer should be only for Spiritual Blessings. —

Objections to this View . ... 109

CONTENTS. xvii CHAPTER IV.

PREPARATIONS FOR PRAYER.

24. General Remarks 116

25. Organic and Psychological Preparations . . 119

26. Preparation of the Heart 124

27. Preparation of the Mind 127

28. Experience. — Out of the Depths . . .134

CHAPTER V.

METHODS.

29. Private Prayer . 141

30. Family and Social Prayer . . • • • 145

31. Public Prayer ... ... 147

32. Liturgic or Extemporaneous . • .158

33. Stated Times and Spontaneous . , 158

34. Without Ceasing .163

35. For What? Topics of Prayer . . .165

36. To Whom? Object of Prayer . . . .170

CHAPTER YI.

MOTIVES AND RESULTS.

37. Necessity and Advantage 178

38. Prayer a Duty or a Privilege . . • .182 xviii

CONTENTS.

39. The Holy Spirit 190

40. Christ in the Heart. — Inward Life . . .192

41. Christ in the Character. — Moral Culture . 204

42. Christ in the Church. — Christian Union and Co-

operation 210

43. Christ in the World 217

CHAPTER Yn.

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

44. The Spiritual Life as the Source of Prayer . . 225

45. The Soul : its Nature and Capacities . . 226

46. The Value of the Soul, shown by Five Arguments 230

48. A Hidden Life the Evidence of Sincerity . . 243

49. The Hidden Life known to God . . . .246 60. The Natural Man does not discern Spiritual Truth 253 51. Nature of Sin, and the Absence of a Sense of Sin 266 62. How Men say they have no Sin . . ,271 53. Confession of Sin, and its Results . . . 279

THE

CHRISTIAN DOCTUmE OF PRATER.

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY.

1. General Survey of the Subject, — Impor* tance of Prayer to the Life of the Soul,

The religious needs of our time seem to require a new investigation of the Christian doctrine of Pmyer. On this subject, as on so manyothers, an unreconciled dispute has long existed between the claims of Reason on the one side, and those of Faith on the other. The theological problem for the present century is to make permanent peace, and not a mere armistice, or suspension of hostilities, between these contendmg parties. This peace cannot be effected by the triumph of either party, but only by full justice being done to the claims of both. Not by ignoring or postponing the difficulties, but by 1 fully stating them and fairly meeting them, can we now hope for any real progress, any permanent advance, in theology. Something has already been done, at least the foundation of the future temple has been laid, in the admission, now so universal among enlightened and religious men, that there can be no real conflict between Faith and Reason. It remains only to apply this prmciple, with unshrinking fidelity, to all separate questions of theology where the conflict still exists unreconciled ; and among these, the doctrine concerning Prayer is one of the most important.

This doctrine lies very near the heart of Christianity. The two great principles which constitute the Christian life are those of accountability and dependence. Religion has sometimes been defined as the sense of obligation toward God ; and again, it has been defined as the sense of dependence upon God. But if we consider the facts of religious experience, we shall see that the religious life can in no case come into existence but by the marriage of these two principles. It IS only from the action and reaction of the two upon each other, that the life of religion in the soul proceeds. The sense of obligation, without the sense of dependence, produces only moral

PRELIMINARY.

effort and struggle, — not life and progress. The sense of dependence, without the sense of obligation, produces only the fleeting and effeminate moods of pious emotion. But Christianity is neither a cold moral effort, on the one hand, nor a pious emotion on the other, but a life. It is a life in the soul, rooted in conviction, manifesting itself in action, bearing the fruits of love and joy. It IS activity, conscious yet spontaneous. It is at once a happy growth and a determined effort ; perpetual progress outward into the universe, to meet God more and more fully in the variety of his works ; perpetual inward rest in the centre of the soul in full communion with the One Alone. Now this life is constantly fed at its roots by the sight of the Divine Law, which reawakens the sense of obligation, and by the sight of the Divine Love, which creates anew the sense of dependence. The law of God rouses the soul to effort ; but no sooner is the soul thus led into active effort to do God's will, than it becomes aware of its weakness. And so it is led into the sense of dependence, that by opening itself to God it may receive from above the needed power. And again, the moment that it finds itself filled with new joy, new light, new pov/er, it is moved to exert that power in the service of Him who gave it ; and so the sense of power awakens the conviction of responsibility for the use of it. This is the natural history of Religion in the soul, — the Book of Genesis of the New Creation.

Hence we see, that, to any real Christian life, the sense of dependence is absolutely essential. But this in its largest sense is nothing other than the act of prayer. Prayer is essentially turning to God with the conviction of need, and in full reliance that this need can be supplied. Every thing else in prayer is outside of this, either as its consequence or its preparation ; something secondary, or something ancillary. This is its heart. But to produce this full reliance which is essential to prayer, it is equally essential that we should see God as the living God, coming to meet the individual soul with special help according to its special needs. We must believe not only in God as a Divine Law of universal benevolence, as a great and bounteous Order of creation, but also as bound in a personal and specific relation with each individual soul. Without this conviction, the sense of dependence is passive, and not active. It is resignation, and not expectation. It is submission, and not hope. And it is only an active, expectant, and hopefu. reliance on God which so opens the soul to Him

TENDENCY TO UNDERVALUE PRATER. 5

that His life flows into it steadily, and becomes its constant strength.

§ 2. Present Tendency to undervalue Prayer,

But there are, at the present time, many things which go to weaken, where they do not destroy, this faith in a living God. There have been ages of the world in which this was otherwise ; ages which suffered from the opposite tendency ; ages which believed rather in a particular than a universal Providence. Those were the days of miracles, visions, and preternatural visitations, — ages of Faith, but not ages of Love. They saw God inwardly, very near ; as a special, and even a partial friend. They did not see him outwardly near, as the universal and impartial Benefactor and Father. Therefore, these ages of Faith have been also ages of cruelty, tyranny, and hard selfishness ; in which man has trampled upon the rights of his brother. But the world has moved round to the opposite side of its orbit, and we are now breathing a different spiritual atmosphere. We have come to see God, with more or less distinctness, as the great Benefactor in the outward world : we see his benign providence operating for the good of the whole : but we have lost, more or less, our confidence in his 1* living presence. Seeing him as Order, we see him in no other way. For such is the limitation of the human mind, that every new revelation of truth shuts out, for the time, some other truth ; as the rising of the sun, while it reveals the earth, hides the stars. Thus the very manifestations of God in nature, in providence, in human histovj^ and in the human soul, inevitably make it more difficult to retain the faith, so natural to former ages, in God as a living God, who hears and answers prayer, and who meets the soul more than half-way. The spirit of the age is in the air we breathe. It can only be shut out by the natural barriers of ignorance, or the artificial defence of that exclusive spirit which shuts its eyes to every thing not in its own creed. But such a will- worship, while it loses the advantages of its own time, cannot effectually regain those of the past. It is only the device of the ostrich, which hides its head in the ground in order not to see the danger. Despite such precautions, the danger is at hand ; and it is better to look it in th^ face.

OBLIGATION AND DEPENDENCE.

§ 3. Spirit of this Age goes to produce the Sense of Obligation rather than of Dependence^ and so weakens the Spirit of Prayer,

What, then, are the ideas which, at the present time, tend in many to destroy, and m all to weaken, the conviction that God really hears and answers prayer, and thus, instead of the prayer of Faith, leaves us only the prayer of propriety, of duty, of sentiment, or of superstition. It is unquestionably the case, that, wherever the ideas and the culture of the present age have gone, that part of Christianity which consists in the spirit of dependence is not in equipoise with the other side, which consists in conscientious effort and the sense of duty. There is more of morality than of piety ; more of conscience than of faith ; more of duty than of devotion ; more of obedience than of prayer. Men speak of duty and of responsibility easily and naturally, as of a part of their common life. If they speak of prayer, it is in tones of formality, as of something unnatural and far off, away from actual experience. Travellers to the East are struck and awed by the spirit of pure devotion often found subsisting with the superstitions of heathenism. In Purmah and Hindostan the people are seen with their faces to the ground, absorbed in the depths of prayer, inattentive to all that is passing around them. In all Mohammedan lands, when the hour of prayer sounds from the mosque or minaret, at morning, at noon, or at the evening twilight, all business is momently suspended. The trader leaves his bargain incomplete and spreads his carpet on the floor of his shop, the sailor on the Nile falls prostrate on the deck, and if you enter the mosque, so silent that you thought it empty, you find it filled with absorbed worshippers. Pass into Roman Catholic countries, and already there is less of devotion than in Mohammedan countries, but more than in Protestant ; and in Protestant communities, the most enlightened, and perhaps we may add the most moral sects, are the least devout and prayerful. Why is it, that, as the scale of devotion rises, that of morality should sink, when we all believe that they belong together.^ Why is it that the most cultivated sects among the Protestants should be the most moral and the least devout,

— that Protestants generally should have more of morality and less of piety than the Catholics,

— that the Catholics should have more of morality and less of piety than the Mohammedans, and that perhaps the same law may apply to the re-

SCIENCE AND DEVOTION.

lation between the monotheistic Mohammedans and the polytheists of the East? Various answers may be given, but one reason at least is this : that those views of God held in our age by the most cultivated tend to produce a greater development of the conscience and the sense of obligation than of the sense of dependence ; and that those communities and nations, therefore, which partake most fully of the spirit of this time, partake also more fully both of its advantages and of its disadvantages.

§ 4. Science, Phrenology, Ethics, and Spiritualism see God rather as Law than as Love^ and so weaken the Spirit of Prayer.

But let us examine more particularly those views prevailing among ourselves which tend either to prevent or to weaken the prayer of faith. All proceed from the same idea, fundamental in modern culture, which regards God's goodness in Order, rather than his love in Freedom. But while the essential view is ever the same, a view in which the prominence of Law conceals Love, it takes different forms, according to the pursuits and tendencies of individuals. Thus we have at least four classes of thinkers, all earnest and influential, the tendency of whose pursuits is to destroy all conviction in the reality of an answer to prayer. First, there are men science, students of matter, penetrating in every direction amid the tangled phenomena of the material universe, searching always for facts and laws. These are always passing from general statements to statements still more general, always, by the necessity of their studies, removing further and further God's free creative act. We do not complain of this, still less do we approve of the charge of Atheism or of Pantheism brought against this mental tendency to substitute a more comprehensive law in place of the original creative act. If it could be shown that all the multitudinous varieties of minerals, vegetables, and animals in the world are but developments, by the operation of constant laws, out of an original nebula, this would not be atheism, nor any thing resemblmg it. ' For a law is nothing else than regularity of action ; and when we say thai every thing comes by law, we may merely say that every thing comes by God's regular and orderly activity. God is as necessary to carry on his laws, as to originate them ; and there is as much wisdom, po%er, and goodness shown in developing a universe by a regular process, out of a nebulous mass, as in producing