The fact of prayer, its problems and possibilities

Front matter

The Fact of Prayer

ITS PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIE Aa OF PRINGS c S ? rh i + EN

| be, e / By SCL ogicat gen

Preface

OOKS on the subject of prayer are innumerable,

and not a few of them are of such excellence that they have become classics. The theme, however, is very vital, and there is still room for discussion of it. Some justification for the appearance of a new volume on the old topic may perhaps be found in the fact that its point of approach is not the usual one. Though this is not primarily a devotional work, one hopes that this element will not be found altogether wanting. If the aim is lower it is still a worthy aim. The book assumes that prayer is a fundamental fact of our natures. On this basis there is an attempt to show:—

First, the certainty of the great truths of the spiritual realm which it presupposes—in a word, the fact that on the side of religion, as well as through our senses, we come in contact with reality.

Second, that the instinctive needs of our souls, as these are expressed in genuine worship, form a -criterion of truth in the religious sphere, and that, tried by this standard, Christianity built upon the 7

8 PREFACE person and work of the divine Christ, is vindicated as the sufficient, universal, and final religion.

Third, that supplication to the Father, on the basis of this great redemptive plan, is the secret of victory over evil within us and without, and over all the sorrows and changes of time. These are fundamental affirmations, although they are not formally treated in this order. I should be happy to think that this discussion had impressed the same convictions upon some others, had steadied some who were troubled with doubts, and had induced some to begin what Brother Lawrence called ‘‘ The Practice of the Presence of God.”

The book is based in part upon a few lectures given at different times and places, although these have been | revised and expanded until little of the original material remains. A considerable portion of the fourteenth chapter was taken from an article published in The Bibliotheca Sacra.

J. E. W.

San Anselmo, Cal.

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VIT.

VIil.

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XIV.

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CONTENTS |

Part I THE REALITY OF PRAYER

PIRAMER TAS VAULUAC TI Umi) CaN aN te MG ei THE VALIDITY OF PRAYER . ....

ATE ODI OR VE RAVER (isl b) o.4 \euiauibmeuina ahi PRAYER AS COMMUNION WITH GoD...

Part IT PROBLEMS OF PRAYER THE PLACE OF PRAYER IN THE VAST CREATION PRAYER AND THE WILL oF Gop PRAYER AND THE WORLD’S ORDER .

PRAYER AND MIRACLE

Part III UsES OF PRAYER

. PRAYER AND Bopity HEALING . ;

PRAYER AND IMMORTALITY .

SoctaL ASPECTS OF PRAYER .

13 26 45 60 76

83 93 109 i ODE A ae i Wy ‘ Seas A G\aphlear S em a mi 2

Part I The Reality Of Prayer I Prayer As A Fact

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until at find rest in Thee.”—AUGUSTINE.

“ 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 or 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.” —TENNYSON.

a eee honest investigator who would make a “ correct draft of human nature” must take into account this notable phenomenon, that men pray. It is a practice which is virtually universal. There are apparent exceptions to the rule, but, however striking they may in some cases be, they are, at best, exceptions. It is to be conceded too that this expression of the religious nature has often taken forms which are faulty, selfish, superstitious and degrading.

To tie petitions on a wheel and whirl them in the air, to tell the beads of a rosary, is doubtless to make use of a method which is unintelligent and mechanical; and indeed to repeat familiar words by rote, when the thoughts are far away, is to do the same.

Furthermore, supplication may be offered for things which are not good, even for things which are positively evil—for the blood of enemies, for rapine and plunder, for gratification of ambition at the expense of the suffering of others; but even such travesties of true prayer testify, however maladroitly, that there is a side of our natures which must go out toward God.

Certainly, if we have in mind only outward acts of devotion, such as the expressing of our needs in words, the placing of the body in a reverent attitude, or the keeping sacred of set times, we can make no sweeping assertions about the universality of these approaches to deity. But there are probably few who would defend so narrow a definition of this great spiritual phenomenon. Man is “incurably religious,” and prayer is the natural and inevitable expression of his religious nature, and is not the exclusive possession of any of the great historic religions.

It does not depend upon the creed, though it may be marred by ignorance or error. It is at bottom seeking after God and communion with God. It may be put into words or be only a wistful thought, a breathing of desire. It may be an act of worship, but in some great souls it has seemed to be the habitual state of mind. It tends to grow weak unless it is given utterance at stated seasons, and yet there is truth in the saying of the old monks, Laborare est orare, and the saintly Brother Lawrence, who was a cook in a monastery, said that he observed the hours as ordered by his superiors, but that he had as full a sense of the presence of God when at work in the kitchen as when on his knees before the holy sacrament. Thus there are innumerable ways and myriads of circumstances in which prayer goes up from needy hearts to the Father in heaven.

This experience in which the finite comes into contact with the infinite may have different phases. The loftiest souls at their greatest moments have not infrequently been thrilled with the sense of the presence of God, an enjoyment of fellowship in which nothing was asked and nothing was needed, and the human response to the divine manifestation was deep adoration. But such visits to the King’s country always produce in a sensitive conscience a feeling of unworthiness like that which led Isaiah to exclaim, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;” and so true supplications ~ must not lack the element of confession.

Moreover, prayer is more than contemplation and communion. That common view is not at fault which speaks of a throne of grace, of One who is ready to help in time of need, and which therefore thinks of this spiritual exercise mainly in the aspect of petition. There is but one fitting frame of mind when blessings have been received, and that is thanksgiving. Nor must we in our requests forget others. This act of worship grows in power when two or three are met together, and even in the closet when the doors are shut it ought again and again to take the form of intercession. There may be true prayer, however, with some or all of these characteristics, among those who are quite unconscious of such distinctions and have never in any way attempted to analyse their almost instinctive appeals to the God, or gods, whom they acknowledge.

If we are here dealing with an essential human trait which is virtually universal, it is a fact which is of immeasurable importance. It is true indeed that now and again some traveller will report that he has found a tribe with no idea of God and with no aspirations or practices which even remotely resemble supplication to Him. So often has further and deeper investigation demonstrated the falsity of such first impressions that one may with a good deal of confidence affirm that some primitive impulses thus to worship are the inheritance of the race. But this is not the whole story. There are tendencies of precisely the opposite kind.

Cases are cited of men who seem to have been converted from faith in God to a life of defiant unbelief. In many of these instances the revolt from the usual practice is not as violent as it seems. Times of special need come, and then, even after years of neglect, help from above is sought once more. Thomas Carlyle, in a famous letter, tells how, though he had long abandoned the devotional habits in which he was brought up, he was once more indulging in something like petitions to God. He was essentially a man of prayer. Abraham Lincoln was at one time a doubter, though not for long. The anguish and stress of war drove him to his knees and his life took on a most Christian attitude. And the obscure men and women who in the same manner have fallen only to rise cannot be numbered for multitude.

It must, however, be confessed that after full allowance is made for exceptions that can be thus explained there is still a remainder. There is no reason to doubt that there are barren hearts with no springs from which flow the waters of praise and petition; some perhaps have never learned to pray, others spurn the impulse to do so until it seems to die of starvation. What shall we say of these things?

This first, that when we deal with religion we have entered the field of values, we are interested in those supreme things, beauty, truth, and goodness, especially the last. (It is not meant that religion can be analysed into ethics or esthetics or any combinations of them. Cf. Otto, Das Heilige.) Of course, these abstract conceptions can never alone be the objects of worship. One cannot enter into fellowship with them. One cannot call upon them for help in time of need. Nothing can satisfy our deepest cravings except a God in whom these transcendant values have their home and of whom they are the manifestations. Him we can adore and to Him we can present our pleas for assistance. To Him we can say, “ Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,” “ Guide me in thy truth and teach me,” “‘ Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory! ”

Now, the fitting response to these highest values is something more than mere intellectual apprehension, they demand appreciation, and appreciation is impossible unless there be power to appreciate, unless there be faculty and insight and vision. This native gift may be small or large, but in any case it is at first only a latent capacity which must be awakened and developed. For example, there is a world of beauty in that melody and harmony of sounds that we call music, and it is probable that this beauty makes at least some slight appeal to every sane mind. But a great difference between different individuals in this respect shows itself in early childhood. The gifted Mozart begins the study of the art to which his nature was attuned at the age of three. Of the great pianist Paderewski it is said that he never forgets an air. But there are those like General Grant who cannot tell one tune from another. And the strains that will thrill a Mozart or a Paderewski may mean nothing to the man who has no such endowments as theirs.

Moreover, natures of the finest quality in this respect often lie comparatively dormant because of untoward circumstances and lack of training, or their development is thwarted like that of the gnarled and twisted tree which has been given the wrong direction. The beautiful folk songs of many nations give evidence that many a “ mute inglorious ” Bach or Beethoven is buried unknown to fame in some country churchyard. Genius itself may be smothered by the commonplace, baffied by the contradictions of outrageous fortune, or led astray until it is befouled by mire and filth.

The real musician must first of all have some true faculty, and it must be called out and matured by study and practice. He must have a growing familiarity with the best things in the art to which he is devoted. He must give time to his chosen pursuit and often neglect other interests which are good in themselves for the sake of the higher value. In a sense the musician, like the poet, is born, not made. In another sense he is the product of discipline and environment.

The same principles hold good in the field of moral and religious values. Some great souls were born with a singularly rich religious endowment. We cannot but believe that such men as St. Paul and St. Augustine, St. Francis and St. Bernard, Luther and Savonarola, Newman and Spurgeon, had by nature a spark of divine fire, a gift of spiritual sensitiveness that may be called genius. But persons of the very opposite type are often met, perhaps most admirable persons in many ways, but marvellously unresponsive to the appeals of the unseen and eternal. :

Such statements might be made—indeed, have been made—about one of our greatest historians, Lord Macaulay. He was a man of brilliant powers and of most attractive personality, manly and yet tender, loyal to his friends, most devoted to those bound to him by ties of blood, irreproachable in public and private conduct, leaving behind him, as his nephew and biographer said, the record of a life every act of which was as clear as one of his own sentences; but what was his inner life? He himself scarcely gave an indication that he had an inner life. In all his voluminous writings, in his masterly history, in his splendid essays, In his charming letters, though he discussed ecclesiastical affairs and pictured religious life with extraordinary eloquence, it would be hard to find a hint that he for a moment pondered what his contemporary, Daniel Webster, called the greatest thought that ever entered his own mind, the thought of his responsibility to almighty God. Perhaps the church circles which he encountered at some period awakened invincible prejudices in his keen intellect. But the probability rather is that, lavish as nature had been in her gifts to him, there was one which she had bestowed only in the most stinted measure, the gift of spiritual insight and appreciation.

It cannot be conceded, however, that any normal human is absolutely devoid of religious capacity. This may in some cases be very slight, just as artistic and musical ability is often hardly discernible, but the mind that had no least trace of these powers would not be whole and sound. It is surely not too great boldness to believe that no one of our race is born without some faint outlines of the image of God. But the nature may be like a field which lies fallow from neglect. It may produce harvests of weeds and briars. It may be trodden down and hardened by the cares of the world and the lust of other things. The devout life is not the result of accident or necessity. It comes of deep plowing, of constant cultivation, of openness to the sun of righteousness and the showers of His blessings. ‘The spiritual faculty, even when given in good measure, may be atrophied, and the life will become cold and barren.

Such neglect of some of the finer capacities seems by his own confession to have occurred in the development of a very great man, Charles Darwin. He had at one time enjoyed poetry and kindred arts, been devoted to the beautiful rather than what is commonly called the useful. He came to be almost incapable of appreciating them. His mind, he felt, had turned into a kind of machine for collecting facts and drawing inferences from them. Making full allowance for selfdepreciation and for the exaggeration which is often to be found in confessions, it is sufficient to pronounce that this great thinker had allowed some of his noblest powers, spiritual insight apparently being among them, to wither and almost die of neglect. His devotion to one value, truth, in some of its aspects, had blinded him to certain higher values, even including truth in other phases. In the same way does the practice of the presence of God well nigh cease in many souls. It is a high art which demands devotion and practice. Yet for all that it is strange how the sense of things divine, even dulled by long disuse, or worse yet, seared by the fires of transgression, will awaken, and perhaps the stings of remorse will prove that it still lives.

There is another, a more fundamental reason, for the apparent exceptions to the universality of prayer. The present condition of our race can be explained only on the assumption that there has been a moral and spiritual tragedy in its past history by which the image of God has been, not effaced, but defaced, by which the thirst for God has been perverted into a restless discontent, hewing out cisterns, broken and empty cisterns that can hold no water, by which the vision of God has been so clouded that men think of Him as altogether such an one as themselves and change His incorruptible glory into images made by the hand or the imagination, by which desire has been estranged from God in whose will is our peace, and fear and hate have taken the place of love and trust. Our nature is a magnificent palace, but the palace is in ruins.

This is not, as some would have us think, merely the teaching of Christianity which inherited, as they allege, harsh Jewish prejudices and ascetic notions, hostile to the healthy freedom of nature. It may rather be asserted that all the great world religions assume and assert with greater or less clearness that there is something wrong with the children of earth, and that their hope must be in the mercy of God. One sect of Buddhists in Japan have built their teachings substantially upon this foundation so directly that a Jesuit missionary described their doctrine as a sort of Buddhist Lutheranism (Moore, History of Religions, Mek. 152-11.):

This sense of human failure and guilt gives an undertone of sadness to the profoundest poetry of the ages. It can be heard in the great dramas of the Greeks, as well as in the Book of Job, the Divine Comedy of Dante, and the tragedies of Shakespeare.

Nay, the deepest thinker among modern English masters of song sees a reason for accepting the religion of Christ in the fact that it so emphatically affirms this unpalatable truth.

“The candid incline to surmise of late That the Christian faith proves false, I find; For our Essays and Reviews’ debate Begins to tell on the public mind And Colenso’s words have weight.

“T still, to suppose tt true, for my part, See reasons and reasons; this to begin: Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie—taught original sin

The corruption of man’s heart.”

—BRowNIna.

The considerations by which some seek to minimize the significance of these facts either give very partial explanations of them or are quite unconvincing. Thus it is alleged that we face here only the inevitable condition of progress, namely, that ideals must outrun attainment; that sin is just this natural sense of the disparity between our dreams and our achievements. This does indeed throw some light on the problem. But it does not account for the feeling of shame and of guilt, the remorse, the self-condemnation that comes from the conviction that the evil need not have been done and that the good might have been chosen. Or some of those who hold that the human race came to its present condition through a long course of evolution—a hypothesis to which religion need not object as long as it does not attempt to shut God out of the process—insist that those bad tendencies which manifest themselves so early in every life and are not wholly overcome even by the most saintly, are survivals from lower stages in the upward course, remnants of the brute inheritance.

But it must not be forgotten that when the point was reached at which “ the ape and tiger died” and the light of reason and conscience dawned even with the faintest beams, the meaning of these baser instincts was entirely changed. The very capacity for God gave them an ethical character. Bloodthirstiness in a wolf or a panther is not sin; it is simply an animal appetite without any moral colour. But in one who is a potential son of God bloodthirstiness is a crime, a defiance of the Father of all, a wrong to society, and an injury to the soul that harbours it, branding that soul with the mark of Cain.

The easiest explanation of the facts of history and of conscience is to say that, though our race has made immense advances in knowledge and culture and civilization, it has suffered a moral and spiritual fall, by refusing the higher call which it dimly heard and yielding to those lower instincts which it was now capable of overcoming, that thus an inclination to evil was fastened upon human nature, and that this miserable inheritance was handed down from generation to generation according to the law of heredity, the scientific term (though broader in its application) for what theologians call original sin.

And so there are two opposite tendencies in us, which are perpetually at war. Our souls are athirst for God and yet we flee from His presence. It is natural to pray, but in our present evil state it is also natural to neglect, or worse still, to hate prayer. Sin, like a foul distemper, has infected all sides of our being and our religious affections themselves have not escaped the disease. Our ideas of God Himself have been debased, as if he were altogether such an one as ourselves. Worship has often been connected with the lowest vices. Supplications have gone up from lying lips and guilty hearts, for things that are wicked and abominable.

Estrangement from the Father in heaven discovers itself in the very effort to draw near to Him. The ultimate proof of our need of divine assistance, or rather of life from above, is our dull insensibility to that need. For none is the water of life more necessary

\than for those who are losing their thirst. The curse of our starving condition is that it causes loss of appetite, and loathing for the bread of life, the lack of which is death. Professor William James summed up the results of his investigations of the varieties of religious experience in these two findings, that “ there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand,” and that “we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers ” (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 508). And the tragedy of this wrongness is that it renders it hard to make that proper connection with the higher powers by which alone it can be righted.

Nevertheless, the capacity for God, the tendency to feel after and find Him, often thwarted by the humdrum round of circumstances and baffled through the opposition within, continually asserts itself, and this is the all-important matter. It is questionable if there are any so lost to good that they never have felt some stirrings of uneasiness over their defiance of heaven, some drawings of the cords of divine love. In spite of its difficulty and their own evil desires, men do pray. ‘““He hath set eternity in their heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11b). The hunger for God pursues unceasingly even in the far country and cannot be appeased by the husks of the swine. This is one of the supremely significant facts of life.

“T fled Him down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precimtated Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase And unperturbed pace, Delrberate speed, majestic instancy They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the feet— ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest me.” —Francis THOMPSON.

II THE VALIDITY OF PRAYER

“ All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard tt once: we shall hear it by and by.” —BrowNIna.

“There 1s as much ground, or as little, for trusteng to the report of the moral faculty, as for believing our perceptions, in regard to an external world, or our intellect respecting the relations of number and dimension. Whatever the ‘authority’ of Reason respecting the true, the same is the ‘authority’ of Conscience for the right and the good.” —MartTINEAU.

HE tendency to pray, that is, to seek after God and to ask His help in any of the various ways in which spirit can speak to spirit, is natural. Is it, also justifiable? Can we, in this modern world, with its tremendous growth in knowledge of the universe, with its marvellous success in investigating natural law and explaining by means of it the forces that operate around us, vindicate for this essential feature of the religious life a right to exist?

The very act and attitude of supplication carry certain implications. If it means fellowship, there must be some being with whom that communion is maintained. If it is adoration, there must be an object of reverence. If it is confession, there must be some > one who is wronged, and to whom acknowledgment is made. If it is petition, there must be some one to hear and answer the request. All our spiritual aspirations are meaningless, they are indeed sheer folly, unless there be in the spiritual world something which corresponds to them and can finally satisfy them. As the eye is made for light and demands light, as the ear is made for sound and demands sound, as an intelligent mind is made for an intelligible environment, and demands an intelligible environment, so the prayer instinct is made for God and demands a God in whom the supreme religious values find their home. (I use the word “‘ instinct,” of course, in the somewhat loose popular sense, not in the strict scientific application of it. Cf. McDougall, Soctal Psychology, p. 22 ff.)

It may, to be sure, be argued that true worship has great and profound influence for good upon the soul from which it comes, that it inspires courage for life’s battle, produces resignation in adversity, awakens hope when all is dark, faith when sight fails, and love the greatest of the graces; that these are an enrichment of the spirit itself; and that they ought to be cultivated and may be won in increasing measure, even if there be no Father in heaven, no spiritual world, and no immortality.

The unanswerable reply to such reasonings must be that prayer has these subjective effects, only because it is believed to have a much higher meaning. Let men once be convinced that it is merely a spiritual gymnastic, that it has no power to cause any changes except in the mind from which it springs, that it is a sort of auto-suggestion and nothing more, then it would soon cease to be even a real spiritual gymnastic. It would die of inanition. If all faith in the unseen and eternal were dissipated, this practice might for a time survive, from the momentum of ages of belief, from habit, and because the hunger of the heart will often defy the logic of the head, but its life would be gone, its dynamic would be lacking. If our cry to God is nothing but “a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea,” let us bravely face the fact, but let us not delude ourselves and stultify our own reason by insisting that we can still retain the values of a religion which we have repudiated. It is fundamental to the idea of prayer that it is a relation between two, the creature and the Creator. If that fundamental idea must be given up, so be it. Assuredly all worship, all supplication must be given up, too.

The central position to be defended in these pages, however, is that, on the religious side of our natures as truly as on the side of our senses—perhaps indeed more truly than in the latter sphere—we touch the world of reality. The values which we must instinctively put highest are the supreme values, and will not disappoint us. We cannot believe that we were created to be deceived and that the constitution of our being is a lie. It may no doubt be necessary to clear away obstructions, to make allowance for perversions and degradations in our spiritual instincts before they can speak in a voice that is clear and authoritative. _“ What people call facts of their inner religious history always involve in some degree a process of interpretation through a system of religious beliefs and ideas ” (Galloway, Philosophy of Religion, p. 254). The data as given may not be pure data and it may require analysis and criticism to separate the grain from the chaff. This is true even of information which comes to us through the channel of the eye and the ear. But after all such subtractions are made, there remains a residuum of no small proportions and of unmistakable significance.