6. LESSONS ON PRAYER
Matt. 6:5-13; 7:7-11; Luke 11:1-13; 18:1-5.
It would have been matter for surprise if, among
the manifold subjects on which Jesus gave instruction to His disciples, prayer
had not occupied a prominent place. Prayer is a necessity of spiritual life,
and all who earnestly try to pray soon feel the need of teaching how to do it.
And what theme more likely to engage the thoughts of a Master who was Himself
emphatically a man of prayer, spending occasionally whole nights in prayerful
communion with His heavenly Father?
We find, accordingly, that prayer was a subject
on which Jesus often spoke in the hearing of His disciples. In the Sermon on
the Mount, for example, He devoted a paragraph to that topic, in which He
cautioned His hearers against pharisaic ostentation and heathenish repetition,
and recited a form of devotion as a model of simplicity, comprehensiveness, and
brevity.[6.2] At other times He directed attention to the necessity, in order
to acceptable and prevailing prayer, of perseverance,[6.3] concord,[6.4] strong
faith,[6.5] and large expectation.[6.6]
The passage cited from the eleventh chapter of
Luke's Gospel gives an account of what may be regarded as the most complete and
comprehensive of all the lessons communicated by Jesus to His disciples on the
important subject to which it relates. The circumstances in which this lesson
was given are interesting. The lesson on prayer was itself an answer to prayer.
A disciple, in all probability one of the twelve,[6.7] after hearing Jesus
pray, made the request: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples." The request and its occasion taken together convey to us
incidentally two pieces of information. From the latter we learn that Jesus,
besides praying much alone, also prayed in company with His disciples,
practising family prayer as the head of a household, as well as secret prayer
in personal fellowship with God His Father. From the former we learn that the
social prayers of Jesus were most impressive. Disciples hearing them were made
painfully conscious of their own incapacity, and after the Amen were ready
instinctively to proffer the request, "Lord, teach us to pray," as if ashamed
any more to attempt the exercise in their own feeble, vague, stammering
words.
When this lesson was given we know not, for Luke
introduces his narrative of it in the most indefinite manner, without noting
either time or place. The reference to John in the past tense might seem to
indicate a date subsequent to his death; but the mode of expression would be
sufficiently explained by the supposition that the disciple who made the
request had previously been a disciple of the Baptist.[6.8] Nor can any certain
inference be drawn from the contents of the lesson. It is a lesson which might
have been given to the twelve at any time during their disciplehood, so far as
their spiritual necessities were concerned. It is a lesson for children, for
spiritual minors, for Christians in the crude stage of the divine life,
afflicted with confusion of mind, dumbness, dejection, unable to pray for want
of clear thought, apt words, and above all, of faith that knows how to wait in
hope; and it meets the wants of such by suggesting topics, supplying forms of
language, and furnishing their weak faith with the props of cogent arguments
for perseverance. Now such was the state of the twelve during all the time they
were with Jesus; till He ascended to heaven, and power descended from heaven on
them, bringing with it a loosed tongue and an enlarged heart. During the whole
period of their discipleship, they needed prompting in prayer such as a mother
gives her child, and exhortations to perseverance in the habit of praying, even
as do the humblest followers of Christ. Far from being exempt from such
infirmities, the twelve may even have experienced them in a superlative degree.
The heights correspond to the depths in religious experience. Men who are
destined to be apostles must, as disciples, know more than most of the chaotic,
speechless condition, and of the great, irksome, but most salutary business of
Waiting on God for light, and truth, and grace, earnestly desired but long
withheld.
It was well for the church that her first
ministers needed this lesson on prayer; for the time comes in the case of most,
if not all, who are spiritually earnest, when its teaching is very seasonable.
In the spring of the divine life, the beautiful blossom-time of piety,
Christians may be able to pray with fluency and fervor, unembarrassed by want
of words, thoughts, and feelings of a certain kind. But that happy stage soon
passes, and is succeeded by one in which prayer often becomes a helpless
struggle, an inarticulate groan, a silent, distressed, despondent waiting on
God, on the part of men who are tempted to doubt whether God be indeed the
hearer of prayer, whether prayer be not altogether idle and useless. The three
wants contemplated and provided for in this lesson--the want of ideas, of
words, and of faith--are as common as they are grievous. How long it takes most
to fill even the simple petitions of the Lord's Prayer with definite meanings!
the second petition, e.g., "Thy kingdom come," which can be presented with
perfect intelligence only by such as have formed for themselves a clear
conception of the ideal spiritual republic or commonwealth. How difficult, and
therefore how rare, to find out acceptable words for precious thoughts slowly
reached! How many, who have never got any thing on which their hearts were set
without needing to ask for it often, and to wait for it long (no uncommon
experience), have been tempted by the delay to give up asking in despair! And
no wonder; for delay is hard to bear in all cases, especially in connection
with spiritual blessings, which are in fact, and are by Christ here assumed to
be, the principal object of a Christian man's desires. Devout souls would not
be utterly confounded by delay, or even refusal, in connection with mere
temporal goods; for they know that such things as health, wealth, wife,
children, home, position, are not unconditionally good, and that it may be well
sometimes not to obtain them, or not easily and too soon. But it is most
confounding to desire with all one's heart the Holy Ghost, and yet seem to be
denied the priceless boon; to pray for light, and to get instead deeper
darkness; for faith, and to be tormented with doubts which shake cherished
convictions to their foundations; for sanctity, and to have the mud of
corruption stirred up by temptation from the bottom of the well of eternal life
in the heart. Yet all this, as every experienced Christian knows, is part of
the discipline through which scholars in Christ's school have to pass ere the
desire of their heart be fulfilled.[6.9]
The lesson on prayer taught by Christ, in answer
to request, consists of two parts, in one of which thoughts and words are put
into the mouths of immature disciples, while the other provides aids to faith
in God as the answerer of prayer. There is first a form of prayer, and then an
argument enforcing perseverance in prayer.
The form of prayer commonly called the Lord's
Prayer, which appears in the Sermon on the Mount as a sample of the right kind
of prayer, is given here as a summary of the general heads under which all
special petitions may be comprehended. We may call this form the alphabet of
all possible prayer. It embraces the elements of all spiritual desire, summed
up in a few choice sentences, for the benefit of those who may not be able to
bring their struggling aspirations to birth in articulate language. It contains
in all six petitions, of which three--the first three, as was meet--refer to
God's glory, and the remaining three to man's good. We are taught to pray,
first for the advent of the divine kingdom, in the form of universal reverence
for the divine name, and universal obedience to the divine will; and then, in
the second place, for daily bread, pardon, and protection from evil for
ourselves. The whole is addressed to God as Father, and is supposed to proceed
from such as realize their fellowship one with another as members of a divine
family, and therefore say, "Our Father." The prayer does not end, as our
prayers now commonly do, with the formula, "for Christ's sake;" nor could it,
consistently with the supposition that it proceeded from Jesus. No prayer given
by Him for the present use of His disciples, before His death, could have such
an ending, because the plea it contains was not intelligible to them previous
to that event. The twelve did not yet know what Christ's sake (sache) meant,
nor would they till after their Lord had ascended, and the Spirit had descended
and revealed to them the true meaning of the facts of Christ's earthly history.
Hence we find Jesus, on the eve of His passion, telling His disciples that up
to that time they had asked nothing in His name, and representing the use of
His name as a plea to be heard, as one of the privileges awaiting them in the
future. "Hitherto," He said, "have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye
shall receive, that your joy may be full."[6.10] And in another part of His
discourse: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father
may be glorified in the Son."[6.11]
To what extent the disciples afterwards made use
of this beautifully simple yet profoundly significant form, we do not know; but
it may be assumed that they were in the habit of repeating it as the disciples
of the Baptist might repeat the forms taught them by their master. There is,
however, no reason to think that the "Lord's Prayer," though of permanent value
as a part of Christ's teaching, was designed to be a stereotyped, binding
method of addressing the Father in heaven. It was meant to be an aid to
inexperienced disciples, not a rule imposed upon apostles.[6.12] Even after
they had attained to spiritual maturity, the twelve might use this form if they
pleased, and possibly they did occasionally use it; but Jesus expected that by
the time they came to be teachers in the church they should have outgrown the
need of it as an aid to devotion. Filled with the Spirit, enlarged in heart,
mature in spiritual understanding, they should then be able to pray as their
Lord had prayed when He was with them; and while the six petitions of the model
prayer would still enter into all their supplications at the throne of grace,
they would do so only as the alphabet of a language enters into the most
extended and eloquent utterances of a speaker, who never thinks of the letters
of which the words he utters are composed.[6.13]
In maintaining the provisional, pro tempore
character of the Lords' Prayer, so far as the twelve were concerned, we lay no
stress on the fact already adverted to, that it does not end with the phrase,
"for Christ's sake." That defect could easily be supplied afterwards mentally
or orally, and therefore was no valid reason for disuse. The same remark
applies to our use of the prayer in question. To allow this form to fall into
desuetude merely because the customary concluding plea is wanting, is as weak
on one side as the too frequent repetition of it is on the other. The Lord's
Prayer is neither a piece of Deism unworthy of a Christian, nor a magic charm
like the "Pater noster" of Roman Catholic devotion. The most advanced believer
will often find relief and rest to his spirit in falling back on its simple,
sublime sentences, while mentally realizing the manifold particulars which each
of them includes; and he is but a tyro in the art of praying, and in the divine
life generally, whose devotions consist exclusively, or even mainly, in
repeating the words which Jesus put into the mouths of immature disciples.
The view now advocated regarding the purpose of
the Lord's Prayer is in harmony with the spirit of Christ's whole teaching.
Liturgical forms and religious methodism in general were much more congenial to
the strict ascetic school of the Baptist than to the free school of Jesus. Our
Lord evidently attached little importance to forms of prayer, any more than to
fixed periodic fasts, else He would not have waited till He was asked for a
form, but would have made systematic provision for the wants of His followers,
even as the Baptist did, by, so to speak, compiling a book of devotion or
composing a liturgy. It is evident, even from the present instructions on the
subject of praying, that Jesus considered the form He supplied of quite
subordinate importance: a mere temporary remedy for a minor evil, the want of
utterance, till the greater evil, the want of faith, should be cured; for the
larger portion of the lesson is devoted to the purpose of supplying an antidote
to unbelief.[6.14]
The second part of this lesson on prayer is
intended to convey the same moral as that which is prefixed to the parable of
the unjust judge--"that men ought always to pray, and not to faint." The
supposed cause of fainting is also the same, even delay on the part of God in
answering our prayers. This is not, indeed, made so obvious in the earlier
lesson as in the later. The parable of the ungenerous neighbor is not adapted
to convey the idea of long delay: for the favor asked, if granted at all, must
be granted in a very few minutes. But the lapse of time between the presenting
and the granting of our requests is implied and presupposed as a matter of
course. It is by delay that God seems to say to us what the ungenerous neighbor
said to his friend, and that we are tempted to think that we pray to no
purpose.
Both the parables spoken by Christ to inculcate
perseverance in prayer seek to effect their purpose by showing the power of
importunity in the most unpromising circumstances. The characters appealed to
are both bad--one in ungenerous, and the other unjust; and from neither is any
thing to be gained except by working on his selfishness. And the point of the
parable in either case is, that importunity has a power of annoyance which
enables it to gain its object.
It is important again to observe what is supposed
to be the leading subject of prayer in connection with the argument now to be
considered. The thing upon which Christ assumes His disciples to have set their
hearts is personal sanctification.[6.15] This appears from the concluding
sentence of the discourse: "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!" Jesus takes for granted that the persons to
whom He addresses Himself here seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness. Therefore, though He inserted a petition for daily bread in the
form of prayer, He drops that object out of view in the latter part of His
discourse; both because it is by hypothesis not the chief object of desire, and
also because, for all who truly give God's kingdom the first place in their
regards, food and raiment are thrown into the bargain.[6.16]
To such as do not desire the Holy Spirit above
all things, Jesus has nothing to say. He does not encourage them to hope that
they shall receive any thing of the Lord; least of all, the righteousness of
the kingdom, personal sanctification. He regards the prayers of a double-minded
man, who has two chief ends in view, as a hollow mockery--mere words, which
never reach Heaven's ear.
The supposed cause of fainting being delay, and
the supposed object of desire being the Holy Spirit, the spiritual situation
contemplated in the argument is definitely determined. The Teacher's aim is to
succor and encourage those who feel that the work of grace goes slowly on
within them, and wonder why it does so, and sadly sigh because it does so. Such
we conceive to have been the state of the twelve when this lesson was given
them. They had been made painfully conscious of incapacity to perform aright
their devotional duties, and they took that incapacity to be an index of their
general spiritual condition, and were much depressed in consequence.
The argument by which Jesus sought to inspire His
discouraged disciples with hope and confidence as to the ultimate fulfilment of
their desires, is characterized by boldness, geniality, wisdom, and logical
force. Its boldness is evinced in the choice of illustrations . Jesus has such
confidence in the goodness of His cause, that He states the case as
disadvantageously for Himself as possible, by selecting for illustration not
good samples of men, but persons rather below than above the ordinary standard
of human virtue. A man who, on being applied to at any hour of the night by a
neighbor for help in a real emergency, such as that supposed in the parable, or
in a case of sudden sickness, should put him off with such an answer as this,
"Trouble me not, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I
cannot rise and give thee," would justly incur the contempt of his
acquaintances, and become a byword among them for all that is ungenerous and
heartless. The same readiness to take an extreme case is observable in the
second argument, drawn from the conduct of fathers towards their children. "If
a son shall ask bread of any of you"--so it begins.[6.17] Jesus does not care
what father may be selected; He is willing to take any one they please: He will
take the very worst as readily as the best; nay, more readily, for the argument
turns not on the goodness of the parent, but rather on his want of goodness, as
it aims to show that no special goodness is required to keep all parents from
doing what would be an outrage on natural affection, and revolting to the
feelings of all mankind.
The genial, kindly character of the argument is
manifest from the insight and sympathy displayed therein. Jesus divines what
hard thoughts men think of God under the burden of unfulfilled desire; how they
doubt His goodness, and deem Him indifferent, heartless, unjust. He shows His
intimate knowledge of their secret imaginations by the cases He puts; for the
unkind friend and unnatural father, and we may add, the unjust judge, are
pictures not indeed of what God is, or of what He would have us believe God to
be, but certainly of what even pious men sometimes think Him to be.[6.18] And
He cannot only divine, but sympathize. He does not, like Job's friends, find
fault with those who harbor doubting and apparently profane thoughts, nor chide
them for impatience, distrust, and despondency. He deals with them as men
compassed with infirmity, and needing sympathy, counsel, and help. And in
supplying these, He comes down to their level of feeling, and tries to show
that, even if things were as they seem, there is no cause for despair. He
argues from their own thoughts of God, that they should still hope in Him.
"Suppose," He says in effect, "God to be what you fancy, indifferent and
heartless, still pray on; see, in the case I put, what perseverance can effect.
Ask as the man who wanted loaves asked, and ye shall also receive from Him who
seems at present deaf to your petitions. Appearances, I grant, may be very
unfavorable, but they cannot be more so in your case than in that of the
petitioner in the parable; and yet you observe how he fared through not being
too easily disheartened."
Jesus displays His wisdom in dealing with the
doubts of His disciples, by avoiding all elaborate explanations of the causes
or reasons of delay in the answering of prayer, and using only arguments
adapted to the capacity of persons weak in faith and in spiritual
understanding. He does not attempt to show why sanctification is a slow,
tedious work, not a momentary act: why the Spirit is given gradually and in
limited measure, not at once and without measure. He simply urges His hearers
to persevere in seeking the Holy Spirit, assuring them that, in spite of trying
delay, their desires will be fulfilled in the end. He teaches them no
philosophy of waiting on God, but only tells them that they shall not wait in
vain.
This method the Teacher followed not from
necessity, but from choice. For though no attempt was made at explaining divine
delays in providence and grace, it was not because explanation was impossible.
There were many things which Christ might have said to His disciples at this
time if they could have borne them; some of which they afterwards said
themselves, when the Spirit of Truth had come, and guided them into all truth,
and made them acquainted with the secret of God's way. He might have pointed
out to them, e.g., that the delays of which they complained were according to
the analogy of nature, in which gradual growth is the universal law; that time
was needed for the production of the ripe fruits of the Spirit, just in the
same way as for the production of the ripe fruits of the field or of the
orchard; that it was not to be wondered at if the spiritual fruits were
peculiarly slow in ripening, as it was a law of growth that the higher the
product in the scale of being, the slower the process by which it is
produced;[6.19] that a momentary sanctification, though not impossible, would
be as much a miracle in the sense of a departure from law, as was the immediate
transformation of water into wine at the marriage in Cana; that if
instantaneous sanctification were the rule instead of the rare exception, the
kingdom of grace would become too like the imaginary worlds of children's
dreams, in which trees, fruits, and palaces spring into being full-grown, ripe,
and furnished, in a moment as by enchantment, and too unlike the real, actual
world with which men are conversant, in which delay, growth, and fixed law are
invariable characteristics.
Jesus might further have sought to reconcile His
disciples to delay by descanting on the virtue of patience. Much could be said
on that topic. It could be shown that a character cannot be perfect in which
the virtue of patience has no place, and that the gradual method of
sanctification is best adapted for its development, as affording abundant scope
for its exercise. It might be pointed out how much the ultimate enjoyment of
any good thing is enhanced by its having to be waited for; how in proportion to
the trial is the triumph of faith; how, in the quaint words of one who was
taught wisdom in this matter by his own experience, and by the times in which
he lived, "It is fit we see and feel the shaping and sewing of every piece of
the wedding garment, and the framing and moulding and fitting of the crown of
glory for the head of the citizen of heaven;" how "the repeated sense and
frequent experience of grace in the ups and downs in the way, the falls and
risings again of the traveller, the revolutions and changes of the spiritual
condition, the new moon, the darkened moon, the full moon in the Spirit's
ebbing and flowing, raiseth in the heart of saints on their way to the country
a sweet smell of the fairest rose and lily of Sharon;" how, "as travellers at
night talk of their foul ways, and of the praises of their guide, and battle
being ended, soldiers number their wounds, extol the valor, skill, and courage
of their leader and captain," so "it is meet that the glorified soldiers may
take loads of experience of free grace to heaven with them, and there speak of
their way and their country, and the praises of Him that hath redeemed them out
of all nations, tongues, and languages."[6.20]
Such considerations, however just, would have
been wasted on men in the spiritual condition of the disciples. Children have
no sympathy with growth in any world, whether of nature or of grace. Nothing
pleases them but that an acorn should become an oak at once, and that
immediately after the blossom should come the ripe fruit. Then it is idle to
speak of the uses of patience to the inexperienced; for the moral value of the
discipline of trial cannot be appreciated till the trial is past. Therefore, as
before stated, Jesus abstained entirely from reflections of the kind suggested,
and adopted a simple, popular style of reasoning which even a child could
understand.
The reasoning of Jesus, while very simple, is
very cogent and conclusive. The first argument--that contained in the parable
of the ungenerous neighbor--is fitted to inspire hope in God, even in the
darkest hour, when He appears indifferent to our cry, or positively unwilling
to help, and so to induce us to persevere in asking. "As the man who wanted the
loaves knocked on louder and louder, with an importunity that knew no
shame,[6.21] and would take no refusal, and thereby gained his object, the
selfish friend being glad at last to get up and serve him out of sheer regard
to his own comfort, it being simply impossible to sleep with such a noise; so
(such is the drift of the argument), so continue thou knocking at the door of
heaven, and thou shalt obtain thy desire if it were only to be rid of thee. See
in this parable what a power importunity has, even at a most unpromising
time--midnight--and with a most unpromising person, who prefers his own comfort
to a neighbor's good: ask, therefore, persistently, and it shall be given unto
you also; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
At one point, indeed, this most pathetic and
sympathetic argument seems to be weak. The petitioner in the parable had the
selfish friend in his power by being able to annoy him and keep him from
sleeping. Now, the tried desponding disciple whom Jesus would comfort may
rejoin: "What power have I to annoy God, who dwelleth on high, far beyond my
reach, in imperturbable felicity? 'Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that
I might come even to His seat! But, behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
and backward, but I cannot perceive Him: on the left hand, where He doth work,
but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see
Him.' "[6.22] The objection is one which can hardly fail to occur to the subtle
spirit of despondency, and it must be admitted that it is not frivolous. There
is really a failure of the analogy at this point. We can annoy a man, like the
ungenerous neighbor in bed, or the unjust judge, but we cannot annoy God. The
parable does not suggest the true explanation of divine delay, or of the
ultimate success of importunity. It merely proves, by a homely instance, that
delay, apparent refusal, from whatever cause it may arise, is not necessarily
final, and therefore can be no good reason for giving up asking.
This is a real if not a great service rendered.
But the doubting disciple, besides discovering with characteristic acuteness
what the parable fails to prove, may not be able to extract any comfort from
what it does prove. What is he to do then? Fall back on the strong asseveration
with which Jesus follows up the parable: "And I say unto you." Here, doubter,
is an oracular dictum from One who can speak with authority; One who has been
in the bosom of the eternal God, and has come forth to reveal His inmost heart
to men groping in the darkness of nature after Him, if haply they might find
Him. When He addresses you in such emphatic, solemn terms as these, "I say unto
you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you," you may take the matter on His word, at least pro
tempore. Even those who doubt the reasonableness of prayer, because of the
constancy of nature's laws and the unchangeableness of divine purposes, might
take Christ's word for it that prayer is not vain, even in relation to daily
bread, not to speak of higher matters, until they arrive at greater certainty
on the subject than they can at present pretend to. Such may, if they choose,
despise the parable as childish, or as conveying crude anthropopathic ideas of
the Divine Being, but they cannot despise the deliberate declarations of One
whom even they regard as the wisest and best of men.
The second argument employed by Jesus to urge
perseverance in prayer is of the nature of a reductio ad absurdum, ending with
a conclusion [hungarumlaut]fortiori. "If," it is reasoned, "God refused to hear
His children's prayers, or, worse still, if He mocked them by giving them
something bearing a superficial resemblance to the things asked, only to cause
bitter disappointment when the deception was discovered, then were He not only
as bad as, but far worse than, even the most depraved of mankind. For, take
fathers at random, which of them, if a son were to ask bread, would give him a
stone? or if he asked a fish, would give him a serpent? or if he asked an egg,
would offer him a scorpion? The very supposition is monstrous. Human nature is
largely vitiated by moral evil; there is, in particular, an evil spirit of
selfishness in the heart which comes into conflict with the generous
affections, and leads men ofttimes to do base and unnatural things. But men
taken at the average are not diabolic; and nothing short of a diabolic spirit
of mischief could prompt a father to mock a child's misery, or deliberately to
give him things fraught with deadly harm. If, then, earthly parents, though
evil in many of their dispositions, give good, and, so far as they know, only
good, gifts to their children, and would shrink with horror from any other mode
of treatment, is it to be credited that the Divine Being, that Providence, can
do what only devils would think of doing? On the contrary, what is only barely
possible for man is for God altogether impossible, and what all but monsters of
iniquity will not fail to do God will do much more. He will most surely give
good gifts, and only good gifts, to His asking children; most especially will
He give His best gift, which His true children desire above all things, even
the Holy Spirit, the enlightener and the sanctifier. Therefore again I say unto
you: Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened."
Yet it is implied in the very fact that Christ
puts such cases as a stone given for bread, a serpent for a fish, or a scorpion
for an egg, that God seems at least sometimes so to treat His children. The
time came when the twelve thought they had been so treated in reference to the
very subject in which they were most deeply interested, after their own
personal sanctification, viz., the restoration of the kingdom to Israel. But
their experience illustrates the general truth, that when the Hearer of prayer
seems to deal unnaturally with His servants, it is because they have made a
mistake about the nature of good, and have not known what they asked. They have
asked for a stone, thinking it bread, and hence the true bread seems a stone;
for a shadow, thinking it a substance, and hence the substance seems a shadow.
The kingdom for which the twelve prayed was a shadow, hence their
disappointment and despair when Jesus was put to death: the egg of hope, which
their fond imagination had been hatching, brought forth the scorpion of the
cross, and they fancied that God had mocked and deceived them. But they lived
to see that God was true and good, and that they had deceived themselves, and
that all which Christ had told them had been fulfilled. And all who wait on God
ultimately make a similar discovery, and unite in testifying that "the Lord is
good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him."[6.23]
For these reasons should all men pray, and not
faint. Prayer is rational, even if the Divine Being were like men in the
average, not indisposed to do good when self-interest does not stand in the
way--the creed of heathenism. It is still more manifestly rational if, as
Christ taught and Christians believe, God be better than the best of men--the
one supremely good Being--the Father in heaven. Only in either of two cases
would prayer really be irrational: if God were no living being at all,--the
creed of atheists, with whom Christ holds no argument; or if He were a being
capable of doing things from which even bad men would start back in horror,
i.e., a being of diabolic nature,--the creed, it is to be hoped, of no human
being.
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