LORD, TEACH US TO
PRAY
LORD,
TEACH US
TO
PRAY
SERMONS ON PRAYER
BY
ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D., LL.D.
HODDER AND
First Edition printed . . . March 1922
Second Edition . . . . . May 1922
Third Edition . . . . . June 1922
_________________________________________________________________
PREFACE
It is not the purpose of this Preface
to anticipate the biography of Dr.
Whyte, now being prepared by Dr. G.
Freeland Barbour, or to provide a
considered estimate of the great
preacher’s work as a whole. But it may be
well briefly to explain the appearance
of the present volume, and to take
it, so far as it goes, as a mirror of
the man. The desire has been expressed
in various quarters that this sequence
of sermons on prayer should appear by
itself. Possibly it may be followed at
a later date by a representative
volume of discourses, taken from
different points in Dr. Whyte’s long
ministry. It is a curious fact that he
who was by general consent the
greatest Scottish preacher of his day
published during his lifetime no
volume of Sunday morning sermons, though
his successive series of character
studies, given as evening lectures,
were numerous and widely known.
At the close of the winter season,
1894-95, Dr. Whyte had brought to a
conclusion a lengthy series of pulpit
studies in the teaching of our Lord.
It was evident that our Lord’s
teaching about prayer had greatly fascinated
him: more than one sermon upon that
had been included. And in the winter of
1895-96, he began a series of
discourses in which St. Luke xi. i, “Lord,
teach us to pray,” was combined with
some other text, in order to exhibit
various aspects of the life of prayer.
The most of these discourses were
preached in 1895-96, though a few came
in 1897; and at intervals till 1906
some of them were re-delivered, or the
sequence was added to. On the whole,
in Dr. Whyte’s later ministry, no
theme was so familiar to his congregation
or so beloved by himself as “Luke
eleven and one.” To include the whole
series here would have made a volume
far too bulky: in a sequence stretching
over so long a time and dealing with
themes so closely allied, there is a
considerable amount of repetition: it
was necessary to select. For instance,
Paul’s Prayers and Thanksgivings were
dealt with at length, and are here
represented only by two examples.
Further, it has not been possible to give
the sermons in chronological order;
Dr. Whyte dealt with the aspect of the
matter uppermost in his mind for the
week, and followed no plan which is now
discernible: for the grouping,
therefore, as for the selection, the present
editors are responsible. They hope
that the volume so selected and arranged
may be a sufficient indication of the
style and spirit of the whole
sequence. [1] The Scottish pulpit owes
much to “Courses” of sermons, in
which some great theme could be
deliberately treated, some vast tract of
doctrine or experience adequately
surveyed. This method of preaching may be
out of fashion with the restless mind
of to-day, but in days when it was
patiently heard it had an immensely educative effect: it was a means at
once
of enlarging and deepening. And Dr.
Whyte’s people were often full of
amazement at the endless force,
freshness and fervour which he poured into
this series, bringing out of “Luke
eleven and one,” as out of a treasury,
things new and old.
Nobody else could have preached these
sermons,—after much reading and
re-reading of them that remains the
most vivid impression: there can be few
more strongly personal documents in
the whole literature of the pulpit. Of
course, his favourites appear—Dante
and Pascal,
and Edwards: they contribute their
gift of illustration or enforcement, and
fade away. But these pages are
Alexander Whyte: the glow and radiance of
them came out of that flaming heart.
Those who knew and loved him will
welcome the autobiographic touches: In
one of the sermons he recommends his
hearers so to read the New Testament
that it shall be autobiographic of
themselves: if ever a man read his Bible so, it was he. The 51st Psalm
and
many another classical passage of
devotion took on a new colour and savour
because, with the simplest and
intensest sincerity, he found his own
autobiography in them. Who that heard
it spoken could ever forget the
description, given on one of the
following pages, of the wintry walk of one
who thought himself forsaken of God,
until the snows of Schiehallion made
him cry, “Wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow,” and brought back God’s
peace to his heart? But in a more
general sense this whole volume is
autobiographic. “Deliver your own
message” was his counsel to his colleague,
John Kelman. He did so himself: it is
here. One or two ingredients in it are
specially noteworthy.
1. One is his wonderful gift of
Imagination. It is characteristic of him
that, in his treatment of his chosen
theme, he should give one whole
discourse to the use of the
imagination in prayer. But there is scarcely a
sermon which does not at some point
illustrate the theme of that discourse.
Here was a soul “full of eyes.” He had
the gift of calling up before himself
that of which he spoke; and, speaking
with his eye on the object, as he
loved to put it, he made his hearers
see it too with a vividness which often
startled them and occasionally amused
them. The Scripture scene was extended
by some lifelike touch which increased
the sense of reality without
exceeding the bounds of probability. A
case in point is the man who knocked
at
dogs bark at him.” And sometimes the
imagination clothes itself in a certain
grim grotesquerie which arrests the
slumbering attention and is entirely
unforgettable, as in the description
of the irreverent family at
prayers,—their creaking chairs, their
yawns and coughs and sneezes, their
babel of talk unloosed before the Amen
is well uttered. These pages contain
many instances of the imagination
which soars, as he bids her do, on shining
wing, up past sun, moon and stars, but
also of a more pedestrian
imagination, with shrewd eyes and a
grave smile, busy about the criticism of
life and the healthy castigation of
human nature.
2. Along with this goes a strongly dramatic instinct. This provides some
words and phrases in the following
pages, which might not stand the test of
a cold or pedantic criticism. A strict
editorship might have cut them out:
Dr. Whyte himself might have done so,
had he revised these pages for the
press. But they have been allowed to
stand because they now enshrine a
memory: even after twenty-five years
or more, they will bring back to some
hearers the moments when the
preacher’s eyes were lifted off his manuscript,
when his hand was suddenly flung out
as though he tracked the movements of
an invisible presence, when his voice
expanded into a great cry that rang
into every corner of the church. In
this mood the apostrophe was
instinctive: “O Paul, up in heaven, be
merciful in thy rapture! Hast thou
forgotten that thou also was once a
wretched man?” Equally instinctive to it
is the tendency to visualise, behind
an incident or an instance, its scenery
and background: “the man of all prayer
is still on his knees. . . . See! the
day breaks over his place of prayer!
See! the
in on the earth.” Occasionally—very
ocasionally but all the more effectively
because so seldom—the dramatic instinct
found fuller scope in a lengthy
quotation from Shakespeare or even
from Ibsen. The intellectual and
spiritual effect was almost
overwhelming the morning he preached on our
Lord’s prayer in
with “the blood of the garden, and of
the pillar” upon it, he suddenly broke
off into the passage from Julius
Caesar:
You all do know this mantle: I
remember The first time Caesar ever put it
on.
It was a daring experiment—did ever
any other preacher link these two
passages together?—but in Dr. Whyte’s
hands extraordinarily moving. The
sermon closed with a great shout, “Now
let it work!” and his hearers, as
they came to the Communion Table that
morning, must have been of one heart
and mind in the prayer that in them
the Cross of Christ should not be “made
of none effect.”
3. It was Dr. Whyte’s own wish that he
should be known as a specialist in
the study of sin: he was willing to
leave other distinctions to other men.
No reader of these pages will be
surprised to discover that, in the place of
prayer which this preacher builds, the
Miserere and the De Profundis are
among the most haunting strains. The
question has often been asked—Did Dr.
Whyte paint the world and human nature
too black? Even if he did, two things
perhaps may be said. The first is that
there are so few specialists now in
this line of teaching, that we can
afford occasionally to listen to one who
made it his deliberate business. And
the second is that the clouds which
this prophet saw lying over the lives
of other men were no blacker than
those which he honestly believed to
haunt his own soul. That sense of sin
goes with him all the way and enters
into every message. If he overhears
Habakkuk praying about the Chaldeans,
the Chaldeans turn immediately into a
parable of the power which enslaves
our sinful lives.
anything cruel, tyrannous, aggressive,
is but a finger-post pointing to that
inward and ultimate bondage out of
which all other tyrannies and wrongs take
their rise. That is why a series of
this kind, like Dr. Whyte’s whole
ministry, is so deepening. And that is
also why these pages are haunted by a
sense of the difficulty of the
spiritual life, and especially of the life of
prayer: we have such arrears to make
up, such fetters to break; we are so
much encased in the horrible pit and
the miry clay. The preacher is frank
enough about himself: “daily
self-denial is uphill work with me”; and when
in Teresa, or in
and deadness of soul, he knows that he
is passing through the same
experience as some of the noblest
saints of God. If the souls of the saints
have sometimes their soaring path and
their shining wings, they at other
times are more as Thomas Vaughan
describes them, like moles that “lurk in
blind entrenchments”—
Heaving the earth to take in
air.
So these sermons become a tremendous
rallying call to our moral energies,
that we may overcome our handicap, and
shake off our load of dust, and do
our best with our exhilarating
opportunity. Here the sermon on “The
Costliness of Prayer” is typical:
there is small chance of success in the
spiritual life unless we are willing
to take time and thought and
trouble,—unless we are willing to
sacrifice and crucify our listless,
slothful, self-indulgent habits. This
is a Stoicism, a small injection of
which might put iron into the blood of
some types of Christianity; Seneca
and Teresa, as they are brought into
alliance here, make very good company.
4. For the total and final effect of
such preaching is not depressing: it is
full of stimulus and encouragement
mainly because the vision of sin and the
vision of difficulty are never far
removed from the vision of Grace. Dr.
Whyte’s preaching, stern as the
precipitous sides of a great mountain, was
also like a great mountain in this,
that it had many clefts and hollows,
with sweet springs and healing plants.
One of his most devoted elders wrote
of him: “No preacher has so often or
so completely dashed me to the ground
as has Dr. Whyte; but no man has more
immediately or more tenderly picked me
up and set me on my feet again.”
Perhaps there was no phrase more
characteristic of him, either in
preaching or in prayer, than the prophet’s
cry, “Who is a God like unto Thee?”
And when at his bidding,—with an
imagination which is but faith under
another name, we ourselves become the
leper at Christ’s feet, or the
prodigal returning home, or Peter in the
porch, or Lazarus in his grave, and
find in Christ the answer to all our
personal need,—we begin to feel how
real the Grace of God, the God of Grace,
was to the preacher, and how real He may be to us also. This volume is
full
of the burdens of the saints, the
struggles of their souls, and the stains
upon their raiment. But it is no
accident that it ends with the song of the
final gladness: “Every one of them at
last appeareth before God in
When all is said, there is something
here that defies analysis,—something
titanic, something colossal, which
makes ordinary preaching seem to lie a
long way below such heights as gave
the vision in these words, such forces
as shaped their appeal. We are driven
back on the mystery of a great soul,
dealt with in God’s secret ways and
given more than the ordinary measure of
endowment and grace. His hearers have
often wondered at his sustained
intensity; as Dr. Joseph Parker once
wrote of him: “many would have
announced the chaining of Satan for a
thousand years with less expenditure
of vital force” than Dr. Whyte gave to
the mere announcing of a hymn. That
intensity was itself the expression of
a burning sincerity: like his own
Bunyan, he spoke what he “smartingly
did feel.” And, though his own hand
would very quickly have best raised to
check any such testimony while he was
alive, it may be said, now that he is
gone; that he lived intensely what he
so intensely spoke. In that majestic
ministry, stretching over so long a
time, many would have said that the
personal example was even a greater
thing than the burning words,—and not
least the personal example in the
matter of which this book treats,—the
life of prayer; ordered, methodical,
deliberate, unwearied in adoration,
confession, intercession and
thanksgiving. He at least was not in
the condemnation, which he describes,
of the ministers who attempt flights
of prayer in public of which they know
nothing in private. He had his reward
in the fruitfulness of his pulpit work
and in the glow he kindled in
multitudes of other souls. He has it still
more abundantly now in that glorified
life of which even his soaring
imagination could catch only an
occasional rapturous glimpse. So we number
him among those who through a long
pilgrimage patiently pursued the Endless
Quest, and who now have reached,
beyond the splendours of the sunset, the
one satisfying Goal.
_________________________________________________________________
[1] The sermons on Jacob and the Man
who knocked at
the extent of a few sentences, and
that on Elijah to the extent of a
paragraph or two, with studies
previously published in the Bible Characters.
But they are so characteristic of the
preacher, and so vital to the series
that it has been deemed wise to give
them, even though they are slightly
reminiscent of matter which has before
appeared.
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CONTENTS
PART
I
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL
I. THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “A royal priesthood.” I PET. ii. 9.
II. THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “The high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity.”—ISA. lvii.
15.
III. THE HEART OF MAN AND THE HEART OF GOD
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “Trust in Him at all times; ye
people, pour out your heart before
Him: God is a refuge for us.”—Ps. lxii.
8.
PART
II
SOME BIBLE
TYPES OF PRAYER
IV. JACOB—WRESTLING
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “Jacob called the name of the place
Peniel.”—GEN. xxxii. 30.
V. MOSES—MAKING HASTE
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “And Moses made haste.”—EX. xxxiv.
8.
VI. ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “Elias . . . prayed in his
prayer.”—JAS. v. 17 (Marg.)
VII. JOB—GROPING
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “Oh that I knew where I might find
Him! that I might come even to His
seat!”—JOB xxiii. 3.
VIII. THE PSALMIST—SETTING THE LORD ALWAYS BEFORE HIM
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “I have set the Lord always before
me.”—PS. xvi. 8.
IX. HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “I will stand upon my watch, and set
me upon the tower.”—HAB. ii.
1.
X. OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “And for their sakes I sanctify
Myself.”—John vii. 19.
XI. OUR LORD-IN THE GARDEN
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. “Then cometh Jesus with them unto a
place called
I go and pray yonder.”—Mat. xxvi.
36.
XII. ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—LUKE xi.
1. For this cause I bow my knees unto
the Father...”—Eph. iii.
14-19.
XIII. ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS
“Lord, teach us to pray,”—Luke xi.
1. “Giving thanks to the Father.”—
i. 12,13.
XIV. THE MAN WHO KNOCKED AT
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “Which of you shall have a friend,
and shall go unto him at
PART
III
SOME ASPECTS OF
THE WAY OF PRAYER
XV. PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “They return, but not to the Most
High.”—Hos. vii. 16.
XVI. THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me,
when ye shall search for Me with all
your heart.”—Jer. xxix. 13.
XVI. REVERENCE IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “Offer it now unto thy governor;
will he be pleased with thee, or
accept thy person saith the Lord of
hosts.”—Mal. i. 8.
XVII. THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “Let us plead together.”—Isa. xiii.
26.
XIX. CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray,”—Luke xi.
1. “When thou hast shut thy
door.”—MATT. vi. 6.
XX. IMAGINATION IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “Full of eyes.”—Rev. iv. 8.
XXI. THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “When ye stand praying, forgive, if
ye have ought against any.”—Mark xi.
25.
XXII. THE SECRET BURDEN
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “Apart . . .”—Zech. xii. 12.
XXIII. THE ENDLESS QUEST
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1. “He that cometh to God must believe
that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”
(lit. that seek Him out).—Heb. ix.
6.
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PART I
INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL
_________________________________________________________________
I. THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“A royal priesthood.”—1 Pet. ii.
9.
“I am an apostle,” said Paul, “I
magnify mine office.” And we also have an
office. Our office is not the apostolic
office, but Paul would be the first
to say to us that our office is quite
as magnificent as ever his office was.
Let us, then, magnify our office. Let
us magnify its magnificent
opportunities; its momentous duties;
and its incalculable and everlasting
rewards. For our office is the “royal
priesthood.” And we do not nearly
enough magnify and exalt our royal
priesthood. To be “kings and priests unto
God”—what a magnificent office is
that! But then, we who hold that office
are men of such small and such mean
minds, our souls so decline and so
cleave to this earth, that we never so
much as attempt to rise to the height
and the splendour of our magnificent
office. If our minds were only enlarged
and exalted at all up to our office,
we would be found of God far oftener
than we are, with our sceptre in our
hand, and with our mitre upon our head.
If we magnified our office, as Paul
magnified his office, we would achieve
as magnificent results in our office
as ever he achieved in his. The truth
is,—Paul’s magnificent results were
achieved more in our office than in his
own. It was because Paul added on the
royal priesthood to the Gentile
apostleship that he achieved such
magnificent results in that apostleship.
And, if we would but magnify our royal
priesthood as Paul did—it hath not
entered into our hearts so much as to
conceive what God hath prepared for
those who properly perform their
office, as Kings and Priests unto God.
Prayer is the magnificent office it
is, because it is an office of such a
magnificent kind. Magnificence is of
many kinds, and magnificent things are
more or less magnificent according to
their kind.. This great globe on which
it strikes its roots and grows is
magnificent in size when compared with
that grain of mustard seed: but just
because that grain of mustard seed is a
seed and grows, that smallest of seeds
is far greater than the great globe
itself. A bird on its summer branch is
far greater than the great sun in
whose warmth he builds and sings,
because that bird has life and love and
song, which the sun, with all his
immensity of size, and with all his light
and heat, has not. A cup of cold water
only, given to one of these little
ones in the name of a disciple, is a
far greater offering before God than
thousands of rams, and ten thousands
of rivers of oil; because there is
charity in that cup of cold water. And
an ejaculation, a sigh, a sob, a
tear, a smile, a psalm, is far greater
to God than all the oblations, and
incense, and new moons, and Sabbaths,
and calling of assemblies, and solemn
meetings of
in that sob and in that psalm. And the
magnificence of all true prayer—its
nobility, its royalty, its absolute
divinity—all stand in this, that it is
the greatest kind of act and office
that man, or angel, can ever enter on
and perform. Earth is at its very
best; and heaven is at its very highest,
when men and angels magnify their
office of prayer and of praise before the
throne of God.
I. The magnificence of God is the
source and the measure of the magnificence
of prayer. “Think magnificently of
God,” said Paternus to his son. Now that
counsel is the sum and substance of
this whole matter. For the heaven and
the earth; the sun and the moon and
the stars; the whole opening universe of
our day; the Scriptures of truth, with
all that they contain; the Church of
Christ, with all her services and all
her saints—all are set before us to
teach us and to compel us indeed to
“think magnificently of God.” And they
have all fulfilled the office of their
creation when they have all combined
to make us think magnificently of
their Maker. Consider the heavens, the
work of His fingers, the moon and the
stars, which He hath ordained:
consider the intellectual heavens
also, angels and archangels, cherubim and
seraphim: consider mankind also, made
in the image of God: consider Jesus
Christ, the express image of His
person: consider a past eternity and a
coming eternity, and the revelation
thereof that is made to us in the Word
of God, and in the hearts of His
people—and I defy you to think otherwise
than magnificently of God. And, then,
after all that, I equally defy you to
forget, or neglect, or restrain
prayer. Once you begin to think aright of
Him Who is the Hearer of prayer; and
Who waits, in all His magnificence, to
be gracious to you—I absolutely defy
you to live any longer the life you now
live. “First of all, my child,” said
Paternus to his son, “think
magnificently of God. Magnify His
providence: adore His power: frequent His
service; and pray to Him frequently
and instantly. Bear Him always in your
mind: teach your thoughts to reverence
Him in every place, for there is no
place where He is not. Therefore, my
child, fear and worship, and love God;
first, and last, think magnificently
of God.”
2. “Why has God established prayer?”
asks Pascal. And Pascal’s first answer
to his own great question is this. God
has established prayer in the moral
world in order “to communicate to His
creatures the dignity of causality.”
That is to say, to give us a touch and
a taste of what it is to be a
Creator. But then, “there are some
things ultimate and incausable,” says
Bacon, that interpreter of nature. And
whatever things are indeed ultimate
to us, and incausable by us, them God
“hath put in His own power.” But there
are many other things, and things that
far more concern us, that He
communicates to us to have a hand of
cause and creation in. Not immediately,
and at our own rash and hot hand, and
at our precipitate and importunate
will, but always under His Holy Hand,
and under the tranquillity of His Holy
Will. We hold our office and dignity
of causality and creation under the
Son, just as He holds His again under
the Father. But instead of that
lessening our dignity, to us, it
rather ennobles and endears our dignity.
All believers are agreed that they
would rather hold their righteousness of
Christ than of themselves; and so
would all praying men: they would rather
that all things had their spring and
rise and rule in the wisdom and the
love and the power of God, than in
their own wisdom and love and power, even
if they had the wisdom and the love
and the power for such an office. But
then, again, just as all believing men
put on Jesus Christ to justification
of life, so do they all put on, under
Him, their royal robe and their
priestly diadem and breastplate. And
that, not as so many beautiful
ornaments, beautiful as they are, but
as instruments and engines of divine
power. “Thus saith the Lord, the Holy
One of Israel,”—as He clothes His
priests with salvation,—“Ask Me of
things to come concerning My sons, and
concerning the work of My hands
command ye me.” What a thing for God to say
to man! What a magnificent office!
What a more than royal dignity! What a
gracious command, and what a sure
encouragement is that to pray! For
ourselves, first, as His sons,—if His
prodigal and dishonourable sons,- and
then for our fellows, even if they are
as prodigal and as undeserving as we
are. Ask of me! Even when a father is
wounded and offended by his son, even
then, you feel sure that you have his
heartstrings in your hand when you go
to ask him for things that concern his
son; and that even though he is a bad
son: even when he sends you away in
anger, his fatherly bowels move over you
as you depart: and he looks out at his
door to see if you are coming back to
ask him again concerning his son. And
when you take boldness and venture
back, he falls on your neck and says,
Command me all that is in your heart
concerning my son. Now, that is the
“dignity of causality,” that in which
you are the cause of a father taking
home again his son: and the cause of a
son saying, I will arise and go to my
father. That is your “magnificent
office.” That is your “royal
priesthood.”
3. And, then, there is this
magnificent and right noble thing in prayer. Oh,
what a noble God we have!—says
Pascal,—that God shares His creatorship with
us! And I will, to the praise and the
glory of God this day, add this, that
He makes us the architects of our own
estates, and the fashioners of our own
fortunes. It is good enough to have an
estate left us in this life, if we
forget we have it: it is good enough
that we inherit a fortune in this
world’s goods, if it is not our lasting
loss. Only there is nothing great,
nothing noble, nothing magnanimous or
magnificent in that. But to have begun
life with nothing, and to have climbed
up by pure virtue, by labour, and by
self-denial, and by perseverance, to
the very top,—this world has no better
praise to give her best sons than
that. But there is another, and a better
world, of which this world at its best
is but the scaffolding, the
preparation, and the porch: and to be
the architect of our own fortune in
that world will be to our everlasting
honour. Now, there is this
magnificence about the world of
prayer, that in it we work out, not our own
bare and naked and “scarce” salvation
only, but our everlasting inheritance,
incorruptible and undefilable, with all
its unsearchable riches. Heaven and
earth, time and eternity, creation and
providence, grace and glory, are all
laid up in Christ; and then Christ and
all His unsearchable riches are laid
open to prayer; and then it is said to
every one of us—Choose you all what
you will have, and command Me for it!
All God’s grace, and all His truth,
has been coined— as Goodwin has it—out
of purposes into promises; and then
all those promises are made “Yea and
amen” in Christ; and then out of
Christ, they are published abroad to
all men in the word of the Gospel; and,
then, all men who read and hear the
Gospel are put upon their mettle. For
what a man loves, that that man is.
What a man chooses out of a hundred
offers, you are sure by that who and
what that man is. And accordingly, put
the New Testament in any man’s hand,
and set the Throne of Grace wide open
before any man; and you need no
omniscience to tell you that man’s true
value. If he lets his Bible lie
unopened and unread: if he lets God’s Throne
of Grace stand till death, idle and
unwanted: if the depth and the height,
the nobleness and the magnificence,
the goodness and the beauty of divine
things have no command over him, and
no attraction to him—then, you do not
wish me to put words upon the meanness
of that man’s mind. Look yourselves
at what he has chosen: look and weep
at what he has neglected, and has for
ever lost! But there are other men:
there are men of a far nobler blood than
that man is: there are great men,
royal men: there are some men made of
noble stuff, and cast into a noble
mould. And you will never satisfy or
quiet those men with all you can
promise them or pour out upon them in this
life. They are men of a magnificent
heart, and only in prayer have their
hearts ever got full scope and a
proper atmosphere. They would die if they
did not pray. They magnify their
office. You cannot please them better than
to invite and ask them to go to their
God in your behalf. They would go of
their own motion and accord for you,
even if you never asked them. They have
prayed for you before you asked them,
more than you know. They are like
Jesus Christ in this; and He will
acknowledge them in this. While you were
yet their enemies, they prayed for
you, and as good as died for you. And
when you turn to be their enemies
again, they will have their revenge on you
at the mercy seat. When you feel,
somehow, as if coals of fire were - from
somewhere - being heaped upon your
head, it is from the mercy seat, where
that magnanimous man is retaliating
upon you. Now not Paul himself ever
magnified his office more or better
than that. And it was in that very same
way that our Lord magnified His royal
priesthood when He had on His crown of
thorns on the cross, and when His
shame covered Him as a robe and a diadem
in the sight of God, and when He
interceded and said—“They know not what
they do.”
4. And then there is this fine and
noble thing about prayer also, that the
aceptableness of it, and the power of
it, are in direct proportion to the
secrecy and the spirituality of it. As
its stealth is: as its silence is: as
its hiddenness away with God is: as
its unsuspectedness and undeservedness
with men is: as its pure goodness,
pure love, and pure goodwill are—so does
prayer perform its magnificent part
when it is alone with God. The true
closet of the true saint of God is not
built of stone and lime. The secret
place of God; and His people, is not a
thing of wood and iron, and bolts and
bars. At the same time, Christ did
say—Shut your door. And in order to have
the Holy Ghost all to himself, and to
be able to give himself up
wholly—body, soul and spirit—to the
Holy Ghost, the man after God’s own
heart in prayer always as a matter of
fact builds for himself a little
sanctuary, all his own; not to shut
God in, but to shut all that is not of
God out. He builds a house for God,
before he has as yet built a house for
himself. You would not believe it
about that man of secret prayer. When you
see and hear him, he is the poorest,
the meekest, the most contrite, and the
most silent of men: and you rebuke him
because he so trembles at God’s word.
If you could but see him when he is
alone with the King! If you could but
see his nearness and his boldness! You
would think that he and the King’s
Son had been born and brought up
together—such intimacies, and such
pass-words, are exchanged between
them. You would wonder, you would not
believe your eyes and your ears. If
you saw him on his knees you would see a
sight. Look! He is in the Audience
Chamber. Look! He is in the Council
Chamber now. He has a seat set for him
among the peers. He is set down among
the old nobility of the Empire. The
King will not put on His signet ring to
seal a command, till your friend has
been heard. “Command Me,” the King says
to him. “Ask Me,” He says, “for the
things of My sons: command Me things to
come concerning them”! And, as if that
were not enough, that man of
all-prayer is still on his knees. He
is “wrestling” on his knees. There is
no enemy there that I can see. There
is nothing and no one that I can see
near him: and yet he wrestles like a
mighty man. What is he doing with such
a struggle? Doing? Do you not know
what he is doing? He is moving heaven and
earth. The man is removing mountains.
He is casting this mountain, and that,
into the midst of the sea. He is
casting down thrones. He is smiting old
empires of time to pieces. Yes: he is
wrestling indeed! For he is wrestling
now with God; and now with man: now
with death; and now with hell: See! the
day breaks over his place of prayer!
See! the
in on the earth! What a spot is that!
What plots are hatched there! What
conspiracies are planned there! How
dreadful is this place! Let us escape
for our life out of it! Is that man,
in there with God, your friend? Can you
trust him with God? Will he speak
about you when he is in audience? And what
will he say? Has he anything against
you? Have you anything on your
conscience, or in your heart, against
him? Then I would not be you, for a
world! But no! Hear him! What is that
he says? I declare I hear your name,
and your children’s names! And the
King stretches forth His sceptre, and
your friend touches it. He has
“commanded” his God for you. He has “asked
concerning” you and your sons. Such
access, such liberty, such power, such
prevalency, such a magnificent office
has he, who has been made of God a
King and a Priest unto God.
5. And, then, to cap and to crown it
all—the supreme magnanimity, and the
superb generosity of God, to its top
perfection, is seen in this—in the men
He selects, prepares for Himself,
calls, consecrates, and clothes with the
mitre and with the ephod, and with the
breastplate. It is told in the Old
Testament to the blame of Jeroboam,
that “he made an house of high places,
and made priests of the lowest of the
people, which were not of the sons of
Levi.” But what is written and read in
the Levitical law, to Jeroboam’s
blame, that vary same thing, and in
these very same words, God’s saints are
this Sabbath day singing in their
thousands to His praise before the throne
of God and the Lamb. For, ever since
the day of Christ, it has been the
lowest of the people—those lowest,
that is, in other men’s eyes, and in
their own—it has been the poor and the
despised, and the meek, and the
hidden, and the down-trodden, and the
silent, who have had secret power and
privilege with God, and have
prevailed. It was so, sometimes, even in the
Old testament. The New Testament
sometimes broke up through the Old; and in
nothing more than in this in the
men,—and in their mothers,—who were made
Kings and Priests unto God. “The Lord
maketh poor,” sang Samuel’s mother,
“and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and
lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor
out of the dust, and lifteth up the
beggar from the dunghill, to set them
among princes, and to make them
inherit the throne of glory.” And the mother
of our great High Priest Himself sang,
as she sat over His manger—“He hath
regarded the low estate of His
handmaiden. . . . He hath filled the hungry
with good things; and the rich hath He
sent empty away.” This, then, is the
very topmost glory, and the very
supremest praise of God—the men, from among
men, that He takes, and makes of them
Kings and Priests unto God. Let all
such men magnify their office; and let
them think and speak and sing
magnificently of their God!
_________________________________________________________________
II
THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“The high and lofty One that
inhabiteth eternity.”—Is. lvii. 15.
I HAVE had no little difficulty in
finding a fit text, and a fit title, for
my present discourse. The subject of
my present discourse has been running
in my mind, and has been occupying and
exercising my heart, for many years;
or all my life indeed. And even yet, I
feel quite unable to put the truth
that is in my mind at all properly
before you. My subject this morning is
what I may call, in one word,—but a
most inadequate and unsatisfactory
word,—the Geometry of Prayer. That is
to say, the directions and the
distances, the dimensions and the
measurements that, of necessity, enter
into all the conceptions of our
devotional life. “Man never knows how
anthropomorphic he is,” says Goethe.
That is to say, we do not enough
reflect how much we measure everything
by ourselves. We do not enough
reflect how much we measure God
Himself by ourselves. Nor can we help
ourselves in that respect. If we are
to measure God at all, we must measure
Him by ourselves. We cannot do
otherwise. We cannot escape ourselves, even
when we think and speak of God. We
cannot rise above ourselves. We cannot
cease to be ourselves. And thus it is,
that when we think or speak of God,
if we are to think and speak of Him at
all, we must think and speak of
Him—as the schools say—“in terms of
ourselves.”
Nor are we to take blame to ourselves
on that account. For that is our very
nature. That is how we have been made
by our Maker. That is the law of our
creation, and we cannot set that law
aside; far less can we rise above it.
God Himself speaks to us in the
language of men, and not in the language of
the Godhead. In our reason, and in our
conscience, and in His Word, and in
His Son, God speaks to us in the
language of men. He anthropomorphises
Himself to us, in order that we may
see and believe all that, concerning
Himself, which He intends-us to
receive and believe. And we must go to Him
in the same way in which He comes to
us. All our approaches to God, in
prayer and in praise, must be made in
those forms of thought and of speech,
in those ideas and conceptions, that
are possible to us as His creatures.
All the same, it is well for us to
keep this warning well in mind, that we
never know how anthropomorphic we are,
in all our approaches to Him Whom no
man can approach unto, Whom no man
hath seen nor can see.
The moral and spiritual world is
essentially and fundamentally different
from the physical and material world.
The geographical and astronomical
dimensions and distances of the
material world bear no manner of relation at
all to the dimensions and the
distances—so to call them—of the spiritual
world. We speak of Roman miles and of
German miles and of English miles, we
speak of geographical or of nautical,
when we take our measurements of the
material world. But the distances and
the directions of the moral and
spiritual world cannot be laid down
and limited in such miles as these. When
Holy Scripture speaks of the “highest
heaven,” it does not speak
mathematically and astronomically, but
intellectually, morally and
spiritually. The highest heaven is not
so called because it is away up above
and beyond all the stars that we see.
It is called the highest heaven,
because it is immeasurably and
inconceivably above and beyond us in its
blessedness and in its glory; in its
truth, in its love, in its peace, and
in its joy in God. And on the other
hand, the deepest hell, that the Bible
so often warns us against, is not some
dark pit sunk away down out of sight
in the bowels of the earth. The true
bottomless pit is in every one of us.
That horrible pit, with its miry clay,
is sunk away down in the unsearchable
depths of every evil heart. And again,
when it is told us in the Word of God
that the Son of God came down from
heaven to earth in order to redeem us to
God with His own blood, we are not to
think of Him as having left some
glorious place far “beyond the bright
blue sky,” as the children’s hymn has
it. Wherein then did His humiliation
consist? “His humiliation consisted in
His being born, and that in a low
condition, made under the law, undergoing
the miseries of this life, the wrath
of God, and the cursed death of the
Cross.” That was His descent from
heaven to earth; and it was a descent of a
kind, and of a degree, that no
measuring-line of man can tell the depth of
it, or the distress of it, or the
dreadful humiliation of it.
Now to expound and illustrate some
outstanding Scriptures on prayer,—in the
light of this great principle,—take,
first, this fundamental Scripture—“Our
Father which art in Heaven.” Now
Heaven, here, is not the sky. It is not the
heaven of sun and moon and stars.
Heaven here is the experienced and enjoyed
presence of God,—wherever that is.
Heaven here is our Father’s
house,—wherever that is: Heaven is
high up above the earth,—yes; but let it
be always remembered and realised that
it is high up, as Almighty God is
high up, in His Divine Nature, above
mortal man in his human nature. It is
high up as goodness is high up above
evil and as perfect blessedness is high
up above the uttermost misery. As
often as we kneel down again, and begin to
pray, we are to think of ourselves as
at a far greater distance from God
than we ought to be, and now desire to
be. All true prayer is a rising up
and a drawing near to God: not in
space indeed; not in measurable miles; but
in mind, and in heart, and in spirit.
“Oh for a mountain to pray on!” thou
criest. “A mountain, and a temple on
the top of it; high and exalted, so
that I might be nearer God, and that
God might hear me better; for He
dwelleth on high!” Yes, He dwelleth on
high; but all the time, He hath
respect to the humble. “Wouldst thou
pray in His temple?” says Augustine;
“then pray within thyself; for thou
thyself art the true temple of the
living God.” And great authority on
these matters as Augustine is, a still
greater Authority than he is has said,
“Believe Me, the hour cometh when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor
yet at
The hour cometh and now is when the
true worshippers shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth; for the
Father seeketh such to worship Him.
God is a spirit: and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in
truth.” And further on in the same
spiritual Gospel, we read this: “These
words spake Jesus, and lifted up His
eyes to heaven.” The Son of God, who
was all the time in Heaven, came so
truly down among the sons of men, that
He lifted up His eyes when He prayed
to His Father just as we ourselves do.
Though He knew that the
skies above Him, yet, like us, He
lifted up His eyes when He prayed. He was
in all points made like unto His
brethren; and in no point more so than in
this point of prayer. It is built deep
into our nature, as we are the
creatures of Almighty God, that we are
to lift our eyes, and look up, when
we pray. And the Son of God took on
our human nature, and prayed as we pray,
kneeling down and looking up, falling
down, and lifting up strong crying and
tears. So anthropomorphic did the Son
of God become, so truly was He made of
a woman, and made under the whole law
and the whole practice of prayer, as
well as under every other law of
devout and reverential men.
And then, to take an illustration of
all this from the opposite pole of
things: “And not many days after, the
younger son gathered all together, and
took his journey into a far country,
and there wasted his substance with
riotous living.” Every intelligent
child, who is paying attention, knows
that the far country into which that
prodigal son went, was not far away
from his home, as
or by any ship with sails. That far
country was far from his father’s house
not in miles, but in bad habits. The
far country was not so many hundreds of
thousands of miles away. Its great
distance consisted in so many bad secrets
that he never could tell at home; till
they had to be told, and paid for by
his father, if his son was not to be
taken to prison. I myself have known
that spoiled and prodigal and now
far-away son, oftener than once. I have
baptized him; and I have recommended
the Kirk Session to admit him to the
Table. And I have written him, to
him books with his name written upon
them, and have never got an answer. The
last time I heard of him, he was
breaking stones for eighteen pence a day.
That, fathers and mothers, is the far
country of our Lord’s parable.
Then again, take this for another
illustration of my morally geometrical and
spiritually topographical argument.
“Out of the depths have I cried unto
Thee, O Lord. Out of the belly of hell
cried I. Out of an horrible pit, out
of the miry clay.” Now just what
depths were these, do you suppose? Where
were those depths dug? And how deep
were they? Were they like the dungeon of
Malchiah, the son of Hammelech, that
was in the court of the prison? Oh no!
When Jeremiah sank in that deep mire
he was in a clean and a sweet bed
compared with that which every sinner
digs for himself in his own unclean
heart and in his own unclean life. The
horrible pit and the miry clay of the
sinful Psalmist was dug with his own
suicidal hands, deep down in his
God-forsaken heart. Oh, take care in
time! You men who are still young! Oh,
be warned in time, and by those who
can testify to you, and can tell you
about the wages of sin; for the wages
of sin is both banishment from the
presence of God here, and it is the
second death itself hereafter.
Then again,“Come unto Me, all ye that
labour and are heavy laden.” Now, just
how do we come to Christ? We come in
this way. Not on our feet, but on our
knees. “Not on our feet,” says
Augustine, “but on our affections.” When we
are burdened in our minds; when we are
oppressed with manifold cares and
sorrows; when we are ill-used,
humiliated, despised, trampled upon; when we
are weary of the world and of
ourselves; and then, when, instead of
rebelling and raging and repining, we
accept our lot as laid on us by God,
and according to His invitation take
all our burden to Christ in
prayer,—that is the way to come to
Him. That is to say, we come from pride
to humility; and from a heart tossed
with tempest to a harbour of rest and
peace; and from rebellion to
resignation; and from a life of unbelief to a
life of faith and love. Come unto Me,
says Christ to us, for I have all that
rest, and all that peace in My own
heart; and I will share it all with you:
We do not come to Him by changing the
land, or the city, or the
neighbourhood, or the house, in which
we have hitherto lived. We come to Him
by changing our mind and our heart and
our whole disposition: or rather, by
coming to Him in prayer, and in holy
obedience, He produces all these
changes in our hearts and in our
lives. “Come unto Me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. For I am meek and lowly in
heart; and ye shall find rest unto
your souls.”
And it is in this same spiritual and
emotional, and not in any astronomical
or topographical sense, that the
sorrowful prophets and psalmists cry
continually, ”Bow down Thine ear, O Lord,
and hear me.” When you are lying,
quite prostrate, on your sick bed; and
when you can only whisper your wants,
and scarcely that; then your doctor
and your nurse bow down their ear to
hear your whispered prayer. And so it
is with your sick soul. “Bow down
Thine ear, O God,” you sigh and say.
“Bow down Thine ear, and hear me; for I
am brought very low. I am full of pain
and sores; I am full of sin and
death.” “No poor creature,” you
say,“was ever so fallen and so broken, and
so far beyond all help of man as I
am.” And you continue to sigh and cry,
night and day; till at last you burst
out with this song, “I waited
patiently for the Lord, and He
inclined unto me and heard my cry. And He
hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise
unto our God: many shall see
it, and fear, and shall trust in the
Lord.”
And it is in the same moral and
spiritual, and neither local nor
topographical sense, that it is so
often said that God is nigh to
such-and-such men, and is far off, and
turned away, from such-and-such other
men. As in the text: “Thus saith the
high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell
in the high and holy place, with him
also that is of a contrite and humble
spirit; to revive the spirit of the
humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite ones.” And again in the 34th
Psalm: “The Lord is nigh unto them
that are of a broken heart, and saveth
such as be of a contrite spirit.” And
St. Peter puts the same truth in this
way: “Yea, all of you be clothed with humility; for God resisteth the
proud,
and giveth grace to the humble.”
And again; in the same moral and
spiritual and not locomotive sense, David
has this: “Who shall ascend into the
hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in
His holy place? He that hath clean
hands and a pure heart: who hath not
lifted up his soul unto vanity nor
sworn deceitfully.” And so on, all up and
down the Word of God, the attitudes
and the movements of the body, and the
directions and the distances, the
dimensions and the measurements of the
material world, are all carried over
into the life of the soul and
especially into the devotional life of
the soul. And when that is once well
understood, and always remembered and
realised, great light will fall on the
Bible teaching, and on the Bible
precepts, about prayer. And our own life of
prayer will be immensely enriched and
refreshed: it will be filled with new
interest, and with new intelligence,
in many ways; as you will soon
experience, if you follow out and
practise the teaching that these great
Scriptures have offered you.
Now, my brethren, much and long as I
have thought on this subject, and with
care and labour as I have composed
this discourse, I am keenly sensible of
how immature and unfinished my
treatment of this great topic has been. And
then, such subjects can only be set
before a specially intelligent and a
specially interested and a specially
devotional audience. I entirely believe
that I have such an audience, to a
great extent, and therefore, I hope that
you will take away with you these
imperfect reasonings and illustrations of
mine this morning; and will faithfully
and thoughtfully and perseveringly
apply them to your own reading of the
devotional parts of Holy Scripture, as
well as to your own public and private
exercises of prayer and praise. The
subject demands and deserves all my
might and all your might too—both as
preacher and hearers; for it is our
very life. It came to pass that as He
Himself was praying in a certain
place, lifting up His eyes and His hands to
Heaven,—when He ceased, one of His
disciples came to meet Him, and said to
Him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Now, he
who teaches us a true lesson in
prayer, whether it is Christ Himself,
or David, or Paul, or Luther, or
Andrewes, or our mother, or our
father, or our minister, or whosoever; he
who gives us a real and a true lesson
both how to pray, and how to continue
and increase in prayer,—he does us a
service such that this life will only
see the beginning of it; the full
benefit of his lesson will only be truly
seen and fully acknowledged by us when
we enter on the service of God in
that City where they “serve Him day
and night in His temple.” For there we
shall see His face; and there His name
shall be in our foreheads. Amen.
_________________________________________________________________
III
THE HEART OF MAN AND THE HEART OF
GOD
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Trust in Him at all times; ye people,
pour out your heart before Him: God
is a refuge for us.”—Ps. lxii.
8.
EVER since the days of St. Augustine,
it has been a proverb that God has
made the heart of man for Himself, and
that the heart of man finds no true
rest till it finds its rest in God.
But long before the days of St.
Augustine, the Psalmist had said the
same thing in the text. The heart of
man, the Psalmist had said, is such
that it can pour itself out nowhere but
before God. In His sovereignty, in His
wisdom, and in His love, God has made
the heart of man so that at its
deepest—but for Himself—it is absolutely
solitary and alone. So much so
that,
Not even the tenderest heart, and
next our own, Knows half the reasons why
we smile or sigh.
They see us smile, and they hear us
sigh, but the reasons why we smile or
why we sigh are fully known to God
alone.
Now we all have hearts. Whatever else
we have or have not, we all have
hearts; and all our hearts are of the
same secret, solitary, undiscovered,
unsatisfied kind. And then, along with
our hearts, we all have God. Wherever
in all the world there is a human
heart, God also is there. And He is there
in order to have that heart poured out
before Him. And out of that, out of
the aloneness of the human heart, and
out of the nearness of God to every
human heart, there immediately arises
this supreme duty to every man who has
a heart,—that he shall at all times
pour his heart out before God. It is not
the duty and privilege of psalmists
and great saints only. It is every
man’s duty, and every man’s privilege.
And, indeed, all our duties to God
are already summed up in this one
great duty; and all our privileges are
held out to us at once in this
unspeakable privilege. “Trust in Him at all
times: ye people, pour out your heart
before Him: God is a refuge for us.”
Now the whole profit of this fine text
to us will lie in our particular
application of it to ourselves. It is
with this view that the text has been
written. The text rose, at first, out
of David’s experience, and it is
offered to us for our experience also.
That is the reason why those holy men
of old wrote out, to all the world, their
most secret experiences. They were
moved to do so by the Holy Ghost in
order that we might learn to follow them
in their walk with God, and in their
deepest spiritual life. Come then, my
brethren, and let us take lessons from
those saints of God in their high and
holy art. Let us go to their divine
school, and learn of them how we also
are to pour our hearts out before God.
And let us take our first lesson from
David in this fine psalm now open
before us. When we really study the lesson
he has set to us, we easily see how
David came to be so tempted to bad
passions and to evil thoughts of all
kinds; to revenge and retaliation
against his enemies, and to doubt and
despair of God’s fatherly attention
and care. As we also are often tempted
in our adverse circumstances; and
that, in ways and at times that, like
David, we can tell to no one. No man,
we say with David, cares for our
souls. But then, that is just our
opportunity. That is just the very
moment for which God has been working and
waiting in our case. Do not let us
miss it. Our immortal soul is in it. Our
eternal life is in it. Only let us
pour out all our loneliness and all our
distress, and all our gloom, before
God, as David did, and all will
immediately be well. For either, He
will remove our trouble at once and
altogether; or else, He will do
better,—He will make His love and His peace
so to fill our heart that we will
break out with David and will sing: “In
God is my salvation and my glory; the
rock of my strength, and my refuge is
in God.”
And, as with all our trouble, so let
us do with all our sins. For our sin is
the mother of all our trouble: get rid
of the mother, and you will soon get
rid of her offspring. And the only way
to get rid of sin—as well as of
sorrow—is to pour it out before God.
For one thing, you are often tormented
and polluted,—are you not?—with sinful
thoughts. Now as soon as they enter,
as soon as they arise,—pour them out
before God. Pour them out before they
are well in. Cleanse your heart of all
unclean thoughts, of all angry and
revengeful thoughts; of all envious
and jealous thoughts; of all malicious
and murderous thoughts,—sweep them out
as you would be saved. Repudiate
them. Deny them. Denounce them.
Declare before God, as He shall judge you,
that all these evil thoughts of yours
are not yours at all. Protest to Him
that it is some enemy of yours and His
who always puts them, somehow, into
your heart. And pour them out like
poison. Pour them out like leprosy. For
poison and leprosy can but kill the
body; but bad thoughts, entertained in
the heart, will kill both body and
soul in hell. Let no sinful thought
settle in your heart for a moment.
Call aloud on God the instant you
discover its presence. Wherever you
are, and however you are employed, and
in whatever company,—that moment call
on God. That moment pour out your
heart before Him. He knows all that is
in your heart in that moment of
temptation; and He waits to see what
you will say to Him about your heart,
and what you will do with it.
Disappoint Him not. Neglect Him not. Displease
Him not. He has told you a thousand
times what you are to do at that moment.
Do it. Do what David did. Do what
God’s tempted and tried people are doing
every moment all around about you.
“Trust in Him at all times: ye people,
pour out your heart before Him: God is
a refuge for us.”
“My sin is ever before me,” says David
in his greatest psalm. And as often
as his sin comes up again before him,
he makes another psalm concerning his
sin and pours it out again before God.
Do the same. Do like David. His awful
story is told for your salvation.
Speak then, to God, like David. Say to
God, like David, that that former sin
of yours is ever before you also. Say
to Him that the more you cleanse it
away,—nay, the more He Himself cleanses
it away,—the more somehow it is ever
before you. Say to Him that you cannot
understand it, but that, the more you
repent and turn from your sin, the
more you remember your own evil ways,
and your doings that were not good;
and, the more you wash your hands in
innocency, the more you loathe yourself
for your iniquities and for your
abominations. As often as such terrible
experiences as these visit you,—just
remember poor sin-pursued David, and
pour out all the undying remorse of
your heart again and again before God.
When your guilty conscience awakens
again on you, like the fury it is; when
you are not able to look up for
absolute shame; even in the hour of absolute
despair; even when death and hell
would almost be a hiding-place to you in
your agony,—fall down, and pour out
all that before God. For it is neither
death nor hell that is a refuge for
you. Almighty God, and Almighty God
alone, is your refuge and the rock of
your salvation, and though you may
have poured all that sin out of your
heart ten thousand times before,—pour
it all out again. And say to Him in
your excuse that your sin is ever before
you. Ask Him to whom you can go. Ask
Him, tell Him, what is His name, and
what is His Son’s name. And, as you
pour out your heart as never before, say
as never before,—
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me
hide myself in Thee!
“And a man shall be as an hiding-place
from the wind, and a covert from the
tempest: as rivers of water in a dry
place, as the shadow of a great rock in
a weary land.” “At all times,” is a
most precious expression. And as God
would have it, for your instruction
and for mine, as to “times,” I came the
other day upon these half-legible
entries in an old black-letter Diary. And
indeed it was when I was spelling my
way through the rusty pages of that old
diary that it came into my head to
preach this sermon. The entries that
specially bear on this text are
these,—I copy verbatim:
“The fourth day of the week—Wednesday.
All day, my heart has been full of
wonder and praise at God’s
extraordinary goodness to me. I went back and
back all day on the Lord’s leading.
Till all day my heart has been one pool
of love and admiration as I poured it
out before God.”
“The fifth day of the week—Thursday,”
writes this diarist, “is always a day
of peculiar temptation to me, and
to-day has been no exception. I could not
go up into my bed till I had poured
out all the corruptions of my heart
before God. And because I could not
sleep, I rose and went over the evil day
again, and made a more and more clean
breast of it all before God.
“Die Dom.” (a Latin contraction for
the Lord’s Day). “Passed a poor day, but
the clouds scattered before
sunset.”
I was much struck with this, as I
think you will be. “Communion Day. For
some time past I have had to live in
the same house, and even to eat at the
same table, with one I cannot bear
with. I went on sinning against him in my
heart till the fast day. When the Lord
sent me a message by His servant out
of the 62nd Psalm”—our psalm, you
see!—“and I was able to lay His message to
heart. On the fast night I went to
specially secret prayer and poured out
again and again and again my whole
evil heart before God. Next morning I
found it easy to be civil and even
benevolent to my neighbour. And I felt at
the Lord’s Table to-day as if I would
yet live to love that man. I feel sure
I will.” Yes, ye people! Pour out your
heart in that way before Him at all
times, and on all the days of the
week; Gad is a refuge for us also.
But with all that about God and about
His people, psalmists, and saints
since then, the half has not been
told. After all that, I have something
still to say that will add immensely
to the wonder and the praise of the
text. And it is this. We do not,
properly speaking, pour out our hearts
before God we pour our hearts upon
God. We do not pour out our hearts before
His feet: we pour out our hearts upon
His heart. We do that with one
another. When we pour out a confession
or a complaint or a petition before
any one we try to get at his heart. We
try to get at his ear indeed ; but it
is really at his heart that our aim
is; and much more so with Gad. We throw
ourselves at His feet indeed ; but,
beyond His feet, we throw ourselves into
His bosom. We press and pass through
all His angels round about Him. We shut
our eyes to all the blinding glory. We
pass in through all His power, and
all His majesty, and all His other
overwhelming surroundings,—and we are not
content till we come to His heart, to
God’s very, very heart. What a
thought! Oh, all ye thinking men! What
a thought! What a heart must God’s
heart be! What knowledge it must have!
What pity it must hold! What
compassion! What love! How deep it
must be! How wide! How tender! What a
mystery! What a universe we belong to!
What creatures we are! and what a
Creator we have! and what a God! “Oh,
the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are His judgments, and His
ways past finding out! For of Him, and
through Him, and to Him are all
things, to whom be glory for ever.
Amen.”
And then, over and above all that,
there is this to crown it all. Not only
do God’s saints pour out their hearts
upon His heart: He pours out His heart
upon their hearts. His Son has come to
us straight out of His Father’s
heart. His Eternal Son is ever in, and
He is ever coming forth from, the
bosom of the Father. And then the Holy
Ghost comes into our hearts and
brings God’s heart with Him. Which heart,
it cannot be too often said, He,
the Holy Ghost, indeed is. That, O
many of my brethren, that is God’s very
heart, already poured out this day
upon your heart ! That softening of heart
under the Word, that strong, sweet,
tender, holy, heavenly spirit that has
taken possession of your heart in this
house. What is that? What can it be,
but God’s very heart beginning to drop
its overflowing strength and
sweetness into your open and uplifted
heart? Pour out your thanks for that
outpouring of His heart upon you. And
pour out your prayer for still more of
His Holy Spirit. Beseech Him not to
take His Holy Spirit away from you: say
to Him that, in your estimation, His
loving-kindness is far, far better than
life. Say to Him that you have seen
His power and His glory this day, as His
saints are wont to see Him in His
sanctuary; and as He sees that you truly
desire it and truly enjoy it, He will
say to you also: ” A new heart will I
give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you. I will put My Spirit”—My
own Holy Spirit!—“within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye
shall keep My judgments and do
them.”
I will not dwell on them, but I must
mention four reflections that have been
much in my mind all through this
meditation.
First, the greatness, the all but
Divine greatness of the heart of man. I do
not know that the highest and most
rewarded archangel of them all has an
honour and excellency of grace
bestowed upon him anything like this,—to be
able to exchange hearts, so to speak,
with God: we pouring our heart upon
God, and He pouring His heart out upon
us.
Second, the unspeakable happiness,
even in this life, of the man who pours
out his heart, at all times, upon
God.
Third, the awful folly—were it nothing
worse— of carrying about a heart, and
hiding a heart and all it contains,
and never pouring it out upon God, even
when permitted and commanded so to do.
And fourth, never for a day, never
for an hour, forget this golden
Scripture: “Trust in Him at all times: ye
people, pour out your heart before
Him: God is a refuge for us.”
_________________________________________________________________
PART II
SOME BIBLE TYPES OF PRAYER
_________________________________________________________________
IV. JACOB-WRESTLING
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Jacob called the name of the place
Peniel.”—Gen. xxxii. 30.
ALL the time that Jacob was in
Padan-aram we search in vain for prayer, for
praise. or for piety of any kind in
Jacob’s life. We read of his marriage,
and of his great prosperity, till the
land could nnno longer hold him. But
that is all. It is not said in so many
words indeed that Jacob absolutely
denied and forsook the God of his
fathers: it is not said that he worshipped
idols in Padan-aram: that is not to be
supposed—only, he wholly neglected,
avoided, and lived without God in that
land. In the days of his youth, and
when he was on his fugitive way from
his father’s house, Jacob had passed
through an experience that promised to
us that Jacob, surely above all men,
would ever after be a man of prayer,
and a man of praise, and a man of a
close walk with God, a man who would
always pay his vow wherever he went.
But Bethel—and all that passed at
Bethel—was clean forgotten in Padan-aram;
where Jacob increased exceedingly, and
had much cattle, and camels, and
maid-servants, and men-servants.
Time went on in this way till the Lord
said unto Jacob: “Return unto the
land of thy fathers and to thy
kindred; and I will be with thee.” And Jacob
rose up to go to Isaac his father in
the land of Canaan. But every step that
Jacob took brought him nearer to the
land of Edom also: where Esau dwelt
with all his armed men about him. And
that brought back all Jacob’s early
days to his mind, as they had not been
in his mind now for many years; till,
by the time Jacob arrived at the
Jabbok, he was in absolute terror at the
thought of Esau. But Jacob never
lacked resource: and at the Jabbok he made
a halt, and there he did this. He took
of that which came to his hand a
present for Esau his brother. For he
said, “I will appease him with the
present that goeth before me, and
afterward I will see his face:
peradventure he will accept of me.”
But, to Jacob’s great terror, Esau never
looked at Jacob’s present, but put on
his armour in silence, and came
posting northwards at the head of four
hundred Edomite men. Had Jacob had
nothing but his staff with which he
passed over Jordan, his mind would have
been more at rest. But with all these
women and children and cattle—was ever
a man taken in such a cruel trap ? And
he took them and sent them over the
brook, and sent over all that he had.
And when the night fell, Jacob was
left alone. Till every plunge of the
angry Jabbok, and every roar of the
midnight storm, made Jacob feel the
smell of Esau’s hunting coat, and the
blow of his heavy hand. Whether in the
body, or whether out of the body,
Jacob could never tell. It was Esau,
and it was not Esau. It was God
Himself, and it was not God. It was
God and Esau—both together. Till Jacob
to the day of his death never could
tell who that terrible wrestler really
was. But as the morning broke, and as
he departed, the wrestler from heaven
said to Jacob, “Thy name shall be
called no more Jacob, but Israel.” And he
blessed him there. And Jacob called
the name of the place Peniel: which by
interpretation is The face of God: for
he said, “I have seen God face to
face, and my life is preserved.”
“Lord, teach us to pray,” petitioned
the disciple in the text. Well, we see
here how the whole of Jacob’s life was
laid out, and overruled, and visited
of God in order to teach Jacob to
pray, in order to make Jacob a prince in
prayer. And all his long and
astonishing story, with all its ups and downs,
is preserved and is told to us, to
teach us also how to pray. Lord, teach us
to pray!
1. Well, the first lesson we are
taught out of Jacob is this—that as long as
all goes well with us, we, too, are
tempted to neglect God: we seldom, or
never pray—to be called prayer. As
Huysman says in En route, “The rich, the
healthy, the happy seldom pray.” You
would have said that Jacob had had such
an upbringing and had fallen into such
transgressions, all followed by such
mercies, and by such manifestations of
God, that he could never again forget
God. You would have said that. But no
sooner was Jacob safely out of Esau’s
reach: no sooner had Jacob’s affairs
begun to prosper in Padan-aram than
Jacob’s conscience of sin fell asleep.
And Jacob’s conscience would have
slept on till the day of judgment had
God and Esau left Jacob alone. And
that is our own case exactly. “The
heart is deceitful,” says the prophet,
“who can know it?” Well, we know it so
far. We know it thus far, at any
rate—that we easily forgive ourselves
the hurt we have done to other men. We
have short memories for our own sins,
and for other men’s sufferings. Only
once in a long while do we remember,
and take to heart what we have done to
other men. We have a long memory for
what other men have done to us: but all
that is changed when we are the
wrong-doers. Let those, who have suffered at
our hands be long enough out of our
sight, and at a safe enough distance,
and we say, Soul, take thine ease.
From the day of the barter of the
birthright, down to that arresting
night at the Jabbok, Jacob had seen
himself, and his share in all that bad
business, with his own partial and
indulgent eyes. Whereas Esau had seen
himself with his own injured and angry
eyes: and, for once, God had seen all
that evil transaction with Esau’s eyes
also. Only, all the time that Jacob
prospered in Padan-aram, God was as if
He had not seen. God “winked,” as we
say, at Jacob’s sin till Jacob was at
the top of his prosperity, and then
God opened His eyes on Jacob’s sin, and
He opened Jacob’s eyes also. If you
will read Jacob’s Padan-aram life with
attention—with your eye on the
object—you will see that Jacob had no time in
Padan-aram for prayer—to be called
prayer. “Thus I was,” complains Jacob,
“in the day the drought consumed me,
and the frost by night: and my sleep
departed from mine eyes: Thus have I
been twenty years.” You know it
yourselves, and you complain about it.
What with the pressure of domestic
duties: what with the tremendous and
cruel competition of modern business
life: what with the too late hours of
the best society in the city: what
with the sports and games of your
holiday: and what with the multitude of
books and papers of all kinds that you
must keep up with—sleep even, not to
speak of salvation, departs from your
eyes. “Thus was I,” complained
graceless Jacob.
2.“So went the present over before
Jacob: and himself lodged that night in
the company.” But Jacob could not
sleep. He could not lie down even. He was
in a thousand minds. He was tossed
with tempest, and not comforted. And he
rose up, and sent over the brook all
that he had. One thing Jacob had quite
determined on,—he would not return to
Padan-aram. At any risk, he would set
his face to go on to Canaan. And when
he had taken the decisive step of
crossing the Jabbok, and when his
household had all laid them down to
sleep—Jacob was left alone, and Jacob
set himself to “watch and pray.”
Jacob, deliberately and of set
purpose, prepared himself for a whole night
of prayer. “But thou,” said our Lord,
“when thou prayest, enter into thy
closet, and shut thy door.” Well, that
was just what Jacob did that night,
and I suspect Jacob, that he had not
done so much as that for the past
twenty years. Leave me alone he said.
Lie you down and sleep in safety, and
I will take a lantern and a sword, and
I will watch the sleeping camp myself
to-night. And he did so. And that is
the second lesson out of Jacob at the
Jabbok. This lesson, namely: that
there are seasons in our lives when true
prayer demands tine, and place, and
preparation, and solitude. When we are
full of some great piece of business;
when a lawyer is at a dying man’s
bedside taking down his last
testament; when a minister is in the depths of
the preparation of his sermon, and
when the spirit of God is resting on him
with power; when any really serious
business has hold of us, we have no
scruple in saying that we must be left
alone. This, I say is the second
lesson here. Let a long journey
then—by land or sea—at one time, be set
apart for prayer. A whole day
sometimes, a birthday, the anniversary of our
engagement to be married, or of our
marriage, or again an anniversary of
some such matter as Jacob’s deception
of Esau, or of his flight, or what
not. Every man’s life is full of “days
to be remembered.” Then let them be
remembered,—and with deliberation and
resolution and determination; and your
life will yet be as well worth
writing, and as well worth reading as
Jacob’s life is. Insist that you are
to be left alone sometimes in order
that you may take a review of your
past life, and at the same time a
forecast of coming danger and death:
and that will turn all the evil of your
past life into positive good: that
will take all the danger out of coming
danger, and death itself out of fast
approaching death. Make experiment:
pray with deliberation, and with all
proper preparation-and see!
3: Jacob, we are delighted to see,
deliberately and resolutely set apart
that whole night to prayer: and his
prayer took him that whole night, and
until the “breaking of the day.” But,
to do what? Why did it take Jacob so
long to offer his prayer? Was God
unwilling to hear Jacob? No, that cannot
be the true explanation. God was
neither absent nor was He unwilling. God
had come down to the Jabbok for this
very purpose—to hear and to answer
Jacob’s prayer, and to serve Jacob’s
life from Esau’s anger. God was ready
to hear and to answer: but Jacob was
not yet ready to ask aright. Jacob had
twenty years of unbelief and
self-forgiveness, and forgetfulness of Esau’s
injury, and total neglect and want of
practice in penitence, and
humiliation, and sorrow for sin. Jacob
had all that, somehow or other, to
undo, and to get over, before his life
could be preserved: and the wonder to
me is that Jacob accomplished so much
in such a short time. You must all
know how hard it is to put yourself
into your injured brother’s place, and
how long it takes you to do it. It is
very hard for you to see, and to
confess that God is no respecter of
persons. It is a terrible shock to you
to be told—shall not the judge of all
the earth do right between you and
your injured brother? You know how
hard, how cruel, it is to see yourself as
others see you, and judge you:
especially as those see you and judge you who
have been hurt by you. It is like
death and hell pulling your body and your
soul to pieces to take to heart all
your sin against your neighbour, as he
takes it to his heart. And that is why
Jacob at the Jabbok has such a large
place in your Bible: because, what you
have taken so many years to do, Jacob
did at the Jabbok in as many hours.
You surely all understand, and will not
forget, what exactly it was that Jacob
did beside that angry brook that
night? The evening sun set on Jacob
sophisticating, and plotting, and
planning how he could soften and bribe
back to silence, if not to brotherly
love, his powerful enemy, Esau; but
before the morning sun rose on Peniel,
Jacob was at God’s feet—aye, and at
Esau’s feet also—a broken-hearted,
absolutely surrendered, absolutely
silent and submissive penitent. “In whose
spirit there is no guile . . . I
acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine
iniquity have I not hid. . . . For
this shall every one that is godly pray
unto Thee in a time when Thou mayest
be found: surely in the floods of great
waters they shall not come nigh unto
him.”
4. But Jacob at the Jabbok always
calls up our Lord in Gethsemane. Now, why
did our Lord need to spend so much of
that Passover night alone in prayer?
and in such an agony of prayer, even
unto blood? He did not have the sins of
His youth coming back on Him in the
garden: nor did He have twenty years of
neglect of God, and man, to get over.
No. It was not that. But it was this.
I speak it not of commandment, but by
permission. It may have been this. I
believe it was this. This. Human
nature, at its best, in this life, is still
so far from God—even after it has been
redeemed, and renewed, and
sanctified, and put under the power of
the Holy Ghost for a lifetime—that,
to reduce it absolutely down to its
very last submission, and its very last
surrender, and its very last obedience,
the very Son of God, Himself, had to
drag His human heart to God’s feet,
with all His might, and till His sweat
was blood, with the awful agony of it.
“I have neglected Thee, O God, but I
will enter into my own heart,” cries
Lancelot Andrewes, “I will come to Thee
in the innermost marrow of my soul.”
“It is true prayer, it is importunate,
persevering and agonising prayer that
deciphers the hypocrite,” says
Jonathan Edwards, repeating Job. “My
uncle,” says Coleridge’s nephew, “when
I was sitting by his bedside, very
solemnly declared to me his conviction on
this subject. ‘Prayer,’ he said, ‘is
the very highest energy of which the
human heart is capable’: prayer, that
is, with the total concentration of
all the faculties. And the great mass
of worldly men, and learned men, he
pronounced absolutely incapable of
prayer. ‘To pray,’ he said, ‘to pray as
God would have us pray,—it is this
that makes me to turn cold in my soul.
Believe me, to pray with all your
heart, and strength, that is the last, the
greatest achievement of the
Christian’s warfare on this earth. Lord, teach
us to pray!’ And with that he burst
into a flood of tears and besought me to
pray for him! Oh, what a light was
there!”
5. We understand now, and we willingly
accept, and we will not forget
Jacob’s new name of “Israel.” Yes: it
was meet and he was worthy. For he
behaved himself like a prince of the
Kingdom of Heaven that night. Prayer,
my brethren, is princely work—prayer,
that is, like Jacob’s prayer at the
Jabbok. Prayer, at its best, is the
noblest, the sublimest, the most
magnificent, and stupendous act that
any creature of God can perform on
earth or in heaven. Prayer is far too
princely a life for most men. It is
high, and they are low, and they
cannot attain to it. True prayer is
colossal work. There were giants in
those days. Would you be one of this
royal race? Would you stand in the lot
of God’s princeliest elect at the end
of your days? And would you be
numbered with His Son and with His choicest
saints? Then, pray.
“Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My
name: ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be full.”
_________________________________________________________________
V. MOSES—MAKING HASTE
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“And Moses made haste . . .”—Ex.
xxxiv. 8.
THIS passage is by far the greatest
passage in the whole of the Old
Testament. This passage is the parent
passage, so to speak, of all the
greatest passages of the Old Testament. This passage now open before us,
the
text and the context, taken together,
should never be printed but in letters
of gold a finger deep. There is no
other passage to be set beside this
passage till we come to the opening
passages of the New Testament. That day,
on which the Lord descended, and
proclaimed to Moses the Name of the Lord,
that was a day to be remembered and
celebrated above the best days of the
Old Testament. The only other days to
be named beside that day were the day
on which the Lord God created man in
His own image; and the day on which
Jesus Christ was born; and the day He
died on the Cross; and the third day
after that when He rose from the dead.
And then, the only days we have to
set beside those great days are these:
the day we were born, taken along
with the day we were born again; and
that best of all our days, which we
have still before us, that great day
when we shall awaken in His likeness.
These are the only days worthy to be
named beside that great day when the
Lord put Moses in the cleft of the
rock, and covered him with His hand, and
proclaimed, and said, “The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful and gracious”: and
Moses made haste, and said, “Take us
for thine inheritance.”
Now, what so draws us back to that Old
Testament day, to that Old Testament
mount, this New Testament morning, is
this: we find on that mount, that day,
an answer and an example to that
disciple who said, “Lord, teach us to
pray.” And that answer, and that
example, are set before us in these three
so impressive and so memorable words
“Moses made haste.” And thus it is that
if we approach this text this morning
in a devotional mind, and in a
sufficiently teachable temper, we
shall without doubt find lessons in it,
and carry away lessons from it—lessons
and encouragements and examples, and
drawings to prayer and to God, lessons
and encouragements and drawings that
will abide with us, and influence us
all our days,—all our days,—till our
praying days are done.
What was it, then, to begin with, that
made Moses in such a “haste” to bow
his head, and to worship, and to pray
with such instancy at that moment?
Well, three things I see, and there may
very well have been more that I do
not see. But these three
things,—Moses’ great need; God’s great grace; and
then the very Presence of God beside
Moses at that moment. Moses was at the
head of Israel. Moses had everything
to think of, and everything to do for
Israel. Israel was a child, and a
wilful and a disobedient child: and it all
lay heavy upon Moses. Moses had been
put at the head of Israel by the
election and call of God. He had just
led Israel out of Egypt. The whole
people lay beneath him at that moment,
spread out in their tents in the
waste wilderness. And Moses had
climbed that mountain that morning with a
very heavy heart. It was but yesterday
that Moses had been so cut to the
heart with the awful fall of Aaron his
brother—his awful sin in the matter
of the golden calf: and altogether
Moses was as near giving over and lying
down to die, as ever a despairing man
was. It was all that extremity and
accumulation of cares and labours and
disappointments and despairs: and
then, at that moment, this so new, so
unexpected, and so magnificent
manifestation of the presence, and the
grace, and the covenant-faithfulness
of God; it was all that coming upon
Moses at such a moment, and in such a
manner,—the stupendous scene: the
cleft rock: the Divine Hand: the Divine
Voice: the Divine Name: and Moses
alone with God amid it all,—it was all
this that made Moses make haste, and
bow his head toward the earth, and
worship, and say, “Pardon our iniquity
and our sin, and take us for thine
inheritance.”
Archdeacon Paley discovered for us
this feature of Paul’s mind and heart.
Ever since Paley’s day it has been a
proverb about Paul that he so often in
his Epistles “goes off on a word.”
Now, what word was it, I like to wonder,
that made Moses “go off” with such
haste from listening to praying? All the
words of the Lord moved Moses that
day: but some of those so new and so
great words from heaven that day would
move Moses and hasten him off,—some
of them, no doubt, more than others.
Was it I AM THAT I AM: and then, I will
cover thee with My hand while I pass
by? Would Moses need more? What angel
in heaven, what saint on the earth
would need more? Or was it I AM in His
mercy? or was it the same in His
grace? or again in His long-suffering?
Whatever it was, it had scarcely gone
out of the mouth of God when Moses had
it in his mouth. Such haste did Moses
make, and so suddenly did his whole
heart go off and break out into prayer.
The clear-eyed author of the Horae
Paulinae throws a flood of light on
the Apostle’s mind and heart by pointing
out to us the New Testament words and
New Testament things that made Paul so
suddenly break off into prayer and
praise, into apostrophe and into
doxology. And it is delightful to
watch and see who “go off” into prayer and
into praise: who at one word of God,
and who at another: who “make haste,”
and because of what. We see some who
get no further than the very first word
of the text. Notably the 136th Psalm:
“His mercy endureth for ever.” “His
mercy endureth for ever.” The
Psalmist’s heart so hastens him in this matter
that he can only write a line at a
time—when his hot pen breaks in again
with God’s mercy. Six-and-twenty times
in one psalm does that Psalmist after
Moses’ own heart “make haste” to hymn
the “mercy of God.” The publican also
in the Temple “went off” on this
attribute, till he was sent down to his own
house justified. “I obtained mercy,”
said the Apostle, “that in me first
Jesus Christ might show forth all
long-suffering for a pattern.” “The Lord,
the Lord God, merciful and
gracious.”
And Gracious! Not to speak of the
countless prayers, and psalms, and sermons
that have taken their stand on the
Grace of God, we have a whole masterpiece
in our own tongue in celebration of
that Grace of God, and of that Grace
alone. All who have tasted what Grace
is, either in religion or in letters,
must know and love that classical
piece which has Grace Abounding for its
title-page. “O! to Grace how great a
debtor!” in that way another in our own
tongue “goes off” on the same blessed
word. “Long-suffering, forgiving
iniquity, transgression, and sin.” How
many have hasted and bowed down at
all these saving names of God!
And, how many fathers of children have
“made haste” as they read that God
sometimes “visits the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children”! Now, as we
know Paul so much better, when we know
the words and the things that
arrested him, took him captive, and
started him off into prayer and
praise,—so would we know and love and
honour one another if we could be told
at what name and at what attribute of
God our neighbour makes haste to pray.
They had a bold, childlike way in
Israel with the names of God, and with
their own names. At a child’s birth
they would take a Divine Name—El, or
Jah, and they would add that name on
to the former family name; and then
give that compounded, fortified, ennobled
and sanctified name to their
child; till that child, all his days,
could never sign his name, or hear his
name spoken, without his father’s God
coming up before him. Now, which of
God’s names are so worked up and so
woven into your home and into your
heart? Is it mercy? Is it grace? Is it
long-suffering? Or does God see you,
as your son is born and so soon grows
up, hastening lest it be said of you,
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on
edge”? What is it that makes you make
haste like Moses? If we knew, we
should, in that, read your heart down
to the very bottom. If we knew, we
should know how to pray both for you
and for yours as we ought.
But, once a man has begun to employ
the promises of God in Holy Scripture in
that way, Holy Scripture, and all its
promises, will not suffice that man
for his life of prayer. He will go on
to make every book he reads a
Scripture: and he will not long read
any book that cannot be so made and so
employed. Every book will become to
him a word of God, and every place a
mount of God; and every new experience
in his life, and every new
circumstance in his life, a new
occasion, and a new call to make haste to
prayer. He will go about this world
watching for occasions, and for calls,
to prayer: he will be found ready and
willing for all those occasions and
calls when they come: and when they do
not come fast enough, he will not
wait for them any longer, but will
himself make them. Every new beginner in
prayer, for one thing, looks upon
every approaching time and place of
temptation as a summons to “make
haste.” And not neophytes and new begnners
only; but the oldest saints, and the
wariest saints and the least liable to
temptation, will not think themselves safe
without constant and instant
prayer. Look at Christ. Consider the
Captain of our Salvation Himself. Just
look at the Intercessor Himself. By
the time He came to His last trials and
temptations—we should have thought
that by that time He would have been
above all temptation. We should have
thought that by that time He would have
fallen back upon His Divine Nature:
or, if not that, then upon His perfect
sanctification. But, what did He do?
See what He did! He cut short His great
sermon, after the Supper, in order
that He might get away from the upper
room to the Garden to pray. He made
haste to get across the Kedron to the
place where He was wont to go alone at
night. He said, “Arise and make
haste; let us go hence.” And as soon
as He was come to His closet, among the
vines and the aloes, He made haste to
shut his door till the blood came
throuh His forehead, and fell down on
the midnight grass. He was in an
agony, just as if He had been a new
beginner closing, for the first time,
with the world that lieth in the
wicked one, and with the wicked one
himself. He foresaw the trials and the
temptations of that night and that
morning, and that made him hasten
away, even from the Lord’s Table, to
secret prayer.
But not only when the Bible, with all
its promises, is in their hands; and
not only when trials and temptations
are at their doors, will your men of
prayer “make haste.” Not only so: but
if you know how to watch their ways
you will find something that is
nothing short of positive genius in their
inventiveness, and in their
manipulation of these times and these places to
make them times and places of prayer.
The very striking of the clock—even in
such a monotonous, meaningless,
familiar and commonplace thing as that, you
will find some men every time the
clock strikes, making haste again to pray.
In curiosity, at this point, I rose
from my desk and looked up two
first-class dictionaries, and was
disappointed not to find this sacred sense
of the word, Horology, in either of
them. But that did not matter. I know
elsewhere the noblest sense of that
neglected and incompleted word,
independently of the dictionaries. And
all the members of the classes [2]
also know by this time the heavenly
sense of Horology, though these
dictionary-makers are ignorant of it.
Yes, there have been men, and we know
their names and have their
“Horologies” in our hands—men of God, who have so
“watched” unto prayer and have so
numbered, not their days only, but their
hours also—that their clock never
struck without their making haste to speak
again to Him, Who, in an hour when we
think not, will say that time, with
all its years and days and hours shall
be no longer. They parted company
with every past hour, and saw it going
away to judgment with prayer: and
they received and sanctified every new
hour, consecrating its first moments
to praise and prayer.
Then, again, the attractions of life,
youth, manhood, middle life, declining
life, old age: wise and prudent and
foreseeing men take all these
admonitions to heart and “make haste.”
Severe sickness and approaching death
make all men to be up and doing.
Donne, whom James the First persuaded to
become a minister,—and to James, with
all his faults, we are deep in debt
for that,—has left behind him a very
remarkable book, “Devotions upon
Emergent Occasions, and at the Several
Steps in my Sickness, Digested into
Meditations upon our Human Condition:
into Expostulations and Debatements
with God: and into Prayers to Him,
upon the Several Occasions.” Donne’s all
but fatal illness came, according to
his Book of Devotions, through
twenty-three stages: and at each new
stage the sick scholar, saint and
superb preacher made haste with
another threefold Devotion. The first, at
the first Grudging, as the old doctors
called it, of his sickness: the
third, when the patient takes his bed:
the fourth, when the physician is
sent for: the sixth, when the
physician is afraid: the eighth, when the king
sends his own physician: the
fifteenth, when “I sleep not day nor night”:
the sixteenth, when I hear the bells
ringing for another man’s funeral: the
nineteenth, when the physicians say
that they see the shore: the
twenty-third, when they warn me of the
fearful danger of relapsing. “Most
excellent Prince”—said Donne, in
dedicating his Devotions to James’ eldest
son—“Most Excellent Prince, I have had
three births—one, natural, when I
came into the world: one,
supernatural, when I entered into the ministry:
and now, a preternatural birth, in
returning to life after this sickness.”
And this is the best record, and the
best result to Donne, and to us of all
his births, and of all his health, and
of all his disease: this, that he was
a man who “made haste” to take all
that befell him to God in prayer.
“Devotions,” he calls his work, “upon
Emergent Occasions: the Several Steps
of my Sickness.”
Others, again, will strike out ways of
prayer and a course of prayer in this
way. One will take seven friends, and,
without telling them, he will make
himself certain to pray for them, by
giving up a part of each day of the
week to each one of his seven friends.
And another will have seven children,
and he will distribute them over the
week for special and importunate
prayer. Another will take certain
hours and certain days to work before God
certain vices out of his own heart, and
life, and character, and to work in,
before God, certain virtues. Another
will have certain seasons, and at those
seasons certain devotions, to keep in
mind some great catastrophe, or some
great deliverance, or some great and
fearful answer to prayer, and so on.
“Some great calamity happens to you,”
says one of those original men; “you
do very well to make it an occasion of
exercising a greater devotion.”
But, excellent and approved and seen
to be very profitable as all that is,
yet it is ejaculatory prayer that is
the perfection and the finish of all
these kinds of prayer in which we
“make haste.” And when ejaculatory prayer
has once taken possession of any man’s
heart and habbits, that man is not
very far off from his Father’s House.
For
Each moment by ejaculated prayer, He
takes possession of his mansion
there.
Jaculum, all boys know, means “a
dart.” Ejaculatory prayer! A prayer shot up
like a spear out of a soldier’s hand:
shot up like an arrow sped off an
archer’s sudden string! You have seen
charts of the air and of the ocean,
with a multitude of rapid and
intricate lines to mark the origin and the
direction and the termination of the
air and the ocean currents. You have
seen and have admired beautiful charts
and maps laid down like that. Well,
if you could, in this life, but be let
see into the Charthouse of Heaven,
you would see still more wonderful and
still more beautiful things there.
You would see there, kept secret
against the last day, whole chambers full
of nothing else, but of charts and
maps of ejaculatory Prayer. You would see
prayer-plans of the cities and of the
scattered villages where God’s best
remembrancers are now living,—plans
and projections laid down and filled up
by those ministering spirits who are
sent forth to minister to them who
shall be heirs of salvation. You would
see, filling the heavens above those
cities and villages, showers of
ejaculatory prayer going up and showers of
immediate answers coming down. You
would see shafts and darts and shootings
upwards of sudden and short prayers
wherever those men went in life,
wherever they walked, wherever they
worked, and wherever they went to rest
and recreate themselves. From the street
when those men pass along the
street: from their tables where they
eat their meals: from their beds: all
day, and all night. You could follow
and make out from these charts of
ejaculation their times and their
places of temptation. You would see a
perfect sheaf of upward arrows, with
all their points sharpened with love,
as those men passed your house or met
you in the street. Where you shot your
arrows—not of prayer—at them, to your
confusion you will see that they shot
their arrows—not of envy, or
ill-will—up to God. What you see not now, you
shall see hereafter. And that because,
like all else in earth and in heaven,
the chartularies of heaven and of
earth will all be laid open at the last
day: and then, when Christ shall appear,
all who, with Moses, have “made
haste” to pray shall appear with
Christ in glory. And on that day, and at
that hour, all those hidden schemes
and methods and devices of secret and
ejaculatory prayer shall be the
astonishment of the whole world, and the
admiration, and the praise, and the
justification of God, and of all godly
men, at that day.
“Seek ye the Lord,” then, “while He
may be found, call ye upon Him while He
is near.” At every Name of His, call.
Every time the clock strikes, call,
ejaculate and call. For He saith, “I
have heard thee in a time accepted, and
in the day of salvation have I
succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted
time; behold, now is the day of
salvation.” “To-day; lest any of you be
hardened through the deceitfulness of
sin.”
_________________________________________________________________
[2] (A reference to the St. George’s
Classes, which at that time (1895) were
studying the Mystics under Dr. Whyte’s
leadership.)
_________________________________________________________________
VI. ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Elias . . . prayed in his
prayer.”—Jas. v. 17 (Marg.).
ELIJAH towers up like a mountain above
all the other prophets. There is a
solitary grandeur about Elijah that is
all his own. There is an
unearthliness and a mysteriousness
about Elijah that is all his own. There
is a volcanic suddenness—a volcanic
violence indeed—about almost all
Elijah’s movements, and about almost
all Elijah’s appearances. “And Elijah
the Tishbite, who was of the
inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the
Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom
I stand, there shall not be dew nor
rain these years, but according to my
word. . . . And the King of Samaria
said unto them, What manner of man was
he which came up to meet you, and
told you these words? And they
answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt
with a girdle of leather about his
loins. And the King said, It is Elijah
the Tishbite.”
And, then, this is the very last word
of the very last prophet of the Old
Testament. “Behold, saith the Lord, I
will send you Elijah the prophet,
before the coming of the great and
dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall
turn the heart of the fathers to the
children, and the heart of the children
to their fathers, lest I come and
smite the earth with a curse.” And, then,
in the opening of the New Testament,
we hear our Lord speaking with great
pride of the great austerity, the
great solitariness, the great strength,
and the great courage of Elijah. “What
went ye out into the wilderness to
see? A reed shaken with the wind? But
what went ye out for to see? A man
clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they
that wear soft raiment are in kings’
houses. But what went ye out for to
see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and
more than a prophet. . . . And, if ye
will receive it, this is Elias, which
was for to come!”
Elijah had a heavenly name: but he had,
to begin with, an earthly nature. He
was a man, to begin with, “subject to
like passions as we are.” Elijah was a
man indeed of passions “all compact.”
We never see Elijah but he is in a
passion, as we say. In a passion of
anger at Ahab. In a passion of scorn and
contempt at the priests of Baal. In a
passion of fury and extermination
against all idolatry, and against all
organised uncleanness. In a passion of
prayer and intercession. And, once
—for, after all, Elijah is flesh and
blood, and not stone and iron—once in
a passion of despondency and
melancholy under the juniper tree.
Elijah was a great man. There was a great
mass of manhood in Elijah. He was a
mountain of a man, with a whirlwind for
a heart. Elijah did nothing by halves.
What he did, he did with all his
heart. And what a heart it was! He,
among us, who has the most heart: he,
among us, who has the most manhood:
he, among us, who has the most passion
in his heart—the most love and the
most hate; the most anger and the most
meekness; the most scorn, and the most
contempt, and the most humility, and
the most honour; the most fear, and
the most faith; the most melancholy, and
the most sunny spirit; the most agony
of prayer, both in his body and in his
soul, and the most victorious
assurance that his prayer is already answered
before it is yet offered—that man is
the likest of us all to Elijah, and
that man has Elijah’s mantle fallen
upon him.
James, the brother of the Lord, and
the author of this Epistle, was
nicknamed “Camel-knees” by the early
Church. James had been so slow of heart
to believe that his brother, Jesus,
could possibly be the Christ, that,
after he was brought to believe, he
was never off his knees. And when they
came to coffin him, it was like
coffining the knees of a camel rather than
the knees of a man, so hard, so worn,
so stiff were they with prayer, and so
unlike any other dead man’s knees they
had ever coffined. The translators
tell us that they have preserved
James’s intense Hebrew idiom for us in the
margin: and I, for one, am much
obliged to them for doing that. For, if I am
saved at last, if I ever learn to
pray, if I ever come to put my passions
into my prayers,—I shall have to say
to “Camel-knees,” and to his excellent
editors and translators, that I am to
all eternity in their debt. The
apostolic and prophetic idiom in the
margin takes hold of my imagination. It
touches my heart. It speaks to my
conscience. And it must do all that to you
also. For, even after we have, in a
way, prayed, off and on, for many years,
in the pulpit, at the family altar,
and on the platform in the
prayer-meeting,—how seldom, if ever,
we “pray in our prayers”! We repeat
choice passages of Scripture. We
recite, with sonorous voices, most
excellent evangelical extracts from
Isaiah and Ezekiel. We declaim our
petitions in a way that would do
credit to a stage surrounded with
spectators. We praise one man, and we
blame another man, in our prayers. We
have an eye, now to this man present,
and now to that man absent. We
pronounce appreciations, and we pass
judgments in our prayers. We flatter
the great, and we fall down before
Kings. We tell our people what the Queen
said to us, and what we said to her.
We argue, and we debate, and we reason
together, sometimes with men, and
sometimes with God. “Come, now, and let us
reason together, saith the Lord.” Are
you old enough to remember Dr.
Candlish’s forenoon prayer? We used to
say that his first prayer was enough
for the whole of that day. He so
“prayed in that prayer.” He so came and
reasoned together with God in that
prayer. Sometimes he would take us to our
knees till we had knees in those days
like James the Just, as he led us
through the whole of Paul’s reasoning
with God and with man in the Epistle
to the Romans. Sometimes he would
argue like Job, and would not be put down;
and then he would weep like Jeremiah
and dance and sing like Isaiah. That
great preacher was an Elijah both in
his passions and in his prayers. He
would put all his passions at one time
into an Assembly speech as he stood
before Ahab, and at another time into
a great sermon to his incomparably
privileged people: but I liked his
passions best in his half-hour prayer on
a Sabbath morning; he so “prayed in
that prayer.”
You have not Elijah’s prophetical
office, not James’s apostolical
inspiration, not Dr. Candlish’s
oratorical power: but you have plenty of
passion if you would but make the
right use of it. You are all vicious or
virtuous men, prayerful or prayerless
men; and, then, you are effectual or
unavailing men in your prayers—just as
your passions are. You have all quite
sufficient variety and amount of
passion to make you mighty men with God and
with men, if only your passions found
their proper vent in your prayers. You
have all passion enough—far too
much—in other things. What an ocean of all
kinds of passion your heart is! What
depths of self-love are in your heart!
And what a master-passion is your
self-love! Like Aaron’s serpent, your
passion of self-love swallows all the
rest of the serpents, of which your
heart is full. What hate, again, you
have in your heart, at the persons and
the things you do so hate! What hope
also for the things you so passionately
hope for! Oh, if only you had that
passionate hope in your heart, which
maketh not ashamed! “Yea, what
clearing of yourselves” there is in your
hearts! “Yea, what indignation! Yea,
what fear! Yea, what vehement desire!
Yea, what zeal! Yea, what revenge!”
Yes: you have passions enough to make
you a saint in heaven, or a devil in
hell: and they are every day making you
either the one or the other. We have all
plenty of passion, and to spare:
only, it is all missing the mark. It
is all sound and fury, a tale told, a
life laid out and lived, by an idiot.
Our passions, all given us for our
blessedness, are all making us and
other people miserable. Our passions, and
their proper objects, were all
committed to us of God to satisfy, and to
delight, and to regale, and to glorify
us. But we have taken our passions
and have made them the instruments and
the occasions of our
self-destruction. We are self-blinded,
and self-besotted men: and it is the
prostitution of our passions that has
done it. Does the thought of God ever
make your heart swell and beat with
holy passion? Does the Name of Jesus
Christ ever make you sing in the
night? Do His words hide in your heart like
the words of your bridegroom? Do you
tremble to offend Him? Do you number
the days till you are to be for ever
with Him? And so on—through all your
passions of all kinds in your heart?
No, oh no! Your daily life among these
men and women is full of passion: but
your heart in your religion is as dead
as a stone. And you are not alone to
blame for that. Your father and your
mother, your tutor and your governor,
taught you many branches of learning
and perfected you in many
accomplishments, as they are called: but they
could not teach you to keep this
passion in your heart, for they did not
know the way. You never heard them say
so much as the word “passion” in
connection with prayer. And your ministers
have not mended matters. They did
not study the passions at college: at
least, never in this light. They
graduated in mental philosophy; but it
was falsely so called. Their
first-class honours puffed them up:
but they edified them not. And ever
since; their own passions are all in
disorder and death, and how then could
they correct or instruct you? Their
own passions are not aflame within them
with God, and with their Saviour Jesus
Christ, and with His Cross, and with
His throne of judgment, and with
heaven; and with hell.
The Bible, naturally, shows a
preference for men of “like passions” with
itself. The more passionateness any
man puts into his prayer, the more space
and the more praise the Bible gives to
that man. Jacob will come at once to
every mind. Now, why does Jacob come
to all our minds at this moment? Simply
because he was a prince in the
passionateness of his great prayer at the
Jabbok. What a tempest of passion
broke upon the throne of God all that
night! What a storm of fear and of despair,
and of remorse, and of
self-accusation, and of recollection,
and of imagination, and of all that
was within Jacob! Jacob’s passions
literally tore him to pieces that
terrible night. His thigh-bones were
twisted, and torn out of their sockets:
his strongest sinews snapped under the
strain like so many silk threads.
There was not another night like that
for passion in prayer for two thousand
years. Esau also often “halted upon
his thigh”: but that was with hunting
too hard; that was with running down
venison, and leaping hedges and ditches
after his quarry. Esau wrestled with
wild beasts. But Jacob,—he wrestled
with the angel. And take Hannah as an
example to wives and mothers. What a
passionate, heart-broken, half-insane
woman was Hannah! For, how she “prayed
in her prayers”! She was absolutely
drunk with her sorrowful passion. She
would have fallen on the floor of the
sanctuary as she reeled in her
passion, had she not caught hold of
the horns of the altar. And Isaiah,—“Oh,
that Thou wouldest rend the
heavens,”—and he rent them as he prayed: “that
Thou wouldest come down, that the
mountains might flow down at Thy presence.
. . . But we are all as an unclean
thing, and all our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags; and we all do fade as a
leaf; and our iniquities, like the
wind, have taken us away”—and a
thousand such passionate passages, both in
preaching and in prayer. What a
passion for holiness had that great Old
Testament orator! And Ezra, who is too
little known. “At the evening
sacrifice I arose up from my
heaviness; and having rent my garment and my
mantle, I fell upon my knees, and
spread out my hands unto the Lord my God,
and said, O my God, I am ashamed and
blush to lift up my face to Thee, my
God: for our iniquities are increased
over our head, and our trespass is
grown up unto the heavens. . . . Now
when Ezra had prayed, and when he had
confessed, weeping and casting himself
down before the house of God, there
assembled unto him out of Israel a
very great congregation of men and women
and children: for the people wept very
sore.” There also is passion in
prayer for you; and men, and women,
and children, all joining in it!
But time would fail me to tell all the
passionate prayers of the prophets,
and the Psalmist, and the friend at
midnight, and the importunate widow, and
all ending in the Garden of
Gethsemane. No: not all ending there—alas, alas!
would God that they did,—for our Lord
passionately foretells certain
passionate scenes that we shall all
see, if we do not take a passionate part
in them. “For, when once the Master of
the house is risen up, and hath shut
to the door, and ye begin to stand
without . . . saying Lord, Lord, open
unto us! there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all
the prophets, in the Kingdom of God,
and you yourselves cast out.” There is
passion in that prayer, and in this:
“Fall on us, and hide us from the face
of Him that sitteth on the throne,
and from the wrath of the Lamb!”
And, now to sum it all up, and to lay
it all to heart. Let every man here,
henceforth “pray in his prayers” like
Elijah and like James. That is to say,
let every man put his passion into his
prayers. And, then, what will take
place in every man and in every man’s
house who lays up in his heart, and
practises in his life, the lesson of
this great Scripture? This will take
place in every such man, and in every
such man’s household. His heart will,
by degrees, be drawn off the things of
this deceitful and sinful world: and
it will be directed in upon the great
world within him, the great world
before him, and the great world above
him. The heat of his heart will all
begin to burn after heavenly things.
And the man will, gradually, as he
continues to pray, become a new man, a
new son, a new lover, a new husband,
a new father. His passions that made
him so impossible to live with will all
become subdued, and softened, and
sweetened, till he will be like a little
child in your hands. He was at one
time so hard, .and so harsh, and so
impossible to please, and so full of
his own ideas and opinions and
prejudices and passions, so loud and so wilful: but you never hear him
now;
he thinks you so much better than
himself; he so despises himself and so
respects and honours you. Patience and
meekness and silence, and his daily
cross, are now the only passions of
his heart. Perhaps all that is taking
place and going on in your own house,
and you do not see it or aright
understand it. James did not see nor
understand Jesus till Jesus was
glorified. But it has been prayer that
has been doing it. Nothing does all
that in any house but prayer. Nothing
silences, and subdues, and sanctifies
our passions but prayer: His Prayer
when you were asleep! His Prayer with
passion, that had to wait for its full
utterance and for its full agony till
you were fast asleep! His Prayer also
when you were neglecting Him, and
trampling upon Him!
Oh, I think you should cheer on and
encourage your minister to preach more
about prayer! And about the place of
the passions in prayer! You should buy
the best books about prayer! You know
their names, surely. You should send
presents of the best books about
prayer! It would soon repay you! It would
soon be returned—into no bosom so soon
as into yours!—if you had even one in
your whole household who “prayed in
his prayers.”
_________________________________________________________________
VII. JOB—GROPING
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Oh that I knew where I might find
Him! that I might
come even to His seat.”—Job xxiii.
3.
THE Book of Job is a most marvellous
composition. Who composed it, when it
was composed, or where—nobody knows.
Dante has told us that the composition
of the Divine Comedy had made him lean
for many a year. And the author of
the Book of Job must have been Dante’s
fellow both in labour and in sorrow
and in sin, and in all else that
always goes to the conception, and the
composition, and the comprehension of
such immortal works as the Book of Job
and the Divina Commedia.
The worst of it was that job could not
find out, with all he could do, why
it was that God had so forsaken him.
Job had a good and honest heart, and a
conscience void of offence both toward
God and toward man. With the whole of
the Book of Job in our hands, we know
what neither Job, nor Eliphaz, nor
Bildad, nor Zophar, nor Elihu knew. We
have the key of the whole mystery,
and the clue of the whole labyrinth,
in our hands all the time we read. We
see the end from the beginning. We see
that Job, in all his terrible trials,
was being made a spectacle unto the
world, and unto angels, and unto men: a
splendid spectacle as it turned out,
of patience, and endurance, and
humility, and resignation, and faith,
and love. But what Job knew not then
he knows now, as he stands on the sea
of glass, having a harp of God in his
hand. “And they sing the song of
Moses, the servant of God, and the song of
the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous
are Thy Works, Lord God Almighty;
just and true are Thy Ways, Thou King
of Saints.”
The captivity of Job arose out of
God’s pure and unchallengeable
sovereignty, as we say. God deserted
and forsook Job for reasons that were
sufficient to Himself, and in which He
had no counsellor. It was to silence
the scoffs and sneers of Satan: it was
to produce a shining example of
submission and resignation, and trust
in God, that would stand out to the
end of time: and it was to perfect all
these, and many other graces, in the
great patriarch himself that Job was
so forsaken of God, and had his faith
and his trust in God put to such a
terrible test. That was Job’s case. But
if we are in any such darkness to-day,
the likelihood is that our case is
not such a mystery: our case is not so
deep and unfathomable to us as Job’s
case was to him. To take a too common
case. One here will have lost God,
just by “neglecting” Him. In his
inward relations with the soul, God, so to
speak, does not thrust Himself upon
the soul. He—so we must speak of such
things—He sometimes stands aside, and
apart, while persons and things take
that possession of the soul which
rightly belongs to Him. And, then, after a
time, the silly soul comes to itself,
and wakens up to see and to feel its
bitter loss. “I have neglected Thee,”
cries out one who has taught many of
us how to keep up a close walk with
God. “God,” says John Donne also, in a
great sermon on the same subject, “God
is like us in this also, that He
takes it worse to be slighted, to be
neglected, to be left out, than to be
actually injured. Our inconsideration,
our not thinking of God in our
actions, offends Him more than our
sins.” “Pardon,” cries Bishop Wilson, in
his Sacra Privata, “pardon, that I
have passed so many days without
acknowledging and confessing Thy
wonderful goodness to the most unworthy of
Thy servants. Preserve in my soul, O
God, such a constant and clear sense of
my obligations to Thee, that upon
every new receipt of Thy favour I may
immediately turn my eyes to Him from
whom cometh my salvation.” Another in
his evening prayer in his family says
this: “We have fled from Thee seeking
us: we have neglected Thee loving us:
we have stopped our ears to Thee
speaking to us: we have forgotten Thee
doing good to us: we have despised
Thee correcting us.” Thus confess
before God Andrewes and Donne and Wilson.
Only,—these are quite exceptional men.
And their God has a sensitiveness,
and a sensibility, so to call it,
toward such men,—a sensitiveness and a
tenderness that He cannot have toward
the common run of His people. God
comes far nearer to some men than to
others: and, then, on their neglect of
Him, He goes much farther away from
them, and stays away much longer. God’s
dealings with the commonalty of His
people are much more commonplace,
conventional, and uneventful than they
are with His electest and choicest
saints. His relations with them are
exquisitely intimate, tender, easily
offended, and easily injured. But an
example, and an illustration from real
life, and that too, among ourselves,
will be far more to the purpose than
the name of any great saint of other
days, and far more worth than any
amount of generalisation and
description. Conversing the other day with one
of my own people, about the life of
God in the soul, he took me aside, and
told me this. I have his permission to
tell it to anyone to whom it may be a
blessing to hear it. It was last
summer, when our congregation was scattered
about, up and down the country, and
when some of the home restraints were
sitting somewhat loose on some of our
people. The first three weeks of his
holiday—he gave me the exact names and
dates—he never had such a close walk
with God during all the thirty
years—off and on—that he has known God. But
he had an invitation to spend ten days
with one of ourselves: and he set
out, so he told me, to keep his
engagement, with some misgivings of heart
that the visit would be too much for
him. But, as it happened, it turned out
far worse for him than anything he had
anticipated. Such was the company of
which the house was full; such were
the conversations that were permitted,
and encouraged; such were the books
that were read, and that were never
read; such was the eating and the
drinking; and such was the keeping of the
Sabbath, that, what with one thing and
what with another, he told me that he
had read little else but the
penitential Psalms and the Book of Job ever
since, so exactly does that Book
describe his desolate estate to-day. Now,
whether it was his too great
complaisancy with the secular-minded company;
or, whether it was the part he took,
or did not take in the conversations;
or whether it was the talk about their
absent friends, and the
fault-finding, and the detraction, of
which that house is notoriously full;
or whether it was that he had come
away and left at home his books and
papers, his habits in secret that so
help him to keep up his communion with
God; or whether it was his miskeeping
of the two Sabbaths that he was
there,—he did not particularise to
tell me: and his soul was too much in
hell already for me to ask. Only, he
came and he went; and no one in that
crowded house knew any more what was
passing in that man’s soul, than Job’s
four friends knew the secret of the
Lord with His chastened servant. In ways
like these—in ways that nobody would
believe—men among ourselves also are
crying to God night and day in agony:
“Oh that I knew where I might find
Him! That I might come even to His
seat!”
Now, when we set out to seek for
anything that we have lost, we do not go
gaping about anywhere and everywhere.
We go straight to the place where we
lost it. We retrace our steps to the
exact spot where we wakened up to miss
the thing we now value and miss so
much. Go back, then, to that sad house
where God, in His anger at you,
forsook you. On what day? at what hour? On
what occasion was it? Was it when you
were sitting at table, and forgetting
yourself? Was it during that
ever-to-be lamented and never-to-be-recalled
conversation? Was it at that moment
when the golden rule leapt too late into
your mind? You would not have believed
it beforehand that Almighty God would
have descended to take notice of such
trifles. That He would have taken a
passing indiscretion in eating, and
drinking, and conversation, so much to
heart! and would have kept it up so
long against you,—you would not have
believed it, if you had not yourself
experienced it. No! But He has taken
you this time out of all men’s hands
into His own hands. And, on your own
admission, He is teaching you a
lesson, this time, that you will not soon
forget. He will teach you that there
is nothing He takes so mighty ill at
your hand as just the way you
transgress against your brother, and let other
men transgress against him when you
are his only friend. A new
commandment,—He has said to you at a
hundred communion tables,—that you do
to others as you would they did to
you. But God does not cast off for ever:
all God’s people will testify and tell
you. No. But you will have to seek
Him with many bitter complaints
against yourself this time, and with very
determined intentions and resolutions
for the time to come.
Would you know, then, where you may
have any hope to find Him? Would you
come this day to His seat? Would you
have it again, between Him and you, as
it was in months past, and as it was
in the days when God preserved you?
Well,—come this way. Try this door. I
do not say that you will find Him at
your first approach and prayer. You
may, or you may not. God is not mocked.
God is not to be set aside, and His
holy law, just when it suits you and
your company. But that being admitted,
try this. Deny yourself. “Mortify
your members, which are on the earth.”
Take up your cross daily in that
thing concerning which God has had a
controversy with you in your conscience
secretly ever since. Was it in eating
or drinking? Was it in bad temper? Was
it in envy and ill-will? Was it in
that sweet conversation in which you sat
and spoke such unanimous things to the
depreciation and damage of your
brother? If it was, try this. I have
known this work well. I have known it
work an immediate miracle. Go straight
to your brother to-day: or take pen
and ink, and tell him that you have
not had a dog’s life with God ever
since. “When I kept silence, my bones
waxed old through my roaring all the
day long. For day and night Thy hand
was heavy upon me: my moisture is
turned into the drought of summer. I
acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine
iniquity have I not hid. I said, I
will confess my transgressions unto the
Lord: and Thou forgavest the iniquity
of my sin.”
Is it “even to His seat,” then, that
you would fain come? Is your cause
ready to be “ordered before Him”? And
is your mouth “filled with
arguments,” if you could only come to
His seat? Well, know you not where His
seat really and truly is? What! Know
you not that His seat is within
you,—even within your heart? “When I
was a child, I spoke as a child, I
understood as a child, I thought as a
child.” It was when Israel was a child
that God came down, and sat upon a
mercy-seat of pure gold: two cubits and a
half was the length of it, and a cubit
and a half the breadth of it, with
the cherubim stretching forth their
wings on high. It was when Israel was
still a child that he went up, now to
this mountain of Samaria and now to
that mountain of Jerusalem, saying, as
he went up: “Oh that I knew where I
might find Him! That I might come even
to His seat!” But, finding fault with
those childish days, God has now said,
“Know ye not that ye are the temple
of God, and that the spirit of God
dwelleth in you? Know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
which is in you, and which ye have of
God?” And again,—for ever since the
fulness of time our New Testament is
full of it,—“Say not in thine heart,
Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is,
to bring Christ down from above:) or,
Who shall descend into the deep? (that
is, to bring up Christ again from the
dead.) But what saith it? The word is
nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in
thy heart.”
At the same time, it is the last thing
we are able and willing to do,—to
cease to be children, and to grow up
to be men, in the things of God. To
learn and know that God is a spirit,
and that He dwells not in temples made
with hands; but that His true and only
temple is the temple of the penitent,
contrite, holy and loving heart,—we
are old, and near our end before we
learn that. My brethren, be no longer
children in understanding; but in
understanding be men. Think, my
brethren, think. Think your greatest and
your best, your most magnificent, your
most deep, and inward, and spiritual,
about God, and about man, made in the
image of God. Think, with all your
soul, and heart, and strength, and
mind about the Divine Nature. Say of the
Divine Nature, - “Essence beyond
essence, essence within essence, essence
everywhere, and wholly everywhere.”
Think and say,—Maker, Nourisher,
Guardian, Governor, Benefactor, and
Perfecter of all men and all things. God
and Father: King and Lord: Fountain of
Life and Immortality. Blessed be the
glory of the Lord out of His place.
Glory be to Him for His Godhead, His
mysteriousness, His height, His depth,
His sovereignty, His almightiness,
His eternity, His omnipresence, and
His grace! Yes, His omnipresence,
everywhere present, and wholly present
everywhere; but, most of all, and
best of all, in the heart of man. It
is in the heart of man that God
establishes His temple. His high
throne is prepared and set up in the heart
of man. His holy altars are builded
and kindled in the heart of man. The
sacrifices that alone please God are
offered continually in the heart of
man. There, the Holy Ghost ministers
in prayer and praise without ceasing,
making intercession within us with
groanings that cannot be uttered. There
also is the golden mercy-seat with the
two cherubim above it. And there the
Great High Priest speaketh peace, and
pronounceth His great Benediction,
because He continueth there for ever.
Seek thy God, then, in thyself! Oh, ye
sons and daughters of captive Job,
seek Him whom ye have lost, and seek Him
in your own hearts. Come, O prodigal
son, come to thyself. Enter into
thyself. Enter deep enough into
thyself, and thou shalt come unto His seat.
For He still sits there, waiting to be
gracious there to thee. Oh, what
glory! Oh, what grace! Oh, what a God!
Oh, what a heart! To have thy God in
thine own heart, and to have Him
wholly there. Wholly, and not in part; and
wholly there for thee. His whole
almightiness, His whole grace and truth,
His whole redemption, His whole
salvation! Arise, then, and enter into
God’s holy temple. Order your cause
before Him there, and fill your mouth
with your best arguments there. Till
you fall down before Him in your own
heart, and say, “I have heard of Thee
by the hearing of the ear: but now
mine eye seeth Thee!”
Are you, then,—by the long-suffering
and the grace of God,—are you one of
those who are this day saying, “Even
to-day is my complaint bitter: my
stroke is heavier than my groaning. Oh
that I knew where I might find Him:
that I might come even to His seat!”
Then seek Him where Job sought Him and
at last found Him. Seek Him in a
humble, broken, believing heart. Go on
seeking Him in a still more, and a
still more, humble, broken, believing
heart. Seek Him deep enough, and long
enough: seek Him with your whole
heart; and sooner, or later, you too
will find Him. Seek Him like David,
seven times a day. Like David also,
prevent the night watches and the
dawning of the day seeking Him. If
need be, die, still seeking Him. And die;
saying to Him that, even if He should
cast you into your bed in hell,—warn
Him that you will wander about in the
outer darkness for ever seeking Him,
and saying: Oh that I knew where I
might find Him: that I might come even to
His seat ! Behold, we count them happy
which endure.
Ye have heard of the patience of
job.
“And the Lord turned the captivity of
Job: . . . and the Lord blessed the
latter end of Job more than his
beginning . . . . So Job died, being old and
full of days.”
_________________________________________________________________
VIII. THE PSALMIST - SETTING THE
LORD
ALWAYS BEFORE HIM
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“I have set the Lord always before
me.”—Ps. xvi. 8.
IF this so devotionally disposed
disciple had lived in the days of David,
and if he had asked of David what he
here asks of his Master,—that is to
say, if he had said to David, “David,
thou man after God’s own heart, teach
me to pray,”—David would have answered
him in the words of the text. “Set
the Lord before you,” David would have
said. “Begin every prayer of yours by
setting the Lord before you.” “I am a
companion of all them that fear Thee,
and of them that keep Thy precepts,”
said David. And that made David the
most accessible and the most affable
of men, especially in divine things.
And, accordingly, if you had asked
David how he was able to compose such
wonderful psalms and prayers,—psalms
and prayers that have lasted to this
day, and will last as long as the
world lasts, and down to the day of
judgment,—David would have told you
that it was by no power or holiness of
his that he did it. “All I do,” he
would have said to you, “is just to set
the Lord before me as often as I begin
again to sing and to pray. I begin;
and, ere ever I am aware, already my
prayer is answered, and my psalm is
accepted.” “But surely,” you would
have insisted, “it must surely have been
by very great power and holiness that
such psalms and prayers as the 40th
Psalm, and the 63rd, and the 103rd,
and the 119th were composed. Such psalms
and prayers as these could never have
been the composition of a man subject
to like passions as we are.” “I
remember well,” David would reply, “I shall
never forget just how it was with me
the day I began one of the psalms you
have just named. My heart within me
was as a dry and thirsty land that day.
But as I set the Lord before me, and
as I went on, I began to see His power
and His glory as I had seen Him
heretofore in His sanctuary, till my soul
was satisfied as with marrow and
fatness.” If this was Peter who said to his
Master, “Lord, teach us to pray!”—and
most likely it was—when Peter’s denial
of his Master continually came back
upon him in after days he would often go
out to David’s sepulchre, which was
with them to that day, and would say in
his agony: “David! David! David of the matter
of Uriah, and Psalmist of the
51st Psalm, teach me to pray! Teach me
thy penitential heart. Teach me, the
chief of sinners, how thou didst so
praise and so pray,” And if David had
still been in the earthly Jerusalem he
would have taught Peter to pray by
such confidences and confessions as
this. “Come, O thou that fearest God,”
David would have said to Peter, “and I
will tell thee what He did for my
soul! After the matter of Uriah, my
bones waxed old through my roaring all
the day long. Till one day I said, I
will confess my transgressions to the
Lord! And I took up my carriages and
went a far journey into the wilderness
till I came to the Mount of God. And
as I ascended the Mount of God, amid
lightning and thunder and tempest,
with my sin ever before me, the Lord
appeared to me and said, ‘Behold,
there is a place by Me, and thou shalt
stand upon a rock . . . and I will
cover thee with my hand as I pass by.’
And the Lord passed by, and
proclaimed, saying, the Lord, the Lord God,
merciful and gracious, long-suffering
and abundant in goodness and truth.
And I made haste and bowed down and
said, Forgive mine iniquity, O Lord, and
take me for Thy servant. And it was
so. And I sang the 103rd Psalm for the
first time, all the way home from
Horeb to my own house in Jerusalem.’
And not the 40th and the 63rd and the
103rd and.the 119th Psalms only: but,
if you examine with a practised eye
any one of the great psalms, you will
see that what David says in the text
is true of the composition of them all.
Whosoever or whatsoever is present or
absent from any prayer or psalm of
David, the Lord is always present and
is never absent. Or if He is ever
absent at the beginning of any psalm
of David, long before the psalm is
ended—and before it has gone far—the
Lord is back again at David’s right
hand. We are allowed to see deep down
into David’s mind and heart in the
composition of some of his psalms. And
notably so in the 103rd Psalm. We see
David in the opening of that superb
psalm calling upon his soul and “all
that is within him” to take part in
the composition of that superb psalm.
And eminent among all that is within
David is that so wonderful power he has
of setting the Lord before the eyes of
his heart. And not David, with his
great gifts and great privileges only.
But we ourselves,—when we enter our
own souls in the same service, we also
discover in ourselves the same noble
and wonder-working power. By the
bodily eye we can set things seen and
temporal before ourselves; but by the
spiritual eye we can set before
ourselves things unseen and eternal.
By our inward eye we are able to see
God as we kneel down before Him. We
seek His face: and He lifts upon us the
light of His countenance sometimes,
like the Psalmist, when we “consider the
heavens, the work of His fingers, the
moon and the stars which He has
ordained.” We set their Maker and our
Maker before us, and we fall down in
wonder and in worship saying, How
great Thou art, O God! At another time we
cast our inward eye back on the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the
God of Jacob, and the God of Moses and
Isaiah; but best of all on the God
and Father of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. And when we do so, when we
set Him before us as He was revealed
to all these sons and servants of His,
then; as we go on doing so, He becomes
more to us than all His creatures;
and Heaven begins with us to take the
place of earth. Such, even in this
life, do they become who truly “set
the Lord before them” in prayer. Such do
they become who are taught of David
and of Jesus Christ thus to pray, and
thus to praise, and thus to walk with
God, and thus to have their
conversation in Heaven.
Our Lord did not say to His disciples
in so any words that they were to set
Him, their Master, always before them
when they prayed. But, all the same,
He meant it. And after He went away
from them, and went home to His glory,
the Holy Ghost soon made all the
apostles see that He had meant it. And thus
it is that we see, in the Epistles of
Paul and the rest of the Apostles,
such a new departure, so to speak, in
prayer. David’s psalms and prayers are
the very best of their kind, and for
their day. But Paul’s prayers are of
quite another kind: they belong to
quite another dispensation, as we say.
There has not been a greater at prayer
and praise born of women, than David:
but the least New Testament saint is,
or he might be, far greater at prayer
than even David. And that, because the
least New Testament saint has the
Lord Jesus to set before him in
prayer, which David, with all his genius,
and with all his grace, had not.
Everybody must surely see that: even he who
never thought about that till this
morning—even he must see that “No man
hath seen God at any time”: no, not
Moses: no, not David. “But the
only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom
of the Father, He hath declared Him.
That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you, that you may have
your fellowship with us.”
We envy the twelve disciples who saw
their Divine Master every day, and had
His face and figure printed on their
hearts and minds every day. What would
we not give just to have seen our
Lord’s face and figure for once! To have
seen Him when He was blessing the
little children, with one of them in His
arms ! To have seen His face, and
heard His voice, when He spread His skirt
over the woman who was washing His
feet with her tears! To have seen and
heard His intercessory prayer with His
eyes lifted up to Heaven after the
supper! Or, again, when He said,
“Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do!” It was easy for Peter
and James and John to set their Lord
always before them! It was very easy
for John to write that le had “an
Advocate with the Father, when he
remembered so well his Advocate’s face,
and the very tones of His voice. I
could very easily be made a believer in
Veronica’s handkerchief, so much in
this matter is the wish with me father
to the thought! But no! Our times are
in His hand, and our lot in this life.
And we must not forget that these are
His own words to us on this very
matter—these words.—“It is the Spirit
that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth
nothing. The words that I speak unto
you, they are Spirit, and they are
life.” “Thomas, because thou hast seen
Me, thou hast believed: blessed are
they that have not seen, and yet have
believed.” And thus it is that the
four evangelists, who had so seen and
so handled the Word of Life, put their
book into our hands, saying as they do
so,—these things about our Lord and
yours write we unto you that you may
have your fellowship with us.
Now, if David could set Jehovah always
before him in his prayers and in his
psalms,—Jehovah, Whom no man could see
and live,—how much more should we set
Jesus Christ before us? Jesus Christ,
Who, being the Son of God, became the
Son of Man for this very purpose. And,
so we shall! For, what state of life
is there?—what need? what distress?
what perplexity? what sorrow? what sin?
what dominion and what disease of sin?
what possible condition can we ever
be in on earth?—in which we cannot set
Jesus Christ before us in prayer and
in faith, and for help, and for
assurance, and for victory? Who are you? and
what are you? and what is your request
and your petition? Open your New
Testament, take it with you to your
knees, and set Jesus Christ out of it
before you. Are you like David in the
63rd Psalm? Is your soul thirsting for
God, and is your flesh longing for God
in a dry and thirsty land where no
water is? Then set Jesus at the well
of Samaria before the eyes of your
thirsty heart. And, again, set Him
before your heart when He stood on the
last day, that great day of the feast,
and cried, saying, “If any man thirst
let him come to Me and drink.” Or, are
you like David after the matter of
Uriah? “For, day and night, Thy hand
was heavy upon me: my moisture is
turned into the drought of summer.”
Then set Him before you who says: “I am
not come to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance. They that be
whole need not a physician, but they
that are sick.” Or, are you the unhappy
father of a prodigal son? Then, set
your Father in Heaven always before you:
and set the Son of God always before
you as He composes and preaches the
parable of all parables for you and
for your son. Or, are you that son
yourself? Then, never lie down at
night till you have again read that
peculiar parable for you, and set your
father and your mother before you.
Or, are you a mother with a daughter
possessed of a devil ? In that case set
Jesus Christ, when He was in the
borders of Tyre and Sidon, before you; and
listen to what He says to the woman
who begged for the crumbs under the
table: The devil, He said to her, is
gone out of thy daughter. Or, are you a
happy mother with your children still,
so many little angels in their
innocence and their beauty round about
you? Then I am sure of you! You never
kiss your sleeping child, I feel sure,
without thinking of Mary, and how she
must have kissed her sleeping child,
and hid all these things in her heart.
Or, to come to a very different kind
of person—Are you loaded with the
curses of people who were once in your
cruel power: widows and orphans, and
poor and friendless people? Then, as
often as you remember their misery and
your own—set your Redeemer before you, who, when He came to the
place,
looked up and saw Zacchaeus, and said
unto him, “Zacchaeus, make haste, and
come down: for to-day I must abide at
thy house . . . . This day is
salvation come to this house, forsomuch
as he also is a son of Abraham.” Or,
again, after twelve years of many
physicians, are you nothing better, but
rather worse? Then set Him before you
till you are healed of your plague—Him
who turned and said: Who touched Me?
Or are you a minister with such a
message that all your people are
walking no more with you? Then rest your
heart on Him who said to the Twelve,
“Will ye also go away?” And on Him who
said on another occasion, “But other
fell into good ground, and brought
forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some
sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.” And, O
thou afflicted, tossed with tempest,
and not comforted, see Him coming to
the ship, walking on the sea: and see
Him, at another time, in another ship
asleep on a pillow: and hear His
rebuke, “O thou of little faith, wherefore
didst thou doubt? “Or, to come to the
uttermost of all: are you tortured
with your own heart, till you cannot
believe that they are worse tortured in
hell itself? Then look at His face of
infinite pity as He says to His
disciples, “For, from within, out of
the heart of men, proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications,
murders, thefts covetousness, an evil
eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
all these evil things come from
within.” And, if there is any other
manner of man here, for whose soul no
man cares, let that man set the Good
Shepherd before him as He says: “I am
the door; by Me if any man enter in he
shall go in and out, and find
pasture.” And, again, “Come unto Me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.” Sinners!
set your Saviour always before you!
Child of God! set your Father in
Heaven, and His Son from Heaven, always
before you! And, because They are at
your right hand, you shall not be
greatly moved.
And, then, He has appointed special
times, and special places, and special
circumstances, and special
accompaniments of prayer: at which times, in
which places, and amid which
accompaniments and circumstances He will be
specially present, and will in an
especial manner set Himself before you.
Seize those golden, but irrecoverable
opportunities; seize them so that He
shall never be able to say to you that
He never knew you. His own word, for
one. Never open the New Testament till
you have said to yourself: “Now, O my
soul, let us proceed no further till
we have set Him of Whom we are now to
read before us!” Never hear a chapter
of the Gospel read without seeing, as
if you had been there, all that is read
about. Be for the time, in
Bethlehem, and in Nazareth, and in
Galilee, and in Jerusalem, and in the
Garden, and on Golgotha, and on
Olivet. Never see His Name even in pen or
pencil, and never hear His Name in a
sermon, or in a psalm or prayer,
without seeing His face at the same
time and falling down before Him. And
when you are in your own place of
prayer, do not be in a hurry to get on
with your prayer and to get done with
it. If need be, He can make the sun
stand still to give you time to pray.
Never kneel without at the same time
shutting your eyes on all earthly
things, and setting God on His Throne in
Heaven, and Jesus Christ in His
intercession, before you. Take time. It is
lost time to speak to the wall. Take
time till you are quite sure that you
have His ear. Be silent till you have
something to say. And then, say it not
into the air, but into the ear and the
heart of Jesus Christ. For He has an
ear and a heart too, and they are
both, if you like, open to you. You are at
family worship, say, and you open your
hymn-book, and you come on John
Newton’s sweet hymn:
How sweet the name of Jesus
sounds
In a believer’s ear!
Yes, but does it at that moment sound
sweet in your ear? Are you that
believer? And is your ear full in a
moment, of an unearthly sweetness? You
are a believer, and your ear is full
of that sweetness, when you set the
Owner of that Name always before
you.
Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband,
Friend:
and on the spot you are a lost sheep,
a woman forsaken and a friendless
outcast—all met, all satisfied, and
all aglow with the love of Christ shed
abroad in your heart.
My Prophet, Priest and King:
and all that is within you is that
moment at His feet!
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my
End,
Accept the praise I bring:
and the praise you bring is all, at
that moment, accepted; and all because
you did set the Lord before you.
You remember what is told of that old
saint who so set the cross and its
bleeding Burden before him, that the
five wounds actually came down from off
the Cross, and printed themselves on
his hands and on his feet and on his
side. It is a parable of what takes
place every day in every true saint of
God and disciple of Christ. They set
their dying Lord always before them
till they are crucified with Him and
till they bear about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus. Join the
great saints in this their crucifixion
with Christ. My brethren, set the Lord
Jesus on His Cross and on His Throne
before you in all your psalms, in all
your prayers, in all your Scriptures,
and at all times, till He is ever with
you: and till it would not surprise
you to feel His hand laid on your
head, and to look up and see His face some
night-watch as you so abide before
Him. Set your Lord, in all these ways,
before you, till, suddenly, some
midnight soon, the Bridegroom is with you
and you are for ever with Him! Even so
come quickly, Lord Jesus!
_________________________________________________________________
IX. HABAKKUK-ON HIS WATCH-TOWER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i. “I will stand upon my watch, and set
me upon the tower.”—Hab. ii.
i.
HABAKKUK’S tower was not built of
stone and lime. Hiram’s Tyrian workmen,
with all their skill in hewn stone,
and in timber, and in iron, and in
brass, had no hand in building
Habakkuk’s tower. “The Name of the Lord” was
Habakkuk’s high tower. The truth and
the faithfulness and the power of
God—these things were the deep and
broad foundations of Habakkuk’s high
tower, into which he continually
escaped, and from the high top of which he
was wont to look out upon the land,
and up to his God. God’s grace and mercy
and long-suffering were the doors and
stairs, were the walls and
battlements, of Habakkuk’s high tower;
and God’s sure salvation was the
golden and the far-shining roof of it.
“Art Thou not from
everlasting,”—prayed this prophet as
often as he again stood upon his watch
and set himself upon his tower,—“O
Lord, my God, mine Holy One? We shall not
die.”
The Chaldeans had, by this time,
overrun the whole land. Judah and Jerusalem
had for long been full of all but
unpardonable sin. God’s chosen and
covenant people had despised and
forsaken God. The law of God was
“slacked,” till the land was full of
all unrighteousness. And thus it was
that this judgment of God had already
gone forth against Judah and
Jerusalem: “Lo, I raise up the
Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation,
which shall march through the breadth
of the land, to possess the
dwelling-places that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful. . . .
Their horses also are swifter than the
leopards, and are more fierce than
the evening wolves: . . . they shall
fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.
They shall come all for violence: . .
. and they shall gather the captivity
as the sand.” And it was so. It was
very much as if the Turks of our day had
been let loose on England, and Scotland,
and Edinburgh. It was amid the
indescribable cruelties and horrors of
the invasion and possession of Judah
and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans that
Habakkuk took up his burden. And
Habakkuk the prophet was alone: he was
alone, and had no fellow in the midst
of all those desolate years.
Alone!—and with his faith very hard pressed
between God, in His righteous anger on
the one hand, and guilty Judah, under
her great agony and oppression, on the
other hand. And we have this great
and noble-hearted prophet in all the
heat and burden of his work,—in his
faith, and in his prayer, and in his
songs,—all set before us with
extraordinary beauty and
impressiveness in this wonderful little book: a
book little in size, indeed, but a
book rich and great in divine substance,
and in intellectual and spiritual
power of every kind. “O Lord, how long
shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear!
even cry out unto Thee of violence, and
Thou wilt not save! Why dost Thou shew
me iniquity, and cause me to behold
grievance? For spoiling and violence
are before me: . . . and the wicked
doth compass about the righteous . . .
but I will stand upon my watch, and I
will set me upon the tower, and I will
watch to see what He will say to me.
. . . And the Lord answered me and
said, Write the vision, and make it plain
upon tables, that he may run that
readeth it.” And, at that, the prophet
immediately came down from his tower;
and had great tablets made by the
workman; and he wrote this text upon
the tables,—this text, “The just shall
live by his faith.” And he had the
tables hung up on the temple walls, and
on the gates and on the market-places
of the city; till he who ran from the
oppression of the enemy, as well as he
who ran to take up arms against the
oppressor, might read the legend,—this
legend,—that “The just shall live by
his faith.” The Chaldeans understood
not the tables, but the oppressed
people of God understood them; till it
abides a proverb, and an
encouragement, and a doctrine, and a
sure hope to this day,—that “The just
shall live by faith.”
1. In a profound and far-reaching
passage,—in two profound and far-reaching
passages indeed,—Pascal impresses on
us, out of such Scripture as this, that
our own passions are our only enemies.
Our real enemies, with all their
cruelty and all their opression, come
up upon us,—not out of Chaldea, but
out of our own heart. Chaldea, with
all her cruel and agrandising ambition,
would never have been allowed to cross
the Jordan and let loose in Judah,
but for Judah’s sin. And it was
Judah’s continuing transgression and
persisting impenitence that kept the
Chaldeans in possession of Judah and
Jerusalem. All which is written in the
prophet, with Pascal’s profound and
spiritual interpretation of the
prophet, for our learning, and for our very
closest and most practical application
to ourselves. Let this, then, be laid
to heart by all God’s people, that
their sinful hearts, and sinful lives,
while they are in this present life, are always, more or less, like the
land
of Judah under the cruel occupation of
the Chaldeans. Our sins, my brethren,
have brought the bitterest of all our
chastisements upon us, that is, upon
our souls. Not every child of God
among us has yet spirituality of mind
enough, or personal experience enough,
to see and to admit that. Judah did
not easily and willingly see and admit
that. But Habakkuk in his day, and
Pascal in our day, saw it: they both
saw it; and wrote powerfully and
convincingly and with splendid comfort
concerning it. And many of God’s
people among yourselves, by much
experience, by much prayer, by a sinful
heart and a holy life taken together,
are themselves prophets,—prophets and
philosophers: wise men, that is, in
the deepest things, both of God, and of
the soul of man. And one of those
deepest things is just this—that God
chastises sin by means of sin. He
employs the remaining sinfulness of the
sanctified heart as His last and His
best instrument for reaching down into
the depths of the heart in order to
its complete discovery, complete
correction, and complete purification.
There is no tyranny so terrible,
there is no invasion and captivity of
the soul one-thousandth part so
horrible, and so hated of all God’s
saints, as is their captivity to their
own sins. Those whose true torments
and tortures come, never from without,
but always from within: those whose
abidingly bad hearts are being made
God’s cruellest scourge,—both for
their past sins, and for their present
sinfulness,—they will consent and
subscribe to all that this great prophet
says in the terrible account that he
gives of the Chaldeans. “That bitter
and hasty nation: which march through
the breadth of the land, to possess
dwelling-places that are not theirs.
They are terrible and dreadful.” “They
are proud: they enlarge their desire
like hell: they are as death itself:
they cannot be satisfied. . . . Shall
they not rise up suddenly that shall
bite thee? And awake that shall vex
thee? And thou shalt be for a booty to
them, O Jerusalem!” All of which is
but a cruel parable to some of us
concerning our own sins. So truly does
our God also, in His grace and truth,
still make His own so sovereign, and so spiritual, use of our remaining
and
deep-rooted sinfulness. In His wisdom,
and in His love, at one stroke, He
does these two divinest of
things:—securing the greatest depth, the greatest
inwardness and the greatest
spirituality for our sanctification; and, at the
same time, securing, more and more
every day, our fear and hatred and horror
at our own hearts, as at nothing else
on earth or in hell. Is that your
mind, my brethren? Is that your
experience? “The spiritual understood
Chaldea of their passions,” says
Pascal. “The unspiritual, and the still
carnal-minded, understood it of
Chaldea only. The term ‘enemy,’” he adds,
“and Chaldea is obscure and ambiguous
only to the unspiritual in mind and in
heart.” Let all students of Holy
Scripture, and of the heart of man, study
Pascal.
2. Look, now, at that man of God, who
is like Habakkuk in our own days. Look
at that prophet upon his tower in our
own city. He has climbed up far above
us, his fellows, into a calm and clear
air: and he has so climbed by means
of much prayer, and by means of much
meditation, and by means of much secret
self-denial of many kinds. He has a
time and a place of retreat, and of
purification, and of exaltation of
mind, that we know nothing of. He may be
a minister; most likely he is: or he
may be a busy business man, as
sometimes he is. He may be well known
to us to be a man like Habakkuk: or,
he may be hidden even from himself.
Sometimes he is old: and, not seldom, he
is young. In any case, he is our
Habakkuk. Habakkuk, with his own burden,
and sometimes with ours. “O Lord,” he
cries on his watch, “how long shall I
cry, and Thou wilt not hear!” “But I
will stand upon my watch, and set me
upon the tower, and will watch to see
what He will say unto me.” There are
men among us who do not neglect
prayer, who yet sadly neglect to watch and
wait for God’s promised answer to
their prayers. Prayer, when we think of
it, and perform it aright,—prayer is a
magnificent thing—and a
venturesome,—for any man to do. For
prayer builds, and fits out, and mans,
and launches a frail vessel of faith
on the deep and wide sea of God’s
sovereignty: and sets her sails for a
harbour nothing short of heaven. And,
then, the wise merchantman gives God,
and his ship, time to be on her way
back again: and then, like Habakkuk,
he sets himself on his high tower. All
his interests are now up there. As
Paul has it—all his conversation is in
heaven: all his treasures and all his
affections are launched on that
sea-adventure he is now so intensely
watching up there. I am convinced, my
brethren, that we lose many answers to
our prayers,—not so much because we
do not pray, as because we do not go
up to our tower to watch for and to
welcome God’s answers to our prayers.
“Why should I answer?”—our God may
well say to His waiting and
ministering angels. “Why should I answer him? He
pays no attention to my answer to his
prayer. He is never on his watch, when
I send My answer. And, even when I do
send My answers to his house and to
his heart, he takes them and holds
them as common and everyday things. He
never wonders at My grace to him. He
never performs his vow for My goodness
to him. He holds a thousand,—he and
his—of My benefits: but he does not seem
to know it.” My brethren, I am as sure
as I am standing here, that we would
all get far more, and far more
wonderful answers to prayer, if only we were
far more on the outlook for them.
Habakkuk never made a holier or a more
fruitful resolve than when he said, “I
will stand upon my watch, and set me
upon the tower, and will watch to see
what He will say unto me.”
3. There were many shapes and sites of
towers in the land of Judah, and they
were put, of the people of Judah and
Jerusalem, to many and various uses.
Their city walls would rise up, all
round their cities, into strong towers,
both for defence and for beauty.
Immense towers were built also by the
military engineers of those days on
frontiers, and on passes, and on peaks,
and on exposed situations. To protect
a great well also, a strong stone
tower would be built, so as to secure
safety to the flocks of cattle and
sheep that came to the well and to its
waters to drink. No vineyard worth
anything to its owner was ever left
without its tower,—both to lodge the
keeper of the vineyard, and to be the
home of the grape-gatherers at the
grape-gathering season. Till, all over
the land, and all round the city, all
kinds of towers stood up to give life,
and strength, and beauty to the whole
landscape.
And so it is in the Church of Christ.
Till He who sees His own holy land as
no eye but His sees it: He who sees
every soldier and watchman, and
vinedresser, and keeper of sheep, in
it: He who has His sleepless eye on
every praying and expecting soul,—He
sees His Holy Land, and His Holy City,
encompassed, and ramparted, and
ornamented with ten thousand such towers:
and He never long leaves any such
tower without its proper and appointed
vision. For, as often as any watching
soul says, “I will stand upon my
watch, and will set me upon my tower,”
the Lord who spake to Habakkuk says
to us the same thing: “Though it
tarry, wait for it; because it will surely
come, it will not tarry.” And, there
is nothing that our Lord says so often
as just this,—He says it every
morning, indeed, and every night to all who
wait for Him,—”The just,” He says
without ceasing, ”shall live by his
faith.” Till one tower answers that
vision, that password and watchword, to
another; till all the land rings with
it, and echoes with it. The Lord
speaks it first to Habakkuk, and
Habakkuk to Paul, and Paul to Rome and
Galatia, and Rome and Galatia to us;
and still the same counsel and comfort
keeps on counselling all the dwellers
in their lonely towers, “The just
shall live by faith.” What Habakkuk
wrote six hundred years before Christ on
the gates, and walls, and pillars of
Jerusalem—that very same word of God
the Holy Spirit of God is writing on
the tables that are in the believing
hearts of all God’s people still:
“Being justified by faith we have peace
with God”: “By grace ye are saved
through faith”: “The just shall live by
his faith.” He shall live,—not so much
by the fulfilment of all God’s
promises; nor by God’s full answers to
his prayers and expectations; nor by
the full deliverance of his soul from
his bitter enemies; nor by the full
and final expulsion of the Chaldeans:
but he shall live, amid all these
troubles, and till they come to an end
for ever,—he shall live by his firm
faith in God, and in the future which
is all in God’s hand. And thus it is
that, whatever our oppression and
persecution may be, whatever our prayer
and wherever and whatever our waiting
tower, still this old and ever new
vision and answer comes: Faith: Faith:
and Faith only. Rest and trust in
God. Commit thy way to God. Be thine
enemy from beyond the Euphrates, or be
he out of the evil of thine own
heart,—keep on in prayer. Keep on watching.
Keep thyself on thy Tower. Keep
saying, keep singing:
For thou art God that dost
To me salvation send,
And I upon Thee all the day
Expecting do attend.
Go up every new day into Habakkuk’s
high tower. And take up his prayer and
his hope. Art Thou not from
everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine Holy One? I
shall not die. Say you also, “I shall
not die.” That is faith. That is the
very faith by which the just have been
enabled to live in all ages of the
Church of God. No man ever died under
the hand of his enemy who so believed
in God, and in the power and grace of
God. You may sometimes be afraid that
you are to be left to die in your sin
and sorrow. So was Habakkuk sometimes.
“O Lord, I heard Thy speech, and was
afraid.” Habakkuk was afraid to face
the whole long, unbroken, unrelieved
life of faith, and of faith only.
Habakkuk would be up on his tower
again to see if there were no signs of the
Chaldeans leaving the land. At another
time he would stand upon his tower,
and look if none of Judah’s old
alliances were coming to her help. But still
the full vision of his salvation
tarried, till he came to seek his
salvation, not in any outward thing
whatsoever; not even in complete
deliverance from the Chaldeans, but in
GOD,—whether the Chaldeans were in
possession of Judah, and Jerusalem, or
driven out of it. Till, taught of
God, as he dwelt more and more with
God in his high tower, Habakkuk was able
to rise and attain to this,—to this
which is one of the highest attainments
of faith, and hope, and love in all
the Old Testament,—“Yet I will rejoice
in the Lord, I will joy in the God of
my salvation. The Lord God is my
strength, and He will make my feet
like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to
walk upon mine high places.”
4. The Chaldeans with all their
overwhelming invasions, and with all their
cruel oppressions, have, then, been
made Habakkuk’s salvation. “They took
possession of dwelling-places that
were not theirs”: till Habakkuk was
compelled to seek a dwelling-place
that even they, with all their horses
like leopards, and all their horsemen
like evening wolves, could not invade.
They had hunted Habakkuk all his life,
up into his high tower, till he is
now far more of his time in his high
tower than he is on the street, or even
in the temple of Jerusalem. And till,
at last, Habakkuk has come to this,
that he asks for no more in this world
but to be let walk on his “high
place” into which he has been wont so
often to climb. In Paul’s seraphic
words, Habakkuk’s whole conversation
is now in heaven. He has gone up upon
his high tower so often, and has set
himself for such long seasons on his
watch, that he is now far more in
heaven than on earth. Habakkuk will not
only, all his remaining days, “watch”
and “wait” on his high tower, but
Habakkuk will walk there. He will
dwell there. His true home and his sure
dwelling-place will be up there. Till,
when the “beatific vision”
comes,—which will soon come to
Habakkuk, and will not tarry,—it will find
him walking, and waiting for it on his
high places. “If ye then be risen
with Christ, seek those things which
are above, where Christ sitteth on the
right hand of God. Set your affection
on things above, not on things on the
earth ... When Christ, who is our
Life; shall appear, then shall ye also
appear with Him in glory.”
_________________________________________________________________
X. OUR LORD-SANCTIFYING HIMSELF
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“And for their sakes I sanctify Myself
...”—John xvii. xix.
“I have an exceedingly complex idea of
sanctification,” says John Wesley in
his Journal. And that must surely be
an exceedingly complex sanctification,
pursuit, attainment and experience
which embraces both our Lord and all His
disciples,—both Him who knew no sin,
and those disciples of His who knew
nothing but sin.
But what exactly is sanctification?
What is sanctification both in its
complexity and in its simplicity?
Well, “Sanctification,” according to the
Catechism, “is the work of God’s free
grace, whereby we are renewed in the
whole man, after the image of God, and are
enabled, more and more, to die
unto sin, and to live unto
righteousness.” Now, to begin with, in all the
complexity and completeness of our
Lord’s sanctification; could He have
subscribed to that catechism? Could He
have signed what all our deacons
sign? When He examined Himself before
every approaching passover, would He
have found all that going forward
within Himself? Yes,—most certainly, He
would, every single syllable of it.
For it was of His Father’s “free
grace” that He, the man Christ Jesus,
the carpenter’s son, was what He was,
and did what He did. He was “renewed
in the whole man” also, ere ever He was
a man. And for thirty years, this, our
Lord’s sanctification, grew in all
its complexity and completeness till
He was manifested to Israel as the very
Image of God among men. And, while all
His days “dead to sins,” He was
enabled more and more every day to die
to sin and to “live unto
righteousness,” till in the text, and
within a few hours of His death on the
cross, He is still sanctifying
Himself—that is, surrendering Himself,
dedicating Himself, devoting Himself,
to fulfil and to finish His Father’s
will, and to accomplish the salvation
of all whom the Father hath given Him.
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself;
that they also might be sanctified
through the truth.”
It was only after an immense
“complexity” of ceremonial, indeed, but also of
moral and spiritual sanctification,
that the high priest in Israel was able
to enter the Holy of Holies, there to
make acceptable intercession for the
people. And in the whole of this great
intercessory prayer of our Lord, and
in the whole of the corresponding
Epistle to the Hebrews, we see through
what an inwardness and spirituality
and “complexity,” both of personal and
of official sanctification, our Lord
was prepared, and made perfect, for His
crowning office of our Great High
Priest. The angel Gabriel described Him as
“that holy thing” before He was born.
“For such an high priest became us,
who is holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, and made higher
than the heavens.” In His own words,
and with His eyes lifted up to heaven:
“Father, the hour is come: and for
their sakes,”—looking round on the
Eleven,—“I sanctify Myself.”
Now, here again, my brethren,—for it
meets us at every turn,—as He was; so
are we, in our measure, in this world.
As many of us, that is, as are
chosen, and called, and ordained, and
anointed for the sake of other men, as
well as for our own sake. We are to be
God’s remembrancers on the earth. We
are to be men of prayer, and
especially of intercessory prayer. We are to
be, for a time, in this world, that
which our Lord is everlastingly in
heaven. We are to be kings and priests
unto God and His Father by the blood
of the Lamb. As He was sanctified, as
He sanctified Himself, for their sake,
so is it to be with us. As He was in
His life of holiness, and consequent
intercession, so are we to be in this
world. We must sanctify ourselves for
the sake of others. We must first
sanctify ourselves, and then pray, first
for ourselves, and then for others.
And that is not our Lord’s command and
example only. Apart from all that, it
stands to reason, and it stands to
experience. Every kind of prayer, not
intercessory prayer only, which is the
highest kind of prayer, but all
prayer, from the lowest kind to the highest,
is impossible in a life of known and
allowed sin. The blind man’s retort
upon the Pharisees is his retort upon
us to this day,—“Now we know that God
heareth not sinners.” No! No man’s
prayer is acceptable with God whose life
is not well-pleasing before God. The
very ploughing of the wicked is sin. We
all know that in ourselves. The man in
this house with the least and the
lowest religious experience,—he has
enough in himself to convince him that
sin and prayer cannot both live at the
same time in the same heart. Admit
sin, and you banish prayer. But, on
the other hand, entertain, and
encourage, and practise prayer, and
sin will sooner or later flee before it:
and entertain and practise
intercessory prayer, and you will, by degrees,
and in process of time, sanctify
yourself to an inwardness and to a
spirituality, and to a complexity, and
to a simplicity that hitherto you
have had no experience of, no
conception of, and indeed no ambition after.
Now, having said “ambition,”—Who has
this holy ambition? Who has the
ambition to be bound up in the bundle
of life with the Saviour of men? Who
has the high heart to shine at last as
the brightness of the firmament, and
as the stars for ever and ever? Are
you able to drink of your Lord’s cup of
sanctification, so as to sit with Him
on His throne? Are you willing to
wear, not only the ring and the shoes
of a returning prodigal, but, in
addition, the crown and the mitre of a
king and a priest unto God?
Then,—take this text out of your
Lord’s mouth, and make it henceforth your
own. Look at Him! Look every day at
Him! Never take your eyes off Him!”
“Lift your eyes to heaven”—just like
Him; and, like Him, say, as He said
that great night of sanctification and
prayer, “Father, Holy Father! For
their sakes I also sanctify
myself.”
The first human ears these wonderful
words ever fell on were the ears of the
Eleven. Their Master had chosen the
Eleven to be the future preachers of the
Gospel, and pastors of the flock. They
heard all their Lord’s words, both of
counsel and of comfort, and of prayer
that night; only, they did not
understand what they heard. But, after
their Master’s Crucifixion, and
Resurrection, and Ascension, and after
the Pentecostal Outpouring of the
Holy Spirit—then, all these things
came back to their understanding and
their remembrance. And, as time went
on, there was nothing in that Great
Prayer the Apostles remembered more in
their daily ministry than just this:
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself.”
They remembered these words every day,
and they saw something of the
unfathomable and inexhaustible depth of these
words, as they worked out their own
salvation, and the salvation of their
people; in a daily life of increasing
holiness and intercessory prayer. And
those ministers of our own day are the
true successors of the Eleven, who
most closely imitate them in their
life of sanctification: and that, with a
view to intercessory prayer. He alone
deserves to be called a minister of
Christ and of His Church who, on the
day of his ordination, looks round on
his people, and says,—“For their sakes
I sanctify myself;” and more and more
says it with every returning Sabbath
morning. “For their sakes,” he will
say, “I dedicate and devote myself.
For their sakes I keep myself at peace
with God. For their sakes I practise
the Presence of God. I seek more and
more to please God for their sakes. To
please Him and to please them. For
their sakes I sanctify myself.” And,
what an incomparable sanctification
that is, and what a shipwreck it is
for any minister to miss it! What a
complex, what a spiritual, what an
endless, what an incessant
sanctification! In every new sermon
there is some new sanctification for a
preacher, and for his people. First
and best for him; and, then, after him,
for them. “Sanctify them through Thy
truth: Thy word is truth.” In every
pastoral visit, at every sick-bed, at
every death-bed; at every open grave,
what a complex sanctification for a
true minister every day! And, then,
every night, what a correspondingly
complex intercession for his people!
Every man in his congregation,—little
known to the man himself,—has some new
and secret and stolen sanctification
hidden about him for his minister.
Every man’s humility, lowliness of
mind, and love: every man’s rudeness,
ill-nature, ingratitude, and
insolence, hardness to move, stubbornness to
turn, pride not to be told the truth.
And, in the face of all that, a
minister’s own folly, ignorance,
unteachableness, offensiveness,
idleness,—and all the other vices of
the ministerial heart and life and
office. Men and brethren, what a
complex, what a splendid sanctification is
here! Not for you. At any rate, not
immediately for you: but for your
ministers; and, then, through their
consequent intercessions, for you. What
a scope! What a field! What an
opportunity! For that man’s sake, what
meekness and humility in his minister!
For that man’s sake, what forgiveness
and long-suffering! For that man’s
sake, what courage and boldness! And for
that man’s sake, what patience and
what hope against hope! And for all
men’s sakes, what self-condemnation
and constant contrition of heart! But
who, is sufficient for all these things?
Who but he that has something of
the mind and experience of Christ as
to the universality, and the malignity,
and the irremediableness of sin; as
also of the power of prayer, and prayer
out of a holier and an ever-holier
life? O young men! O gifted young men! O
ambitious young men! O courageous and
greathearted young men! Choose the
pulpit for your life-work! Choose the
pastorate! Choose, and endure to the
end in this incomparable
sanctification. Only, rather beg your bread, rather
break stones on the roadside than
enter the ministry, unless you are
determined to know nothing, day nor
night, but to sanctify yourselves for
their sakes!
But, almost more than any minister,
let every father and mother among us see
to it that they make this blessed
Scripture the law and the rule of their
family life. Let very Nature herself
come in here to supplement and to
strengthen grace. Let all fathers, and
all mothers, look round upon their
families every day, and say together
before God: For their sakes we sanctify
ourselves. Every father and mother
makes daily intercession before God in
the behalf of their children. But, if
they would succeed in that, they must
do more than that. They must add
sanctification to intercession. They must
learn of Christ the true secret of His
intercessory and prevailing prayer.
They must lay this too long-neglected
text to heart,—“For their sakes I
sanctify myself.”
What is it that makes you pray with
such secret tears for that son of yours?
What is it that makes you so
remorseful as you see him growing up so fast in
your house, and not at the same time
growing in grace, and in wisdom, and in
the favour of God? Is it not that you
cannot but see so much of yourself in
your ill-fated son? So much of your
own willfulness and selfishness, and
pride, and bad temper, and incipient
sensuality, and what not. It is what he
has inherited from you that causes you
such remorse, sometimes, that ever he
was begotten of you. It is this that
makes you pray for yourself, and for
him, with such passionate importunity.
All that is well; but even all that
is not enough. Have you ever tried
sanctification,—self-sanctification,—upon
your son, upon yourself, and upon God?
Try still more sanctification of
yourself, before you despair, and give
up hope. I say it in His house and in
His presence: and He will speak out,
and will contradict it if it is not
true. God cannot resist a parent’s
prayer when it is sufficiently backed up
with a parent’s sanctification. I say
it to you, in His hearing, that,
though He will not answer your most
importunate prayer by itself: yet,
because of your sanctification added
to it, He will say to you: Be it unto
you all that you will! Make experiment
by still more sanctification.
Sanctify, clean out of yourself, all
that it so pains and confounds you to
see reproduced in your son.
Contemporaneously with your prayers and your
counsels, carry you on a secret
assault both upon God and upon your son
through a still more secret and a
still more complete sanctification of
yourself. Leave nothing undone so that
all your prayers and all your
reproofs may have their full and
unbroken force, both upon God and upon your
son.
It is a very fine sight to see a
father taking on a new, and a better, and a
more modern education alongside of his
son. What a happy household that is
when a father is open to all his sons’
tutors and schoolmasters both in
nature, and in providence, and in
grace—the father, and the son still
keeping step together in the great
school of life. That is wise, and noble,
and beautiful, and very fruitful. Now,
let all fathers, in like manner,
sanctify themselves through their sons.
Let them modernise and freshen up,
and carry on, and complete their
sanctification also, seeing themselves as
in a glass, in their son’s sin and
salvation. It is supremely for this that
God setteth His solitaries in
families. It is of such a family that the
prophet speaks when all the rest of
the earth has been smitten with a curse.
All the earth, that is, but that house
where the heart of the father has
been turned to the child, and the
heart of the child to the father: that
house in which the father says, in the
words of the text,—“For the sake of
my son I will sanctify myself.”
It is altogether too dreadful to speak
about—the “curse” with which God
smites some unsanctified fathers. And,
who can tell, among so many fathers
here, but that curse may not have
begun to fall? There may be a hidden
horror in some father’s heart here
that he does not, and cannot love his
son, as all other fathers are blessed
in loving their sons, and in their
sons loving them. Such a man feels
himself to be a monster among fathers.
Your son has grown up to manhood in
the house of an unsanctified and
unprayerful father. And, as was
prophesied in a thousand scriptures, and
seen in a thousand of your neighbours’
houses,—as a father sows in his son,
so shall he reap. You took your own
way with God, and your son is now taking
his own way with you. You despised
God’s counsels, and all that your son has
done has been to despise yours. “If I
am a father,” you say, “where is mine
honour?” But God said that first, and
said it about you. Try the deliverance
of the text before you absolutely
destroy yourself. You have done everything
a father can do, you say. No, you have
not sanctified yourself. Try
sanctification upon God, and upon
yourself, and upon your son. Die this very
day to your proud heart; and having
begun to die, so die daily. “O Almighty
God! O God of all grace! Pity a most
miserable man! Sanctify me: break me to
pieces: melt me to tears; do what Thou
wilt with me: do all that I need to
have done: only, if it be possible,
take this hell out of my heart, and give
me back my lost love for my child, and
his for me!”
Till your neighbours—instead of loud
and angry words—will hear the voice of
Psalms in the tabernacles of the
righteous: “For He hath torn, and He will
heal us; He hath smitten, and He will
bind us up.” Sanctify yourself, then,
from all the remaining dregs of pride,
and anger, and temper, and tyranny in
your heart and life, as also from all
those appetites that inflame and
exasperate all these evil things.
Sanctify yourself to please God, and to
pacify conscience, and wait and see
what God will do to you in His pity and
in His love. He has no pleasure in the
death of the wicked: make you,
therefore, a new heart, and a new
spirit, saith the Lord. Sanctify yourself;
and wait and see.
There is perhaps not one of us come to
years, who has not some child or some
other relation; some old schoolfellow
or college friend; some partner in
business; or some companion in sin, or
some one else; that we are compelled
from time to time to pray for, as we
see them going down in sickness, or in
poverty, or in vice, or it may be even
in crime. Men differ greatly in the
tenderness and in the pain of their
hearts and their consciences in such
cases. But we all know something, no
doubt, of this remorse and this horror
at the ruin and the misery of men we
once knew so well. It is many years
since you have even seen him. You did
what you could to assist him; and
since then you have tried hard to wash
your hands of him. But, like the
cock-crowing, which, as often as Peter
again heard it anywhere to the end of
his life, always called back to his
unhappy mind his denial of his Master:
so there are things that you cannot
help hearing, that call back your long
past to your conscience. Your
conscience may be very unreasonable and very
unjust,—but be quiet she will not.
“Thou art the man! but for thee that poor
shipwreck might to this day have been
a happy and a prosperous and a good
man.” I cannot tell you the terrible
shock a case of that kind gave to
myself last week. There is a man still
in this life I had neglected to pray
for, for a long time past. Days and
weeks,—and I never once mentioned his
name. I used to sanctify myself for
his sake: but daily self-denial is
uphill work with me; and I had
insensibly slipped out of it. But, as God
would have it, a letter came into my
hands last week, that called back my
present text to my mind. I may not
tell you all that was in that letter, but
the very postmark made my heart to
stand still. And as I opened the letter
and read it,—Shall I tell you what I
felt? I felt as if I had murdered my
old friend. I felt as if he had been
drowned, while, all the time, I had
refused to throw him the rope that was
in my hand. I felt his blood burning
like vitriol on my soul. And a voice
cried after me on the street, and would
not be silent even in my sleep, “Thou
art the man!” I could get no rest till
I had resolved, and had begun to
sanctify myself again unto importunate
prayer for his sake. To deny myself,
to watch unto prayer, and to take his
name, night and day, back to God. “I
cannot let Thee go unless Thou dost
save that man: if he is lost, how can
my name be found in Thy Book?” How I
will persevere and succeed, in my
future sanctification for his sake,—I
cannot tell. The event alone will
tell! At any rate, I have preached this
sermon this morning out of my own
heartsore experience, as well as out of
this great intercessory text.
_________________________________________________________________
XI. OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“Then cometh Jesus with them unto a
place called Gethsemane, and saith unto
the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go
and pray yonder.”—Matt. xxvi. 36.
Gethsemane can I forget? Or there
Thy conflict see, Thine agony and bloody
sweat,—And not remember Thee?
“THEN cometh Jesus with them unto a
place called Gethsemane,” says Matthew,
who was one of them. “And when they
had sung an hymn, they went out into the
Mount of Olives,” says Mark. “And He
came out,” writes Luke, “and went, as
He was wont, to the Mount of Olives;
and His disciples also followed Him.”
And then, John, who also was one of
them, has it thus: “When Jesus had
spoken these words, He went forth with
His disciples over the brook Cedron,
where was a garden, into the which He
entered, and His disciples. And Judas
also, which betrayed Him, knew the
place; for Jesus ofttimes resorted
thither with His disciples.” Where our
version says “a place called
Gethsemane,” the Vulgate version has
“a villa”: while the Rheims version has
in Matthew “a country place,” and in
Mark “a farm”—“a farm called
Gethsemane.” Now, there was in
Gethsemane a garden, and the owner of that
garden had given our Lord full
permission to come and go in that garden when
and where He pleased. Make yourself at
home in my garden, said the owner of
Gethsemane to our Lord; and He did so.
“It was His wont to go out to that
garden,” says one of the evangelists.
“He ofttimes resorted thither,” says
another.
When he is leading his readers up to all this,
Luke, with his practised pen,
has two verses that throw a flood of
light on the whole of that Passover
week, so full of preaching and of
prayer. “And in the daytime He was
teaching in the temple; and at night
He went out, and abode in the mount
that is called the Mount of Olives.
And all the people came early in the
morning to Him in the temple, for to
hear Him.” We have some of the sermons
of that Passover week preserved to
this day in the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th
and 25th of Matthew; and terrible
sermons they must have been. They are
sufficiently terrible to read to this
day: and what must they have been to
hear that week, and to hear from the
lips of the Lamb! So terrible was His
preaching that Passover week that it
did more than anything else to bring
matters to a head, and to a last
issue, between the preacher and His
enemies. If true preaching does not
subdue us, it is sure to exasperate us.
The better the preaching is, the more
it is either a savour of life or a
savour of death to him who hears it.
“This was but a matter of seven days
before He was crucified,” says Dr.
Thomas Goodwin, one of the savouriest of
the Puritan preachers. “For, Christ
when He saw that He must die, and that
now His time was come, He wore His
body out: He cared not, as it were, what
became of Him: He wholly spent Himself
in preaching all day, and in praying
all night”: preaching in the temple
those terrible parables, and praying in
the garden such prayers as the 17th of
John, and “Thy will be done!” even to
a bloody sweat.
“And they came to a place which was
named Gethsemane: and He saith to His
disciples, sit ye here, while I shall
pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and
James and John. . . . And He was
withdrawn from them about a stone’s-cast,
and kneeled down, and prayed.” Now, if
you knew to a certainty that your
last agony was to come upon you this
Sabbath night; if all your past sins
were this very night to find you out,
and to be laid of God and man upon
you—before morning—how many of us
would you take with you? Christ took His
eleven disciples—but He soon saw that
they were far too many. Till He
selected three, and said to the rest,
“Tarry ye here.” Who of us, and how
many of us would you send for
to-night, if you know to a certainty that the
wine-cup of the wrath of God was to be
put into your hands to- night? Would
you take your minister and your elder,
and who else to make up the three?
John Knox took his wife and said to
her, “Read to me that Scripture on which
I first cast my anchor.” Have you a
wife, or a mother, or a brother, or a
friend who sticketh closer to you than
your brother, whom you could let come
within a stone’s-cast of your soul,
when your agony was upon you? No. Not
one. We should all have to stand back
when the heaviness and the exceeding
sorrow, and the amazement and the
great agony came, and the bloody sweat.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the
throne, He travels the fastest, who travels
alone.
“And He began to be sorrowful, and
very heavy,” says Matthew. But the second
of the four Evangelists, with those
wonderful eyes of his, says a still more
startling thing. “He began to be sore
amazed“ is Mark’s inexpressibly
striking contribution to this awful,
this absolutely unfathomable history.
Our words, our very best words—even
the words in which the Holy Ghost
teaches us—all fail us here. The best
and the most expressive of our words
do not come near describing our Lord
in anything He was, or in anything He
did. When our Lord ”began to be sore
amazed and very heavy,” it was not such
a beginning as ours even is. He began:
that is, He took a deliberate step:
He performed a deliberate act: He, of
His own accord, opened the doors of
His soul: He poured in on His own
soul, He let pour, in all the unutterable
woe of that unutterably woeful night.
We set ourselves, with all our might,
to see and to feel just what it was
that our Lord both did, and endured,
that dreadful night: but we give up
the effort utterly baffled. “It is too
high, and we cannot attain to it.” We
cannot wade out into all the waves of
woe that went over His soul that night
and that morning. We need not try
it—for we cannot do it. He trod the
wine-press alone; and of the people
there was none with Him. We should
need to be both God and man, as He was:
we should need to be the Lamb of God,
as he was: we should need to be “made
sin,” as He was—before we could
possibly understand in what way “He began to
be sorrowful and very heavy.” The
second Evangelist far surpasses all the
rest, and he far surpasses himself, in
his extraordinarily bolt and
soul-piercing word—“He began to be
sore amazed.” Luther declared that, to
him, these words of Mark about our
Lord were the most astonishing words in
the whole Bible. And that saying of
Luther’s is to me a sure measure of the
greatness and the freshness of the
Reformer’s mind and heart. Speaking for
myself,—I have not come on any word in
the Bible that has more both invited
and then utterly baffled me to bottom
than just this word “amazed.” I cannot
see my Lord’s human soul as I here
seem to be invited in to see it. I cannot
picture to my mind His experience at
that supreme moment. What was it that
so “amazed” our Lord in the Garden of
Gethsemane? What was there that could
begin to so sore amaze Him to whom all
things were naked and open? There was
nothing that could so sore amaze the
Son of God, but only one thing. And
that one thing was sin. It was sin
“laid upon Himself” till He was “made
sin.” Sin is so unspeakably evil, and
so unspeakably awful in its evil, that
it “sore amazed,” and struck down, as
to death and hell, the very Son of God
Himself. He had been “amazed” enough
at sin before now. He had seen sin
making angels of heaven into devils of
hell. And He had seen sin making men,
made in the image of God, to be the
prey and the spoil, and the
dwelling-places, and the companions,
of devils. He had seen and He had
studied all His days the whole malice
and wickedness of the heart of man. It
had been amazement and horror enough
to stand and see deceit and envy and
pride, and all of that kind, as He
describes it in terrible words, “coming
out of the heart” of man. But it was a
new thing to our Lord to have all
that poured in upon Himself. To be
made sin “amazed” our Lord; it absolutely
overwhelmed Him,—cast Him into “an
agony”: it loaded Him and sickened Him,
and slew Him, down to death and hell.
A terror at sin and a horror: a terror
and a horror at Himself—to absolute
stupefaction—took possession of our
Lord’s soul when He was made sin. The
only thing anywhere at all like His
amazement and heaviness, and exceeding
sorrow and anguish, is the amazement
and the heaviness, and exceeding
sorrow and utter anguish of God’s saints;
when, in their life of highest
holiness and most heavenly service, they, at
the same time, both see and feel that
they are still “made of sin,” as
Andrewes has it. Their utter
stupefaction of soul as they see all hell
opening and pouring up its bottomless
wickedness all over their soul,—that
is to taste something of what is
behind of the ‘amazement” of Christ. That
is to drink of His cup: that is to be
baptized with His baptism. It was sin
that so amazed and agonised our Lord.
Take away all its terrible wages: take
away its sure and full discovery and
exposure: take away its dreadful
remorse: take away both the first and
the second death: take away the day of
judgment and the fire that is not
quenched,—all which is the mere froth of
the cup,—take away all that, and leave
pure sin: leave pure, essential,
unadulterated sin,—what the apostle so
masterfully calls “the sinfulness of
sin.” Conceive that, if you have the
imagination. Look at that, if your eyes
have been sufficiently anointed. Taste
that, if your tongue is sufficiently
tender and strong. Carry about that,
continually, in a broken, prayerful,
holy heart—and you, of all men, are
within a stone’s-cast of Christ in the
garden: you are too near, indeed, for
mortal man to endure it long: if you
remain long there you will need an
angel from heaven to strengthen you.
It was not His approaching death.
Death and all its terrors did not much
move, did not much disconcert, did not
much discompose our Lord. He went up
to meet His death with a calmness and
with a peacefulness of mind, with a
stateliness and with a serenity of
soul that confounded the Roman centurion,
and almost converted the Governor
himself. No. It was not death: it was SIN.
It was that in which our mother
conceived us: it was that which we drink up
like water. It was that which we are
full of, from the sole of the foot even
to the head. It was that which never
cost us an hour’s sleep. It was that
which never caused us—it may be—a
single moment of pain, or shame, or
amazement of soul. It was SIN. It was
hell-fire in His soul. It was the
coals, and the oil, and the rosin, and
the juniper, and the turpentine of
the fire that is not quenched. “The
sorrows of death compassed me, and the
pains of hell gat hold upon me. I
found trouble and sorrow.”
“We know that the law is spiritual:
but I am carnal, sold under sin. For
that which I do I allow not: for what
I would, that do I not; but what I
hate, that do I.... I find then a law,
that, when I would do good, evil is
present with me.... Oh, wretched man
that I am! Who shall deliver me from
the body of this death?... For the
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the
Spirit against the flesh: and these
are contrary the one to the other.” That
was not our Lord’s amazement and agony:
but that is as near our Lord’s
amazement and agony as any sinner can
ever come. Are you able to drink of My
cup, and to be baptized with My
baptism?—Christ says to every true disciple
of His, as He leads him down into the
Gethsemane of his sanctification.
Till, as his true sanctification—so
very heavy, so exceeding sorrowful, so
sore amazing—goes on, that man of God
enters into the “fellowship of the
sufferings of Christ”; to a depth of
pain and shame and tears and blood,
that has to be hid away with Christ
among the wine-presses and the crosses
and the graves of the garden. For
he—this elect soul—wrestles not any more
with flesh and blood, but with
principalities, and with powers, and with
spiritual wickednesses, in the high
places of his own soul.
“Who is this that cometh from Edom,
with dyed garments from Bozrah? ...
Wherefore art thou red in thine
apparel, and thy garments like him that
treadeth in the wine-fat?” The hollow
of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as
he wrestled with the angel. But with all that,
there is one here greater
than our father Jacob. Jacob halted on
his thigh indeed, as he passed over
Peniel. But our Lord’s sweat with His
agony was, as it were, great drops of
blood falling to the ground. When the
light of their lanterns shone on the
dyed garments of the betrayed Man, who
came to meet them, the Roman soldiers
fell back. They had never before bound
such a prisoner as that. There is no
swordstroke that they can see upon
Him; and yet His hands and His head and
His beard are all full of blood. What
a coat was that for which the soldiers
cast their lots! It was without seam,
but,—all the nitre and soap they could
wash it with,—the blood of the garden
and of the pillar was so marked upon
it, that it would not come out of it.
What became, I wonder, of that
“dyed” garment? and all that “red
apparel”?
If you have tears, prepare to shed
them now. You all do know this mantle:
I remember The first time Caesar ever
put it on; ‘Twas on a summer
evening, in his tent, That day he
overcame the Nervii:—Look, in this place
ran Cassius’ dagger through: See
what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus
stabbed; And, as he plucked his
cursed steel away, Mark, how the
blood of Caesar followed it, ... Then
burst his mighty heart: And, in his
mantle muffling up his face,— Even at
the base of Pompey’s statue, Which
all the while ran blood—great Caesar
fell. O, what a fall was there, my
countrymen!... Now let it work.
And as Peter preached on the day of
Pentecost, he lifted up the seamless
robe he knew so well: and, spreading
it out in all its rents and all its
bloodspots, he charged his hearers,
and said: “Him ye have taken, and by
wicked hands have crucified and
slain.... Therefore let all the house of
Israel know assuredly that God hath
made that same Jesus, whom ye have
crucified, both Lord and
Christ.”
“O piteous spectacle! O noble Caesar!
O woeful day! O most bloody sight!
Most noble Caesar, we’ll revenge His
death! O royal Caesar! Here was a
Caesar! When comes such another? Now
let it work!”
And, one way it will surely work is
this,—to teach us to pray, as He prayed.
“And it came to pass, that, as he was
praying in a certain place,”—most
probably Gethsemane,—“when He ceased,
one of His disciples said unto Him,
Lord, teach us to pray!”
1. Our blessed Lord had “a place“ of
prayer that He was wont to retire to,
till even Judas knew the place. We
should have said that the Son of God did
not need retirement and seclusion and
secrecy in order to seek and find His
Father. We should have said that He
did not need our aids, and instruments,
and appliances, and means of grace. He
was always “in the spirit.” He was
always collected, and disposed, and
heavenly-minded. And yet, for reasons of
His own, our Lord had a closed-in
place of His own,—an olive-tree, a
wine-press, a stone’s-cast out of
sight, where He sought and found His
Father.
2. The wrestlers in the ancient lists
went and practised themselves on the
spot where they were to-morrow to
close with their enemy. They went down
into the arena alone. They looked
around. They looked up at the seats where
the spectators would sit. They looked
up at the throne in which Caesar would
sit. They looked well at the iron door
at which their enemy would come in.
They felt their flesh. They exercised
their joints. They threw, and were
thrown, in imagination. And the
victory was won before the day of their
agony came. Pray much beside and upon
your bed, my brethren. You will die,
as you hope, in your bed. Well, make
it, and yourself, ready. “Forefancy”
the last enemy. Have your harness in
repair. Feel the edge of your sword.
Aye; cross the Kedron sometimes, and
stand beside your fast-opening grave,
and read your name on the cold stone.
For,
The arrow seen beforehand slacks its
flight.
3. And our last lesson in this: Non
multa, sed multum, that is to say, “One
thing is needful.” The cup! the cup!
the cup! Our Lord did not use many
words: but He used His few words again
and again, till, this cup! and Thy
will!—Thy will be done, and this
cup—was all His prayer. Cato the Censor,—it
did not matter what he was speaking
about in the Senate house, or what bill
was upon the table—ended every speech
of his with the same gesture, and with
the same defiant exclamation,—Delenda
est Carthago! “The cup!” “The cup!”
“The cup!” cried Christ: first on His
feet: and then on His knees: and then
on His face. “Avenge me of mine
adversary!” cried the widow. “Avenge me of
mine adversary! Avenge me of mine
adversary!” And, O God! this day, from
this day forward, avenge us of ours!
Our one and only enemy is sin. Delenda,
avenge!
Lord, teach us to pray.
Now let it work!
_________________________________________________________________
XII. ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS
“Lord, teach us to pray,”—Luke xi.
i.
“For this cause I bow my knees unto
the Father...”—Eph. iii. 14-19.
If we do not learn to pray, it will
not be for want of instructions and
examples. Look at Abraham, taking it
upon him to speak unto the Lord for
Sodom. Look at Isaac, who goes out to
meditate in the field at the eventide.
Look at Jacob, as he wrestles until
the breaking of the day at the Jabbok.
Look at Hannah, as she speaks in her
heart. Look at David, as he prevents
now the dawning of the day, and now
the watches of the night, in a hundred
psalms. Look at our Lord. And then,
look at Paul, as great in prayer as he
is in preaching, or in writing
Epistles. No,—if you never learn to pray, it
will not be for want of the clearest
instructions, and the most shining
examples.
Our Lord’s Intercessory Prayer is
above us: it is beyond us. Of the people
there are none with our Lord when He
prays. There is inexhaustible
instruction in our Lord’s Intercessory
Prayer; but we must take our examples
from men like ourselves. After our
Lord, there is no nobler sight to be seen
on earth than Paul on his knees in his
prison in Rome. All the Apostle’s
bonds fall from off him as he kneels
in prayer for the saints in Ephesus,
and for all the faithful in Christ
Jesus. Truly the Apostle has not fainted
in his tribulations when he can rise
to such intercession and adoration as
this. “For this cause I bow my knees
unto the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom the whole family in
heaven and earth is named.”
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!
No,—not when those stone walls and
those iron bars have an Apostle Paul
within them. For, as Paul kneels on
his prison floor, its dark roof becomes
a canopy of light: and its walls of iron
become crystal till Paul sees the
whole family in heaven and on earth
gathered together in one, and all filled
with the fullness of God. Not Jews and
Gentiles only, of twain made one new
man; but all created things that are
in heaven, and that are in earth,
visible and invisible, whether they be
thrones, or dominions, or
principalities, or powers. He sees all
the angels of God in all their
endless ministries. He sees the
Archangels in their mighty dominions. He
sees the Cherubim shining with
knowledge, and the Seraphim burning with
love. “Every family,” is Paul’s great
and all-embracing word, “every family
in heaven and earth.” Paul sees them
all; he salutes them all: he loves them
all: he prays for them all. Paul has
the heart of a brother toward them all.
And all that, because his Father is
their Father; and his God their God; and
his Master their Master. And as he
looks up at them with wonder, they look
down at him with desire. Much as they
could tell him, they feel that he
could tell them far more. They are not
ignorant of God: God hath not left
His heavenly families without a
witness. Both in their creation and in their
confirmation; both in their
occupations and in their wages; both in their
worship and in their wars,—they all
live, and move, and have their being in
God. But some of their elect and
travelled fellows have returned, and have
told them things that have set all
their hearts on fire. Gabriel, for one;
the angel who was sent with strength
to the Garden of Gethsemane, for
another; as also the multitude of the
heavenly host who praised God and
said, “Glory to God in the
highest!”—all these favoured sons of God had it
to tell their fellows that not the
seventh heaven itself, but this lowest
earth alone, had seen the fullness of
the Father’s love. And not in envy but
in love they “desire to look into
these things.” Paul from his prison looks
up to them, and they from a thousand
shining walls and towers and
battlements and palaces look down at
him. And then, both earth and heaven
simultaneously cease from one another,
and look at Christ. “And the number
of them was ten thousand times ten
thousand, and thousands of thousands;
saying with a loud voice, Blessing and
honour and glory and power: Amen!”
And as the angels sang, Paul rose up
off his knees, and took his pen and
wrote this to us: “For verily He took
not on Him the nature of angels: but
He took on Him the seed of Abraham....
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers
of the heavenly calling, consider the
Apostle and High Priest of our
profession, Christ Jesus.”
Let us then also, my brethren, as
often as we lift our eyes and look up at
the sun and the moon and the stars,—at
Arcturus, and the bands of Orion, and
the sweet influences of Pleiades, and
the Chambers of the South—let us see,
inhabiting and holding them all for
God, His “every family” named after Him.
Let us often visit in faith, and in
love, and in imagination, all the
Father’s families, intellectual and
moral and spiritual, that people the
whole created universe. Let us lift up
our hands and salute them, and love
them in God their Maker, and in Jesus
Christ their Strength, if not also
their Redeemer. If they are not
jealous of us, we need not be jealous of the
best of them. As yet they far excel us
in glory: but they would count it all
loss to be “found in Christ not having
their own righteousness.” Yes: come,
all ye shining angels of God, and I
will tell you what He hath done for my
soul! Tell me about your God, and I
will tell you about my God. How has he
made you? And out of what substance?
And just in what image? How has He
spoken and written to you, and in what
language of Heaven? In what way has
the Logos enlightened you? In what way
has the Son, Who is in the bosom of
the Father, revealed the Father to
you? Just in what way do you know what is
to be known of God? Is there no kind
of sin among you? Did you ever hear
about sin? Do you know what it is?
When one of your number is talented, and
favoured, and employed, and trusted,
and loved, and brought nearer the
throne than another, what do you feel
to your brother in your hearts? Do
your hearts grow richer in love as
your ages go on? Or have you ages in
Heaven? Have you days and nights and
weeks and years in Heaven? Do you never
grow old? Have you no death? What is
your occupation? What are your wages?
What is your way of taking rest? How
do you worship? How much do you know
about us? Can you see us at your
distance? Has anyone of our race of men
ever visited your cities? And what did
he tell you about himself, and about
us? Oh, all ye lofty worlds of life,
and light, and obedience, and
blessedness, we take boldness to
salute you in the name of our Father,—in
His great Name, after which every
family in heaven and earth is named!
Far more out of the body than in it,
the Apostle now bows his knees to the
Father for that little family of
saints and faithful in Christ Jesus that
God has in Ephesus, “that he would
grant them to be strengthened with might
by His spirit in the inner man.” What
a sweep of spiritual vision from every
family in heaven down to the inner man
of every Ephesian believer! What
wonderful flights of spiritual vision
Paul took! And with what swiftness and
sureness of wing! But, what exactly is
this that he here prays for with such
importunity and nobility of mind? What
is the “inner man”? And what is the
strength of the inner man? An
illustration is far better than a description.
And our Lord Himself—Blessed be His
Name!—is the best description and
illustration of spiritual strength in
the inner man. “And the child grew,”
we read, “and waxed strong in spirit,
filled with wisdom, and the Grace of
God was upon Him.” Was upon Him, and
was within Him, till He stood up in the
fullness of that wisdom and that
strength, and took the Book, and found the
place, and said to the men among whom
He had been brought up, “This day is
this Scripture fulfilled in your
ears.” And, from that notable day, our
Lord’s whole life was one long and
unbroken illustration to us of that
strength in the inner man that we are
now in search of. When He loved His
enemies: when He did good to them that
hated Him: when He blessed them that
cursed Him: when He prayed for them
that despitefully used Him: when,
smitten on the one cheek, He offered
also the other: when His cloke was
taken away, and He forbade them not to
take His coat also: when He gave to
him that asked of Him: when He did to
all men as He would have all men do to
Him: when He judged not, nor found
fault, but forgave as much as if he had
Himself needed to be forgiven: when He
was merciful, even as His Father in
Heaven is merciful: when He gave,
looking not to receive again, good
measure, pressed down, shaken
together, and running over into men’s bosoms:
“when He was reviled, and reviled not
again: when He suffered and threatened
not... but His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree”—that
was
strength in the inner man. Paul,
himself, in no small measure, had in
himself the same inner man and the
strength that his Master had. “For this
thing I besought the Lord thrice, that
it might depart from me. And He said
unto me, My grace is sufficient for
thee: for My strength is made perfect in
weakness.... Therefore I take pleasure
in infirmities, in reproaches, in
necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am
weak, then am I
strong.”(2Cor.12:8-10)
Now, were some true and Paul-like
friend of ours, who has power with God, to
bow his knees to the Father for this
same strength to strengthen us in our
inner man—how would the answer show
itself? It would show itself in this
way. In that thing in which we are now
so weak, so easily tempted, so easily
overtaken, and so easily overthrown—in
that thing, and at that time, we
should then stand firm. At what times
and in what places in your life do you
bring shame and pain and defeat and
bondage on yourselves? In what are you a
burden, and an offence, and a
hindrance, and a constant cross to your
families and friends and
acquaintances? Well, all that would then come to an
end, or, if not all at once to an
end,—as it would not,—yet all that would
begin to come to an end. With that
strength strengthening you in the inner
man, you would begin to be patient and
silent and strong to endure under
provocation. You would be able to
command yourself where you were wont to be
lashed up into a passion. You would
begin to look on the things of other
men. You would enjoy other men’s
happiness as, at present, you enjoy your
own. You would be as grieved to hear
an evil report of other men as it
to-day kills you to be told evil
reports about yourself. You would rejoice
with them that do rejoice: and you
would weep with them who weep. You would
suffer long, and you would be kind:
you would not entertain envy: you would
not vaunt yourself: you would not be
puffed up: you would not behave
yourself unseemly: you would not seek
your own: you would not be easily
provoked; you would think no evil: you
would not rejoice in iniquity, but
you would rejoice in the truth: you
would bear all things, believe all
things, hope all things, endure all
things. In all these things, as the
outward man perished, the inward man
would be renewed day by day. Brethren,
pray for us! And God forbid that we
should sin against the Lord in ceasing
to pray for you!
But the interceding Apostle contracts
and concentrates this prayer of his
for the Ephesians in a very remarkable
way. He concentrates and directs his
prayer on one special kind of
strength. Paul is as much bent on finding
faith in the Ephesians as Christ was
bent on finding it in Jew and in
Gentile, and was overjoyed when He
found it. “That Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith.” But how?—just in
what way does Christ dwell in that man’s
heart in which faith is strengthened?
Well, take an illustration again. How
did the still absent bridegroom dwell
in the heart of the bride in the song?
Listen to her heart, and you will see
for yourself. “By night on my bed I
sought him whom my soul loveth: I
sought him, but I found him not. Saw ye
him whom my soul loveth? I charge you,
O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye
tell him that I am sick of love. Oh,
that thou wert as my brother, that
sucked the breasts of my mother! I
would lead thee, and bring thee into my
mother’s house. His left hand should
be under my head, and his right hand
should embrace me. Set me as a seal
upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine
arm: for love is strong as death. Many
waters cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it.” That is
something of the way Christ dwells in his
heart who is strengthened by faith.
That is the way he dwelt in John and
Paul and in our own Samuel Rutherford.
And why not in you and me? Simply
because no one has prayed for us, and
we have not prayed for ourselves, that
Christ may dwell in our hearts by
faith. No prayer,—no faith,—no Christ in
the heart. Little prayer,—little
faith,—little Christ in the heart.
Increasing prayer,—increasing faith,—increasing
Christ in the heart. Much
prayer,—much faith,—much Christ in the
heart. Praying always,—faith
always,—Christ always. “Hitherto ye
have asked nothing in My name: ask, and
ye shall receive, that your joy may be
full.”
“That ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, ..may be able to comprehend
with all saints what is the breadth,
and length, and depth, and height; and
to know the love of Christ, which
passeth knowledge..” (Eph.3:17-19) You
cannot construe that. You cannot make
grammar and logic out of that. You
cannot make theological science out of
that. You cannot shut that up into a
confession of faith, or contract it
into a Church catechism. Paul is a
mystic. Paul is a poet. Paul is of
heart and imagination all compact. Paul
has science, and he has clearness and
crispness of intellect of the very
first order. But he will tell you
himself that he never in any of his
Epistles speaks the words which man’s
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy
Ghost teacheth, because they are
spiritually discerned. “Rooted and
grounded.” I defy you when you first
try it to make anything of that. I defy
you, all you can do, to reconcile
that. You never saw anything like that in
all your experience. There is nothing
created by God, or manufactured by
man, like that. You never heard before
this prayer, nor have you ever heard
since this prayer, of anything that
was both rooted and grounded. There is
no such thing. There is no such thing
but a saint’s heart. A tree is rooted,
and a house is grounded: a tree has a
root, and a house has a foundation:
but no house has a root, and no tree
has a foundation. No houses but holy
hearts: no trees but the trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord.
But here—all you who love to hear of
wonders and strange tales—here is a
house with roots, and a tree with
foundations! And all that deep down in the
divine ground of love. Magnificent
man! A master of men! A master of the
inner man of the heart! Great Paul! Great
original! Great Apostle! Both
Apostle and Poet of Jesus
Christ!
“And to know the love of Christ, which
passeth knowledge.” There, again!
What can we make of a man like Paul?
You cannot draw out leviathan with a
hook. Wilt thou play with him as with
a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy
maidens? He maketh the sea to shine
after him. One would think the deep to
be hoary. And yet, do not despair! For
it is this same leviathan among men
who has written with his own hand this
combined challenge and encouragement.
“Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world?(1Cor.1:20) .. Because the
foolishness of God is wiser than
men.(1Cor.1:25) .. That your faith
should not stand in the wisdom of men,
but in the power of God.(1Cor.2:5)”
Yes! I begin to see! It passes knowledge
to know it all: but, if it were not
possible to me to know the love of
Christ in my own measure, Paul would
never mock me by such a prayer. All
saints, he says, know that love well.
Then the least saint, and he who is
not worthy to be called a saint, may
have his own little knowledge ofthat
love. A saint, indeed, is not a saint
at all: a true saint is just a great
sinner seeking to taste the love of
Christ. Only “tell me which of them will
love Him most... I suppose He to whom
He forgave most... Thou has rightly
judged.”
The truth, my brethren, the blessed
truth is this—that instead of it being a
difficulty, and a hardship, and an
offence that the love of Christ passeth
knowledge,—that is the crowning glory
of Christ’s love: that is our crowning
blessedness. The love of Christ has no
border: it has no shore; it has no
bottom. The love of Christ is
boundless: it is bottomless: it is infinite:
it is divine. That it passeth
knowledge is the greatest thing that ever was
said, or could be said about it, and
Paul was raised up of all men to see
that and to say it. We shall come to
the shore, we shall strike the bottom,
of every other love: but never of the
love of Christ! No, never! It passeth
now, and it will for ever pass,
knowledge. You, who have once cast
yourselves into it, and upon it—the
great mystic speaks of it as if it were
at once an ocean and a mountain,—you
will never come to the length of it, or
to the breadth of it, or to the depth
of it, or to the height of it. To all
eternity, the love of Christ to you
will be new. It will fill you full of
wonder, and expectation, and
imagination; full of joy and sweetness and
satisfaction: and still the half will not be known to you. Heap up
eternity
upon eternity, and still the love of
Christ to you will make all eternity to
be but the springtime of life to you,
and still but the early days of your
everlasting espousals. The love of
Christ will, absolutely and
everlastingly, pass all knowledge. The
love of Christ, like the peace of
God, will everlastingly pass all
understanding.
“And, that ye might be filled with all
the fullness of God.” (Eph:3:19) What
that is, and what that will for ever be,—“it
is not lawful for a man to
utter.”
_________________________________________________________________
XIII. ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Giving thanks unto the Father . .
.”—Col. i. 12, 13.
THANKSGIVING is a species of prayer.
Thanksgiving is one species of prayer
out of many. Prayer, in its whole
extent and compass, is a comprehensive and
compendious name for all kinds of
approach and all kinds of address to God,
and for all kinds and all degrees of
communion with God. Request, petition,
supplication; acknowledgment and
thanksgiving; meditation and contemplation;
as, also, all our acts and engagements
of public, and family, and closet
worship,—all those things are all so
many species, so to say, of prayer.
Petition is the lowest, the most
rudimentary and the most elementary of all
kinds of prayer. And it is because we
so seldom rise above the rudiments and
first principles of divine things that
we so seldom think, and so seldom
speak, about prayer in any other sense
than in that of request and petition
and supplication. Whereas praise—pure,
emancipated, enraptured, adoring
praise,—is the supremest and the most
perfect of all kinds of prayer.
Thanksgiving is higher and purer than
petition; while, again, it is lower
and less blessed than holy, heavenly,
God-adoring praise.
Now it is to thanksgiving that the
Apostle here invites the Colossian
believers. He has prayed for them ever
since the day on which he first heard
of their faith and their love. And
now, that Epaphras has brought him such
good news of their continuance and
their growth in grace, he invites them to
join with him in this noble thanksgiving—unto
the Father who hath delivered
him and them from the power of
darkness and hath translated him and them
into the Kingdom of His dear
Son.
It is in Paul’s princely manner to
establish and to illustrate his
doctrines, and to enforce and to fix
his counsels, by drawing upon his own
experience. This is one of Paul’s
great ways of writing, and it is only a
true and a great man who could write
about himself as Paul constantly
writes. Paul is so dead in Paul that
he can take an argument, and a proof,
and an illustration, and an apostrophe
out of himself with as much liberty
and detachment as if he had lived in
the days of Moses or of David. Paul is
so “crucified with Christ” that he can
speak about himself, on occasion, as
if he were speaking about some other man
altogether. “I know a man in
Christ, above fourteen years ago:
whether in the body, or out of the body, I
cannot tell: God knoweth.” Speaking,
then, out of this noble freedom and
self-emancipation, Paul puts himself
at the head of the Colossians in their
thanksgiving and says: Come, O ye
saints and faithful brethren, and join
with me in my constant thanksgiving to
the Father, “Which hath made us meet
to be partakers of the inheritance of
the saints in light: Who hath
delivered us”—first me and then
you—“from the power of darkness, and hath
translated us into the kingdom of His
dear Son.” “Us,” he says,—you and me.
And especially me, that I might be a
pattern to them which should hereafter
believe on Him to life everlasting.
“Darkness” and “the power of
darkness.” Now, what is this darkness? It is
sin, you will answer. And so it is. It
is sin. It is the dark shadow that
sin casts on God and on the soul of
the sinner. This is not what we are wont
to call “darkness.” This is not the
slow setting, or the sudden eclipse, of
the sun or the moon. This is not the
overclouding of the stars. This is not
the oil failing till our lamps go out.
This is not the darkness that
terrifies our children. This is not
the darkness that is scattered by
striking a match and lighting a
candle. No. This “darkness” is sin. And each
man’s own, and only, darkness is from
his own sin. And each man’s darkness
is so thick, and so inward, and so
abiding, because it is the darkness that
is cast by that huge idol of darkness,
each man’s own sinful self. “Self,”
in this life, is just another, and a
truer, and a keener, and a more
homecoming name, for sin. My sin is
myself. And my darkness lies so thick
and so deadly on my soul because self
towers up so high and so dark in my
soul. And in every man’s soul! That is
the reason that the world is so full
of all kinds of darkness,—because it
is so full of men who are all so full
of themselves. And that is the reason
that hell is so full of darkness,—with
not one ray of light,—it is because it
is so full of fallen angels and
fallen men who are all so full of
themselves. That is the reason why they
gnaw their tongues with pain, and,
that is the reason that the smoke of
their torment goes up for ever. Yes:
believe it! yes: be sure of it! Self is
the very valley of the shadow of
death. It is the land of deserts and pits.
It is that land of drought through
which no man passes. It is that land
where all men who pass through it
stumble and are broken upon its dark
mountains. Hell is hell, because self
fills it full, down and out, to all
its awful bottomlessness. And heaven
is heaven, because there is no self
there. Only God is there: only the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
and our neighbour as ourselves. And
self in Paul, and in the Colossians, was
hell begun: it was hell and its
darkness in them already; till the Father
gave commandment and delivered them
from this darkness of sin and self, and
translated them into the marvellous
light of His dear Son.
Paul is a magnificent writer. We have
seen one magnificent manner of Paul’s
writing already; and there is another
in this magnificent passage. But both
these manners of his are too high, and
too much his own, for any of us to
attain to, or to attempt. We must not
measure common men with the measure of
the Apostle Paul. After he had been
caught up into Paradise, Paul never
altogether got himself brought back to
this earth again. His conversation
and his correspondence ever after that
was carried on in “unspeakable
words.” His affection, ever after
that, was set on things above, and not on
things on the earth. He wrote all his
Epistles, after that, less in any
language that has ever been written on
earth than in the language they write
and speak and sing in heaven. His very
pen and ink and parchment after that,
his very grammar and vocabulary, his
style,—his whole intellectual and moral
and spiritual manner,—no school on
earth ever taught this Apostle to write
these Epistles. He writes in the mood,
in the tense, in the idiom, in the
atmosphere, in the scope, and in the
horizon of heaven. Time and sin are
already no longer with Paul, when he
is at his best. Paul sits in heavenly
places with Christ, and he writes to
us in words it is not lawful for a man
to utter. And he is so assured
concerning not himself only but concerning
all the chosen and called in Christ
Jesus, that he antedates his Epistles,
and writes in them, as if all the
Colossians and Ephesians and Thessalonians
were already where he is. He sometimes
redresses the balance in a most
masterly manner; but his prevailing
tone and temper is that of a glorified
saint, who both sees and experiences
what other saints still but believe in
and hope for. “The Father hath
delivered us,” says Paul ecstatically, where
a less rapt and a more pedestrian
writer would be thankful to be able to
say: He has begun to deliver us, and
it is our unceasing prayer that he will
perfect that which so concerneth us! I
do not ask you, my brethren, to be
thankful like Paul and the Colossians,
because the Father has actually and
for ever delivered you from the
darkness of selfishness, and anger, and
envy, and malice, and lovelessness,
and unbelief, and all disobedience. I
dare not ask you to be thankful for
your deliverance as if it were perfected
and past. For, if I said you had no
sin, I should be a liar. And if I said
you were delivered from all darkness,
you would laugh in my face and say I
was a fool. All I ask is this—Do you
know what Paul is speaking about? Do
you have this darkness of his in
yourself? Is there less of it than there
once was? Do you hate the darkness,
and yourself on account of it? and do
you rejoice in the light and seek it?
Are your dark thoughts about your
neighbour your daily burden and
agonising prayer? Do you, before God, put
off the deeds and the words and the
thoughts of darkness, and put on against
them the armour of light? Do you, my
brethren, do you? Then Paul, hearing of
all that from Epaphras, would write an
Epistle to you in his most soaring
style, till you would answer: “Would
God, He had indeed so delivered me!”
And he would answer you back again,
and would say, “When Christ, Who is our
life, shall appear, then shall ye also
appear with Him in glory. Put on,
therefore, as the elect of God, holy
and beloved, bowels of mercies,
kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one
another, and forgiving one another, if
any man have a quarrel against any”:
and in all that the Father will more
and more deliver you from the power of
darkness, and will “translate you into
the kingdom of His dear Son.”
“He delivered us” is tame and jejune.
“He snatched us,” is Paul’s tingling
and heart-thrilling word. He snatched
us as the angel snatched Lot out of
Sodom! He snatched us as a man
snatches a brand out of the fire. “And while
Lot lingered, the men laid hold upon
his hand, and upon the hand of his
wife, and upon the hand of his two
daughters; the Lord being merciful unto
him: and they brought him forth, and
set him without the city.” And like
that,— yes, often like that,—when a
darkness is again, as of Sodom and
Gomorrah, filling our hearts, God
takes our hand, and we are in repentance,
and in prayer, and in tears, and in
love to God and man, before we know
where we are. “The sun was risen upon
the earth when Lot entered into
Zoar.”
He “snatched” us and translated us:
literally, He emigrated us. Now an
emigrant is more than a delivered
captive. An emigrant, even when you
emigrate him, goes of his own free
will and full accord. He chooses to go.
He decides to go. He prepares to go.
He hastens to go. You tell him about a
better land. You fit him out for it.
You even pay his passage to it, and buy
him his farm in it: but all that only
makes him the more forward to go to
it. “Come!” he says to his wife and
children, “let us be up and going!” And
so is it with those whom the Father
emigrates. They have far more hand in
their translation and emigration into
the Kingdom of God’s dear Son than
they had in their snatched deliverance
from the power of darkness. They love
the light now. They love to hear about
it. They love to walk in it. “Every
one that doeth evil hateth the light,
neither cometh to the light, lest his
deeds should be reproved. But he that
doeth truth cometh to the light, that
his deeds may be made manifest, that
they are wrought in God.”
And, lastly, in this great
thanksgiving: He hath “made us meet to be
partakers of the inheritance of the
saints in light.”
“Meet” is a fine translation, and an
exquisitely apt and beautiful English
expression—as long as our minds move
only in the literature of the text. But
when we take the text to heart, it
runs through our hearts like a two-edged
sword. O Paul! up in Paradise, be
merciful in thy rapture! Hast thou
forgotten that thou, also, wast once a
wretched man? “Darkness” I know. And
“Deliverance from the power of
darkness” I am not altogether ignorant of.
God’s dear Son and His Kingdom,—I
sometimes feel as if I had indeed been
“translated” into it. But, “meet for
the inheritance of the saints in
light!” My heart is dazzled and driven
back, and driven down within me, with
the too great glory. I meet for that
inheritance! Impossible, for I am to
this day full of darkness and of
everything that is unmeet for such an
inheritance! I was saying that to
myself, my brethren, over this Scripture,
when a voice spake to me and said:
“What do you say to the thief on the
cross?” At first I did not see what
the thief on the cross had to do with my
hopeless unmeetness for the heavenly
inheritance. But, gradually, there
arose in my mind what the thief asked
of the Dying Redeemer, and what the
Dying Redeemer promised the thief.
Hanging by his hands and his feet, and
filled with the darkness of a lifetime
of robbery and murder, the near
neighbourhood of the Saviour for those
six hours made such an impression on
the dying thief that the whole
impossible work of the text was gathered up,
and completed, in that great sinner
than forenoon. “Lord, remember me when
Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” ...
“To-day shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise.” That thief then, who, by
his own confession, was only reaping on
the cross as he had sown all his
days—that thief was in Paradise before Paul
himself: Paul saw him, and talked with
him: and he must have been made as
meet for Paradise as Paul himself. In
those six hours of pain, and shame,
and repentance, and sight of Christ
beside him in His sweetness, and
meekness, and patience, and pity and
prayer for His murderers—that forenoon,
the Father delivered that outcast
creature, snatched him from the power of
darkness and translated him into the
Kingdom of His dear Son. And, more
marvellous still, and past all our
understanding how it was done, He made
him meet, and that in a moment, for
the inheritance of the saints in light.
As soon as I saw that, I understood
the voice that had said to me, “Go,
before you preach your sermon, go and
stand and hear what passes between
your Master and the penitent thief.”
And I came away with new hope for all
my dying people, and for myself, and
for our meetness for the inheritance of
the saints in light.
Have I then, and have you, that dying
thief’s meetness? Have our sins found
us out to the cross? Has the darkness
of death got hold of us? And is our
lost life fast running out of us like
his life’s blood? And, with all that,
has there been given us a glimpse of
Jesus Christ,—Jesus Christ in His
affability and grace, and such
affability and grace, and He Himself on the
Cross? Do you see and feel anything of
all that? Then, that is the Father!
That is the darkness beginning to
divide, and clear up and scatter. You are
on the border of the Kingdom of His
dear Son. Follow that out, speak that
out, say, “Lord, remember me!” Tell
Him that you are reaping the reward of
your deeds in all the darkness, and in
all the forsakenness, and in all the
pain, and in all the death that has
come upon you.
The dying thief rejoiced to see That
fountain in his day; And there have
I, as vile as he, Washed all my sins
away.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power Till all
the ransomed Church of God Be saved, to sin
no more.
Tell Him what you would rather die
than tell to any other. Tell Him that He
only knows how unmeet you are for
anything to be called an inheritance of
saints. But boldly tell Him also where
your heart is. Tell Him that your
heart is in heaven: and testify to Him
that even if He casts you into hell,
to all eternity your heart will be
with Him and His saints in heaven. And,
when you are as near death as that
thief was, keep on saying: Lord, remember
me! Give Him no rest till He says: By
your much coming you weary Me. And
till He says: Be it unto thee as thou
wilt. To-day shalt thou be with Me!
_________________________________________________________________
XIV. THE MAN WHO KNOCKED AT
MIDNIGHT
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“Which of you shall have a friend, and
shall go unto him at
midnight...”—Luke. xi. 5-8.
It is night. It is midnight. The night
is dark. All the lights are out, and
everybody is in bed. “Friend! lend me
three loaves! For a friend of mine in
his journey is come to me, and I have
nothing to set before him!” He knocks
again. “Friend! lend me three loaves!”
He waits awhile and then he knocks
again. “Friend, friend! I must have three
loaves!” “Trouble me not: the door
is now shut; I cannot rise and give
thee!” He is dumb, for a time. He stands
still. He turns to go home. But he
cannot go home. He dare not go home. He
comes back. He knocks again. “Friend!”
he cries, till the dogs bark at him.
He puts his ear to the door. There is
a sound inside, and then the light of
a candle shines through the hole of
the door. The bars of the door are drawn
back, and he gets not three loaves
only but as many as he needs, “And I say
unto you, Ask, and it shall be given
you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be opened unto
you.”
1. Our Lord Himself was often like
that importunate poor man, out at
midnight, knocking for bread. When He
was a child, He had lain, full of
fear, and had heard all that knocking
at midnight at Joseph’s door. And,
when He became a man, He remembered
that sleepless midnight, and
spiritualised it and put it into this
parable. And often, when He was full
of all manner of labours, and all
manner of temptations all day, He called
to mind that midnight in Nazareth, and
knocked again and again till He got
as much as he needed. There are things
in the Gospels written there—without
emotion and without exclamation—at
which our hearts stand still, when we
suddenly come upon them. “He went up
into a mountain to pray: and when the
evening was come He was there alone.”
And, again, “He departed again into a
mountain Himself alone.” And, again,
“It came to pass in those days that he
went out into a mountain to pray, and
continued all night in prayer to
God.” He continued all night. Do you
see Him? Do you hear Him? Can you make
out what He is asking? He stands up.
He kneels down. He falls on His face.
He knocks at the thick darkness. All
that night He prays, and refuses to
faint, till the sun rises, and He
descends to His disciples like a strong
man to run a race. And in Gethsemane
all His past experiences in prayer, and
all He had ever said to His disciples
about prayer,—all that came back to
His mind till His sweat was as it were
great drops of blood falling to the
ground. No,—we have not an high priest
who cannot be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities. “Who in
the days of His flesh, when He had
offered up prayers and supplications
with strong crying and tears ... And
being made perfect, He became the
author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey Him.” And in nothing more
than in importunate prayer.
2. And then, just as He was when He
was in this world, and just as this
importunate poor man was, so are we
while the day of our mercy lasts in this
world. A friend of ours—so to call
him—comes to us in his journey; and we
have nothing to set before him. God’s
law comes and says to us, Do this, and
do that to that man, pointing him out
to us. And we set out to do what we
are told from God to do: but the thing
that we would, we do not: while the
thing that we would not, that we do. A
temptation that we had not expected,
and that we were not prepared for,
comes upon us. A heart-searching, a
hart-scorching temptation,—till our
hearts are as dark as midnight, and as
dead as the grave. Duties that we
cannot perform as we ought, and cannot
escape, are laid upon us. Trials to
test and to sift us; and crosses to
which to nail our hands and our feet,
till, all day, and every day, and
every night, like the man in the
parable, we have nothing to set before
them.
And then, in our famine of life, and
peace, and strength, we think—oh, so
unwillingly!—of God. How unwelcome is
the thought that He has all that we
need; and that, if we ask it aright of
Him, He will give us all we need! It
may be so. But if we could make any
other shift we would make it. We have
grace enough left to be ashamed to go
to God in our need. It is so long
since we have been at His door, or in
His house, or at His table, or He at
ours. He might very well say to us, I
do not know you. He might very well
say to us, Get some of your own
friends to help you. We anticipate that, and
also far worse upbraidings than that.
And we turn back, we simply cannot go
to God. But the intolerable pangs go
on. The awful faintness and sinking go
on: till very death itself, and worse
than death, is at the door, and till
we say like the four lepers at the
entering in of the gate of Samaria: “Why
sit we here until we die? Now,
therefore, come and let us fall unto the host
of the Syrians: if they save us alive,
we shall live: and if they kill us,
we shall but die.” It is not a very
becoming mind in which to arise and go
to our Father. But any of you that is
a father does not stands upon points
with his son, which was dead, and is
alive again; and was lost, and is
found.
3. When the Books are opened it will
be discovered that more importunate and
prevailing prayer has been offered at
midnight than at all the other hours
of the day and the night taken
together. Look back at your Bible,—that book
of importunate and prevailing
prayer,—and see! Jacob is the father of all
men of importunate prayer. Jacob was
called no more Jacob, but Israel,
because of his all-night importunity
in prayer. A friend of his, his brother
Esau, indeed, was to meet him
to-morrow, and Jacob felt that he must have
all night with God if his life was to
be preserved. The sin of his youth had
found Jacob out. And it took Jacob all
night to see the sin of his youth as
God saw it, and as Esau saw it. But he
did see it as the night went on. And
he called the name of the place
Peniel. What midnights David had with sin,
and with prayer also, all his Psalms
testify. But, best of all, David’s SON.
The midnight mountains and the
midnight olive-yards of Galilee and Judea
will all rise against us when the
Books are opened,—the Books about our
Lord’s life of prayer, and the books
about our own life of prayer. His Books
are all closed against that day, but
not ours yet. If, to-night, then, a
friend of yours should come to you,
and you have nothing to set before him:
if, in your Saviour’s words, you
should come to yourself to-night: and, amid
your fear, or your want, or whatever
form your awakening may take, if you
hear over you and within you this
voice saying to you: “Ask, and it shall be
given you: seek, and ye shall find:
knock, and it shall be opened unto
you”: then do it. Do it, as if the
Books were to be opened before the world
is awake to-morrow morning. Do it, as
if already the thief were at your
window. Keep your candle burning till
you read once more the Parable of the
Friend at Midnight. Go through the
parable: and go through it on your knees,
if not yet on your face. Read it; see
it. See Himself,—the Son of
God,—praying in a certain place.
Attend to Him as He teaches His disciples
to pray. See the man at midnight.
Imitate that man. Act it all alone at
midnight. Leave nothing of it that you
do not do over again. See him in his
straits. Hear his knocks sounding in
the silence of the night. Hear his loud
cry, and cry it after him. He needed
three loaves. What is your need? Name
it. Name it out. Let your own ears
hear it. And should some ear in the house
overhear it, it will do them good to
hear that sound in your room at
midnight. Never mind the lateness of
the hour: think of the untimeous man in
the parable: think of your untimeous
Intercessor, and continue in
importunate prayer.
4. “Importunity,”—“because of his
importunity,” —does not do justice to our
Lord’s style,—to call it style. What
our Lord said was far more to the
purpose than “importunity,” excellent
as that is. What He said was
“shamelessness.” This was what our
Lord really said: “I say unto you,” He
said, “though he will not rise and
give him because he is his friend, yet
because of his shamelessness he will
rise and give him as many as he
needeth.” “Think shame!” the man cried
out, who was in bed, with his door
shut. “Think shame!” the disturbed
neighbours cried out. “Think shame!” the
late passers-by said. “Hold your
peace,” they said, “and let honest men’s
doors alone at this time of night.”
“Never mind,” says our Lord on the other
hand. “Never you mind them: they have
bread enough at home: and easy for
them to cry shame to a starving man.
Never you mind, knock you on. I have
been in your place Myself, till they
said that I was beside Myself. Knock
you on: and I will stand beside you
till I see the door open. He must rise
if you go on knocking. Give him no
rest. Well done! Knock again!”
Yes,—shamelessness! “What a shameless
wretch I am!” you will say about
yourself, “to ask such things, to have
to ask such things at my age: to
knock so loud after the way I have
neglected prayer, and neglected and
forgotten the Hearer of prayer.” “At
my age,”—you will number your days and
will blush with shame,— “at my age,
and only beginning to pray in any
earnest! How many nights have I had no
time to give to God! And, now, to
expect that when I lift up my finger,
and go down five minutes on my
carpeted knees, God Almighty is to
hasten and set everything aside to hear
me!” Yes: you are right: it needs some
forehead: it needs some face: it
needs, as Christ says, some
“shamelessness” in you and me to come in that
manner and for these things at
midnight. Yes,—it is this that so increases
and so aggravates the shamelessness of
your case. The shameful things you
have to ask for. The disgraceful—the
incredible things you have to admit and
confess. The life you have lived. The
way you have spent your days and
nights. And what all that has brought
you to. It kills you to have to say
such things even with your door shut.
Yes,—but better say all these things
in closets than have them all
proclaimed from the housetops of the day
ofjudgment. Knock, man! knock for the
love of God! Knock as they knock to
get into heaven after the door is
shut! Knock, as they knock to get out of
hell!
5. And then,—oh! what an experience it
is, what a more than heavenly joy it
is, when the door is at last opened,
and the loaves are handed out! What an
indescribable feeling is that in our
hearts, when, after years of prayer,
followed with midnight after midnight
of importunity and agony, light begins
to break through: and God’s hand is
reached out, and our souls taste the
strength and the sweetness of the
Bread from heaven. Jacob does not feel his
thigh any more. David’s couch, wet
with his tears, is all answered now. The
bloody sweat of Gethsemane itself is
all forgotten now.
6. And then, just before He shuts up
His sermon on prayer, our Lord in one
word touches the top and the
perfection of all prayer,—“importunate prayer,
that is, for the Holy Spirit. It is no
longer a prayer for bread, or for a
fish, or for an egg: it is no longer
for long life, or for riches, or for
the life of our enemies: it is no
longer, What shall we eat? or what shall
we drink? or wherewithal shall we be
clothed? It is now for the Holy Spirit,
and for the Holy Spirit alone. Our
Lord would fain hear us saying at the end
of His sermon: “One thing do I desire,
and that will l seek after.” We have
all wrestled at midnight, when we saw
Esau coming to meet us with his armed
men. We have all made our couch to
swim with tears when our sin found us
out. We have all fallen on our face
when death, with his cords and his
torches and his weapons, was seen
crossing the Kedron. But have we ever been
like this man in the parable for the
Holy Spirit? For the Holy Spirit, and
for His holiness in our hearts? Do we
ever—do we often—do we without ceasing
knock for holiness? For the death and
the destruction of sin in our souls?
For faith in God,—to believe that He
is when we come to Him? For love to
Jesus Christ? For love to our
neighbour? For love to our false friends? and
to our enemies? For the complete
cleansing of our hearts of all hatred, and
variance, and emulation, and wrath,
and strife, and envy, and such like? Is
there, this morning of God, within the
walls of this House of God, one man
who last night knocked and knocked,
and returned after he was in bed and
half asleep, and knocked again for
more love, for more long-suffering, for
more gentleness, for more meekness?
For a clean heart? For a heart clean of
envy and ill-will? For a heart dead to
sin, and to his own besetting and
indwelling sin? Is there one? My
brethren, God is your witness: for the
darkness hideth not from Him: but the
night shineth before Him as the day.
“But, thou, when thou prayest, enter
into thy closet, and when thou hast
shut thy door, pray to thy Father,
Which seeth in secret; and thy Father
Which seeth in secret shall reward
thee openly.” When the Books are
opened—that is to say. When your
secret place of prayer is opened. When your
midnight is no longer. When the Holy
Spirit has finished His midnight work
in you. As you pray at midnight, in
the thick, and dark, and lonely, and
slothful, and all-men-asleep midnight
of this evil life, so shall it be
answered and fulfilled to you in the
morning. Only, understand, and be
instructed—not till the morning.
Understand this well, that you will get
earnests and foretastes before the morning,—but
they will only be earnests
and foretastes. Submit to this and lay
it to heart, that the full answer to
your best prayer is not given in this
life. You will get the full answer to
all your other prayers in this life.
Peace with Esau: long life, and riches,
and the lives of your enemies: corn,
and wine, and oil: what you shall eat,
and what you shall drink, and
wherewithal you shall be clothed. But if your
heart is carried on to pray for the
Holy Spirit, and for the Holy Spirit
alone, you will have to continue in prayer till the morning. Every man
in
his own order, and in his own time.
But then,—when the day breaks:
“What are these which are arrayed in
white robes, and whence came they? . .
. They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more. . . . For the Lamb
which is in the midst of the Throne
shall feed them, and shall lead them
unto living fountains of waters: and
God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes.” Amen.
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PART III
SOME ASPECTS OF THE WAY OF PRAYER
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XV. PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“They return, but not to the Most
High.”—Hos. vii. 16.
THE Most High. The High and Lofty One,
That inhabiteth eternity, whose Name
is Holy. The King Eternal, Immortal,
Invisible, the Only Wise God. The
Blessed and Only Potentate, the King
of kings, and Lord of lords: Who only
hath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto: Whom
no man hath seen, nor can see. Great
and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God
Almighty: just and true are Thy ways,
Thou King of saints. Who shall not
fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy
Name? For Thou only art Holy. God is a
Spirit: Infinite, Eternal, and
Unchangeable in His Being, Wisdom, Power,
Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth.
Lo! these are parts of His ways: but
how little a portion is heard of Him!
But the thunder of His power who can
understand? The Most High!
Now the greatness of God is the true
index and measure of the greatness of
man. God made man in His own image. God
made man for Himself, and not for
any end short of Himself. “Man’s chief
end is to glorify God, and to enjoy
Him for ever.” “In Thy presence is
fulness of joy: at Thy right hand there
are pleasures for evermore.” “Then
will I go unto the altar of God, unto God
my exceeding joy.” “Enter thou into
the joy of thy Lord.” The higher, then,
that God is, the higher is our
everlasting destination to be. The more
blessed God is, the more blessed are
we purposed and predestinated to be.
The more surpassing all imagination of
Prophets and Psalmists and Apostles
the Divine Nature is,—the more true it
is that eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, nor hath it entered into the
heart of man what God hath prepared for
them who are for ever to be made
partakers of the Divine Nature. “I in them,
and Thou in me. And the glory which
Thou gavest Me, I have given them: that
the Love wherewith Thou hast loved Me
may be in them: and I in them.” And
then, in order to hedge up, and
secure, all these to their everlasting
exaltation and blessedness, God has
made it the supreme law of all His laws
to us, that all men shall, above all
things else, seek their own chief end.
And He has made it the sin of sins,
the one unpardonable sin, in any man, to
come short of his chief end—which is
the full enjoying of God to all
eternity. And the prophet Hosea has
all that in his mind, and in his heart,
when he offers that great evangelical
invitation and encouragement, “Come
and let us return unto the Lord.” And
he has all that in his mind and in his
heart also, when he utters the sore
lamentation and bitter accusation of the
text, “They return, but not to the
Most High.”
Now it is necessary to know, and ever
to keep in mind, that prayer is the
all-comprehending name that is given
to every step in our return to God.
True prayer, the richest and the
ripest prayer, the most acceptable and the
most prevailing prayer, embraces many
elements: it is made up of many
operations of the mind, and many
motions of the heart. To begin to come to
ourselves,—however far off we may then
discover ourselves to be,—to begin to
think about ourselves, is already to
begin to pray. To begin to feel fear,
or shame, or remorse, or a desire after
better things, is to begin to pray.
To say within ourselves, “I will arise
and go to my Father,”—that is to
begin to pray. To see what we are, and
to desire to turn from what we
are—that also is to pray. In short,
every such thought about ourselves, and
about God, and about sin and its
wages, and about salvation, its price and
its preciousness; every foreboding
thought about death and judgment and
heaven and hell; every reflection
about the blood and righteousness of Jesus
Christ; and every wish of our hearts
that we were more like Jesus Christ:
all our reading of the Word, all our
meditation reflection, contemplation,
prostration and adoration; all faith,
all hope, all love; all that, and all
of that same kind,—it all comes, with
the most perfect truth and propriety,
under the all-embracing name of
“prayer”; it all enters into the
all-absorbing life of prayer.
Prayer is the soul’s sincere
desire,
Uttered or unexpressed:
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.
Prayer is the simplest form of
speech
That infant lips can try:
Prayer the sublimest strains that
reach
The Majesty on High.
How noble then is prayer! How
incomparably noble! Who would not be a man of
prayer? What wise, what sane man, will
continue to neglect prayer? “Ask, and
it shall be given you; that your joy
may be full.”
Now, be it understood that neither this text;
nor this sermon, is addressed
to those who do not pray. Both the
prophet and the preacher have their eye
this morning on those who not only
pray, on occasion, but who also are at
pains to perform all those other
exercises of mind and heart that enter into
prayer. They read the Word of God:
they meditate on what they read: they
sing God’s praise, at home and in the
sanctuary; and they repent and reform
their life. What more would this
prophet have than that? My brethren, this
is what he would have: he would have
all that done to God. The prophets are
all full of this very same accusation,
and remonstrance, and protest, that
all the acts prescribed by the law of
God were done: but, not being done to
God, the most scrupulous, the most
punctual, the most expensive service was
no service at all in God’s sight and
estimation. “To what purpose is the
multitude of your sacrifices unto Me?
saith the Lord. When ye come to appear
before Me, who hath required this at
your hands, to tread My courts? Bring
no more vain oblations: incense is an
abomination unto Me: the new moons and
Sabbaths I cannot away with: it is
iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your
new moons and your appointed feasts My
soul hateth. They are a trouble unto
Me: I am weary to bear them.” That is
the climax, indeed, of all such
accusations and indignations; but all
the prophets are full of the same
accusation; and it is all summed up in
the short and sharp accusation of the
text, “They return, but not to the
Most High.”
But then on the other hand, we are
very happy in having the other side of
this matter most impressively and most
instructively set before us in a
multitude of most precious psalms. And
it is this indeed that makes the
Psalms the mother and the model of all
subsequent books of true devotion:
because we see in them those true and
spiritual worshippers in Israel
returning, and returning to the Most
High. Take one of those truly returning
Psalmists, and hear him, and imitate
him. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I
sinned, and done this evil in Thy
sight. Wash me throughly from mine
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
Behold, Thou desirest truth in the
inward parts: and in the hidden part
Thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Hide
Thy face from my sins: and blot out
all mine iniquities. Create in me a
clean heart, O God: and renew a right
spirit within me. Cast me not away
from Thy presence: and take not Thy
Holy Spirit from me. The sacrifices of
God are a broken sprit: a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not
despise.” That, my brethren, is true
returning to God. And God meets all
such returnings, and says, “Come now
and let us reason together: though your
sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow: though they be red like
crimsom, they shall be as wool.”
Now, while we have all that in the Old
Testament, for our direction, and for
our imitation, and for our encouragement,
we, New Testament men, are met at
every step of our return to God with
this great utterance of our Lord on
this whole matter: “No man cometh,
unto the Father but by Me.” And, no
sooner have we heard that,—no sooner
do we believe that,—than every step of
our return to the Most High from that
day takes on a new direction. All out
religious exercises, public and
private, are now directed towards Him of
whom the Apostle says, “He dwelt among
us,and we have heard, we have seen
with our eyes, we have looked upon,
and our hands have handled, of the word
of life. That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you, that ye also
may have felIowship with us.”
Fellowship, that is, in their fellowship with
the Word made flesh, till he that hath
seen and heard the Son, has as good
as seen and heard the Father; and till
all our prayers and praises are to be
directed, in the first place, to the
Word made flesh, even as in the Old
Testament they were directed
immediately and only to the Most High. But,
with all our New Testament nearness to
God; with the Most High, now and for
ever, in our own nature; with Jesus
Christ, the one Mediator between God and
man, near to every one of us,—are we
any better of all that? When we return
in prayer and in praise, do we return
into the very presence of Jesus
Christ? Or are we, with all that, as
far from Him as the formalists in
Israel were far from the Most High?
Have we taken any real assistance, and
any true advantage, out of the
Incarnation in this matter of prayer? The
Incarnation of the Son of God has
brought many assistances and many
advantages to the children of men: and
one of the greatest and most
momentous is this,—that the Most High
is now so near us: and especially so
near us when we pray. Now, is that so?
As a matter of experience and
practice is that so to us? Do we
practise the presence of Christ when we
pray? Do we think ourselves and
imagine ourselves into His presence when we
stand up to sing, and kneel down to
pray? Have we as keen, and as quick, and
as intense, and as ever-present a
sense of His presence as we have of the
presence of our fellow-worshippers?
When, at any time, we kneel in secret,
is it no longer secret as it once was;
but is the whole place now peopled
with the presence of Christ? And, in
public worship, are we so overshadowed
and overawed with His presence that
all those fellow-worshippers around us
are, for the time, but so many mere
shadows to us? Is it so? Is it becoming
so? It will assuredly be so when we
return to Jesus Christ in our prayers,
and when He presents us and our
returning prayers to the Most High.
Speaking for myself,—I have found this
device very helpful in my own
returnings to my Saviour. And I
recommend this same device to you. Make
great use of the Four Gospels in your
efforts to return to Jesus Christ.
Think that you are living in
Jerusalem. Think that you are one of the
Twelve. Think that you are one of
those amazing people who had Him in their
streets, and in their homes, every
day. And fall down before Him as they
did. Speak to Him as they did. Show
Him your palsies and your leprosies as
they did. Follow Him about, telling
Him about your sons and daughters as
they did. Tell Him that you have a
child nigh unto death as they did. Wash
His feet with your tears, and wipe
then with the hair of your head, as they
did. Work your way through the Four
Gospels, from end to end: and, all the
time, with a great exercise of faith,
believe that He is as much with you as
He was with Simon the leper, and with
the Syro-Phoenician woman, and with
Mary Magdalene, and with Lazarus who
had been four days dead, and with the
thief on the cross. Read, and believe,
and pray. Fall at His feet. Look up
in His face. Put Him in remembrance.
Put your finger on the very place, and
ask Him if that is really true. Ask
Him if He did and said that. Ask Him if
you are really to believe that, and
are safe, in your case also, to act upon
that. If you are a scholar, say to
yourself as the old scholarly believers
said,—Deus ubique est et totus ubique
est; and set out again to return to
God in Christ in the strength of that.
And, if you are an unlearned and an
ignorant man, like Peter and John,
well, like them say,—“Were not these His
words to us while He was yet with
us,—Lo, I am with you alway, even to the
end of the world.” And act your faith
again, as if it was indeed so. And the
more pure, and naked, and absolute
faith you put in Him, and into your
prayer,—the more will He take pleasure
in you, till He will say to you: “O
woman! Woman! I have not found so
great faith; no, not in all Israel. Be it
unto thee and unto thy daughter, even
as thou wilt!” “I came to this at
last,” says a great Scottish saint,—“I
came at last to this, that I would
not rise and go away till I felt sure
I had had an audience. And I sometimes
felt as sure that I was having an
audience as if He had been before me in
the body.”
But, before he came to that, he often
said,—and the saying has become
classical in the North of
Scotland,—lamenting his parched heart he often
said, “Surely I have laid my pipe far
short of the fountain.” And so he had.
And so have we. No words could
describe our case better than the text; and
that other saying so like the text.
For we also are always returning; but
not to the Most High. We are always
laying our pipe, but not up to the
fountain. We are always engaged in the
exercises of public and private
religion. We are not atheists. We are
not scoffers. We do not forsake the
assembling of ourselves together. We
are glad when it is said to us,—Let us
go up to the House of the Lord. We
enter into His courts with thanksgiving,
and into His gates with praise. At the
time appointed, we partake of the
Lord’s Supper; and, again, we bring
our children to be baptized. We make our
vow, and we pay it. And when at any
time we fall into a besetting sin, we
hasten to repent and to reform our
lives. We incline our hearts again to
keep God’s commandments.
But, with all that, this so
heart-searching, this so soul-exacting text
discovers us, and condemns us. We
return to all that; but we do not return
to the Most High. We lay our pipe up
to divine ordinances,—to the most
spiritual of divine ordinances: up to
prayer, and to praise, and to
meditation, and to Sabbaths and to
sacraments: but, all the time, all these
things are but so many cisterns. All
these things, taken together, are not
the Fountain. God is the Fountain. And
when we return to God, when we lay
our pipe up to the true Fountain of
living waters,—then we taste an
immediateness of communion, and an
inwardness of consolation, and a strength
of assurance, and a solidity of peace,
and a fulness of joy, that are known
to those only who truly return to the
Most High. Until we are able to
say,—and that not out of a great psalm
only but much more out of a great
personal and indisputable
experience,—“Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and
there is none upon earth that I desire
beside Thee. My flesh and my heart
faileth: but God is the strength of my
heart, and my portion for ever.”
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XVI. THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“And ye shall seek Me, and find Me,
when ye shall search for Me with all
your heart.”—Jer. xxix. 13.
IN his fine book on Benefits, Seneca
says that nothing is so costly to us as
that is which we purchase by prayer.
When we come on that
hard-to-be-understood saying of his
for the first time, we set it down as
another of the well-known paradoxes of
the Stoics. For He who is far more to
us than all the Stoics taken together
has said to us on the subject of
prayer,—“Ask, and it shall be given
you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and
it shall be opened unto you.” Now what
could possibly be cheaper than just
asking? And what could cost us less
than just to knock at God’s door? And
yet, when we see such stern and
self-denying souls as Dante and Teresa
setting their seals to Seneca’s
startling words, that makes us stop and
think whether there may not be much
more in the Stoic’s paradoxical words
about the cost of prayer than lies on
the surface. And when we do stop and
think on the whole subject of prayer,
and especially on the costliness of
prayer, such things as these begin to
be impressed upon us.
1. To begin with: Our habits of prayer come to
cost us no little time. We
usually divide our day of twenty-four
hours in this way,—eight hours for
work; eight hours for meals, and rest,
and recreation; and eight hours for
sleep. You will observe that it is not
said where reading, and meditation,
and prayer come in. And the reason of
that is because, with most men, these
things do not come in at all. But, in
revenge, when reading and meditation
and prayer do once begin to come in on
a man, they make great inroads both
upon his hours of work, and his hours
of recreation, and even upon his hours
of sleep. It is not that the Hearer of
prayer has any need of our hours: He
has no pleasure in taxing our time,
either during the day, or during the
night. The truth is,—time does not
enter into His side of this matter at
all. He has always plenty of time. He
inhabits eternity. He is always
waiting to be gracious. It is we who
need time to prepare our hearts to seek
God. And it takes some men a long, and
a retired, and an uninterrupted time
to get their minds and their hearts
into the true frame for prayer and for
the presence of God. And it is this
that makes the night-time so suitable to
some men for sacred reading, for devout
meditation, and for secret prayer.
Our time is now our own. Our day’s
work is now done. Our door is now shut.
And no one will intrude upon us, or
will in any way interfere with us, at
this time of night. Till from such
experiences as these, as life goes on, we
come to discover that time, pure time,
is as indispensable and as important
an element in all true prayer as is
repentance, or faith, or reformation
itself. Indeed, without a liberal
allowance of time, no man has ever
attained to a real life of prayer at
all. So much is that the case, that
Seneca might quite safely have
descended into particulars, and might very
well have said that prayer costs so
much time that, instead of a few stolen
moments now and then, it takes from
some men all that remains of their time
on this earth. Now that cannot,
surely, be said to be bought cheaply, which
despoils us of so much of the most
precious thing we possess; and a thing,
moreover, which is so fast running
short with so many of us.
2. Time and Thought. I do not say that
a man must bring immense and
commanding powers of thought to prayer
before he can succeed in it. But I do
say that those who do possess immense
and commanding powers of thought must
bring all their power of thought to
bear upon their prayers, if they would
be accepted and answered. Almighty God
is infinitely the greatest and
grandest subject of thought and
imagination in all the Universe: and yet
there is nothing in all the universe
to which most men give less thought and
less imagination than to Almighty God.
Joseph Butler told Dr. Samuel Clarke
that the Being and the Nature of God
had been his incessant study ever since
he began to think at all. And, further
on in life, he said that, to his
mind, Divinity was, of all our
studies, the most suitable for a reasonable
nature. Now, not philosophers, and
theologians, and moralists like Bishop
Butler only, but all God’s people,
must cultivate Butler’s habits of
thought, if they have any ambition to
please God greatly, and to make real
progress in the life of prayer. Take
any man of prayer you like, and you
will see Butler’s noble habit of mind
exhibited and illustrated in that man.
Take the Psalmists,—what wealth of
devotional thought there is in the
Psalms! Take the 17th of John,—what
heights and depths of heavenly thought
there are in that single chapter! Take
Paul’s intercessory prayers for the
Ephesians and the Colossians,—and what
majesty and Christological thought is
there also! Take Augustine and
Andrewes, and see how they will exercise not
your powers of thought only but all
that is within you. To come back to
Paul—that man of time and thought in
prayer, if ever there was one: “Now
unto the King Eternal, Immortal,
Invisible, the Only Wise God.” And again:
“The Blessed and Only Potentate, the
King of kings, and Lord of lords. Who
only hath immortality, dwelling in the
light which no man can approach unto:
Whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”
What mortal man has powers of thought
at all equal to such doxologies as
these? No man, no angel: no, not the
Incarnate Son Himself. And what
schoolmaster, in Sabbath school, or day
school, can himself grasp all this
answer to his own question—“God is a
Spirit, Infinite, Eternal, and
Unchangeable, in Hs Being, Wisdom, Power,
Holiness, Justice, Goodness and
Truth”? Try your own compass and grasp of
thought on such matters as these; and
say if Seneca was not wholly in the
right when he said that nothing is so
severe upon a man’s powers of thought
and imagination and heart as just to
approach God, and to abide for a
sufficient time before God, in prayer.
No wonder that we often fall asleep
through sheer exhaustion of body and
mind, when we begin to give something
like adequate time and thought to
meditation, adoration, prayer and praise.
3. But both time and thought are easy,
pleasant and costless compared with
this,—Thy will be done. To say “Thy
will be done,” when we enter our
Gethsemane,—that throws us on our
faces on the earth: that brings the blood
to our brows. And yet at no less cost
than that was God’s own Son “heard in
that He feared.” When some one, far
dearer to us than our own souls, is laid
down on his death-bed, to say “Not my
will, but Thine be done,”—at what a
cost is that said in such an hour!
What a heart-racking price has to be paid
for that prayer! And yet, pay that
price we must: pour out our hearts into
that prayer we must, if we are, like
our Lord, to be made perfect by
suffering. And not at death-beds only,
but at times that are worse than
death,—times upon which I will not
trust myself to put words. Times also,
when a great cloud of disappointment
and darkness gathers over our life:
when some great hope is for ever
blasted: when some great opportunity and
expectation is for ever gone, and
never to return. To lie down before God’s
feet and say, “Not my will, but Thine
be done,” at such times—at what a cost
is that said and done! And to say it
without bitterness, or gloom, or envy,
or ill-will at any one: and to go on
to the end of our lonely and desolate
life, full of love and service to God
and man,—at such a sight as that, God
says, “This is My Beloved Son, in Whom
I am well pleased! Come up hither.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for thee
before the foundation of the world!”
4. And, then, as to how we have to pay
down all our transgressions and
secret sins before our prayers will be
heard,—let one speak who has gone
deeper into that matter than any one
else I know. “Now,” she says, “I saw
that there would be no answer to me
till I had entire purity of conscience,
and no longer regarded any iniquity
whatsoever in my heart. I saw that there
were some secret affections still left
in me that were spoiling all. I
passed nearly twenty years of my life
on this stormy sea, constantly tossed
with the tempests of my own heart, and
never nearing the harbour. I had no
sweetness in God, and certainly no
sweetness in sin. All my tears did not
hold me back from sin when the
opportunity returned; till I came to look on
my tears as little short of a
delusion. And yet they were not a delusion. It
was the goodness of the Lord to give
me such compunction, even when it was
not, as yet, acompanied with complete
reformation. But the whole root of my
evil lay in my not thoroughly avoiding
all occasions and opportunities of
sin. I spent eighteen years in that
miserable attempt to reconcile God and
my life of sin. Now, out of all that,
I will say to you,”—she
continues,—“never cease from prayer,
be your life ever so bad. Prayer is the
only way to amend your life: and,
without prayer, it will never be mended. I
ought to have utterly and thoroughly
distrusted, and suspected, and detested
myself. I sought for help. I sometimes
took great pains to get help. But I
did not understand of how little use
all that is unless we utterly root out
all confidence in ourselves, and place
our confidence at once, and for ever,
and absolutely, in God. Those were
eighteen most miserable years with me.”
But we do not need to go beyond our
own Bibles for all that. For we have in
our own Bibles these well-known words
of David: “If I regard iniquity in my
heart, the Lord will not hear me. But,
verily, God hath heard me: He hath
attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God which bath not turned
away my prayer, nor his mercy from
me.”
5. And, not to go the length of gross
sins, either secret, or open, or
long-continued, prayer when you once
take it in dead earnest, and as for
your immortal soul,—such prayer will
cost you all your soft, and easy, and
slothful, and self-indulgent habits. I
will not go on to name any of your
soft, and easy, and slothful, and
self-indulgent habits. But you know them
yourselves and your conscience will
not be slow in naming them to you, if
you will let her speak out. Seneca is
always telling young Lucilius to make
up his mind. To make up his mind
whether he is to be one of God’s athletes
or no. To make up his mind as the
athletes of the arena do. They make up
their mind to deny themselves in
eating and drinking: in lounging all day in
the Campus Martius and in soaking
themselves all night in taverns: and on
the day of the arena they have their
reward. You have the same thing in the
Epistle to the Hebrews: “Wherefore,
seeing we also are compassed about with
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
aside every weight, and the sin
which doth so easily beset us, and let
us run with patience the race that is
set before us.” And again in
Corinthians: “Know ye not that they which run
in a race run all, but one receiveth
the prize? And every man that striveth
for the mastery is temperate in all
things. Now they do it to obtain a
corruptible crown: but we an
incorruptible. But I keep under my body, and
bring it into subjection: lest that by
any means, when I have preached to
others, I myself should be a
castaway.” “Do I pray,” demands Andrewes of
himself, “do I pray—if not seven times
a day, as David, yet at least three
times a day as Daniel? If not, as
Solomon, at length, yet shortly, as the
publican? If not like Christ, the
whole night, at least for one hour? If not
on the ground and in ashes, at least
not in my bed? If not in sackcloth, at
least not in purple and fine linen? If
not altogether freed from all other
desires, at least freed from all
immoderate, unclean and unholy desires?” O
true and self-denying saints of
God,—shall we ever be found worthy to touch
so much as your shoe-latchet?
In short, on this whole subject, and
to sum up on it,—prayer, in all its
exacting costliness, is like nothing
so much as it is like faith and love.
It is like Paul’s faith, which made
him suffer the loss of all things, and
made him count all his best things but
as so much dung, that he might win
Christ, and be found in Him. Prayer is
like love also,—that most vehement
and most all-consuming of all the
passions of the human heart. Prayer is
like the love of the bride in the
song: “Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
as a seal upon thine arm: for love is
strong as death: jealousy is cruel as
the grave: the coals thereof are coals
of fire, which hath a most vehement
flame. Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it: if a
man would give all the substance of
his house for love, it would utterly be
contemned.” And so it is with prayer.
And even with all that, the half of
the price of prayer has not been told.
For, after we have paid down all that
immense price for prayer, and for the
things that come to us by prayer, the
things we paid so much for are not to
be called our own after all. We have
still to hold them, and enjoy them, in
a life of prayer and praise. Even as
we got those good things by prayer at
first, so we have to hold them by
prayer to the end. It is as Samuel
Rutherford has it in his rare classic
entitled Christ Dying. “It is better,”
says that eminent saint, “to hold
your lands by prayer than by your own
industry, or by conquest, or by
inheritance, or by right of
redemption. Have you wife, child, houses, lands,
wisdom, honour, learning, parts,
grace, godliness? See to it how you got
them. For, if you got them not by
prayer at the first, you do not hold them
either righteously, or safely, or with
the true enjoyment of them. See that
you get a new charter to them all by
continual and believing prayer. Hold
and enjoy all your possessions by
continual and believing prayer and
praise.”
Stand forth, then, all you who are men
of much prayer. Stand forth, and say
whether or no the wise Stoic was right
when he said that nothing is so
costly, so exorbitant, so
extortionate, as that is which is bought by
prayer. While, on the other hand,
nothing is so truly and everlastingly
enriching as that is which is gotten
and held by prayer, and by prayer
alone.
Lord, teach us to pray. Lord!
Lord!
_________________________________________________________________
XVII. REVERENCE IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Offer it now unto thy governor; will
he be pleased with thee or accept thy
person? saith the Lord of Hosts.”—Mal.
i. 8.
IF we were summoned to dine, or to any
other audience, with our sovereign,
with what fear and trembling should we
prepare ourselves for the ordeal! Our
fear at the prospect before us would
take away all our pride, and all our
pleasure, in the great honour that had
come to us. And how careful we should
be to prepare ourselves, in every
possible way, for the great day! We should
at once bethink ourselves of those men
of our acquaintance who had been at
court, and we should throw ourselves
on them to tell us everything. How to
answer the royal command: how to
dress: how to drive up to the gate: who
would meet us: how they would know us:
all about the entrances, and the
stairs, and the rooms: all about Her
Majesty herself and the royal table.
And then, when the day and the hour
came,—our first sight of the Queen [3] ,
and her first sight of us! And then,
our name announced, till our heart beat
as never before. And then, our seat at
the table: and what to say, and what
not to say. And, at the end of the
day, our thankfulness that we had been
carried through the ordeal so well,
and without any dreadful mistake.
Now, all that is, as near as can be,
the meaning of Malachi in the text. The
prophet is protesting against the
scandalous irreverence, and the open
profanity, of the people of Israel in
their approaches to Almighty God.
“Offer it now to thy governor!” he
cries to them. “Will he be pleased with
such service at thy hands? Or will he
accept thee? A son honoureth his
father, and a servant his master. If
then I be a father, where is Mine
honour? And if I be a master, where is
My fear? saith the Lord of Hosts. I
have no pleasure in you, saith the
Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an
offering at your hand.”
1. Now, to begin with, let us take
this pungent passage, and apply it to our
own public worship, to the place where
we are now assembled, and to the
service we are now engaged in. Compare
the stateliness, the orderliness, the
rich beauty, the impressive silence,
the nobleness, the reverential love of
the Queen’s palace: compare all that
with the squalor, the disorder, the
absence of all beauty, the rude
noises, the universal irreverence, I will
not say of this church, but of so many
churches up and down the land. And
if, in some outward things, there has
been some improvement for some time
past among us, how do we ourselves
stand, individually, for inward
improvement, for our personal
demeanour of mind and heart in public worship?
A Court chaplain, who is at the same
time a minister of a congregation, says
this to his congregation, “When you
are in an audience with your sovereign,
would you have your mind taken up all
the time with impertinent and utterly
trifling things? When you are
standing, or kneeling, in the royal presence,
would you turn to see who is conning
in when the door opens? Would you rise
and look out to see who is passing the
window? Would yon stare round the
room at the servants, and at the
furniture, while your sovereign is speaking
to you, and you to him?” And so on.
No. The thing is inconceivable. No sane
man could possibly do such a thing.
There is a good story told at the
expense of a certain enterprising and
unceremonious English journalist, to
the effect that the Czar returned to
his councillors, and said that he had
just passed through an experience that
was new to him,—he had been
“dismissed” by a newspaper man as soon
as the interview was over. Both
Malachi, and the Court chaplain, and
the story about the dismissal of the
Czar, have lessons for us all about
our behaviour in public worship.
And, the worst of it is that all this
irreverence, disrespect for the House
of God; and, indeed, downright
profanity, begins where it should be arrested
and denounced till it becomes
impossible. For it begins and is perpetuated,
of all places, in the pulpit. With how
little reverence and godly fear do we
who are ministers enter the pulpit! With
plenty of fear, if not reverence,
of man. Full of the fear of man, lest
we do not come up to-day to what our
irreverent people expect of us. How we
study and prepare to pray, and to
preach, setting mortal men like you
before us! Were it not that He, with
Whom we have to do, is, far past all
His promises, “long-suffering and slow
to wrath” towards us ministers, an
angry Voice would many a Sabbath morning
cut short our profane performances
with the sentence,—“O graceless minister!
Offer all that to thy governor!” And,
thus it comes about,—“Like priest,
like people.” For who, here, of all
this multitude of people with
psalm-books in their hands, really
sang this morning’s psalm try God? To
God? Who set everything else aside at
the church door, because he was to
have one more audience of the King,
Eternal, Immortal, Invisible? Who prayed
to God, in the opening or in the
intercessory prayer, with an arrested,
entranced and enraptured heart? No:
not one. “Take it to your governor.”
2. And, beginning with public worship,
we take all that profanity home with
us to our family worship. For one
thing,—all our family worship is made to
give place, morning and night, to
anything and everything. There are
so-called Christian homes where the
sons and the daughters and the guests
come down to family worship just as
they please and find it convenient. If
they are down in time for breakfast,
good and well—the kitchen arrangements
must not be disturbed; but the family
prayers to God may be observed or not
as our young gentlemen please. And, as
to evening prayers,—this actually
happened in one of our own houses the
other night. A new servant-man brought
in the books, and laid them on the
table in the crowded drawing-room, at the
usual hour. I should have said it was
the night of a large and late
dinner-party. The poor innocent fellow
narrowly escaped being sent about his
business as soon as the last guest had
left. “Do you not know, sir”—his
master set upon him—“that in good
society there is ever family prayers after
a party like what we have had
to-night?” The stupid man had just come from a
devout old castle in the Highlands,
and did not know that family worship was
a fast-dying-out ceremony in the West
End society he had come to serve.
But even when family worship is
never,—morning nor night—pushed into a
corner, it might almost better be. The
regulation chapter; the wooden
monotony; the mechanical round; the
absence of a thought, or an idea, or an
emotion, or a feeling; one pushing
about a creaking chair when he is on his
knees: another yawning till the whole
room is ashamed of the indecency:
another coughing and sneezing without
ceremony; and then,—before Amen is
well uttered,—all the room beginning
to talk at once: it had been so bottled
up for the past ten minutes. I only
know one house, in all my acquaintance,
where ordinary decorum is taught to
the children and the guests in the
matter of a moment of reverential
silence before the Babel begins again
after prayer to God. Now, would you
cough in the Queen’s face? Would you
yawn till she heard you? Would you up,
and begin to talk to her servants
before they are well off their knees?
“Take it now unto thy governor.”
Very few men are such well-mannered
gentlemen at home as they are in
company. No man dresses for his wife
and children, as all men so
scrupulously dress for court and
ceremonial. But some select men do. They
have a queen every evening at home,
and young princes and princesses at
table with them. And they have their
reward. And so in the matter of family
prayers. Few men, ministers or others,
prepare themselves for family prayers
as they do for State services, and
ceremonial devotions. But some men do:
and they, too, have their reward.
Thomas Boston made it a rule to prepare
himself for family worship, as
regularly, and as honestly, as for the pulpit
or the prayer-meeting. And he had his
remarkable rewards, as you will see
when you read his remarkable Memoirs
of himself. An old college friend of
mine keeps me posted up with the work
of grace that always goes on in his
congregation, and in his family. And,
not long ago, I had a letter from him
telling me that God had given him the
soul of another of his children: and
the best of it was that it took place
at, and sprang out of, the family
worship of the manse. You and I would
be taken aback if any one—a child, a
servant, a guest—said to us that they
had ever been any the better of any
family worship of ours. We do not
expect it. We do not prepare for it. We do
not really wish it. And we do not get
it. And we never shall.
But it is perhaps at the breakfast and
the dinner table that our family
mockery of God comes to its most
perfect performance. This is the way they
said grace about the year 1720 in
England. “In one house you may perhaps see
the head of the house just pulling off
his hat: in another, half getting up
from his seat: another shall, it may
be, proceed as far as to make as if he
said something, but was ashamed of
what he said,” and so on. You will see
the miserable picture finished when
you go home today. And you will see the
heartless mockery to perfection the
first public dinner you are at. I
suppose this is what Malachi meant
when he said, “Even the Lord’s meat is to
you contemptible.”
3. And then, secret prayer, “closet”
prayer, as Christ calls it,—even where
there is a certain semblance of
it,—take it to thy governor! For are not
these its characters and features,
even where it in some measure exists? Its
chanciness, its fitfulness, its
occasionliness, its shortness, even
curtness, its hastiness to get it
over, and to get away from it, and from
Him; and so on. “Be not so hasty,”
says the prophet, “to get out of His
sight”; showing, you see, that in
secret prayer they had the very same
impiety and profanity to contend with
that we have. And, again: “If the
spirit of thy ruler rise up against
thee, leave not thy place.” No: leave
not thy place, for His spirit rises up
against all haste to get rid of Him
and all dislike at His presence, and
all distaste, and all restraint of
prayer. “Leave not thy place.” The
whole world is in that word. Thy soul is
in that word. Thy salvation, and the
salvation of others, is in that word to
thee, “Leave not thy place.” No! Leave
not thy place. Keep firm on thy
knees. Go back a second and a third
time. Even after thou art out of thy
door, if the Spirit moves thee: and
more, if He has forsaken thee and does
not move thee, go back: shut thy door
upon thee again: for thy Governor is
there waiting for thee, and nothing in
thee pleases Him like secret prayer.
And, sometimes, speak out when you are
alone with Him. You will find it a
great assistance to a languid faith
sometimes to speak out. Cry aloud to Him
sometimes. You will find a mighty
alteration in your heart as you continue,
and continue, in secret, and in
intimate and in confiding prayer. Say to
yourself that the Governor of heaven
and earth is shut in with you, and you
with Him; and be not in such a hurry
to “dismiss” Him.
Now, this Royal command has again gone
forth among us concerning next
Lord’s Day. “If the Lord will, the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper will be
dispensed here.” “The Mighty God, even
the Lord, hath spoken. Out of Zion,
the perfection of beauty, God hath
shined. Gather my saints together unto
Me; those that have made a covenant
with Me by sacrifice.” And in obedience
to His command we shall all be
gathering together to the Lord’s Table about
this hour next Lord’s Day. Now, let us
just do—all this week—as if it were
the week before we were to go to
Windsor or to Balmoral. Let us think all
the week about our King, and about His
Table, and about how we should
prepare ourselves for His Table; and
how we should behave ourselves at it.
Let us seek out those royal favourites
who are at home at the Lord’s Table,
and go by their advice. There are
books, also, of court etiquette, that are
simply invaluable to intending
communicants,—golden books, in which the ways
of heaven are set forth, and
illustrated, for the counsel and guidance of
new beginners. Read nothing else all
the week. Fill your mind with the ways
and words and manners of the Royal
Table. And be ready, with the right words
to speak, when the King speaks to you.
And when He comes in to see the
guests, He will see you with your
wedding garment on: and He will look on
you with His Royal countenance, and
will say to you, “Eat, O friends! drink,
yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” And
you will call the name of this place
Peniel: for you will say, “I have seen
God face to face, and my life is
preserved.”
_________________________________________________________________
[3] (This sermon was preached in
1899.)
_________________________________________________________________
XVIII. THE PLEADING NOTE IN
PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Let us plead together.”—Isa.xliii.
26.
WE all know quite well what it is to
“plead together.” We all plead with one
another every day. We all understand
the exclamation of the patriarch Job
quite well—“O that one might plead for
a man with God, as a man pleadeth for
his neighbour.” We have a special
order of men among ourselves who do
nothing else but plead with the judge
for their neighbours. We call those
men by the New Testament name of
advocates: and a much-honoured and a
much-sought-after office is the office
of an advocate. But, what if in this
also, “earth be but the shadow of
heaven: and things therein each to other
like, more than on earth is
thought”?
Prayer, in its most comprehensive
sense embraces many states of the mind,
and many movements and manifestations
of the heart. But our use of the word
prayer this morning will be limited to
these two elements in all true
prayer—petition and pleading.
Petitioning and pleading are two quite
distinct things. When we make a
petition, we simply ask that something
shall be granted and given to us.
Whereas when we plead, we show reasons
why our petition should be granted
and given. Petitioning is asking:
whereas pleading is arguing. When a
petitioner is in dead earnest, he is
not content with merely tabling his
petition. He does not simply state his
bare case, and then leave it to speak
for itself. No. Far from that. He at
once proceeds to support his case with
all the reasons and arguments and
appeals that he can command. His naked
petition, he knows quite well, is not
enough. And thus it is that, like Job,
he hastens to “order his cause before
God, and to fill his mouth with
arguments.”
Now, as was to be expected, we find
that Holy Scripture is full not only of
petitioning but of pleading also.
Especially the Psalms. Then, again, Job is
an extraordinary book in many
respects; but in nothing is it more
extraordinary than just in its
magnificent speeches of argumentation and
pleading, both with God and with man.
So much so, that a young advocate
could study no finer model of the
loftiest rhetoric of his great profession
than just the passionate pleadings and
appeals of which this splendid book
is so full. And then, most wonderful
of all, most instructive, most
impressive, and most heart-consoling
of all, the 17th of John is full of
this same element of reasoning and
pleading,—more full of reasoning and
pleading, remarkable to discover, than
even of petitioning. Three petitions,
or at most four, are all that our Lord
makes to His Father in that great
audience of His. And then, all the
rest of His time and strength, in that
great audience, is taken up with
pleadings and arguments and reasonings and
appeals,—as to why His four petitions
for Himself, and for His disciples,
should be heard and answered.
And then, the pleas, so to call them,
that are employed by the prophets and
the psalmists,—and much more by our
Lord Himself,—are not only so many
argumentative pleas; they are
absolutely a whole, and an extraordinarily
rich, theology in themselves. The
warrants they all build upon; the
justifications they all put forward;
the reasons they all assign why they
should be heard and answered,—all
these things are a fine study in the very
deepest divinity. The things in God
and in themselves that all those
petitioners put forward; the
allegations and pretexts they advance; the
refuges they run into; and the grounds
they take their last stand upon,—the
prayers of God’s great saints are not
only a mine for a divinity student to
work down to the bottom, but they are
an incomparable education to every
practitioner of the advocate’s art.
And if they are indisputably all that,
then much more are those inspired
prayers the very best meditation and
ensamp1e to every throne-besieging
sinner, and to every importuning saint.
For those great suppliants plead
before God, God Himself: they plead the
Divine Nature and the Divine Name:
they plead, and put God in remembrance of
what He can do, and what He cannot do:
they plead themselves, and their
depraved and debilitated human nature:
and, in their last resort, they plead
the very greatness of their own guilt,
and their desert,—if they got their
desert,—to be for ever cast out of
God’s presence. With such extraordinary
arguments as these do God’s saints
fill their mouths when they enter in to
petition and to plead before
God.
Come then, and let us all join
ourselves to them. Come, and let us learn to
pray with them; and, especially, to
plead. And, first, let us take the case
of that man here, who has been a great
transgressor. Such a transgressor as
he was whose great transgressions were
the occasion and the opportunity of
our present text. Just see what a
powerful,—what an all-powerful,—argument
God gives to this great transgressor
in Israel to plead. Just listen to the
most wonderful words. “I, even I, am
He that blotteth out thy transgressions
for Mine own sake, and will not
remember thy sins. Put Me in remembrance:
let us plead together: declare thou,
that thou mayest be justified.”
Let the great transgressor listen to
that. Let him lay up that in his heart.
Let him plead that with all his might,
till his transgressions are all
blotted out. Let him fill his mouth
with this argument,—this unanswerable
argument,—God’s own sake. Let every great
transgressor, in his great
extremity, take this very text; and,
when he has found this place, let him,
on his knees, lay this place open
before God. Let him be very bold. Let him,
with all plainness, put God in
remembrance of this great promise of His.
“Look down, and see,”—let the great
transgressor say with this promise open
before him and before God,—” look
down, and see if these are indeed Thine
own words to such sinners as I am. Or
was the prophet deceived in thinking
that these were the very words of the
sin-pardoning God? And has he so
deceived me? Hast Thou, O God, in very
divine truth, said that Thou wilt
blot out and wilt not remember my
sins? I shall always remember them. They
shall ever be before me. But, O my God,
if ever Thou didst blot out, and
forget any man’s sins,—oh, blot out
and forget mine!” And then, from that,
still go on to plead before God the
greatness of your misery because of your
sin. Tell Him that your sin and misery
are far beyond all telling. And ask
Him if it is indeed true that He
“delights in mercy.” And then, plead those
two great arguments together,—your
misery and His mercy. Put Him in
remembrance, that if He indeed
delights in mercy,—as He says He does,—then
He will have His fill of delights in
you; for that you are of all men most
miserable, and most absolutely
dependent on His great mercy. And as you so
pray, and so plead, ere ever you are
aware, your sinful heart will break out
into this song with the prophet and
will say, “Who is a God like unto Thee,
That pardoneth iniquity, and passeth
by transgression? Thou retainest not
Thine anger for ever, because Thou
delightest in mercy. He will turn again:
He will have compassion upon us: Thou
wilt cast all our sins into the depths
of the sea.”
Or, is the sanctification and true
holiness of your so sinful soul,—is that
your special and your always most
pressing case before God? Is it the
positively awful pollution and
depravity of your heart that casts you, day
and night, on your face before God and
man? Is this the cry that never
ceases before God from you: “Create in
me a clean heart, O God”? Is your
inward enslavement to sin something
you have never seen or heard equalled in
Holy Scripture, or anywhere else? Is
that, indeed, so? Then,—just say so.
You cannot take into your mouth a
better argument with God than that. Tell
Him: put Him in remembrance: search
the Scriptures: collect the promises,
and plead with Him to consider your
case, and to say if He has ever seen
such a sad case as yours,—ever since
He began to sanctify and to save
sinners. And He will surely bow down,
and will hear that cry of your heart
that no mortal man hears: and He will
wipe off the tears that no mortal hand
can touch.
When Zion’s bondage God turned
back,
As men that dreamed were we;
Then filled with laughter was our
mouth
Our tongue with melody,
As streams of water in the south
Our bondage, Lord, recall:
Who sow in tears, a reaping time
Of joy enjoy they shall.
Or, again, are you a father, and is it
your son’s bondage to sin that you
are to-day pleading before God? If
that is your case, then put Him in
remembrance that He is a Father also;
and that He has prodigal sons as well
as you. And that He has it is His
power to make your heart, and your house,
as glad as His own house, and His own
heart, are again made glad, as often
as any son of His which was lost is
found, and which was dead is alive
again. Read the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, and read nothing else: plead
the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and
plead nothing else,—till it is all
fulfilled to you, and till you, and
your house, are all made as merry as
heaven itself.
Or, is it some secret providence of God, some
secret dispensation, that is
as dark as midnight to you? Is it some
terrible crook in your lot, that will
not even out, all you can do? Is it
some cross, so heavy that it is
absolutely crushing out all faith, and
all hope, and all love, in your
heart? I have already spoken about the
Book of Job. Have you ever read that
book in real earnest?—that so
spiritual and experimental book, written with
such a Divine intention towards such
sufferers as you are? You must not
charge God foolishly, till you have
prayed, and pled, your way through that
wonderful book. For all this time, if
you only knew it, and would but bow to
believe it, God is but putting you to
school as He put His servant Job,—if
you would only read the children’s
school-books and learn the children’s
lessons. Nay, not only so, but God
humbles Himself to plead with you about
your cross, and about your cup, since
you will not plead with Him. God puts
you “in remembrance” since you will
not so put Him. “It is good,”—so God
pleads with you, and, in order to
justify Himself before you, He reasons
with you and says, “It is good for a
man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
For the Lord will not cast off for
ever. But though He cause grief, yet will
He have compassion according to the
multitude of His mercies.” And so on, to
the end of that great Divine apology
that every sufferer should have by
heart. And, if you had God’s pleading
with you by heart, and always listened
to it, He would surely deal with you
in your sufferings as He dealt with His
own Son in His sufferings,—He would
either make your cup to pass away from
you: or else He would send the Holy
Ghost to strengthen you. Till you would
boast over your very worst sufferings,
and would say, “Most gladly therefore
will I rather glory in my infirmities,
that the power of Christ may rest
upon me. For when I am weak, then am I
strong.”
Or, what else is your present case? Is
it old age that is fast descending on
you, and that will not be rolled back?
Is it old age, age and death itself,
both of which—and before very
long—will claim you, and carry you off as
their prey? If that is your case—just
listen to this recorded pleading of a
fast-ageing saint like yourself. And
make his successful pleading your own;
if, indeed, you are fast getting old,
and are not entirely happy about it.
Plead in this way, for one hour every
night: and see what your reward will
be. These are that expert’s very
words, literally transcribed. “Having spent
the day”—he said every night—“I give
Thee thanks, O Lord. Evening draws
nigh: make it bright. For as day has
its evening, so has life: the evening
of life is old age, and old age is fast
overtaking me: make it bright. Cast
me not off in the time of old age:
forsake me not when my strength faileth
me. Even to old age, be Thou He: and
even to hoar hairs do Thou carry me.
Abide with me, Lord, for it is toward
evening, and the day of this toilful
life is now far spent. The day is fled
and gone: life too is fast going,
this lifeless life. Night cometh: and
then cometh death, the deathless
death. Let the fastcoming close of my
life be believing, acceptable,
sinless, fearless; and, if it please
Thee, painless. And let me outstrip the
night, doing, with all my might, some
good work. For near is Judgment. Oh,
give me a good and acceptable plea to
plead in that day, O God!” And if your
heart still trembles at the thought of
the cold and lonely grave, go on to
plead this: “What profit is there in
my blood when I go down to the pit?
Shall the dust praise Thee? Shall it
declare Thy truth? For in death there
is no remembrance of Thee: in the
grave who shall give Thee thanks? Wilt
Thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall
the dead arise and praise Thee? The
living, the living, he shall praise
Thee.” Till, to scatter your ungodly
doubts and fears, He will take pity
and will Himself plead with you, and
will say to you, and will put you in
remembrance: “Hast thou not known? hast
thou not heard, that God giveth power
to the faint; and to them that have no
might He increaseth strength? Even the
youths shall faint and be weary, and
the young men shall utterly fall. But
they that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength: they shall mount
up with wings as eagles; they shall
run, and not be weary; and they shall
walk, and not faint.” And, as if an
Old Testament prophet were not enough
for your comfort, He will send you a
New Testament apostle to testify and
to plead with you, and to say: “For
this cause we faint not: but though
our outward man perish, yet the inward
man is renewed day by day. While we
look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen:
for the things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not
seen are eternal.”
And so on, and so on. Through all your
life, and in all its estates. Only,
oh learn to pray, and to plead. Study
to pray. Study to plead. Give yourself
to prayer. Pray without ceasing. Take
lessons in prayer, and in pleading. Be
ambitious to become, yourselves,
experts and even real authorities in
prayer. It is a noble ambition. It is
the noblest of all the
ambitions—especially you, who are
advocates and pleaders already. You have
an immense start and advantage over
ordinary men in this matter of prayer.
And, especially, in this matter of
pleading in prayer. It should be far
easier for the Holy Ghost to teach our
advocates to pray than to teach this
heavenly art and office to any other
manner of man. For every true advocate
studies, down to the bottom, every
case you put into his hands to plead. And
much more will he study, till he has
mastered, his own case before God.
Every true advocate absolutely
ransacks the records of the Court also for
all former cases in any way similar to
this case he has in his hand. He puts
the judge in remembrance of his own
past opinions, and of all his
predecessors’ past opinions and past
judgments. Not only so, but a skilful
advocate will study the very
temperament and mood of mind at the time; the
age; and the very partialities and
prejudices of the judge,—so set is every
adroit advocate on carrying his case.
Altogether, you cannot but see what an
advantage an advocate has, when once
he becomes a man of prayer.
But, instead of any advantage and
start in prayer, like that, you may well
have this desperation and hopelessness
in your case, that you positively
hate to pray, or even to hear about
prayer. It is not only that you have had
no experience in prayer: you would
never so much as bow your knee if it were
not for one thing before you,—that
without prayer you cannot escape. Well,
awful as your case is, it is not
absolutely hopeless. God is such, and He
has made such provision for you, that
even you may yet become a man of
prayer; aye, and, what is more, an
advocate for other men. Go to Him just as
you are. Make your dreadful case your
great argument with Him. Say this to
Him; say: “Lord, teach this reprobate
now before Thee to pray. Teach this
castaway, if it be possible, to pray!
Lord, soften this stone to pray!” Tell
Him the truth, and the whole truth.
Tell Him, on your knees, how you hate to
come to your knees. Tell Him that you
never spent a penny upon a help to
pray. Tell Him, honestly, that, if it
were not for hell-fire; all the books
and all the sermons in the world would
never have brought you to His
footstool. And what will He do? Will
He cast you away with contempt and
indignation, as He well might, from
His presence? No! But He will do this.
He will do as all the humane crowns on
earth do. When an accused man is so
poor, and so friendless, that he
cannot pay for a pleader, he is supplied
with one of the best pleaders for
nothing. And so will the Crown of heaven
do with you. So God has already done
with you, and for you. For, you and
we,—we all,—have an Advocate with the
Father. It is Christ that died; yea,
rather, that is risen again: who also
maketh intercession for us. “And this
Man, because He continueth ever, hath
an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore
He is able to save them to the
uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing
He ever liveth to make intercession
for them.”
He Who, for men, their Surety
stood,
And poured on earth His precious
blood,
Pursues in heaven His mighty
plan,
The Savior and the Friend of
man.
With boldness, therefore, at the
throne,
Let us make all our sorrows
known;
And ask the aids of heavenly
power
To help us in the evil hour.
_________________________________________________________________
XIX. CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“When thou hast shut thy door.”—Matt.
vi. 6.
We shut our door when we wish to be
alone. We shut our door when we have
some special work to do that must
to-day be done, some piece of work that
has been far too long put off and
postponed. “I have some time to myself
to-day,” we say to our household.
“Tell those who ask for me to-day that I
am so occupied that my time is not my
own. Tell them to leave their message,
or to write to me. Tell them that I
hope to be free, and at their service,
any time to-morrow.” We are deep in
our accounts; or our every thought is
drunk up in some business so serious
that we cannot think of anything else.
We have put off and put off that
imperative duty,—that so distressing
entanglement,—till we can put it off
not one hour longer. And then it is
that we shut our door, and turn the
key, and lock ourselves in and all other
men and all other matters out, till
this pressing matter, this importunate
business, is finished and off our
hands. And then, as soon as it is finished
and off our hands, we rise up and open
our door. Our hands are free now. Our
heart is lightened, and we are the
best of company for the rest of the day.
Nothing could be plainer, and more
impressive, than our Lord’s words to us
in the text. Just as you do every
day,—He says to us,—in your household and
business life, so do, exactly, in your
religious life. Fix on times; set
apart times. He does not say how
often, or how long. He leaves all that to
each man to find out for himself; only
He says, When you have, and as often
as you have, real business on hand
with heaven; when the concerns of another
life and another world are pressing
you hard; when neglect and postponement
will do no longer; then, set about the
things of God in a serious, resolved,
instant, business-like way. “Thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray
to thy Father which is in secret.”
Our Lord does not mean that our Father
is not in the synagogue, or even in
the corners of the streets where the
hypocrites of His day were wont to
pray—less that He is not present with
us why our families meet together
morning and evening for prayer. There
is no family altar, and no
prayer-meeting, and no church and no
street corner even, where God is not to
be found of them that diligently seek
Him. But God is present to His
children in a special and in a
peculiar way when they enter their closet and
shut their door. The shortest, the
surest, the safest way to seek God is to
seek Him “in secret.” It is not that
God is any more really in secret than
He is in public: but we are. God is
wherever we are. And God is whatever we
are, in street, in synagogue, at the
family altar, in the closet. It is not
that Gcd is one thing on one side of a
door of wood, and another thing on
the other side of that door: it is
that we differ so much according to which
side of that door we are on. We all feel
it the instant we turn the key, and
go to our knees. In that instant we
are already new creatures. We feel that
this is our proper, and.true, and best
place. We say, “This is the house of
God: this is the gate of heaven.” And
if you keep the door shut, and give
things time to work, very soon your
Father and you will be the whole world
to one another. And if you pursue
that; if you lay out your life to be a man
of prayer; you will make continual
discoveries of practices and expedients
of secret devotion; such as will carry you up to heights of
heavenly-mindedness that, at one time,
would have been neither believable by
you, nor desirable to you. You will
find out ways that will suit you, and
that could not suit anyone else—ways
of impressing your own heart with the
Being, the Greatness; the Grandeur,
the Grace, the Condescension, the
Nearness; and then the Inwardness of
God. Your imagination, when you are on
your secret knees, will sweep through
heaven and earth; not so much seeking
God as seeing Him and finding Him in
all His works. You will drop down Bible
history from Adam to yourself, seeing
God’s shining footsteps all down the
way. You will see Jesus Christ also;
and will speak with Him with an
intimacy and a confidence and an
experience not second to the intimacy and
the confidence and the experience of
the disciples themselves. You will
positively people your place, of
prayer with Jesus Christ and with His
Father: and out of your place of prayer
you will people your whole life,
public and private, in a way, and to a
degree, that would make your nearest
friend to think that you had gone
beside yourself, if you began to tell Him
what God has done for your soul.
If we were to go over our accounts,
and to arrange our disordered papers,
and to write our most private letters
in as short time as we give to our
secret devotions, we should not need
to shut our door. But our affairs are
in such disorder, and in such arrears,
that we must allot some time to set
them right. And our Loud assumes in
the text that the accounts and the
correspondence connected with our
religious life will need some time, and
will take some trouble. We do not need
to go farther than our own
consciences for the proof of that.
There is perhaps no man in this house who
would not be put to shame if it were
told what time in the day, or in the
week, he gives to secret and inward
prayer. Godly men go no further than
their own closets for the proof of
their depravity, and misery, and
stupidity. Their restraint of secret
prayer; their distaste for secret
prayer and a shut door; and with that,
their treatment of their Maker, of
their children, of their best friends,
and of their own souls,—all horrify
them when they come to themselves, and
think of themselves in this matter of
secret prayer.
And, even after we have taken all that
to heart, and have begun to shut our
door, we do not keep it long enough
shut. It is quite true that secret
prayer is the most purely spiritual of
all human employments. That is quite
true. Secret prayer is the last thing
to be shut up to places and bound down
to times. At the same time we men, as
Butler says, are what we are. And it
is just the extreme spirituality of
secret prayer that makes time, as well
as seclusion, absolutely indispensable
for its proper performance and for
its full fruit. If we rush through a
few verses of a familiar psalm, or a
few petitions of the Lord’s prayer,
and then up and out of our door as we
should not be allowed to do in the
presence-chamber of our sovereign, then
we had as well,—nay, we had
better,—not have gone to our knees at all. But
if we enter our closet with half the
fear, with half the wonder and awe,
with half the anxiety to be recognised
and addressed with which we would
enter the palace of a prince on earth,
then, so willing is God to be
approached that He will immediately
meet with us and will bless us. Hurry,
then, in our secret devotions, is
impossible. If you are in such a desperate
hurry, go and do the thing that so
hurries you, and God will wait. He is in
ho hurry: He will tarry your leisure.
No! Let there be no hurry here. God is
God; and man is man. Let all men,
then, take time and thought when they
would appear before God.
And then, it sometimes takes a long
time even to get the door shut; and to
get the key to turn in the rusty lock.
Last week [4] I became very miserable
as I saw my time slipping away, and my
vow not performed. I therefore one
afternoon stole into my coat and hat;
and took my staff, and slipped out of
the house in secret. For two hours,
for an hour and three-quarters, I walked
alone and prayed: but pray as I would,
I got not one step nearer God all
these seven or eight cold miles. My
guilty conscience mocked me to my face,
and said to me: Is it any wonder that
God has cast off a minister and a
father like thee? For two hours I
struggled on, forsaken of God, and met
neither God nor man all that chill
afternoon. When, at last, standing still,
and looking at Schiehallion clothed in
white from top to bottom, this of
David shot up into my heart: “Wash me,
and I shall be whiter than snow” In a
moment I was with God. Or, rather,
God, as I believe, was with me. Till I
walked home under the rising moon with
my head waters and with my heart in a
flame of prayer; naming and
describing, first my own children to God, and
then yours. Two hours is a long time
to steal away from one’s books and
companions to swing one’s
walking-stick, and to utter unavailing
ejaculations to one’s self in a wintry
glen: but then; my two hours look to
me now—as they tasted to me then—the
best strength and the best sweetness of
all my Christmas holiday.
And then, when secret, mental, and
long-accumulated intercession is once
begun, it is like the letting out of
waters,—there is no end to it. Why, my
children almost made me forget you and
your children. And then, our friends!
how bad we all are to our friends! how
short-sighted, how cruel, how
thoughtless, how inconsiderate! We
send them gifts. Our children cover their
Christmas tree with Christmas presents
to our friends. Our friends cost us a
great deal of thought and trouble and money ,
from time to time. We send
them sheaves of cards with all manner
of affectionate devices and verses. We
take time and we write our old
friends, at home and abroad, letters full of
news and of affection on Christmas Day
and on New Year’s Day. But we never
pray for them! Or, at best we pray for
them in a moment of time, and in a
great hurry. Why do we do everything
for our friends but the best thing? How
few of us shut our door during all the
leisure of the last fortnight, and
deliberately and particularly, and
with discrimination, and with importunity
prayed for our dearest and best
friends! We discriminated in our purchases
for our friends, lest we should slight
or offend our friends: but not in our
prayers. Who in the family, who in the
congregation, who in the city, who
abroad, will be surprised with some
blessing this year? Surprised—with some
uexpected providence, some
despaired-of deliverance, some cross lifted off,
or left and richly blessed, some thorn
taken out of their flesh, some
salvation they had not themselves had
faith to ask for? And all because we
asked, and importuned, and “shut our
door” upon God and ourselves in their
behalf. A friend of any kind, and to
any extent and degree, is something to
have in this cold and lonely world.
But to have a friend who has the ear of
God, and who fills God’s ear from time
to time with our name and our
case,—Oh, where shall I find such a
friend? Oh, who shall find such a friend
henceforth in me? When a minister,
going out for a long walk, takes his
sick-list in his pocket; or his
visiting-book; or his long roll of young
comunicants, no longer young; or when
an elder or a deacon thinks of the
people of his district; or a Sabbath
school teacher his class, and the
fathers and mothers of his class; or a
mistress her servants; or a father
his children; or a friend his friends;
or an enemy his enemies;—many a knock
will come to his door before he is
done, many a mile will he have walked
before he is done. Our Lord took all
night up in a mountain over the names
of His twelve disciples. And since the
day of His ascension nearly nineteen
hundred years ago He has been in
continual intercession in heaven for all
those who have been in intercession
for themselves and for other men on
earth. Day and night;—He slumbers not
nor sleeps: keeping Israel by His
unceasing, particular, discriminating,
importunate intercession.
Secret prayer is such an essentially
spiritual duty that the Bible nowhere
lays down laws and rules as to times
or as to places for such prayer. The
Bible treats us as men, and not as
children. The Bible is at pains to tell
us how this saint of God did in his day;
and then, that other saint in his
day and in his circumstances: how
Abraham did, and Jacob, and David, and
Daniel, and Jesus Christ, and His
disciples and apostles. The Bible is bold
to open the shut door of all these
secret saints of God, and to let us see
them and hear them on their knees.
Abraham for Sodom: Jacob at the Jabbok:
Daniel with his open window: Jesus on
the mountain all night, and in the
garden at midnight. Peter on the
housetop: and Paul, in the prison and in
the workshop, for his hearers and for
his readers. And then, we are left
free to choose our own times and
places,—few or many, open or secret, vocal
or mental, just as we need just as we
like, and just as suits us.
Only,—surely nature itself, common sense
itself, old habit from childhood
itself, must teach and constrain us to
keep our door shut for a moment or
two in the morning: a moment or two
alone and apart with Him Who is about
our path and about our bed. And if we
once taste the strength, and the
liberty, and the courage, and the
light of God’s countenance that always
streams down on him who is found of
God on his secret knees early in the
morning, then that will be a sweet and
a happy day that does not send us
back to our knees more than once
before it is over.
And then at night,—what an indecency
it is, what folly! How we shall gnash
our teeth at ourselves one day to
remember how a dinner-party, or music in
our neighbour’s house or in our own; a
friend in at supper; a late talk; a
storybook to finish before we
sleep;—how such things as these should have
been let rob us of our nightly
self-examination, of nightly washing from the
past day’s sin, and of our nightly
renewed peace with God! What do the
angels, and the saints think of our
folly? If our fathers and mothers are
let look down to see what their
children are doing would anything darken
heaven to them like seeing the things
that serve their children for an
excuse to go to sleep without self-examination,
confession of sin, and
prayer? Whether they see us or no,
there is One who says over us many a
graceless and prayerless night: -” Oh!
if thou hadst known! even thou in
this thy day!” Let us begin this very
Sabbath night. Let us shut our door
tonight. We are in no hurry of
business or of pleasure to-night. Let us go
back upon the morning, upon the
forenoon, upon the whole day, upon the week,
upon the year. Let us recollect for
whom, and for what, we prayed in secret
this morning,—or did not pray. Let us
recall what we read, what we heard,
and with what feelings: with whom we
conversed, about what: all the things
that tried us, tempted us, vexed us,
or helped, comforted, and strengthened
us. Let us do that to-night, and we
shall not want matter for repentance and
prayer to-night: nor for prayer, and
purpose, and a plan of life for
to-morrow. “You are not to content
yourself,” says a Queen’s Physician to us
concerning the soul, “you are not to
content yourself with a hasty general
review of the day, but you must enter
upon it with deliberation. Begin with
the first action of the day; and
proceed, step by step; and let no time,
place, or action be overlooked. An
examination,” this expert says, “so
managed, will, in a little time, make
you as different from yourself as a
wise man is different from an idiot.
It will give you such a newness of
mind, such a spirit of wisdom, and
such a desire of perfection, as you were
an entire stranger to before.”
“And thy Father, Which seeth in
secret, shall reward thee openly.” There is
nothing that more humiliates us; there
is nothing that more makes us blush
for shame than the way our Lord
sometimes speaks about rewarding us for what
we do. His words about our wages and
our rewards shock us and pain us
exceedingly. We know well,—we shall
never forget,—that, after we have done
all, we are still the most
unprofitable of servants, and the most deep of
debtors. At the same time,—there it
stands: “Thy Father shall reward thee
openly.” Where? When? How shall He
reward us openly? Perhaps in our
children,—perhaps in our children’s
salvation; their eternal salvation, to
which they might never have attained
but for our secret, unceasing, mental
prayer. That would be a reward we
could not refuse! Nor feel any humiliation
for, other than a most sweet and
everlasting humiliation! On the other hand,
what would a kingdom be to us if
anything had gone wrong with our children?
What would heaven itself be to us, if
our children were not there with us?
And what a reward, what wages, if they
are all there!
Or perhaps this may be it,—that when
all shut doors are opened, and all
secrets told out, we may be let see
what we owe to one another’s
intercession It may be part of the
first joyful surprise of heaven to see
what we did for other men and what
they did for us. “Pray for them that
despitefully use you,” our Lord
advises us. Well, what a surprise it will be
to you and to him if some one is
brought up and introduced to you whose
secret prayers for you have been your
salvation all the time you were
thinking he was your enemy, as you
were his.
But who shall tell all that is in our
Lord’s mind and intention when He
says, “Thy Father which seeth in
secret shall reward thee openly”? And when
He goes on to say, “For there is
nothing covered, that shall not be
revealed: neither hid that shall not
be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have
spoken in darkness shall be heard in
the light; and that which ye have
spoken in the ear in closets shall be
proclaimed upon the housetops.”
_________________________________________________________________
[4] (Preached after a holiday at
Bronskeid)
_________________________________________________________________
XX. IMAGINATION IN PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“Full of eyes.”—Rev. iv. 8.
I NEVER see, or hear, or speak, or
write the word “imagination” without
being arrested and recalled to what
Pascal and Butler and Edwards have all
said, with such power and with such
passion, on the subject of imagination.
Pascal—himself all compact of
imagination as he is—Pascal sets forth again
and again a tremendous indictment
against the “deceits” and “deceptions” of
the imagination. Butler also, in few
but always weighty words, stigmatises
the imagination as “that forward and
delusive faculty.” While Jonathan
Edwards, in his own masterful way,
would almost seem to have given the
death-blow to the use of the
imagination in all matters of personal and
experimental religion. But as to
Butler,—that great author’s latest and best
editor, in two paragraphs of really
fine criticism, has clearly brought out
that what Butler calls “the errors of
the imagination” are not errors of the
imagination at all, but are the errors
of unbridled fancy and caprice, and
of an unbalanced and ill-regulated
judgment. “It seems probable,” so sums up
Butler’s venerable editor, “that this
is one of the rare instances in which
Butler, relaxing the firmness of his
hold, forgets himself, and assumes a
licence in the use of words.” And
then, the editor turns the tables on his
admired author by going on to say
that, in felicity of imaginative
illustration, Butler is the equal of
Macaulay himself; while, in some other
of the exercises of the imagination,
Butler is even above Burke.
What, then, you will ask,—with all
that,—what exactly, and in itself, and at
its best, is the imagination? Well,
come back for a moment to the very
beginning of all things, if you would
have the best answer to that question.
And, then, I will answer that question
by asking and answering another
question. “How did God create
man?”—“God created man,” I am answered, “male
and female, after His own image, in
knowledge, righteousness, and holiness,
with dominion over the creatures.” Our
understanding, then, our mind and our
memory, are both so many images to us
of the Divine Mind. Our conscience,
again, is an inward voice to us,
impressing upon us an imprint of the Divine
Righteousness, and the Divine Law. Our
will, also, and the Divine Will, are
of the same Divine Substance. And as
for our heart—it is “a copy, Lord, of
Thine.” And then, in his imagination, man
possesses, and exercises in
himself, a certain, and that a not
very far-off likeness of the Divine
Omnipresence, and the Divine
Omniscience. For, by his imagination, a man can
look behind, and before, and around,
and within, and above. By his
imagination a man can go back to the
beginning ere ever the earth was. One
man has done it. Moses has done it.
And what Moses has done to this earth,
that one day will not be remembered
nor come into mind,—all that John,
Moses’ fellow in imagination, has done
to the new heaven and the new earth.
The imagination, then, whatever else
it is, is not that “forward,
ever-intruding and delusive faculty”:
it is not that “author of all
error,” as Butler, so unlike himself,
so confuses and miscalls it. Nor is it
what Pascal so lashes to death with
his splendid invective. Nor is it
imagination at all, as we have to do
with it to-day, that Edwards so
denounces in his Religious
Affections.
Imagination, as God in His goodness
gave it at first to man,—imagination is
nothing less than the noblest
intellectual attribute of the human mind. And
his imagination is far more to every
spiritually-minded man than a merely
intellectual attribute of his mind. I
shall not need to go beyond Pascal
himself,—so splendidly endowed with
this splendid gift. “Imagination,” says
Pascal, “creates all the beauty, and
all the justice, and all the happiness
that is in the heart of man.” The
imagination, then, must not be made to
bear the blame that really belongs to
those men who have prostituted it, and
have filled its great inward eyes full
of visions of folly and sin: when
they should have set the Lord always
before their inward eyes, with all His
works in nature, and in grace, and in
glory. Because there is only one of a
city, and two of a family, who ever
employ their inward eyes aright,—are the
inward eyes of those men to be plucked
out who have on their inward eyes an
unction from the Holy One? No. A
thousand times, No! “Open Thou mine eyes,
that I may behold wondrous things out
of Thy law. I am a stranger in the
earth: hide not Thy commandments from
me.”
If, then, you would learn to pray to
perfection,—that is to say, to pray
with all that is within you,—never
fail, never neglect, to do this. Never
once shut your bodily eyes and bow
your knees to begin to pray, without, at
the same moment, opening the eyes of
your imagination. It is but a bodily
service to shut our outward eyes, and
not at the same moment open the eyes
of our inner man. Do things like this,
then, when you would be in the full
spirit of prayer. Things, more or
less, like this. “I speak as a child.” Let
your imagination sweep up through the
whole visible heavens, up to the
heaven of heavens. Let her sweep and
soar on her shining wing, up past sun,
moon, and stars. Let her leave Orion
and the Pleiades far behind her. And
let her heart swell and beat as she
says such things as these to herself:
“He made all these things. He, Whom I
now seek. That is His Sun. My Father
made them all. My Mediator made them
all to the glory of His Father. And He
is the heir of all things. Oh, to be
at peace with the Almighty! Oh, never
again for one moment to forget or
disobey, or displease Him! Oh, to be an
heir of God, and a joint heir with
Jesus Christ! Oh, to be found among the
sons and the daughters of God
Almighty!”
At another time, as you kneel down,
flash, in a moment,—I still speak as a
child,—the eyes of your heart back to
Adam in his garden, and with the image
of God still in all its glory upon
him: and to Abraham over Sodom; and to
Moses in the cleft of the rock; and to
David in the nightwatches; and to
Jesus Christ all night on the mountain
top—and your time will not be lost.
For, by such a flash of your
imagination, at such a moment, the spirit of
grace and supplications will be put in
complete possession of your whole
soul. Never open your eyes any morning
without, that moment, seeing God and
saying, “I laid me down and slept; I
awaked; for the Lord sustained me.” And
never lie down without saying, “I will
both lay me down in peace, and sleep:
for Thou, Lord, only makest me to
dwell in safety.” Never set out on a
journey till you have said to God and
to your own soul, “The Lord shall
preserve thy going out and thy coming
in from this time forth, and even for
evermore.” And never so much as say
grace at table, however short time you
have to say it in, without seeing Him:
in the twinkling of an eye, be for
one moment, if no more, with Him who
spreads your table, and makes your cup
to run over. In short, be sure to get
a true sight and a true hold of God,
in some way or other, before you begin
either prayer or praise. There is
nothing in this world so difficult.
The time it takes, sometimes, and the
toil, and the devices, and the
instrumentalities—you would not believe:
because no word in all the Bible
better describes us when we are at prayer,
and at praise, and at table than this:
“Without God”; and this: “Their
hearts are far from Me.” Be sure,
then—with all the help that heaven and
earth, that God and man can give
you—be sure you get your eyes and your
hands on God in your prayer. You may
begin and end your prayer without
that—if you are in a hurry; and if you
have no time or taste to give to Him
Who will be honoured, and waited on,
and well pleased with you. But, if so,
you need not begin. It is not prayer
at all. In your audience of an earthly
sovereign, you would not grudge or
count up the time and the pains and the
schooling beforehand. You would not
begin to speak to him while yet you were
in the street, or on the stair, and
out among the common crowd. You would
keep your cause in your heart till you
were in his presence: and then, when
you saw him sitting on his throne high
up above you, you would then fall
down before him, and would fill your
mouth with arguments.
Never say any of your idle words to
Almighty God. Say your idle words to
your equals. Say them to your
sovereigns. But, never, as you shall answer
for it,—never, all your days,—to God.
Set the Lord always before you. Direct
your prayer to Him, and look up.
Better be somewhat too bold and somewhat
unseemly than altogether to neglect
and forget Almighty God. Better say that
so bold saying,—“I will not let Thee
go,” than pray with such laziness and
sleepiness and stupidity as we now
pray. Look for God, and look at God: till
you can honestly say to Him, with Dr.
Newman, a great genius and a great
saint, that there are now, to you, two
and two only supreme and luminously
self-evident beings in the whole
universe, yourself and your Creator. And,
when once you begin to pray in that
way, you will know it. Every prayer of
yours like that will, ever after,
leave its lasting mark upon you. You will
not long remain the same man. Praying,
with the imagination all awake, and
all employed—such praying will soon
drink up your whole soul into itself.
You will then “pray always.” It will
be to you by far the noblest and the
most blessed of all your employments
in this present world. You will pray
“without ceasing.” We shall have to
drag you out of your closet by main
force. You will then be prayerful
“over much.” “Whether in the body I cannot
tell; or whether out of the body, I
cannot tell: God knoweth.” Such will you
all become when you accustom your
inward eyes to see and to brood
continually on the power, and on the
greatness, and on the goodness, and on
the grace and on the glory of
God.
Yes, but all the time, what about
this?—you will ask: what about this—that
“no man hath seen God at any time”?
Well,—that is true, and well remembered,
and opportunely and appropriately
brought forward. Whatever else is true or
false, that is true. That, all the
time, abides the deepest and the surest
of truths. And thus it was that the
Invisible Father sent His Son to take
our “opaque and palpable” flesh, and,
in it, to reveal the Father. “And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, and we beheld His glory.” And it is
this being “made flesh” of the Son of
God that has enabled us to see God. It
is the birth and the whole life, and
the words, and the works, and the
death, and the resurrection, and the
ascension, and the revelation from
heaven again of Jesus Christ—it is all
this that has for ever opened up such
new and boundless worlds which the Christian
imagination may visit, and in
which she may expatiate and regale
herself continually.
The absolute and pure Godhead is
utterly and absolutely out of all reach
even of the highest flights of the
imagination of man. The pure and
unincarnated Godhead dwells in light
which no man’s imagination has ever
seen even afar off, or ever can see.
But then, hear this. “He that hath seen
Me hath seen the Father.” Well, if
that is true, come now! Awake up, O my
baffled and beaten-back imagination!
Awake, and look at last upon thy God!
Awake, and feast thyself for ever on
thy God! Bathe, and sun, and satiate
thyself to all eternity, in the
sweetness and in the beauty and in the
light, and in the glory of thy God!
There is nothing, in earth or in heaven,
to our imagination now like the Word
made flesh. We cannot waste any more,
so much as one beat of her wing, or
one glance of her eye, or one heave of
her heart on any one else, in heaven
or earth, but the Word made flesh.
“Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And
there is none upon earth that I desire
beside Thee.” There is a cold and
heartless proverb among men to this
effect: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
And this cold and heartless proverb
would be wholly true—even of believing
men—if it were not for the divine
offices and the splendid services of
the Christian imagination. But the
truly Christian imagination never lets
Jesus Christ out of her sight. And
she keeps Him in her sight and ever
before her inward eyes in this way. You
open your New Testament—which is her
peculiar and most delightful field,—you
open that Book of books, say, at the
beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.
And, by your imagination, that moment
you are one of Christ’s disciples on
the spot, and are at His feet. And all
that Sermon you never once lift your
eyes off the Great Preacher. You hear
nothing else, and you see nothing
else, till He shuts the Book and says:
“Great was the fall of the
house,”—and so ends His sermon. All
through His sermon you have seen the
working of His face. In every word of
His sermon, you have felt the beating
of His heart. Your eye has met His
eye, again and again, till you are in
chains of grace and truth to Him ever
after. And then, no sooner has He
risen up, and come down the hill, than
a leper, who dared not go up the
hill, falls down at His feet, and
says, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make
me clean!” And all your days, ever
since that Sermon, you are that leper.
All that day you have been more and
more like that leper, till now, as that
day closes, you are like him nigh unto
death. You worship Christ like the
leper. He is beside you. He stands
over you. You feel, as never before, the
leprosy of sin. It fills full your
polluted heart. The diseased flesh of
that poor leper is the flesh of a
little child compared with you and with
your heart. Till in a more than
leper-like loathing at yourself, and a more
than leper-like despair of yourself,
you bury your face before His feet, and
cry to Him: “But, Lord, if Thou only
wilt, Thou canst make me clean!”
And so on—as often as, with your
imagination anointed with holy oil, you
again open your New Testament. At one
time, you are the publican: at another
time, you are the prodigal: at another time,
you are Lazarus, in his grave,
beside whose dead body it was not safe
or fit for a living man to come: at
another time, you are Mary Magdalene:
at another time, Peter in the porch:
and then at another time, Judas with
the money of the chief priest in his
hand, and afterwards with his halter
round his neck. Till your whole New
Testament is all over autobiographic
of you. And till you can say to
Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and to
John himself: Now I believe; and not for
your sayings so much; for I have seen
Him myself, and have myself been
healed of Him, and know that this is
indeed the Christ of God, and the
Saviour of the World. Never, then, I
implore you, I demand of you—never,
now, all the days and nights that are
left to you—never open your New
Testament till you have offered this
prayer to God the Holy Ghost: ”Open
Thou mine eyes!“ And then, as you
read, stop and ponder: stop and open your
eyes: stop and imagine: stop till you
actually see Jesus Christ in the same
room with you. “Lo! I am with you
alway!” Ask Him, if He hides Himself from
you, ask Him aloud,—yes,
aloud,—whether these are, indeed, His words to you,
or no. Expect Him. Rise up, and open
to Him. Salute Him. Put down your book.
Put down your light, and then say such
things as these—say: “Jesus Christ!
Son of David! Son of Mary! Carpenter’s
Son! Son of God! Saviour of Sinners,
of whom I am chief!” Speak it out. Do
not be afraid that both men and devils
hear thee speaking to thy Saviour.
What about them all when thou art alone
with the Son of God? And, besides, all
men are asleep. “Art thou, in very
truth, here, O Christ? Dost Thou see
me? Dost Thou hear me? Yes! Thou art
here! I am sure of it. I feel it. O
blessed One! O Son of the Highest! I am
not worthy that Thou shouldest come
under my roof. But Thou art here! Here,
of all the houses in the whole city!
And, here, with me—O my Saviour: with
me of all men in the whole city!” Fall
at His feet, kiss His feet. Kiss His
feet till thy lips come upon an iron
nail in them: and, after that, thou
wilt know, of a truth, Who He is, that
is with thee in the night-watches!
But your absolutely highest, and
absolutely best, and absolutely boldest use
of your imagination has yet to be
told, if you are able to bear it, and are
willing to receive it. It is a very
high and a very fruitful employment of
your imagination to go back and to put
yourself by means of it into the
place of Adam, and Abraham, and Moses, and
Job, and Peter, and Judas, and
the Magdalene, and the thief on the
cross. But, to put out this magnificent
talent to its very best usury, you
musttake the highest boldness in all the
world, and put yourself in the place
of CHRIST HIMSELF. Put yourself and all
thatis within you into the Hand of the
Holy Ghost, and He will help you,
most willingly and most successfully,
to imagine yourself to be Jesus
Christ. Imagine yourself, then, to be
back in Nazareth, where He was brought
up. Imagine yourself,—and show to your
son and your Sunday school scholar
the way to imagine himself,—sitting
beside Joseph and Mary every Sabbath day
in that little synagogue. Imagine
yourself to be the carpenter’s son, as He
was. Imagine yourself at Jordan at
John’s great awakening of the dry bones,
and then at John’s Baptism. Imagine
yourself fighting the devil in the
wilderness with nothing but fasting
and praying and the Word of God for
weapons. Imagine yourself without
where to lay your head. Imagine all your
disciples turning against you and
forsaking you. Imagine the upper room, and
the garden, and the arrest and the
Cross, and the darkness, and “My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Did
you ever imagine yourself to be
crucified? Paul did. And the
imagination made him the matchless apostle of
the Cross that he was. And then,
imagine yourself Christ risen, and in
glory, and looking down on your heart,
and on your life, and on your closet,
and on your bed. Imagine Him seeing
you,—your mind, your heart, your
inspiration, your motives, your
intentions, your thoughts:—all you think,
and all you say, and all you do. And
then,—I challenge you to imagine what
HE must be thinking and feeling, and
making up His mind to-day as to what He
is to say, and to do, to you; and
when! What would you say about yourself,
if you were in His place,—if you had
died on the tree for such sins as
yours, and then saw yourself what, all
this time, you are, having no wish
and no intention ever to be otherwise?
I think you would throw down your
office. I feel sure you would wash
your hands of yourself. You would say,
“Let him alone!” You would say “Cut it
down! Why cumbereth it the ground?” I
will tell you literally and exactly
what you would say. From God’s word I
will tell you what any honest and
earnest and wearied-out and insulted man
would say, and what may this moment,
for anything you know, be said over you
from the great white throne of God.
“Because I have called, and ye refused;
I have stretched out My hand, and no
man regarded.... I will laugh at your
calamity; I will mock when your fear
cometh; when your fear cometh as
desolation, and your destruction
cometh as a whirlwind....For that they
hated knowledge, and did not choose
the fear of the Lord.” Imagine the Lamb
in His wrath saying that! And imagine
yourself dying, and not knowing at
threescore and ten how to pray!
Imagine yourself at the river, and no one
there to meet you—and no one to say to
you, “I will be with thee”! Imagine
the Judge in His hot anger saying
it;—and shutting the door—“I never knew
you”! And then, imagine with all your
might of imagination—imagine that, by
an unparalleled act of God’s grace,
you are sent back again to this world,
just for one more year, just for one
more week, just for one more Sabbath
day or Sabbath night! O
prayer-neglecting sinner! O equally
prayer-neglecting child of God! One
more Sabbath day of the Mercy-seat, and
the Mediator at God’s right hand, and
the Blood of Christ that speaketh
peace!
“I have heard of Thee by the hearing
of the ear: but now, mine eye seeth
Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and
repent in dust and ashes.”
_________________________________________________________________
XXI. THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN
PRAYER
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye
have ought against any.”—Mark xi. 25.
PRAYER is a world by itself, a whole
world, and a great world too. There is
a science of prayer, and there is an
art of prayer. There are more arts than
one that rise out of a life of prayer,
and that go to make up a life of
prayer. Prayer is an education and a
discipline: it is a great undertaking
and a great achievement. And, like
every other art, education, discipline,
attainment and achievement, prayer has
its own means and its own methods,
its own instruments, and its own aids
and appliances whereby to attain, and
whereby to secure its ends.
There is a whole literature of prayer
also. There are some, not small,
libraries into which there is nothing
else collected but the classics of
prayer. There is even a bibliography
of prayer. And there are bookworms who
can direct you to all that has ever
been written or printed about prayer;
but who never come to any eminence, or
success, in prayer themselves. While,
on the other hand, there are men who
are recognised adepts and experts in
prayer, proficient and past masters in
prayer. There is nothing in which we
need to take so many lessons as in
prayer. There is nothing of which we are
so utterly ignorant when we first
begin; there is nothing in which we are so
helpless. And there is nothing else
that we are so bad at all our days. We
have an inborn, a constitutional, a
habitual, and, indeed, an hereditary
dislike of prayer, and of everything
of the nature of prayer. We are not
only ignorant here, and incapable: we
are incorrigibly and unconquerably
unwilling to learn. And when we begin
to learn we need a lesson every day,
almost every hour. A lesson to-day,
and a lesson to-morrow; a lesson in the
morning, and a lesson at night. We
need to have old lessons gone over again,
revised and repeated incessantly. We
need, as the schoolboys say, to go over
the rudiments again and again, till we
have all the axioms, and elementary
rules and paradigms, and first
principles of prayer made part and parcel of
ourselves. Such axioms and such first
principles as these: “He that cometh
to God must believe that He is.” “Him
that cometh unto Me I will in no wise
cast out.” “The sacrifices of God are
a broken spirit.” “When ye stand
praying, forgive”—these axioms and
elements, and such-like.
We have had some lessons in prayer
given us of late in this house; and here
is another. And, like all our Lord’s
lessons, it is impossible to
misunderstand it, or to forget it.
No,—I must not say that, for such is the
depravity and the deceitfulness of our
hearts that there is nothing that we
will not misunderstand and despise and
cast behind our back. Only,
prayer—prayer sufficiently persevered
in—will at last overmaster even our
deep depravity; and, O my brethren,
what a blessed overmastery that will be!
Speak, then, Lord! Speak once again to
us what Thou wilt have us to hear
about prayer, and we will attend this
time and will obey!
1. I do not think that there is
anything that our Lord returns on so often
as the forgiveness of injuries. And
the reason of that may very will be
because our lives are so full of
injuries, both real and supposed, and both
given and received. As also because
the thoughts and the feelings, the words
and the deeds, that injury awakens
towards one another in our hearts, are so
opposed to His mind and His spirit. It
is remarkable, and we cannot forget
it, that the only petition in the
prayer that our Lord taught His
disciples,—the only petition that He
repeats and underscores, as we say,—is
the fifth petition: “Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us.” No sooner has He
said Amen than He takes His disciples
back again to their “trespasses,” and
warns them in these solemnising and
arresting words: “For, if ye forgive
men their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you. But if
ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses.” As much as to say that
the forgiveness of injuries will be
the very hardest of all the holy tempers
that I shall ever have to ask of you.
The motions of spite and ill-will are
the most difficult of all its sinful
motions to subdue in the human heart.
At the same time, He adds, as long as
those so wicked and detestable tempers
hold possession of your hearts, your
prayers and everything else will be an
abomination before God.
2. It is not told us in so many words,
but I think I see how it came to pass
that we have the text. Our Lord saw
His disciples every day employing the
prayer He had taught them: He heard
them saying night and morning, “Forgive
us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors,” with all their bad passions all
the time in a blaze at one another.
They were disputing every day who was to
be the greatest. The ten “had
indignation” at the two brethren because their
foolish mother had asked of Christ the
two chief seats in His Kingdom for
her two sons. They were all
trespassing every day against one another, just
like ourselves, till their Master
stopped them one day in the very middle of
their Lord’s Prayer, and said, Stand
still! stop! say no more till you have
forgiven your offending brother: and
then, go on, and finish your prayer
with assurance, and with a good
conscience. He laid His hand on Peter’s
mouth that day, and would not let
Peter finish till he had, from his heart,
forgiven the two ambitious brethren.
And it was that arrest and interdict
that his Master put upon Peter’s
prayer that made Peter expostulate, and
say, “Lord, how oft shall my brother
sin against me, and I forgive him?” And
his Master said to Peter, “I say not
unto thee, Until seven times: but,
Until seventy times seven.” Yes,
Peter, said his Master to Peter that
day,—once your conscience is fully
awake, and once your heart is fully
broken, you will never once be able to
say, Forgive me my debts, till you
have already forgiven some great
debtor of yours. You will always do on the
spot what you ask God to do to you. And it will be by so doing that you
will
be a child of your Father which is in
Heaven; Who maketh His sun to rise
upon the evil and the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
Do you ever feel that same hand
stopping your mouth, my brethren? Is your
prayer ever cut in two and suspended,
till your heart is searched out, and
made quiet, and clean, and sweet to
some of these, your offending brethren?
Or, better still: has Jesus Christ so
penetrated and inspired your heart,
and your conscience, and your
imagination with His grace and His truth that
you never,—either in the church or at
home, either among your children or
alone on your own knees,—never once
say the Lord’s Prayer, without naming in
the middle of it, and at the fifth
petition of it, some of us who vex you,
or offend you, or trespass in some way
against you? some one of us towards
whom you have an antipathy, or a
distaste, or a secret grudge, or some
inveterate ill-will? Standing, or
sitting, or kneeling, or lying on your
face in prayer—is God your Witness,
and your Hearer, and your Judge, that
you forgive us, as often as you
remember that you have ought against us? Do
you do that? Well, I am sure if we, not
to speak of God, knew that, and
could believe it about you, you would
not soon have occasion to forgive us
again! God bless you, all the same,
and hear your prayer!
3. You would, as I think, find this to
be helpful when you “stand
praying,” and are as yet unable to
forgive. Try this the next time. Say this
to yourself. Say something like this.
“What, exactly, is it that I have
against that man?” Put it in words.
Put it to yourself as you would put it
to a third person. Calm reflection,
and a little frank and honest
self-examination, is a kind of third
person, and will suffice you for his
office. And so stated, so looked at,
that mortal offence turns out to be not
half so bad as it has up till now been
felt to be. Our pride, and our
self-importance, often blow up a small
matter into a mortal injury. Many of
our insults and injuries are far more
imaginary than real: though our sin
and our misery on account of them are
real enough. Look at the offender.
Look closely at him. Do not avoid him.
Do not refuse to have a talk with
him. If possible, eat a meal now and
then with him. Make a great and noble
effort, and put yourself in his place
in all this unhappy business. For once
be honest, and just, and generous. See
yourself as he has seen you. Allow
and admit his side of it for a moment.
Allow and admit that yon differ from
him, as Butler has it, quite as much
as he differs from you. Let a little
daylight, as Bacon has it, fall on
this case that is between him and you.
Let a little of the light of love, and
humility, and goodwill fall on him,
and on yourself—and, already, your
prayer is heard! You may go on and finish
your prayer now. Your trespasses are
already as good as forgiven. They are:
since you are all but ready to admit that a
great part of your hurt and pain
and anger and resentment is due to
yourself, and not to your neighbour at
all. And once your neighbour has come
to your assistance in that way in your
prayer, he will come again, and will
come often, till you and he, meeting so
often in amity before God, will only
wait for God’s promised opportunity to
be the closest and the best of friends
again, not only before God, but
before men also. For, “He is our
peace; Who hath abolished the enmity, so
making peace.”
4. You will find this to be helpful
also in some extreme cases. When there
is some one who is trespassing against
you “seven times a day”; some one
whose tongue works continually against
you like a sharp razor; some one
whose words are as a sword in your
bones; some one who despitefully uses
you, and persecutes you; some one who
returns you only evil for all the good
you have done to him and his,—and so
on. There have been such extreme cases.
Your own case, in short. Well. What do
you wish to have done to him? There
are prayers for all kinds of cases in
the Bible. And here is one for you.
“Let his days be few; and let another
take his office. Let his children be
fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let
his children be continually vagabonds,
and beg .... Let his posterity be cut
off; and in the generation following
let their name be blotted out ... As
he loved cursing, so let it come unto
him: as he delighted not in blessing,
so let it be far from him.” When you
stand praying, put up that prayer. Say
that: and then say, “For Christ’s
sake, Amen!” And, then, out of the
same psalm, add this for your so
suffering soul: “But do Thou for me, O
God the Lord, for Thy name’s sake:
because Thy mercy is good, deliver
Thou me.” I have known men to be cured of
malice and ill-will by offering that
prayer morning and night, and at the
Lord’s Table. I have known groanings,
that could not be uttered before, find
utterance in the words of that
devoting psalm. Try it on your enemy in the
extremity of your injury and ill-will.
And it will, by God’s blessing, do
for you and for your heart what it has
done by God’s blessing for far worse
hearts than yours.
How horrible, and how hell-like, is a
revengeful heart! While how beautiful,
and how like heaven itself, is a
humble, a meek, a patient, and a
Christ-like heart! I have been
refreshing and enlarging and ennobling my
heart among Plutarch’s noble Grecians and
Romans in my spare hours this past
winter,—when you give Plutarch in a
present let it be in Thomas North’s
Bible English,—and at this point
Plutarch’s Pericles comes to my mind. “For
he grew not only to have a great mind
and an eloquent tongue, without any
affectation, or gross country terms;
but to a certain modest countenance
that scantly smiled: very sober in his
gait: having a kind of sound in his
voice that he never lost nor altered:
and was of very honest behaviour:
never troubled in his talk for
anything that crossed him: and, many such
like things, as all that saw them in
him, and considered him, could but
wonder at him. But for proof hereof,
the report goeth, there was a naughty
busy fellow on a time, that a whole day
together did nothing but rail upon
Pericles in the market-place, and
revile him to his face, with all the
villainous words he could use. But
Pericles put all up quietly, and gave him
not a word again, dispatching in the
meantime matters of importance he had
in hand, till night came, that he went
softly to his home, showing no
alteration nor semblance of trouble at
all, though this lewd varlet followed
at his heels with all the villainous
words he could use. But Pericles put
all up quietly and gave him not a word
again. And as he was at his own door,
being dark night, he commanded one of
his men to take a torch and take that
man back to his own house.” An apple
of gold in a picture of silver!
But, both in patience and in forgiveness
of injuries, as in all else,
behold, a Greater than Pericles is
here! He Who gave Pericles that noble
heart is here teaching us and training
us by doctrine, and by example, and
by opportunity, to a nobler heart than
any of Plutarch’s noblest Greeks or
Romans. I know nothing outside of the
New Testament nobler in this noble
matter than the Ethics, and the
Morals, and the Parallel Lives: but I read
neither in Aristotle, nor in Plato,
nor in Plutarch anything like this:
“Blessed are ye, when men shall revile
you, and persecute you, and shall say
all manner of evil against you
falsely, for My sake. Rejoice and be
exceeding glad: for great is your
reward in heaven.” Our Master, you see,
actually congratulates us on our
enemies, and backbiters, and false friends.
He lifts us out of all our bitterness
and gloom, and despondency, and
resentment, up into the sunshine of
His own humble, loving, forgiving heart.
And as if His heavenly teaching was
not enough, He leaves us His example so
that we may follow in His steps. And
He leaves it—it is beautiful to
see—first to Peter, who hands it down,
after he is done with it, to us. Hold
up, then, your hurt and proud and
revengeful hearts, O all ye disciples of
Christ, and let Peter, by the Holy
Ghost, write this on the hard and cruel
tables of your hearts. This: “Christ
also suffered for us, leaving us an
example, that ye should follow His
steps. Who, when He was reviled, reviled
not again; when He suffered, He threatened
not. . . . Who, His own self,
bare our sins on His own body on the
tree: . . . by whose stripes ye were
healed.” Come, then, my brethren, with
all your wrongs and all your
injuries, real and supposed, great and
small; greatly exaggerated, and
impossible to be exaggerated. And when
you stand praying, spread them all
out before God. Name them, and
describe them to Him. And He will hear you,
and He will help you till you are
able, under the last and the greatest of
them, to say, “Father, forgive them:
for they know not what they do.”
_________________________________________________________________
XXII. THE SECRET BURDEN
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
1.
“Apart. . .”—Zech. xii. 12.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the
throne, He travels the fastest, who travels
alone
THAT is to say, secret sin, and secret
prayer, have this in common; that
they both make a man travel his
fastest. Secret sin makes him who commits it
travel his fastest down to Gehenna,—that
is to say, down into “the fire that
is not quenched.” Whereas secret
prayer makes him who so prays travel his
very fastest up to the throne of God,
and up to his own throne in heaven.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the
throne, He travels the fastest, who travels
alone.
“Apart! Apart! Apart!” proclaims this
prophet, ten times, in the text. If he
could only get “the house of David,
and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” to
pray, and to pray apart—the Fountain
for sin and for uncleanness would soon
be opened; and the Kingdom of God
would soon come. “Apart! Apart! Apart!” he
cries “Every family apart, and their
wives apart!”
This truly evangelical prophet is very
importunate with the people to whom
he preaches, to get them to take the
fullest and the most universal
advantage of this apartness in prayer.
Apartness in prayer has immense and
incomparable advantages over all other
kinds and practices of prayer: and
this prophet urges it on his people
with all his authority and with all
possible earnestness. He would have
all ranks, and all classes, and all
occupations, and all ages, and both
sexes, to begin, and to continue, to
pray apart. Indeed, he as good as
proclaims to them, with all his prophetic
power and passion, that the man who
does not pray apart does not properly
pray at all. And our Lord supports
this prophet and says the same thing in
one of His well-known utterances about
prayer. Thou, He says, when thou
prayest, go apart first. Go away to
some retreat of thine, where thou art
sure that no eye sees thee, and no ear
hears thee, and where no man so much
as suspects where thou art, and what
thou art doing. Enter thy closet; and,
with thy door shut on thee, and on thy
Father with thee,— then pray.
There it is—written all over our open
Bible so that he who runs may read
it,—the sure and certain blessedness
of prayer apart, the immediate and the
immense advantage and privilege of
private prayer. But not only is all that
written all over both the Old Testament and
the New, it is illustrated and
enforced on us out of our own
experience every day. Let us just take
ourselves here as so many proofs and
pictures of the advantage and
superiority and privilege of private
prayer over public prayer. And take
just your minister and then yourselves
in proof and in illustration of this.
As soon as the church bells stop
ringing on the Sabbath morning, your
ministers must immediately begin to
pray openly and before men—whether they
are prepared or no; whether they are
in the proper spirit or no; and whether
they have recovered their lost sight
and lost hold of God that morning or
no. It is expected of them that, as
soon as the opening psalm is sung, the
pulpit should begin to pray.
And you get,—more or less,—every
Sabbath morning from the pulpit what you
pay your seat for, and demand of us in
return. You get a few well-repeated
liturgical passages. You get a few
well-selected texts taken out of the
Psalms. And then a promise or two
taken out of the prophets and the
apostles,—all artistically wound up
with a few words of doxology. But all
that, four or five times every Sabbath
day, is not prayer. All that is a
certain open and public acknowledgment
and tribute to the House of Prayer,
and to the Day of Prayer; but nobody
with an atom of sense or spirit ever
supposes that that is prayer. And then
we have to stop our Sabbath morning
prayer before we have well begun it.
You allow, and measure out to us by
your watches, our limit. We must say
our pulpit prayers before you at the
proper moment, in the proper tones,
and to the proper length,—on the pain of
losing your countenance and patronage.
And on the other hand, though our
hearts are breaking, we must begin at the
advertised hour. And we must not
by a sigh, or a sob, or a tear, or by
one utterance of reality and
sincerity, annoy or startle or upset
you. We must please you with a pleasant
voice. Our very pronunciation and
accent must be the same as yours,—else you
will not have it. We may let out our
passions in everything else, as much as
we like,—but not on Sabbath, and,
above all, not in pulpit prayer. These are
some of the inconveniences and
disadvantages and dangers of public prayer to
your ministers. But out of the pulpit,
and sufficiently away and apart from
you,—we can do what we like. We have
no longer to please you to your
edification. We can wait as long as we
like in our closet, before we attempt
to pray. The day is over now, and the
duties of the day: we are in no hurry
now: we are under no rule of use and
wont now. We can watch a whole hour
now, if we are not too tired and
sleepy. We can sit down and read, and muse,
and meditate, and make images of
things to ourselves out of our Bible, or
out of our Andrewes, till the fire
begins to burn! That was what David did.
“My heart was hot within me, while I
was musing the fire burned: then spake
I with my tongue.” And the minutes
toward midnight may run on to hours; and
the midnight hours to morning watches;
and yet we will run no danger of
wearying out Him who slumbers not nor
sleeps: He still waits to be gracious.
What we ministers, of all men, would
do without prayer apart,—I cannot
imagine what would become of us! But,
with his closet, and with the key of
his closet continually in his hand, no
minister need despair, even though he
is a great orator, with a great gift
of public prayer. “Apart! Apart!
Apart!” this great prophet keeps
ringing in every minister’s ears. “Apart!
Apart! Apart! Every minister—of all
men,—apart!”
And the very same thing holds true of
yourselves, my praying brethren. You
have the very same out-gate and
retreat in private prayer that we have. You
can escape apart from us, and from all
our pulpit prayers. God help you if
you do not! If all your praying is
performed here,—and if it is all
performed by your minister for
you,—may God pity you, and teach you Himself
to pray! But if you are living a life of
secret prayer, then you are not
dependent on us; and we are not so
ruinously responsible for you. And
indeed, if you pray much apart, you
are already beyond our depth. You are
wiser than all your teachers. You
could teach us. I sometimes see you, and
see what you are thinking about, when
you are not aware. You listen to us in
our public prayers. And you smile to
yourself as you see us attempting a
thing in public that—you see quite
well—we know next to nothing about in
private. We have our reward of others,
but not of you: you say nothing. You
sit out the public worship and then
you rise up, and go home. It is with you
as when a hungry man dreameth and;
behold, he eateth ; but he awaketh and
his soul is empty. Till you get home,
and the house is asleep. And then,
could we but act the eavesdropper that
night! Could we but get our ear close
to your keyhole, we should learn a
lesson in prayer that we should not
forget. You must surely see what I am
driving at in all this, do you not? I
am labouring, and risking something,
to prove this to you, and to print it
on your hearts,—the immense privilege
and the immense and incomparable
opportunity and advantage of private
prayer, of prayer apart.
And then, for a further illustration
of this argument, take the confession
of sin, in public and in private
prayer. The feeling of sin is the most
personal, and poignant, and
overpowering part of your daily and hourly
prayer. And, if you will think about
it for one moment, you will see how
absolutely impossible it is for you to
discover, and to lay bare and to put
the proper words and feelings upon
yourself and upon your sin, in public
prayer. You cannot do it. You dare not
do it. And when you do do it, under
some unbearable load of guilt, or
under some overpowering pain of heart,—you
do yourself no good, and you do all
who hear you real evil. You offend them.
You tempt them to think and to speak
about you and your prayers, which is a
most mischievous thing: you terrify,
like Thomas Boston, the godly. And,
after all; after all that injurious
truthfulness and plain-spokenness of
yours in prayer,—with all that, you
cannot in public prayer go out
sufficiently into particulars and
instances, and times, and places, and
people. Particularity, and taking
instances, is the very lifeblood of all
true and prevailing prayer. But you
dare not do that: you dare not take an
outstanding instance of your daily
sinfulness and utter corruption of heart
in public or in family prayer. It
would be insufferable and unpardonable. It
is never done. And you must not under
any temptation of conscience, or of
heart, ever do it. When your door is
shut, and when all public propriety,
and all formality, and insincerity is
shut out, then you can say and do
anything to which the spirit moves
you. You can pray all night on your face,
if you like, like your Lord in
Gethsemane. When you are so full of sin that
you are beside yourself with the leprosy of it and with the shame and
the
pain of it,—they would carry you to
the madhouse, if you let yourself say
and do in public what all God’s
greatest saints, beginning with God’s Son,
have continually done in private. But
your soul may sweat great drops of
blood in secret, and no human being is
any wiser. And as for those who watch
you and see it all,—“there is joy in
heaven” over you from that night. Not
one in ten of you have ever done it,
possibly not one in a hundred: but when
you begin really to look on Him whom
you have pierced, as this great prophet
has it, then you will begin to
understand what it is to be in bitterness,
and to mourn apart, as one is in
bitterness for his first-born. Then, no
pulpit confession, and no family
altar, will relieve your heart. For then,
there will be a life-long mourning in
your heart as the mourning of
Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.
“Oh,” you will cry, “oh, that mine
head were waters, and mine eyes a
fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the Son of God whom I
have slain by my sin! Oh, that I had in
the wilderness a lodging-place of
wayfaring men; that I might leave my
people, and go from them to weep for
my sin against my God and my
Saviour!” And God will provide such a
place apart for you, and for Himself
with you,—till one day, when your head
is, as never before, “waters,” He
will say; “It is enough, go in peace.
Weep no more.” And He will wipe all
tears from your eyes.
And the very same thing holds true of
all intercessory prayer. It would be
an impertinence and an impudence; it
would be an ostentation and a
presumption to pray for other men in
public, as you are permitted and
enabled and commanded to pray for them
in private. It would be resented, and
never forgiven. In intercessory prayer
in public, particulars and instances,
and actual persons, and special and
peculiar cases, are absolutely
impracticable and impossible. You
simply dare not pray, in public, for other
men,—any more than for yourself,—as
they need to be prayed for. You would be
arrested and imprisoned under the law
of libel if you did it. Were you to
see these men and women around you as
they are; and were you to describe
them, and to plead with God to redeem
and renew, and restore, and save
them,—the judge would shut your mouth.
But in private, neither your friend
nor your enemy will ever know, or even
guess, till the last day, what they
owe to you, and to your closet. You
will never incur either blame or
resentment or retaliation by the way
you speak about them and their needs in
the ear of God. The things that are
notoriously and irrecoverably destroying
the character and the usefulness of
your fellow-worshipper—you may not so
much as whisper them to your best
friend, or to his. But you can, and you
must, bear him by name, and all his
sins and vices, all that is deplorable,
and all that is contemptible about
him, before God. And if you do so; and if
you persist and persevere in doing
so,—though you would not believe it,—you
will come out of your closet to love,
and to honour, and to put up with, and
to protect, and to defend your client
the more,—the more you see what is
wrong with him, and the more you
importune God in his behalf. Intercessory
prayer, in the pulpit, usually begins
with the Sovereign, and the Royal
Family, and the Prime Minister, and
the Parliament, and so on. You all know
the monotonous and meaningless rubric.
But nobody is any better, Sovereign
nor Parliament, because nobody is in
earnest. We pray for the Sovereign, in
order to be seen and heard and
approved of men. But in secret,—it is another
matter. If you ever—before God and in
faith and love—prayed for your
Sovereign, or for any great personage
sincerely, and with importunity, you
then began to feel toward them in a
new way; and you began to have your
answer returned into your own bosom,
if not yet into theirs, in the shape of
real honour, and real love, and real
good-will, and real good wishes, and
more and better prayer, for those you
so pray for. “I exhort therefore that,
first of all, supplications, prayers,
intercessions, be made for all men;
for kings, and for all that are in
authority; that we may lead a quiet and
peaceable life in all godliness and
honesty.... For there is one God, and
one Mediator between God and men, the
Man Christ Jesus.... I will therefore
that men pray everywhere, lifting up
holy hands, without wrath and
doubting.”
And, then,—to conclude this great
argument,—take thanksgiving, which is, by
far, the best and the most blessed
part of both public and private prayer.
You cannot thank God with all your
heart in public. You cannot tell in
public—even to them that fear God—all
that God has done for your soul. Even
David himself could not do it. He
tried it, again and again: but he had to
give up the attempt. In public, that
is, and before the great congregation,
he could not do it. You see him
attempting it, again and again; but the
great congregation is not able to bear
it. Here is the best specimen of a
true thanksgiving I have ever met
with. But then, it is not a public, but a
private devotion,—as its title-page
bears.
“O God,” this man of prayer said in
secret to God once every week, taking a
whole night to it: going out into
particulars, and giving instances, and
names, and dates.
“O God, I thank Thee for my existence:
for my life, and for my reason. For
all Thy gifts to me of grace, nature,
fortune”—(enumerating and naming them,
and taking time to do it)—“for all Thy
forbearance, long-suffering, long
long-suffering to me-ward, up to this
night. For all good things I have
received of Thy hand”—(naming some of
them)—“for my parents honest and
good” (recollecting them, and
recollecting instances and occasions of their
honesty and goodness)—“and for
benefactors, never to be forgotten” (naming
them). “For religious, and literary,
and social intimates, so congenial, and
so helpful. For all who have helped me
by their writings,—(and at that he
rises off his knees, and walks round
his library, and passes his eye along
its so helpful shelves).—“For all who have
saved my soul also by their
sermons, and their prayers” (and at
this he recalls great preachers of the
soul, some dead, and some still alive
and open to his acknowledgments). “For
all whose rebukes and remonstrances
have arrested and reformed me. For those
even who have, some intentionally, and
some unintentionally, insulted and
injured me,—but I have got good out of
it all,”—and so on. You could not
offer a sacrifice of praise like that
before everybody. You could not do it
with propriety before anybody! And it
would be still more impossible to go
on, and to give instances and
particulars like this: and, without instances
and particulars, you might as well be
in your bed. “Thou holdest my soul in
life, and sufferest not my feet to be
moved. Thou rescuest me every day from
dangers, and from sicknesses of body
and soul; from public shame, and from
the strife of tongues. Thou continuest
to work in me, by Thy special grace
to me, some timeous remembrance of my
latter end; and some true recollection
and shame, and horror, and grief of
heart for my past sins. Glory be to
thee, O God, for Thine unspeakable,
and unimaginable goodness to me,—of all
sinners the most unworthy, the most
provoking, and the most unthankful!” You
could not say things like that in the
pulpit, no, nor at your own most
intimate family altar. And, yet, they
must be said. There are men among you
whose hearts would absolutely burst,
if they were not let say such things:
aye, and say them, not once a week,
like this great saint, but every day and
every night. And it is to them—few, or
many among us, God alone knows,—it is
to them that this Scripture is
selected and sent this morning,—this
Scripture: And I will pour out upon them
the spirit of grace and of
supplications, the spirit of
repentance and confession, the spirit of
intercession and prayer for all men:
and the still more blessed spirit of
praise and thankfulness: and they
shall pray and praise apart, till their
Father which seeth, and heareth, apart
and in secret, shall reward them
openly.
Down to Gehenna, and up to the
throne, He travels the fastest, who travels
alone.
_________________________________________________________________
XXIII. THE ENDLESS QUEST
“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.
i.
“He that cometh to God must believe
that He is, and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him (lit.
that seek Him out).”—Heb. xi. 6.
I MUST not set myself up as a man able
to mend, and to make improvements
upon, the English translation of the
Greek Testament. At the same time, it
seems to me to be beyond dispute that
the English of the text falls far
short of the exact point and the full
expressiveness of the original.
Remacu:—touching the text with the
point of needle, Bengel exclaims: “A
grand compound!” And it is a “grand
compound.” The verb in the text is not
simply to seek. It is not simply to
seek diligently. It is to seek out: it
is to seek and search out to the very
end. A Greek particle, of the greatest
possible emphasis and expressiveness,
is prefixed to the simple verb: and
those two letters are letters of such
strength and intensity they make the
commonplace word to which they are
prefixed to shine out with a great
grandeur to Bengel’s so keen, so
scholarly and so spiritual eyes.
Ever feeling after God, if haply I may
find Him, in a moment I saw the
working out of my own salvation in a
new light; and, at the same moment, I
saw written out before me my present
sermon, as soon as I stumbled on the
Apostle’s “grand compound.” “But
without faith it is impossible to please
Him: for he that cometh to God must
believe that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of them that seek Him out” to
the end; of them that seek Him out
saying, “Oh, that I knew where I might
find Him!” That seek Him out saying,
“Verily, Thou art a God that hidest
Thyself.” That seek Him out with their
whole heart. That seek Him with
originality, with invention, with
initiation, with enterprise, with
boldness, with all possible urgency, and
with all possible intensity and
strenuousness. As also, to the end of a
whole life of the strictest obedience,
and the most absolute and unshaken
faith, and hope, and love. “A grand
compound!”
As we go on in life, as we more and
more come to be men and leave off
speaking as children, and
understanding as children and thinking as
children, we come to see with more and
more clearness what it is to us,—what
it must be to us,—to arise and return
to God, to seek God, to come to God,
and to walk with God. At one time we
had the most unworthy and impossible
thoughts of God, and of our seeking
Him, and finding Him. We had the most
materialistic, and limited, and local,
and external ideas about God. But, as
we became men, we were led,—all too
slowly, and all too unwillingly,—yet we
were led to see that God is an
Infinite and an Omnipresent Spirit: and that
they that would seek God must seek Him
in the spiritual world, that is, in
that great spiritual world of things
into which our own hearts within us are
the true, and the only, door. “Thou
hast set the world in their hearts,”
says the Preacher in a very profound
passage. The spiritual world, that is;
the world of God, and of all who are
seeking God out till they are rewarded
of Him. “We do not come to God upon
our feet,” says Augustine, “but upon our
affections.” And thus it is that we,
who are so materialistically minded and
so unspiritually minded men, find it
so distasteful, and so difficult, and
so impossible to seek out God till we
find Him. Were He to be found in any
temple made with hands; were He to be
found in Samaria or in Jerusalem,
between the Cherubim on earth, or on a
throne in heaven,—then, we should
soon find Him. But because He has set
the spiritual world, and Himself as
the God and King of the spiritual
world, in our own hearts,—we both mistake
the only way to find Him, and miss our
promised reward of Him.
How can I go away from Him,—and how
can I come back to Him, Who is
everywhere present? “Whither shall I
go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I
flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up
into heaven, Thou art there. If I
make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art
there.” A question, a chain of
questions like that, put continually,
put imaginatively, put day and night
and in dead earnest to a man’s self,
will be the beginning of a new life to
any man among us. Questions, problems,
psalms and prayers, like
that,—raised, reasoned out,
understood, and accepted,—will open our eyes. A
man has no sooner stated these things
to himself than, from that moment, he
begins to see as never before,
something of the greatness and the glory of
God; something of the Divine and Holy
Spirituality of God; and,
consequently, something of the pure
spirituality of all his intercourse with
God. I see then, that it is not God
who has turned away and removed Himself
from me in His omnipresence and
omniscience: but that I have gone away and
removed myself far from Him in all my
thoughts and words and deeds. I have
gone away from God in my heart. And,
as my going away from God was, so must
my coming back to Him be. And thus we
are told of the prodigal son that his
coming to himself was his first step
back to his father. And his whole
return began, and was carried out, by
recollection, and by repentance, and
by confidence in his father’s
forgiveness, and by a resolution, at once
acted on, to return to his father’s
house. The whole parable took place in
his own heart. The far country was all
in that prodigal son’s own heart. The
mighty famine was all in his own
heart. The swine and their husks were all
in his own heart. The best robe and
the ring and the shoes were all in his
own heart. And the mirth and the music
and the dancing were all also in his
own heart. “He hath set the whole
world,” says the wise man, “in their
heart.”
Take then, as the first illustration
of this law of our text, take the truly
studious, or, as I shall call him, the
truly philosophic seeker after truth,
if not yet to say after GOD. Let that
student be, at present, a total
stranger to God. Nay, I am bold to
say, let him be at secret enmity with
God. Only, let him be an honest,
earnest, hard-working, still-persevering,
and everyway-genuine student of nature
and of man. Let him never be content
with what he has as yet attained, but
let him love, and follow, and seek
out, the whole truth to the end. Now
such a true student as that will not
work at his studies with one part of
his mind only; but in the measure of
his depth, and strength, and wisdom,
he will bring all that is within him,
as the Psalmist says, to his studies.
He will bring his heart as well as his
head: his imagination as well as his
understanding: his conscience even, and
his will, as well as his powers of
recollection and reasoning. And as he
works on, all the seriousness, all the
reverence, all the humility, all the
patience and all the love with which
he studies nature, will more and more
be drawn out as he ponders and
asks,—who, or what, is the real root, and
source, and great original of nature
and man? Who made all these things? And
for why? And by this time, that true
student has come, all unawares to
himself, under the sure operation of
that great Divine law, which is
enunciated with such certitude in this
splendid text. For he that cometh
seeking God, whether in nature or in
grace; whether in God’s works, or in
God’s Son, or in God’s word: if he
still comes with teachableness, and with
patience, and with humility, and with
faith, and with hope, and with love to
the end,—all of which are the
qualities and the characters of a true
student,—that man, by this time, is
not far from God. Till the very
vastness, and order, and beauty, and
law-abidingness, and loyalty, and
serviceableness of nature; will all
more and more pierce his conscience, and
more and more move, and humble, and
break his heart. And God will, to a
certainty, reward that man, that
serious, and honest, and humble-minded man,
by putting this psalm in his mouth,
till he will join his fellow-worshippers
here in singing it: “The heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament
sheweth His handywork.” But it is the
law of the Lord that is perfect,
converting the soul: it is the
testimony of the Lord that is pure,
enlightening the eyes. “It is true
that a little philosophy inclineth man’s
mind to atheism: but depth in
philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to
religion: for while the mind of man
looketh upon second causes scattered, it
may sometimes rest in them, and go no
further: but when it beholdeth the
chain of them confederate and linked
together, it must needs fly to
Providence and Deity. Then, according
to the allegory of the poets, he will
easily believe the highest link of
nature’s chain must needs be tied to the
foot of Jupiter’s chair.”
We speak in that large and general way
about what we call great students and
great thinkers and great philosophers,
as they feel after, and find out God;
and we do not speak amiss or out of
place. But there is no student in all
the world like the student of his own
heart. There is no thinker so deep and
difficult as he who thinks about
himself. And out of all the philosophies
that have been from the beginning,
there is none of them all like that of a
personal, a practical, an experimental
religion, and an out-and-out
obedience to all God’s commandments.
That is science. That is philosophy. As
the Book of Revelation has it: “Here
is wisdom”: and “Here is the mind which
hath wisdom.” The mind, that is, which
seeks God in all things, and at all
times, and that seeks Him out till it
finds Him. And till God says to that
man also, “Fear not, Abram: I am thy
shield and thy exceeding great
reward.”
Is there any man here then, this day,
who is saying: “Oh, that I knew where
I might find Him! That I might come
even to His seat”? What is the matter
with you, man? What is it that has so
banished your soul away from God? What
was it that so carried you away into
that captivity? And what is the name of
the chain that holds you so fast
there? Do you ask honestly and in
earnest,—“What must I do to be saved
from this far country, this
hell-upon-earth into which I have
fallen?” O man! You are very easily
answered. Your case is very easily
treated. You are not a great thinker: you
are simply a great sinner. It is not
speculation that has led you astray,
but disobedience, and a bad heart. You
must not expect to be flattered and
fondled, and sympathised and condoled
with, as if there was some deep and
awful mystery about you. Oh no! there
is nothing mysterious or awful abut
you. You are a quite commonplace,
everyday, vulgar transgressor. There are
plenty like you. “Say not in thine
heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? . .
. Or, Who shall descend into the deep?
. . . But what saith it? The word is
nigh thee,” That is the word of
repentance, and return to God, and a better
life, and a broken heart, which we
preach to ourselves and to you. Do you
not understand? Do you not know what
it is in you, and about you, that lands
you in such nakedness and famine and
shame and pain and death? You know
quite well. It is sin. It is nothing
but sin. It is the sins and the faults
of your heart and your life. Now, this
is wisdom. This is the mind that hath
wisdom. To put your finger on yourself
and say: It is in this, and in this,
and in this, that I always go away
from God. It is in the indulgence of this
appetite. It is in this wicked temper.
It is in this secret envy and
ill-will. It is in this sour and
sullen heart. It is in this secret but deep
dislike and evil mind at that man who
so innocently trusts me, and who so
unsuspiciously thinks me his friend.
It is in this scandalous neglect of
prayer; this shameful, this suicidal
neglect of all kinds of personal
religion in the sight of God. Believe
the worst about yourself. Fix on the
constantly sinful state of your own
heart, and an the secret springs of
sinful thought and feeling within you:
seek yourself out, as the text says,
and you are thus seeking out God. And
the more evil you seek out of
yourself,—and put it away,—the nearer
and the surer you will come to God.
Fight every day against no one else
but yourself; and against nothing else
but every secret motion of pride, and
anger, and malice, and love of evil,
and dislike of good. Every blow you
deal to these deadly things of which
your heart is full is another safe and
sure step back to God. At every such
stroke at yourself, and at your own
sin God will by all that cane back to
you; till, at last, He will fill your
whole soul with himself. That was the
way, and it was in no other way, that
Enoch “walked with God” in the verse
just before the text. And you too will
walk with God, and God with you, just
in the measure in which you put on
humility, and put off pride; and fill
your hot heart full of the meekness
and lowly-mindedness of the Son of God;
and, beside it, with the contrition,
and the penitence, and the
watchfulness, and the constant prayerfulness
of one of His true disciples.
To hold your peace when you are
reproved,—that is a sure step toward God. To
let a slight, a contempt, an affront,
an insult, a scoff, a sneer, fall on
your head like an excellent oil, and
on your heart like your true
desert—“with that man will I dwell,”
says the God of Israel and the God and
Father of our Lord Jeans Christ. Every
step you take out of an angry and
wrathful heart, and out of a sour,
sullen, and morose heart, and into a meek
and peace-making heart; out of envy
and uneasiness, and into admiration and
honour: on the spot your heavenly
Father will acknowledge and will reward
you. Seek Him out: and see if He will
not!
And, then,—remaining always at your
true post, within yourself,—come out
continually in that mind, and seek out
God in all outward things also. For,
be sure, He is in all outward things
as well: and He is in them all for you
to seek Him out till you are rewarded
of Him. In every ordinance of his
grace and truth He is to be sought out
by you. On every new Sabbath, and in
every psalm, and prayer, and
scripture, and silent and secret hour of that
Sabbath. In every week-day providence
also. He is in every providence of His
for many more beside you: but He is
there for you, just as much as if He
were there for no one but you. In
public providences, in domestic
providences, as well as in all those
more secret and personal providences
that have been so many perfect
miracles in your life. And in every change
and alteration in your circumstances.
God, all-wise, does not make a change
in your circumstances just for the
love of change. It is all for His love to
you, and to make you seek out a fresh
proof of that love, as well as to draw
out some new, and warm, and wondering
love out of your renewed heart to Him.
After you have appropriated to
yourself all the reward He had prepared for
you in one age and stage of your life,
He leads you on to another age and
another stage; and He hides Himself
and His grace there for you again to
seek Him out. And this goes on, all
through your life, till He teaches you
to say, “One thing do I desire, and
that will I seek after, and that is God,
my God, my Life, my Joy, my
Blessedness.”
Men and women! What are you living
for? What is your life yielding you? If
you are not finding God in all parts
of your life—what a fatal mistake you
are making! And what a magnificent
reward you are for ever missing!
But, when all is said, it is not to be
wondered at that so few of us seek,
and seek out, God. For His greatness
passes all comprehension, and
imagination, and searching out, of men
and angels. His holiness also makes
Him a “consuming fire” to such sinners
as we are. And then, His awful
spirituality, omnipresence, and
inwardness,—we would go mad, if we once saw
Him as He is, and at the same time saw
ourselves as we are. “And He said,
There shall no man see Me, and live.”
We must grow like God before we can
both see Him and live. And thus it is
that it is only His very choicest and
chiefest saints who do seek Him out to
the end either in His Son, or in the
Scriptures, or in their own hearts, or
in Providence, or in nature, or in
unceasing prayer. It is only one here,
and another there, who ever get the
length of crying out with Job, “Oh,
that I knew where I might find Him.” And
with Isaiah, “Verily Thou art a God
that hidest Thyself.” And with Paul,
“Dwelling in light which no man can
approach unto: Whom no man hath seen, or
can see.”
But, just in the depth and adoration
of their cry; and just as their sight
and sense is of the greatness and the
glory of God,—just in that kind, and
just in that degree, will their reward
be, when He shall reveal Himself at
last, and shall Himself become their
exceeding great and everlasting Reward.
And though we are not worthy to stoop
down and unloose the latchet of the
shoes of such great, and such greatly
rewarded, saints of God: yet, if we
also seek God, and seek Him out to the
end of our life,—feeble as our faith
is, and smoking flax as our love
is,—yet by His grace, after all our partial
discoveries of God, and all our
occasional experiences of Him, we also in
our measure shall receive, and shall
for ever possess, and enjoy very God
Almighty Himself for our own Reward
for ever.
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of
the wisdom and the knowledge of God! .
. . For of Him, and through Him, and
to Him, are all things.” “Whom have I
in heaven but Thee? And there is none
upon earth that I desire beside
Thee.” “My soul longeth, yea, even
fainteth: . . . my heart and my flesh cry
out for the living God. . . . They go
from strength to strength, every one
of them in Zion appeareth before
God.”
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY MORRISON
AND GIBB LTD., EDINBURGH
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_________________________________________________________________
Indexes
_________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
[1]32:30 [2]32:30
Exodus
[3]34:8 [4]34:8
Job
[5]23:3 [6]23:3
Psalms
[7]16:8 [8]16:8
[9]62:8 [10]62:8
Isaiah
[11]13:26 [12]43:26
[13]57:15 [14]57:15
Jeremiah
[15]29:13 [16]29:13
Hosea
[17]7:16 [18]7:16
Habakkuk
[19]1
[20]2 [21]2:1
Zechariah
[22]12:12 [23]12:12
Malachi
[24]1:8 [25]1:8
Matthew
[26]6:6 [27]6:6
[28]26:36 [29]26:36
Mark
[30]11:25 [31]11:25
Luke
[32]1
[33]1 [34]1 [35]1
[36]1 [37]1 [38]1
[39]1 [40]1
[41]11 [42]11
[43]11 [44]11 [45]11
[46]11 [47]11 [48]11
[49]11 [50]11:1
[51]11:1 [52]11:1 [53]11:1
[54]11:1 [55]11:1
[56]11:1 [57]11:1
[58]11:1 [59]11:1 [60]11:1
[61]11:1 [62]11:1
[63]11:1 [64]11:1
[65]11:1 [66]11:1 [67]11:1
[68]11:1 [69]11:1
[70]11:1 [71]11:1
[72]11:1 [73]11:1 [74]11:1
[75]11:1 [76]11:1
[77]11:1 [78]11:1
[79]11:1 [80]11:1 [81]11:1
[82]11:1 [83]11:1
[84]11:1 [85]11:1
[86]11:1 [87]11:1 [88]11:5-8
[89]11:5-8
John
[90]7:19 [91]17 [92]19
Ephesians
[93]3:14-19 [94]3:14-19
Colossians
[95]1:12 [96]1:12
[97]1:13 [98]1:13
Hebrews
[99]9:6 [100]11:6
James
[101]5:17 [102]5:17
1 Peter
[103]2:9 [104]2:9
Revelation
[105]4:8 [106]4:8
_________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture Commentary
Genesis
[107]32:30
Exodus
[108]34:8
Job
[109]23:3
Psalms
[110]16:8 [111]42:8
Isaiah
[112]43:26 [113]57:15
Jeremiah
[114]29:13
Hosea
[115]7:16
Habakkuk
[116]2:1
Zechariah
[117]12:12
Malachi
[118]1:8
Matthew
[119]6:6 [120]26:36
Mark
[121]11:25
Luke
[122]11:1 [123]11:1
[124]11:1 [125]11:1 [126]11:1
[127]11:1
[128]11:1 [129]11:1
[130]11:1 [131]11:1 [132]11:1
[133]11:1
[134]11:1 [135]11:1
[136]11:1 [137]11:1 [138]11:1
[139]11:1
[140]11:1 [141]11:1
[142]11:1 [143]11:1 [144]11:1
[145]11:5-8
John
[146]17:19
Ephesians
[147]3:14-19
Colossians
[148]1:12-13
Hebrews
[149]11:6
James
[150]5:17
1 Peter
[151]2:9
Revelation
[152]4:8
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