22. Nature, Necessity, and Power of Prayer

I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.—Ezekiel xxvi. 37.

IN pursuing his voyage to the shores of the new world the seaman steers southward. His object is to catch the trade wind. It blows so steadily from east to west, that having once caught it in his sails he has often nothing else to do. With his ship's head set before that wind, he is borne steadily along beneath a brilliant sun, and gently wafted over a summer sea. His voyage is one extended, happy holiday. The thrilling cry of land comes at length from the out look on the topmast, and he drops his anchor in some quiet bay of those lovely islands, where the waves wash coral strands, and the breezes that blow seaward from their spicy forests, come loaded with delicious perfumes.

It is not thus man reaches the shores of heaven That landing may be a picture of his arrival—the voyage is not. In yonder vessel, which enters the harbor with masts sprung, sails in rags, bulwarks gone, bearing all the marks of having battled with many a storm and ridden many a crested wave, and on her deck a crew of weather-beaten and worn men, happy and glad to reach the land again—behold the plight in which the believer arrives at heaven It is hard work to get there? No doubt of it. Paul, the man, in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths of—

Paul, the martyr, thrice beaten with rods, once stoned, thrice shipwrecked, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by his countrymen, by the heathen, in the city, in the wilderness, on the sea—Paul, the patient sufferer for Christ, of a life of weariness, and painfulness, and watchings, hunger, thirst, fastings, cold, nakedness—Paul even stood alarmed, lest he himself should be a castaway.

"The righteous scarcely are saved." The busiest in praying, watching, working, fighting, are no more than saved. O then, "if the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the ungodly and the wicked appear?"

My text summons you to prayer. But does any man think, that, by repeating a daily prayer—learned long ago perhaps at his mother's knee, reading some verses of Scripture, abstaining from grosser sins, attending church on Sabbath, and the Lord's table on communion days, he is by this smooth and easy way to reach the kingdom, and receive its crown? What says our Lord, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force;" it is the prize of men who are valiant in faith and strong in prayer—men like those who, at bugle's sound or flare of rocket, rush from the trenches, and springing into the deadly breach—leaping into the very mouth of death—fight their way on and up till their flag of victory waves above the smoke of battle.

Or, take Paul's figure of the energies and activities of the Christian life. Look at these two men, stripped to the skin, who stand face to face, confronting each other in the public arena. They have been in training for weeks and months. Strangers to the pleasures of ease and sweets of luxury, they have been on foot every day by the dawn. Abstaining from all indulgences which might enervate their frame, in hard bed, hard food, hard work, they have endured every trial which could develop their muscular powers, and add to their strength. And now these athletes are met to contend for the prize; foot touches foot, eyes watch eyes, and their spare but sinewy and iron forms are disrobed, that nothing may impede the lightning rapidity of their movements, or lessen the power of the stroke. The signal is given. Blows fall thick as bail; and now the candidates are rolling on the ground; now they emerge from a cloud of dust to continue the fight, till one—planting a tremendous stroke on the head of his antagonist—stands alone in the arena, and amid applauses that rend the sky and waken up the distant echoes, holds the field. At this moment Paul steps forward, and, addressing Christians, says, So fight; so win. "They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible." Woe to the man, in these old games, who allowed his competitor to catch him off his guard. Woe to the man who turned to look on father, mother, wife, or mistress. Woe to the man who lifted his eyes but for a moment from the glaring eyeball of his antagonist; that moment a ringing blow fells him to the earth—he bites the dust.

Not less does our safety depend on constant prayer and watchfulness. "Be instant in prayer." "Pray without ceasing." "Watch and pray." Ah! you will never have to offer Satan an advantage twice. Should he catch you asleep, as David caught Saul—when he put aside the spear of Abashai that gleamed in the moonlight above the unconscious sleeper, and whispered, "Destroy him not"—Satan will not be satisfied with carrying off spear and water-cruse, or skirt of robe; he will not be content to prove how he had you in his power, and that, like a noble enemy who declines to take advantage of a sleeping man, he had generously left you your peace and piety. Constant prayer, unceasing watchfulness, are what your interests imperatively demand. These the Christian life requires, and these the crown of redemption rewards. Observe how in my text God hangs all the blessings of salvation upon prayer. He says—as it were—I have had pity upon sinners; I have provided pardon for the guilty, justification through the righteousness, and life through the death of my Son; I have promised to take away the heart of stone and replace it with one of flesh; I have promised my Spirit to sanctify, sufficient grace, a certain heaven—all these blood-bought, gracious, happy, holy blessings shall be yours, freely yours; yet not yours, unless they are sought in prayer. "I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them." In directing your attention to prayer, let me notice—

I. Nature itself teaches us to pray.

Like our intuitive belief in the existence of the soul, or in man's responsibility, there seems to be lodged in every man's breast, what I may call an instinct to pray, and an intuitive belief in the efficacy of prayer. Prayer must be natural, because it is universal. Never yet did traveler find a nation upon earth but prayed in some form or other to some demon or god. Races of men have been found without raiment, without houses, without manufactures, without the rudiments of arts, but never without prayers; no more than without speech, human features, or human passions.

Prayer is universal, and seems to be as natural to man as the feelings which prompt an infant to draw the milk of a mother's bosom, and by its cries to claim a mother's protection. Even so man is—as it were instinctively—moved to cast himself into the arms of God, to seek divine help in times of danger, and in times of sorrow to weep on the bosom of a Father who is in heaven.

Nature and necessity have wrung prayers even from an atheist's lips.

There was a celebrated poet, who was an atheist—or at least professed to be so. According to him there was no God. Very strange! A rude heap of bricks shot from a cart upon the ground was never seen to arrange itself into the doors, stairs, chambers, and chimneys of a house. The dust and filings on a brass-founder's table had never been known to form themselves into the wheels and mechanism of a watch. The types loosely flung from the founder's mould never yet fell into the form of a poem, such as Homer, or Dante, or Milton would have constructed. The rudest hut of Bushmen, the Indian's simple canoe—fashioned by fire from a forest tree, the plainest clay urn, in which savage affection had enshrined the ashes of the dead, were never supposed to owe their form to the hands of chance. Yet this man believed (if it is possible to think so,) that nature's magnificent temple was built without an architect, her flowers of glorious beauty were colored without a painter, and her intricate, complicated, but perfect machinery constructed without an intelligent mind. According to him there was no God—the belief in a God was a delusion, prayer a base superstition, and religion but the iron fetters of a rapacious priesthood. So he held when sailing over the unruffled surface of the Aegean Sea. But the scene changed; and, with the scene, his creed. The heavens began to scowl on him; and the deep uttered an angry voice, and, as if in astonishment at this God-denying man, "lifted up his hands on high." The storm increased until the ship became unmanageable. She drifted before the tempest. The terrible cry, "breakers ahead!" was soon heard; and how they tremble to see death seated on the horrid reef—waiting for his prey! A few moments more, and the crash comes. They are whelmed in the devouring sea? No. They were saved by a singular providence. Like apprehended evils, which, in a Christian's experience, prove to be blessings, the wave, which flung them forward on the horrid reef, came on in such mountain volume as to bear and float them over into the safety of deep and ample sea-room. But ere that happened, a companion of the atheist—who, seated on the prow, had been taking his last regretful look of heaven and earth, sea and sky—turned his eyes down upon the deck, and there, among papists, who told their beads and cried to the virgin, he saw the atheist prostrated with fear. The tempest had blown away his fine-spun speculations like so many cobwebs; and he was on his knees, imploring God for mercy. In that hour—in that terrible extremity—Nature rose in her might, asserted her supremacy, vindicated the claims of religion, smote down infidelity by a stroke, and bent the stubborn knees of atheism in lowliest prayer. Danger may thus extort prayer; it does not follow that God will accept it. How can a man expect to have prayers accepted which are only wrung from him by the hand of danger or the fear of death? Let us

15* translate their language? Is it not this? I will serve my lusts as long as I dare. So long as I can say it safely, I will say—Evil be thou my good; my vices, be ye my gods; I will turn to religion when I can do no better. Does Jesus stand at my door? are his locks wet with the dews of night? are his limbs weary standing? is his hand weary knocking? Till another hand is knocking there—the loud, impatient hand of death—Jesus comes not in. "What have I to do with thee, thou Son of God?" With thy religion—"Art thou come to torment me before the time?" "Go thy way at this time: when I have a convenient season I will call for thee."

In the name of reason, religion, gratitude, love, is this the treatment which a Saviour deserves? Deluded sinner! "Is this thy kindness to thy friend?" Beware! What if he should mete out to us the measure we mete to him? Remember the warning—"I have spoken, and ye have not heard; I have called, and ye have not answered; when ye speak I will not hear; when ye call I will not answer. I will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh."

II. Some difficulties connected with this duty.

The decrees of God, say some, render prayer useless. Are not all things, they ask, fixed by these decrees—irrevocably fixed? By prayer I may, indeed, prevail on a man to do a thing which he has not previously resolved not to do, and even although he should have so resolved—man is changeable; and I may show him such good reasons for doing it, as to change his resolution. But if an immutable God has foresettled every thing by an eternal and irreversible decree, what purpose can prayer serve? Who shall change the unchangeable? Thus men have argued, saying—"What profit shall we have if we should pray unto him?"

It were not difficult to expose the fallacy of this reasoning. The objection may be entirely answered. We might show that the decrees of God embrace the means as well as the end; and since prayer is a means of grace, being a means to an end, it must be embraced within these very decrees, and can not be excluded by them. I content myself, however, with simply saying, that this objection is not honestly, at least not intelligently, entertained by any man. For, if the objection is good against prayer, it is good against many things besides. If it stops action in the direction of prayer—if it arrests the wheels of prayer—it ought to stop the wheels of our daily business. If a good objection against prayer, it is an equally good objection to ploughing, sowing, taking meat or medicine, and a thousand other things. Might not an unwilling or indolent husbandman, in spring, as well ask, what is the use of sowing? Has not God ordained every thing? If I am to have a harvest—if he has decreed a harvest for my farm—then, although no ploughshare turn up a furrow, nor sower walks its fields, they shall wave in autumn with golden corn. Or might not one, who sickens at the sight of nauseous drugs, as well say, Take these away, I'll drink no more of them. Has not God ordained every thing? Can a sparrow fall to the ground without the Father? If he has decreed that I am to live, come cholera, fever, pestilence, I shall live; if he has decreed otherwise, all the medicines of the apothecary, and the skill of science can not avail to save me, or add one grain to the sands of my existence. Did any man in his sober senses ever reason so? With that simple question we dismiss this objection.

Others, more earnest and honest, reading that "without faith it is impossible to please God, reading—and misunderstanding what they read—"he who doubteth is damned"—say that, from want of faith, heir prayers must be useless. Most false reasoning! What says the Apostle?—"I will that men pray every where." "God will have all men to be saved." We take, like little children, the simple word, nor trouble ourselves with the metaphysics of the question.

If you were sufficiently alive to your danger, these difficulties would have no more power to hold you than the meshes of a spider's web. I knew of one who, while wandering along a lonely and rocky shore at the ebb of tide, slipped his foot into a narrow crevice. Fancy his horror on finding that he could not withdraw the imprisoned limb! Dreadful predicament! There he sat, with his back to the shore, and his face to the sea. Above his head sea-weed and shells hung upon the crag—the too sure signs that when yonder turning tide comes in, it shall rise on him inch by inch, till it washes over his head. Did he cry for help? Does any man dream of asking such a question? None heard him. But, Oh, how he shouted to the distant boat! how his heart sank as her yards swung round, and she went off on the other tack! how his cries sounded high above the roar of breakers! how bitterly he envied the white scamew her wing, as, wondering at this intruder on her lone domains, she sailed above his head, and shrieked back his shriek! how, hopeless of help from man, he turned up his face to heaven, and cried loud and long to God! All that God only knows. But as sure as there was a terrific struggle, so sure, while he watched the waters rising inch by inch, these cries never ceased till the wave swelled up, and washing the dying prayer from his lips, broke over his head with a melancholy moan.

There was no help for him. There is help for us, although fixed in sin as fast as that man in the rock. Whether we have true faith, may be a question which is not easily settled, but to pray is a clear and commanded duty. The "help, Oh, help, Lord," never yet rose from an anxious heart, but it was heard, and accepted in heaven. And if Satan bids me hold my peace—as the disciples bade the blind man—I bid him hold his own. I refuse to be silent; I but cry the louder, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me." In God's hands, when he in smiting, let me be "dumb, opening not the mouth." In my Father's arms I may lie and do nothing but weep—weep upon his loving bosom; but in the arms of this mortal and malignant enemy, who has seized me, and is carrying me off to prison and pit—a lamb bleating in the lion's jaws—"I will cry unto the Lord, and he will answer me, and send help from above, and deliver me."