July 4

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.”—James 1:5.

JAMES practised what he preached. In the early Church he was known pre-eminently as the man of prayer. His knees, men declared, were worn as hard as a camel’s, through his frequent kneeling. And, when he died a martyr’s death in Jerusalem, at the hands of cruel persecutors, “the just one is praying for you,” bystanders said. Was it not one chief secret of his power, that, whenever he lacked wisdom, he asked it of God?

So it has always been. The apostolic men, the saintly men, the heroic servants of God, the strong soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ, have everywhere and always prayed without ceasing.

If Francis of Assisi knew how to do battle among men, it was because he loved, as Thomas of Celano says, to fly away like a bird to its nest on the mountain. Martin Luther’s ejaculations helped him to witness his good confession before Kaiser and Pope. John Welsh spent eight hours out of the twenty-four in communion with God, and therefore he was equipped and armed to dare and to suffer. David Brainerd rode through the endless American woods praying, and so he fulfilled a long time in a short time, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side. John Wesley came out from his seclusion to change the face of England. Andrew Bonar did not once miss his way to the mercy-seat, and his fellowship with heaven made him the winsome Christian he was.

Ah yes, if I would attempt great things for God, and achieve something before I die, I must pray at every moment and in every place.