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Chapter III
Friendship with God – Speaking

Quite a sufficient guide as to how God should be addressed is afforded by the Lord's Prayer. It was given by the Master in response to the earnest request of His disciples for instruction in prayer. Brief, compact and complete, it is as it were the Christian seed-prayer. Once let it be planted in the heart of a Church or the soul of a child of God and it will grow into the glowing devotion of wondrous collects and rich liturgies. Indeed there is no Christian prayer worth anything which does not owe its whole merit to the Lord's Prayer; and the noblest liturgy of the Church is but the expansion and application of the same. Hence it is the touchstone of all prayer. By it the Christian's mode of address to God is finally approved or condemned.

How important is it, then, that a man should know the Lord's Prayer! – know it, not merely as a formula, but as the embodiment of the vital principles of converse with God. The process of yore must be repeated by the disciples of to-day. Like their predecessors of Galilee they must approach the unchangeable One and prefer the old entreaty: "Lord, teach us to pray." Nothing short of this will suffice. Then if they listen they will receive the familiar measures of the "Our Father" as a new and personal gift fresh and living from the lips of Jesus. It is good sometimes to "wait still upon God" between the sentences, and let the Holy Spirit apply each several petition to one's own special case and to all those interests which concern one's life – in sooth, translate it into the terms of our own day and generation. It is thus that the compressed richness of the Lord's Prayer is unfolded.

The Lord's Prayer is one of those most precious of things known as common property. But a common possession to be worth anything to anybody must be related by every one of the multitude who claim a share in it, each to his own personality. Before common property can fully justify its claim to be common, it must become in a sense private by a process of implicit appropriation on the part of the individuals concerned. So while the Lord's Prayer ideally belongs to every child of God as the common heritage of prayer, it actually belongs only to those who have recognized and used it as a personal, though not exclusive, gift from its Author.

Not the least important characteristic of the Lord's Prayer is its simplicity in thought and expression. Surely it is not without significance that as it stands in the English tongue it is the purest piece of Saxon in literature, a monument of clearness and simplicity. God neither speaks or desires to be spoken to in grandiloquent language which belongs to the courts of earthly kings. The difficulty that so many persons find in praying without the aid of some form of devotion is largely due to the impression that the language needed for address to God is not such as an ordinary mortal can frame. There are four leading principles, the first of which contradicts this misconception, that stand out in bold prominence in the Lord's Prayer, and tell us what all speech Godward should be.

§ 1. Prayer must be familiar yet reverent. We are taught to address God as our Father. What a host of intimate confidences this single word calls up! There is no familiarity so close as that between child and father, no sympathy so sensitive. When Scripture declares that Enoch walked with God, whatever else it means beyond, it means at least that Enoch was able to hold familiar converse with God in prayer. Those who knew him could find no better way of describing his relationship with God than by drawing the picture of the familiar companionship of two intimate friends. Or again, when Abraham is termed the friend of God it implies, as well as much beside, that he knew how to speak familiarly yet acceptably to God. All this was long ago, before man's full relation to God was made known. The coming of the Son of God as the Son of Man makes what was really deep seem shallow, so mighty was the change that was wrought. It is not merely as an ordinary friend that the Christian may speak to God, but as a son. Filial relations are the highest type of friendship.

But familiarity must be chastened by reverence, a quality strangely lacking in our national character. It would seem as though in the boldness of our search for independence reverence had been largely forfeited. The Father addressed is in heaven. That is He is where holiness prevails to the utter exclusion of sin. So while we may tell out the whole mind it must be done with regard for the moral character of God and His eternal and infinite attributes; with the familiarity, not of equals, but of lowly souls addressing sympathetic greatness and holiness. To dwell exclusively on either one of these two considerations, God's Fatherhood or His infinite character, will result, on the one hand, in familiarity without reverence; or, on the other, in reverence without familiarity. Familiarity without the discipline of reverence is desecrating impertinence, and reverence without the warmth of familiarity is chilling formalism.

§ 2. Prayer should be comprehensive yet definite. In the Lord's Prayer each petition gathers into its grasp whole groups of desires, and all the petitions taken together give shelter under their hospitable shadow to every need and every aspiration that belong to human life. Great gifts are asked for – "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." In such requests we even claim things for God as well as from Him. The dignity of each several petition is marked. We are taught to expect royal gifts from our royal Father, gifts worthy of members of that royal family, the children of the Incarnation. The effect of the persistent use of these comprehensive petitions has filtered right through human experience and taught man to expect great things in all departments of life, in science, in invention, in literature. Man's best desires have become a true measure of his possibilities.

The prayer that is shaped after the great model must not be timid or faltering, but bold and aspiring. It is a great mistake for one to be satisfied with praying for, say, purity instead of "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is to ask for the crumb from the rich man's table when the rich man is beseeching you to sit by his side and share all that he has. Let us pray for purity by all means, though not as if it were a flower that grew in a bed all by itself. We can get one Christian grace only by aiming at all.

No less marked than the comprehension is the definiteness of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Each is as clear cut as a crystal. There is no mistaking its meaning. Like the articles of the Creed they are all too simple to be vague, and they carry their meaning on their face. It is a common fault in prayer to be content with a certain comprehension that abjures definiteness. If the latter without the former can at the best make a character of but small stature, the former without the latter can make no character at all. Take the one matter of penitence. The mere admission of sinfulness, as in the prayer of the publican, is but the first moan of penitence. A riper penitence rises from the vague to the definite in declaring the sins, and not only the sinfulness, for which God's mercy is implored. True comprehension implies detailed knowledge and minute accuracy.

§ 3. Prayer should be social rather than individual in spirit. Our Father; forgive us. The "our" and the "us" warn men never to think of themselves as units, or of religion as a private transaction between God and the individual. God regards each as a part of, and never apart from, the whole race, at the same time cherishing each part as though it were the whole. Consequently petitions for others ought to keep even pace with those for ourselves. A moment's reflection shows how true philosophically the social form of prayer is. So closely is the web of human life woven that what touches one touches two at least, unless a man be a hermit, when he is as good as dead. Even supposing one were to pray for a spiritual gift for himself alone and receive it, it would at once become the property of others in some measure at any rate. It is an inflexible law that the righteousness or the evil, as the case may be, which dwells in a man, becomes forthwith the righteousness or the evil of the society to which he belongs. It is only common sense then to pray "give us" and "forgive us" rather than "give me" and "forgive me."

Of course, this does not mean that "I" and "me" should never occur in our private prayers. They must do so. But I am to love my neighbour as myself on my knees as well as in society. My neighbour is my other or second self to which I owe an equal duty of prayer with myself. To link "their" or "his" with "mine" on equal terms is really to say "our"; to ask for others separately what I have already claimed for myself is to be social rather than individual in prayer.

It would follow, then, that intercessory prayer is not a work of extraordinary merit but a necessary element of devotion. It is the simple recognition in worship of the fundamental law of human life that no man lives or dies alone. But intercession rises to sublime heights when it claims the privilege and the power for each child of God to gather up in his arms the whole family to which he belongs, and carry it with its multifold needs and its glorious possibilities into the presence of the common Father for blessing and protection. It is grand to feel that the Christian can lift, by the power of prayer, a myriad as easily as one, that he can hold in his grasp the whole Church as firmly as a single parish, and can bring down showers of blessing on an entire race as readily as the few drops needed for his own little plot.

§ 4. Prayer must maintain proper proportions. Spiritual needs are paramount, material are secondary. Out of seven petitions six bear upon the invisible foundations of life and the remaining one alone is concerned, directly at any rate, with things material. It is further remarkable that the latter is as modest as the former are bold. The soul needs the whole of God's eternal Kingdom where the body requires but bread for the day. The Lord's Prayer does not teach asceticism, but it certainly condemns luxury, and implies that the physical nature requires a minimum rather than a maximum of attention and care.

With the vision of God above and the Christian seed-prayer well planted in the soul, man can dare to hope that his speech Godward will not waste itself in hollow echoes, but will travel straight up to the throne of Grace and bring a speedy answer.

Chapter IV
Friendship with God – The Response

Probably the greatest result of the life of prayer is an unconscious but steady growth into the knowledge of the mind of God and into conformity with His will; for after all prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is bent to man's desires as it is that whereby man's will is bent to God's desires. While Jesus readily responded to the requests and inquiries of His disciples His great gift to them was Himself, His personality. He called His apostles that they "should be with Him." The all-important thing is not to live apart from God, but as far as possible to be consciously with Him. It must needs be that those who look much into His face will become like Him. Man reflects in himself his environment, especially if he surrenders himself unreservedly to its influence. In the case of God, "in Whom we live and move and have our being," the influence is not passive, but active in impressing its character upon us. It is not as the white of the land of snow which coats its animals with its own colour; it is a Person. The complete vision of Christ will mean the complete transformation of man – "We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." If there were no other conceivable result from prayer than just this, it would even so be wonderful. Certainly that which we treasure most in companionship with an earthly friend is not his counsel or service; it is the touch of his soul upon our own; it is the embrace of his whole being that wraps itself about our whole being. One may say then that the real end of prayer is not so much to get this or that single desire granted, as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with the will of God.

This thought, beautiful and true as it is, would be too intangible and too great a tax upon faith, unless man had some more or less definite and immediate recognition of his heavenward appeals. The Old Testament is a standing witness to God's consideration for human limitations and weakness. He sometimes gave man less than the best because of the latter's inability to receive the best, though He always gave as much as could be received, until at last He gave His Son. Now it is in this same way that He deals with His children of to-day. At first the lesser gifts are sought for and given, but as spiritual life ripens what man craves most for and what God is most eager to grant is that the Father's will may be wholly worked out in His child. Trust so grows that there can be no such thing as disappointment regarding the way God treats our petitions.

 
Not Thy gifts I seek, O Lord;
Not Thy gifts but Thee.
What were all Thy boundless store
Without Thyself? What less or more?
Not Thy gifts but Thee.
 

This frame of mind, however, belongs to the to-morrow of most lives. For the present the lesser gifts are the best we are equal to. And it cannot be too often or too strongly said that God has direct answers to prayer for every soul that appeals to Him. But many fail to recognize the answer when it comes because of inattention. If God is to be heard when He speaks we must give heed. It is no less a duty to "wait still upon God" than it is to address Him in prayer. A one-sided conversation is not a conversation at all. Conversation requires an interchange of thought. He who is one moment the speaker must the next become the listener, intent upon the words of his companion. The expectation of an answer to prayer is laid down as a condition of there being one.

§ 1. Oftentimes God's answer is in the shape of an action rather than a voice. When we entreat a friend to do something for us, speedy compliance is a sufficient response to the request. If we are certain of the person addressed no verbal assurance is required. The character of our friend is the guarantee that the petition will be heeded. When, therefore, God is petitioned to do, we must look for an action rather than listen for a voice.

There are some requests the answer to which returns with the speed of a flash of light, as, for instance, when we ask God to give us some Christian grace or disposition of heart. The giving comes with the asking.⁷ A man may not be strong enough to retain the gift, but it actually becomes his before he rises from his knees. The rationalist will object to this, that such an answer to prayer is nothing more than the subjective effect of a given attitude of mind. Granted; but that makes it none the less the direct work of God. Secondary or scientific causes exhibit to the observer the method by which God fulfils His purposes. The stone falls to the ground according to the law of gravitation, but God is behind the law controlling it. The distinguishing feature of the Jewish mode of thought was the way in which it related all things to God's immediate activity. The Old Testament is the book of God's immanence. The present attitude of mind leads men to rest in all causes short of God, and even to forget the need of a Cause of causes. An earnest student of nature remarked upon leaving her microscope: "I have found a universe worthy of God." She at least felt that a revelation of secondary causes was, at the same time, a new revelation of the God of causes.

If it could be proved that all answers to prayer came according to the working of natural law, it would not eliminate God from the process, or have any sort of bearing upon the efficacy of prayer. All we know of God's method of work demonstrates His love of law; and it would be no surprise, but rather what we should expect, to find that all the unseen stretches of life are equally within the domain of His law and order.⁸

§ 2. But when occasion requires, the reply to speech Godward comes in the shape of a voice. In one sense God is always speaking; He is never still. Just as in prayer it is not we who momentarily catch His attention but He ours, so when we fail to hear His voice it is not because He is not speaking so much as that we are not listening. We may hear sounds, as a language with which we are not conversant, but be unable to interpret. Or perhaps we are in the position of one who sits in the summer evening when nature is instinct with music, – the chirping of insect life, the whispering wind, the good-night call of the birds, – deaf to the many voices, whereas a companion has ears for nothing else but what those voices say. The cause of the former's deafness is that his attention is wholly absorbed by other interests. We must recognize that all things are in God and that God is in all things, and we must learn to be very attentive, in order to hear God speaking in His ordinary tone without any special accent. Power to do this comes slowly and as the result of not separating prayer from the rest of life. A man must not stop listening any more than praying when he rises from his knees. No one questions the need of times of formal address to God, but few admit in any practical way the need of quiet waiting upon God, gazing into His face, feeling for His hand, listening for His voice. "I will hearken what the Lord God will say concerning me." God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and contemplation.

The written Word of God has special messages for the individual as well as a large general message for the entire Christian body. The devotional use of Holy Scripture is the means by which the soul reaches some of the most precious manifestations of God's will. By devotional use is meant such a study as has for its ultimate purpose an act of worship, or of conscious fellowship with Him. The Bible reveals not merely what God was, but what He is. Finding from its pages how He loved, we know how He loves; learning how He dealt with or spoke to men, we perceive how He deals with and speaks to us. But our instruction in things divine must come to us from a Person rather than a book, though through a book perhaps. If we approach the Bible as we would approach Bacon or Milton, merely as a collection of the wise thoughts and actions of the dead, it will never sway the life to any large extent. Holy Scripture is separated from all other literature by the fact that it contains absolute spiritual truth and because its Author, as a living Person, always stands behind it. Those who listen will hear the Holy Spirit saying to them, in direct application, the same things that lie on the open pages as the record of what was once said to men of old. Meditation or the devotional use of Scripture renders conscience, that organ of the soul by which God's voice is received by man, increasingly sensitive. The Old Testament days were full of men who could say "Thus saith the Lord," with the same assurance that they could report the speech of a comrade. Doubtless God had many ways of speaking to the prophets, but whatever these ways were and however special and singular, they were based originally on those by means of which He addresses all men in common. As a result of the Incarnation "all the Lord's people are prophets" and the Lord has "put His Spirit upon them;" and they, too, ought to be able to say "Thus saith the Lord."

§ 3. A third way in which God makes His will known to man is by His silences, silences which are always eloquent. As experience has taught us, silence can convey a message just as readily as speech sometimes, or even more readily. The silence of the Easter tomb was the first voice that told of the Resurrection. The loved disciple read the message of the orderly silence of the place where the Lord had lain; "he saw and believed." Silence has expression and accent telling of sympathy, rebuke, anger, grief, as occasion may require. The silence of Jesus before the importunate appeal of the woman of Canaan, was full of sympathy and encouraged her faith to rise to sublime heights. Whereas His silence before the accusations of His enemies during His trial was so eloquent as to establish His innocence even in the eyes of a Pontius Pilate. And if God is silent now at times when we long for some sign from Him, it is because by means of silence He can best make known to us His mind. His silence may mean that our request is so foreign to His will, that it may not be heeded without hurt to the petitioner. Or, on the other hand, He may be luring on our faith and inciting it to a more ambitious flight. Or, again, it may be that His silence is His way of telling us that the answer to our query or petition lies in ourselves. God never tells man what man can find out for himself, as He never does what man can do for himself. The result of giving a person what he should earn is pauperism. As God will do, nay, can do, only what will enrich human nature, it would be a contradiction of Himself to answer what we can find out for ourselves, or give what we can gain by our own efforts. Love lies within God's silences as their explanation.⁹ The mother refuses to answer her child's questions because the child by a little observation and thought can itself get at the truth, and truth won by struggle is the only truth that we really possess. If God is silent when we ask for new knowledge of His Person and His love, may it not be that it is because we are substituting books about the Bible for an earnest study of the Bible itself, which contains a full answer to our prayer? Or if, when day after day we have prayed for the conversion of a relative, no response comes, may it not be that we have never put ourselves at the disposal of God to be the instrument for working out what is at once our desire and His purpose? At any rate, whatever be the explanation of a silence in this or that special instance, God is never silent excepting when silence speaks more clearly than a voice.

So the sure response comes to speech Godward in an action, or a voice, or a speaking silence. The persevering, faithful, attentive soul will never fail to discern God's answer to prayer, nor be disappointed in the quality of that answer when it comes. God is more ready to hear than we to pray, and it is His wont to give more than either we desire or deserve.¹⁰