XIX THE REASONABLENESS OF PRAYER "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him?"-Matt. vii. 11. T is a property of our Master's words that IT they are contemporary with all ages, and this argument for prayer applies to our own time and our own way of thinking. What hindered a man from praying aright in our Lord's day was a want of sincerity-that Pharisaic temper of mind which had turned prayer into a vain repetition. What hinders a man from praying at all to-day is a perversion of sincerity, that frame of mind which refuses to believe in anything not physical. Prayer according to this modern standpoint was a pardonable peculiarity of the period when men had not learned the uniformity of nature, and when one miracle more did not matter. Some still pray because they are indifferent to science; some because they under stand science; but many find the words freezing on their lips because of the surrounding temperature. They are hag-ridden, not by the laws of nature, but by the theories of science; they are brow-beaten by those who may know the facts of science, but who have not correlated them with the facts of religion. They are the victims, not of science, but of sciolism. And long before our day Jesus taught His disciples to appeal from this tyranny, to the supreme reason, or the nature of things. Prayer has been defined in many ways-as communion with God, as aspiration after the highest things, as doing our daily duty, but Mr. Stopford Brooks was right when he insisted that prayer in its plainest meaning is a petition addressed to God. Take the element of petition out of prayer, and prayer may be a wholesome exercise of the soul or a spiritual energy of the life, but it ceases to be what we mean by prayer. Prayer with Jesus was straightforward and unhesitating petition, asking God to do something, and believing that He would do it. And when Jesus laid the duty of petition upon His disciples He went on to assert the reasonable ness of a man asking and of God answering, by that argument from man to God which he loved to use and which is thoroughly scientific. If a child in an earthly home were hungry he would turn by an instinct to his parents, and if he asked bread would the father give the child a stone? Impossible, because it would be contrary to nature, and if you could imagine a state of affairs where the offspring, whether birds in a nest or infants in a home, receive stones instead of food from their parents, you would have a topsyturvy world. Jesus, therefore, argues along the line of reason, that if an earthly parent, although from his limitations often foolish and sometimes evil, yet does the best in his power for his children, will not the Almighty and All-wise Love of which human love is only the shadow, do better still for His great family? And, therefore, our Master teaches that men ought everywhere to pray without fear, and without doubt. When we ask whether it is reasonable to pray, and not merely a fond superstition, it surely counts for something that prayer is an instinct. From Socrates who commanded his disciples to begin every work with the gods, since the gods are the masters of affairs, to the little child which learns the name of God by its mother's knee, one finds the soul turn to God as a flower stretches itself in the direction of light. In the straits of life, however indifferent a man may have grown to prayer, or however keenly he may have argued against prayer, upon a petition he will fall back. Nature in an agony is never atheist, and many have cried God be pitiful, who never said What does it mean that a bird has wings but that there is air in which to fly, or that men are moved to pray in an orderly universe, but that there is a God to answer them? Must not religion be taken account of in the theory of things quite as much as the verified law of gravitation, and the more speculative principle of evolution, and is not prayer the core of religion? Both Canon Liddon and Sabatier say in exactly the same words, "Prayer is religion in act"; and Sabatier asserts that the mere worship of nature is not properly religion because it cuts a man off from prayer. 'It leaves him and God," says that brilliant Frenchman, "in mutual remote ness, with no intimate commerce, no interior dialogue, no interchange of thought, no action of God in man, no return of man to God." Of course the compass of prayer may range from the sacred intercourse between Christ and His Father to the despairing wail of the sceptic, "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul." But it remains the pulse-beat of religion, and until religion be argued out of human consciousness, prayer must be justified. If there be a God, and if there be a soul, then, as George Herbert has it, prayer is God's breath in man, returning to his birth. It is for experience to decide whether prayer be of practical use, and it is always better to depend upon expert witnesses-to hear Darwin rather than a gardener on the variation of plants; Lord Kelvin rather than a telegraphist on the properties of electricity; and the saints rather than amateur critics of religion upon prayer. One turns to Abraham who interceded for Sodom, to Jacob who wrestled with the angel until the day broke, to Moses who in the darkness of Sinai obtained God's mercy for his nation, to Elijah who opened and sealed the heavens |