5 b nee garcons eet] Y 2 +s eats a- 3 x = 7 Roe ae PERE RRR TEAC SE ' 3 aya) ; sep ney cee! ‘SpSraTasn ey Sahat ek ea panier eet ANS “ pat 233 FF : paras geese cab hz PAS os = pest acs fy aria TOTES pep Reha Srey eget : 5 ; pratt fats . SSdnags saree 3 cates : AE saat prraepete rel ay: oat . pre . z 3 Shred : : a ia arin ea Seis) pete etre op Tenenerereyns ries S = yb he ea asaya SPRL Ee Soe raemesataey se Pot rppeesreeetereenn pe ee a ee aaaBRt aa Ie etie enn: Vara dope tee os oF. ep rreh rere ere: moe aeae 2 rere - poteennees os a 7 ; % —_ See ee ee Science and Prayer Studies in Communion and Intercession By HERBERT BOOTH SMITH, D.D. PASTOR, IMMANUEL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH LOS ANGELES, CAL. Author of “The New Earth,” etc. New York CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1924, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY Printed in the United States of America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street PREFACE series of addresses in the pulpit of the Im- manuel Presbyterian Church, of Los Angeles. They pretend to no special profundity or origi- nality. They are just a busy pastor’s weekly messages to his people, in the effort to build up that most important thing, the prayer-life of his flock. Many of the hearers desired that they be put in some permanent form. This little book answers their request. If perchance any others find them helpful, we shall count them as members of our larger congregation. Various manuals and booklets on prayer have been consulted in the preparation of the addresses. Special mention should be made of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s little book, The Meaning of Prayer, which offered helpful suggestions and from which some of the illustrations are taken. If these pages shall help someone to pray, they will have fulfilled their mission. | Deeg chapters were originally given as a HY B.S. Immanuel Church Study, Los Angeles, Califorma. 3 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/scienceprayerstu00smit Contents . Has Mopern Science INVALI- DATEDER RAVER DY Utes wee chan . Dors Gop ANSWER PRAYER? .... . How To OstaIn' VICTORY IN POAT Rune iemnn gis tac me UL ir atta . Is Ir WortH.WHILE TO PRAY? .. . How Dozs Gop ANSWER PRAYER? . THE PrRoBLEM oF UNANSWERED PRAY Ree re ent Rte ene Narellan EE PAVE SHOULD WE PRAY fon wuita . WHat Are SOME OF THE HIN- DRANCES TO SUCCESSFUL PRAVER Coin Gu meen ERM Cats . WHat ARE THE OBJECTIONS TO TERAVER ps ice vais niet tare anke hers cami DESY MMETRICAT: JC RAVER 0, gis's elias RRELOW SHALL OVE NERAV Eo ean. Pall PRAVER AND “WORRY tooo uiwhenies 5 123 135 148 I HAS MODERN SCIENCE INVALI- DATED PRAYER? OME years ago Professor Leuba of Bryn Mawr undertook to find out how many scientists believed in prayer. He went about it in this way. He sent out a questionnaire to various groups of learned men and asked them to register their belief or disbelief in a personal God. Then he explained that by a “personal God” he meant One to whom one may pray in the expecta- tion of receiving an answer. The returns showed a majority of negative answers and he announced that the more eminent men in each group were more pronounced unbelievers than the less eminent were. If Leuba’s conclusions are final, then belief in prayer is a sign of ignorance and the more you believe, the more ignorant you are. If so, blessed be ignorance! But happily wisdom is not all confined to the aforenamed professor. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was a more famous scientist than Leuba and yet he confessed that while working on his invention, whenever he came to a perplex- ing place, he found refuge in prayer, as a result 7 8 SCIENCE AND PRAYER of which his mind seemed to receive fresh inspira- tion and he was able to see the next step ahead. No wonder the first message sent over the wire was, “What hath God wrought!’ Lord Kelvin, when Professor of Physics in Glasgow University, was a greater authority than Leuba and yet every day he was wont to open his classroom lectures with prayer. Sir James Dawson was a name better known than the Physics Professor, and Dawson said that a naturalist ought to be the last man in the world to object to the efficacy of prayer, since prayer is one of the most potent of natural forces. The cry of the young raven is a prayer to the parent bird who never fails to respond. The bleat of the lamb is a prayer which brings its dam to its side. Isn’t it strange then to suppose that the only being in the Universe who can’t answer prayer is the One Who alone has all power at His com- mand? One thing that ought to be noticed at the outset of a discussion like this is that the specialist in one department of human knowledge has no right to cast contempt on the assured conclusions of a specialist in another department. Leuba probably knows as little about prayer as some aged saint of God does about biology. But let us hope the dear saint has sense enough to refrain from criticising things he knows nothing about. Charles Darwin said years ago that the Church was ready to accept any scientific doctrine on which scientific workers INVALIDATED PRAYER 9 are themselves agreed. Well, if that is so, the converse ought to be true that the scientific world should accept those religious doctrines on which the Church is agreed. The fact is, science asks us to accept some hard things on faith. Science says that a pin falling to the ground jars the earth and we say, “Well, we don’t feel any jar, but if you say it must be so, we'll try to feel it next time you drop one—we’ll do our best.” Science says that there are in far off Aldebaran, sodium and magnesium and calcium and bismuth, for the spectroscope says so. [Edison’s tasimeter measures the amount of heat received from Arcturus, a star inconceivably distant and we say, “Well, we don’t feel the heat, but we'll take your word for it.”” Then in turn we say, “God is and He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, the Hearer and Answerer of prayer”—and it is only fair for science to reply, “Our instruments are not built for detecting God or telephoning to Him, but your sensitive souls are so built; and just as you accept the evidence of our tasimeter recording heat millions of miles away, so we accept the evi- dence of your souls registering God, though we see Him not.” I. Consider Prayer in Its Relation to Natural Law. A great change has passed over the thinking of men since the advent of modern science. Long 10 SCIENCE AND PRAYER years ago, before the scientific attitude became as pronounced as it is today, the popular impression among Christian people was that every event which occurred in the world of nature was due to the direct exertion of will and power on the part of God. Thus, for example, if a storm raged it was thought that God, by some immediate process, had called that storm into action. But in our times we have come to look upon all these natural phenomena as indicating what we call the “reign of law.” We have found we can depend on nature’s regularity. We can predict to a second the rising and setting of the sun. We can foretell eclipses. We can pro- phesy the condition of the weather days in advance. The result is that many people say—Why pray? Law has taken the place of God. Nature will have her way. If certain conditions in the atmosphere are likely to produce rain tomorrow, it is no use to pray for fair weather. If certain conditions pre- vail in a man’s body which presage death, it is no use to ask for his recovery. Well, let us stop a moment and look at this problem. What are these laws of nature which we are so afraid of ? Why, a law of nature is merely an observed uniformity, a sequence of cause and effect. Such a law itself is not capable of effecting anything. It is simply our way of grouping our observations. It is a description and nothing more. We simply have observed that nature usually does so and so and we assume she always has and always INVALIDATED PRAYER 11 will. But scientists often discover that nature has a way of her own and hence a text-book on Physics of 1923 propounds very different theories from one of 1823. We used to think there were seventy ele- ments, but radium has changed all that. Even such standbys as the law of gravitation and the law of conservation of energy are in process of modifica- tion and may be merged into larger generalizations. So the wise scientist of today talks less dogmatically about natural laws than his father did. The fact is, there are laws beyond our ken which operate in spheres beyond our horizon and it is conceitedly foolish for us to suppose that all wisdom will die with us. Man by his inventive genius is discover- ing more and more of God’s secrets but God has known them all the time. We Christians believe God is a Personality and not merely a “‘modification of force.’’ As soon as you bring personality into the world, you have a power greater than nature. Personality can com- bine natural forces and without contradicting them can use them for the accomplishment of ends. For example, in the old days of sail boats, it was at first thought possible to sail a boat only the way the wind was blowing. Here’s a man on one side the bay who wants to cross to a sick friend. The wind is wrong. He prays God to change it. God does not, but the man in his desperation conceives the idea of a zig-zag course which finally gets him home. He has not violated any law of the wind but 12 SCIENCE AND PRAYER has combined opposite pressures and secured his end. Men are doing the same thing every day. pometimes men have been known to cause much needed rain by the use of heavy guns. It is a case of human ingenuity conquering nature. Every time you lift your hand you conquer gravitation. The power of your will is stronger than the power of gravity. So we see that man can manipulate natural laws for the accomplishment of his ends— why may not God do the same? When my small boy asks me to take him in my arms, in answering his prayer I overcome gravity for the sake of love. Methinks God can do the same thing for His children. : The problem of prayer in the last analysis is the problem of God. It all depends on how big your God is. If He or It is only an automaton, an un- known Force, then It is subject to nature’s laws. But if He is a Father—and Jesus said He was and He ought to have known—there is nothing He wills He cannot do. For there is nothing impossible to Almighty Love. II. Consider Prayer as a Form of Mental Energy. A very remarkable little book has been written by a layman who is a licentiate of the Royal Insti- tute of British Architects. This architect is used to measuring the forces of the material world but one would not expect him to rightly estimate the INVALIDATED PRAYER 13 forces of the spiritual world; and yet he says that “prayer is at least as effective a force as steam or wind or water. It can now be scientifically held as one of the world’s great dynamics and can rightly claim the recognition usually granted to a cosmic force.” It is refreshing to Christians to see prayer recognized as a power, a force that changes things and accomplishes results which are visible in the material world. Psychology understands the mind of man better than it did years ago. It throws new light on prayer. It tells us that the mind of man consists of countless conscious wills all rooted in the sub- conscious mind or soul. Prayer then as a real exercise is an effort of the will toward an object of desire—it is the forth-putting of psychic energy. Its efficiency is largely proportional to its energy; that is, it is a form of mental energy, more or less intense, according as it engages more or less of the person uttering the prayer. James says, “the prayer of a righteous man availeth much in its working.” It is a form of energy and physics defines energy as the power to do work. Man is a bundle of desires and prayer is the outflow of Godward desire. What a new light this throws on prayer, both from the scientific and Christian point of view. Real prayer is not just the recita- tion of a set form of words, but the putting forth of mental and soul energy toward the accomplish- ment of a definite end. Someone has used the 14 SCIENCE AND PRAYER illustration of the radiogram. In order to overleap the Atlantic it requires high electric energy; so to overcome the opposition of many human minds, to open their souls to the voice of divine sugges- tion, prayer takes a high degree of desire and will which is put forth as St. Paul said, “with groan- ings that cannot be uttered.” Take just one illustration from the life of the early Church. See what prayer did in the 12th Chapter of Acts. When the chapter opens, Herod is on the throne and Peter is in prison. When the chapter closes, Herod has died an awful death and Peter has gone on his way rejoicing—an ex- convict who got out of jail in a wonderful way. How explain what happened? The fifth verse explains it: ‘“Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the Church unto God for him.” How do you suppose those Chris- tians prayed? It took real energy and power to unlock these prison gates and set St. Peter free. They did not lazily recite canned prayers after a mechanical fashion. That is only an exercise of the lips, but prayer is a gymnastics of the soul, even as Jesus Christ sweat great drops of blood when He prayed in the Garden. After their ener- getic, dynamic prayer, the answer came. Oh, that we might pray down obstacles and open gates in that way today! It would be a good thing for some great church to discontinue for a whole month all its settled forms of worship and just pray! INVALIDATED PRAYER 15 III. Consider the scientific Basis of Intercessory Prayer. Do you realize that many of the modern inven- tions and theories are throwing a new light on prayer? Take, for example, wireless telegraphy in the realm of invention and telepathy in the realm of psychology. Men who accept these two things as facts have got to admit that they make prayer a very reasonable performance. Let us approach the subject from a new angle. Here are two personalities, man and God, trying to get in touch with each other. How shall they do it? Well, how do two men get into communication with one another—how do they bridge the chasms of space? In early days, A must go in person with his petition to B—or must send swift runners. Then came post-carriages and horses and these were regarded as a marvelous improvement. You could really send a letter to New York and get back an answer the same year! The first great victory over space was the telegraph. By its means two persons separated by great leagues of distance were put into instantaneous communication with each other. Think of a man sitting before an instrument and sending out a request, a prayer to London or New York and getting back an answer almost immediately! It looks as though men were beginning to learn something of the secrets of God, when they can 16 SCIENCE AND PRAYER take a heart-throb of human interest and transfer it by the vibrations of an electrical instrument hundreds of miles over a wire to another instru- ment and thus to another human heart on the other side of the continent. Next after the telegraph came the telephone which dispenses with the media- tor and puts us into immediate touch with our friend at the other end of the wire. Voice answers to voice and heart to heart. We are becoming less and less slaves of space and time, and more and more masters of the material in order for the victory of the spirit. The next advance was wire- less telegraphy, in which we dispense with the wires and simply talk through space. Wonderful and sublime! Between you and your friend is simply the limitless ether which is more sensitive to vibra- tions than the eye is to light. The inventor got hold of this fact and found that by shooting off into space a certain kind of vibration, he could pick up that same vibration hundreds and even thousands of miles away with an instrument keyed to that particular throb. And now there is one step more—and what is that? Telepathy—in which mind speaks to mind without the intervention of any physical means whatsoever. This is one of the accepted facts of - human experience. You send out a cry for soul help and your friend gets it yonder, 2000 miles away. How do you explain it? They tell us that the ether is the medium not only of light and INVALIDATED PRAYER 17 electric vibrations, but of thought-vibrations, also. The two souls at the ends of this 2000 miles of distance are something like two wireless-telegraph stations. They are in sympathy with each other, which means they have the same rate of vibration. This comes very near to being a scientific demon- stration of the fact of prayer. For if two human souls can hear and answer each other irrespective of space and time, then surely the human soul and the divine can do likewise. For the soul is the subconscious mind and it is in the realm of the subconscious that these thought-vibrations take place. Does not this illumine the subject of interces- sory prayer? Prayer is an influence we can exert on the friend for whom we pray both directly and by way of heaven. Every true prayer is a positive force, a thought wave of great intensity flung out into the blue. If somebody could invent an instrument to catch up these waves and measure their intensity, he would be amazed at their power. Let me quote three widely different authorities. Here is Henry Sidgwick, the founder of the British Society of Psychical Research, who said “Tel- epathy is scientifically as well established as gravi- tation.” Again here is Dr. Hedge, Unitarian and Harvard professor of fifty years ago who wrote in “Reason and Religion,” “Every genuine prayer is a positive force in the universe of things. The motion may not reach to the outward visible 18 SCIENCE AND PRAYER result which the prayer contemplates; but every prayer, in proportion to the force that is in it, tends to that result.”” And here is David Hill, the missionary in China, who wrote once in his diary: “T feel very buoyant this morning; somebody must be ardently praying for me at home.” Here are three assertions: We can influence other souls— prayer is a real force—men have caught the throb of sympathetic souls. This is just proving the truth of what James said in his Epistle, “The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working,” or as the literal translation would be —“is very forceful in its energising.” May we not, as a result of this study, pray, as Paul said, not only with the spirit but with the understanding also; a.e. with a larger appreciation of the scientific and psychological background of prayer. A plain seaman stood on watch on the bridge of a U. S. battleship several hundred miles out on the Atlantic when a wireless was handed to him. “Little Donald passed away yesterday. Funeral Wednesday afternoon. Can you come? Mary.” The seaman forgot his watch. He saw the smiling face of his baby boy as he had left him three months before. His only boy—his hope. Then be broke and the Captain found him sobbing. “What's the matter, my lad?” The seaman stood at attention and handed the Captain the message. “Where do you live?” ‘Cleveland, Ohio, sir.” Then the Captain did some rapid figuring and in INVALIDATED PRAYER 19 a moment the wireless of the big battleship began spluttering out messages to her sister ships in the vicinity. ‘Full steam ahead’ was the order. Soon a grey form appeared—a faster ship; the seaman was quickly transferred. The second battleship raced 200 miles until a torpedo-boat destroyer came up which had also received the wireless and into it the seaman descended. Then full steam ahead for the nearest port—a waiting taxi—the train which left in four minutes for Cleveland and the next afternoon, one hour before the funeral, the seaman-father stood looking down on his little boy, with the mother and wife in his arms. Three battleships somewhere on the Atlantic had felt the impulse of fatherhood. And shall not God hear His own elect who cry day and night unto Him? [ tell you, yes. Sailor-friend of mine, tossed on the high seas of life, the Captain waits for your message. “Speak to Him, then, for He hears, And spirit with spirit can meet; Closer 1s He than breathing, Nearer than hands and feet.” IT HOW CAN WE PROVE THAT GOD ANSWERS PRAYER? ENVY the teacher of mathematics. He deals - with things you can see on a blackboard. He "” does not ask his class to take his word for a single statement. They accept only what they can prove. “The square described on the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” This isn’t a hymn or anthem but a solid fact—they can prove it. I envy the teacher of physics. “The volume of a body of gas at a constant temperature varies inversely as its pressure, density and elasticity.” This is Boyle’s Law. If any student disputes it, he may go to the laboratory and prove it. I envy the business man who deals in commodities you can handle. Here’s a pound of tea and there is a pound of coffee. But whoever heard of a pound of prayer? Invest so much prayer and get so much answer. Buy a nickel’s worth of blessing from the Almighty, forsooth! No, we don’t do things that way in religion. As soon as you enter the sphere of spiritual things, the old yardsticks, scales and tests have to be given up. And so the impression arises that religion deals with fancies, while science and business deal with facts. 20 DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 21 Hence, I love to discover that there are some phases of religion where experience enters in to test the assertions made in the creed. Experience is a great word. It means “try the thing for yourself.” As Philip said to Nathanael, “Come and see.” Now, prayer offers itself to us as a field where we can test God. He asks us to doa certain thing and we will get a certain result. He says that if certain conditions are met, certain results will follow. Well, that is simple enough—meet the conditions and see if the results do follow. If they do, confess it; if they do not, publish it to all the world. Luke 11:9 and 10 lays down three very important state- ments, each containing an imperative and a decla- ration: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” My question is, Is this true and can we prove it? I make three answers. I. It Can Be Proven That God Answers Prayer From the Testimony of Personal Christian Ex- perience. Emerson preached his first sermon on the sub- ject of Prayer. It came about in this way: He was walking through the open country when he met an aged labouring man leaning his weight on two sticks and sunning himself in the midday sun. Entering into conversation, the theme turned to prayer. The peasant made three remarkable state- ments which so impressed Emerson that he made 22 SCIENCE AND PRAYER them the heads of his first sermon. He said, ‘“Men are always praying; God is always answering; Be careful, therefore, what you ask for, for every true prayer is always answered.” Does experience bear this out? Does God actually hear and answer prayer as evidenced in daily life? Who can answer this question? Only a praying person, naturally. They say swimming is good exercise—but who knows? Only a swim- mer. Can I say it is not if I never go near the water? Of course not. They say golf is great sport, but only a golfer knows. Do we ask a man’s counsel in chemistry who has never been near a laboratory? Do we call in a physician who has never studied medicine when our loved ones are ill? No. We want a specialist in every line in this exacting twentieth century. And God knows the world needs specialists in prayer. Hence all this ridicule which people pour on prayer who know ~ nothing about it is beside the mark. It is the testi- mony of praying souls we have got to get in this matter. I heard of a man who criticised the mod- ern church very severely who later confessed he hadn’t been in a church for a dozen years. What did he know about it? Ridicule is often the refuge of ignorance. So if you insist on my answering whether God answers prayers, I must go to some askers; for answer implies a previous asking. Many Christians rise to take the witness stand here—but we can let only two or three speak. DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 23 First, I call John Knox, but he is too weak to answer. It is about two o’clock in the afternoon. He raises two fingers and says, “Now for the last time I commend my spirit, soul and body into Thy hands, O Lord.” About five o’clock he said to his wife—and they were his last words—“Go read where I cast my first anchor.” And what did she read? The 17th of John. And why did he cast his first anchor there? Because of the day when he saw George Wishart burned at the stake,—and who was George Wishart? A man who carried on regular correspondence with the Almighty—daily, yes hourly, letters back and forth. The post office of prayer was busy. And had not John Knox read of that awful day when the plague lay over Scot- land? The people of Dundee saw it approach from the west in the form of a great black cloud. They fell on their knees and cried to the cloud to pass them by, but it came ever nearer. Then they looked around for the most holy man among them to inter- vene with God on their behalf. They wanted a holy man—somebody whose prayer handwriting God was acquainted with—somebody who didn’t have to be introduced to God. All eyes turned to George Wishart and he stood up, the old account tells us, stretching his arms to the cloud and prayed and it rolled back. Such was George Wishart and such was John Knox. “Go, read where I cast my first anchor.” The anchor of prayer. Next I call Chaplain McCabe of the Civil War 24 SCIENCE AND PRAYER days. He had proven God also and he knew. He was in Libby Prison, ill with typhoid fever. Major-General Powell sitting by his bedside said, “Chaplain, here is a letter for you—I will read it.” The letter was from Dr. Isaac Cook, a brother min- ister, telling the Chaplain that a session of the Con- ference had just been held. When McCabe’s name was called out, somebody answered “He is in Libby Prison.” The presiding Bishop reminded the Conference that Paul and Barnabas were prayed out of prison and suggested that prayer be offered for Chaplain McCabe. Two hundred and fifty preachers went down on their knees and asked for the release of their brother. McCabe said afterwards: “I was used to suffering and lone- liness but I wasn’t used to tenderness and that let- ter broke me down. The tears rolled down my cheeks like rain. As soon as I could control myself, — I began to sing. I broke into a profuse perspira- tion and the tide was turned. In the evening, the doctor came and felt my pulse and started back in surprise.” ‘Why,’ he said, “there’s a big change in you. That last medicine has helped you wonder- fully.” The recovery was rapid. Twelve days later, McCabe was informed he had been exchanged and was able to leave the hospital. Thus did God answer the prayers of that Methodist Conference in a wonderful way. Whom shall we call next? I see a Chinese con- vert with something on his mind. He doesn’t speak DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 25 English very well—fact is his testimony consists of two words. A missionary has just asked him what remedy he found most effective in curing his countrymen of the opium habit, idolatry and other sins. He answered laconically “Knee Medicine.” Can you improve on that as a description of prayer? It is knee medicine. Tradition tells us that after St. James had died, those who were preparing his body for burial found that his knees had great calluses on them like a camel’s, as a result of his much kneeling in prayer. “Knee medicine’ had been balm and healing to his soul. For a fourth witness I call Henry M. Stanley, the great African explorer. He was one of the hardest- headed men of his generation. He admitted he had scoffed at prayer and called it children’s food, but later his eyes were opened and his opinions changed. Here is a statement verbatim from his hand: “I have evidence, satisfactory to myself, that prayers are granted. By prayer, the road sought for has become visible and the danger immediately lessened, not once or twice or thrice but repeatedly, until the cold, unbelieving heart was impressed. When I have been earnest I have been answered.” May I summon Abraham Lincoln as our last wit- ness on this point? In the darkest hour of the nation’s history, Bishop Simpson called upon him. He said, “Bishop, I feel the need of prayer. Will you pray with me?” The two men fell on their knees before God and implored His help. Audible 26 SCIENCE AND PRAYER “Amens” were uttered by Lincoln while the Bishop was praying. He said he felt confident that things would go all right at Gettsyburg. He said to Gen- eral Sickles, “I told God if we were to win the battle, He must do it, for I had done all I could. I told Him this was His war and our cause was His cause.’ Then having put the whole matter in the Lord’s hand, he admits that confidence and peace came to him. Well, what do you think of the evi- dence presented by these witnesses? Don’t you think itis rather strong? It certainly is sincere. A man might be mistaken once or twice. There might be a number of coincidences or accidental combina- tions of events. But when repeatedly throughout a long life one receives evidences of God’s open ear and kindly hand, one is justified in drawing out of these scattered experiences a general law and that law would be—God answers prayer. II. It Can Be Proved That God Answers Prayer From The Statements of Holy Scripture: I have read of one good man who had his Bible all marked up. Every now and then on the margin after some precious promise one would find the letters T. P. On inquiring what they meant, one was informed that they signified “Tried and proved.” That’s what God challenges the people to do through the prophet Malachi. ‘‘Prove me now herewith” saith the Lord. So the Bible promises to prayer are a challenge, a defiance, if you please. DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 27 They are like so many signed checks with the amount filled in but the name left blank and we are to fill in our own names and see if they will not be honored. We ought to cash in on some of the Scripture promises to praying souls. If we believe the Bible, to see the promise resting there in God’s great check-book will be enough; but if we do not accept the Bible, we can test the value of the check in Olir own experience by presenting it at the win- dow of everyday life, to be honoured. Begin, if you will, with the first books of Scrip- ture and how many proofs of prayer you have. Abraham prayed for a son and God gave him a posterity more numerous than the stars. He prayed for Ishmael and God spared the boy’s life and made of him a great nation. He prayed for Sodom and God graciously heard his cry. Jacob prayed for a favourable reception by his brother, Esau, and the reconciliation of the men was his answer. Moses prayed for the forgiveness of his people at the time of their rebellion. Joshua prayed about Ai. Gideon prayed about the Midianites. Samuel prayed about the loss of the ark. Elijah prayed for the fire from heaven and the wonder- ful scene at Mt. Carmel was the answer. Jonah cried to the Lord and He heard him out of the depth of the sea. Nineveh, that great ancient city, had a season of humiliation and prayer when sen- tence of doom was pronounced against it and you remember how God heard its cry and spared it. In 28 SCIENCE AND PRAYER fact it has been said that in all Scripture there is but one instance of prayer conjoined with fasting that failed to secure the desired result and that was when David pleaded for the son of his adulterous union. But in every other case—even the wicked King Ahab—God graciously heard and answered prayer. When you come over to the New Testament, you stand face to face with the great Pray-er of all history. It has been said of Him: “Jesus of Naz- areth came out of eternity, a great praying soul.” His whole life was a constant communion with God. He tells us to pray henceforth in His name and that whatever we ask the Father, He will do. The early church was born in a prayer meeting and baptised in an atmosphere of intercession. There are 30,000 promises in the Bible, most of which are connected with prayer. All of the seven great universal promises, wrapped around such words as “whosoever” and ‘whatsoever’ are made to praying souls. It looks as though God can afford to be ex- travagant when He speaks of prayer because He knows its wondrous power. Dr. Fosdick says some- where something like this: “If a thing can be done, reason and common sense can do it; but if a thing cannot be done, only faith can do it.” And the Bible proves that faith has done the impossible time and again. The Chinese have a kind of par- able in the architectural beauty of the pagoda as it rises heavenward; for the character for the word, pagoda, is composed of two elements which DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 29 signify respectively, “earth” and “answer.” So it is that earth reaches up its hand and heaven answers, according to the witness of Scripture. III. It Can Be Proved That God Answers Prayer From a Siudy of Religious Biography: The giants of prayer are not all dead. When we read in Scripture “there were giants in those days” we are wont to think that the pyramid souls have all passed away. But not so—we can find in con- temporary history as well as in posthumous biog- raphy cases of marvelous answer to prayer. Take for example the “Prayer Farm” of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Dr. Albert Oecetinger established some twenty years ago an institution which he called the “Principality of Great Faith,” starting out with nothing but a bucket, a broom, a prayer and a Bible. Since that time neither he nor his assistants have asked any living mortal for aid. The official title of the institution is “Christ’s Home for Homeless and Destitute Children.” There are over two hundred needy children and some fifty workers living in this prayer-guided community. The methods of the place are prac- tical and feasible. Three times each day, at sun- rise, noon and sunset, the children and workers sink to their knees and lay their needs before God in prayer. First, the Prayer-Master compiles a list of the needs of the Prayer-farm. These in- clude food and clothing for the inmates, harness 30 SCIENCE AND PRAYER for the horses, feed for the chickens and so on. They pray for only a day’s supply at a time. Has the plan worked? Does God answer prayer in the twentieth century or did He quit doing so when the Bible was closed? Here is the answer, ac: cording to the Master. They have prayed into ex- istence a farm of one hundred and forty-four acres with up-to-date barns and equipment, daily sus- tenance for their colony of two hundred and fifty persons, a complete equipment for the quarrying of stone, a water supply system costing $2700, a boys’ and a girls’ dormitory, three schools, a chapel, a print shop, a modern bakery, cows, horses, chickens, etc. Dr. Oetinger says that prayer is answered in very marvelous ways. Once when they were obliged to kill four of their horses because of old age they earnestly asked God to replace them be- cause they were so sorely needed. Within one week God put it into the heart of a person unknown to them to send them four horses. Similarly they asked for a printing press, a Ferguson stitcher and a boiler and the answers came. When we read accounts like this we are tempted to disbelieve them, but that is simply because we do not meet the conditions of true prayer as these simple be- lievers of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have done. How true it is as somebody has said, that if there should arise one utterly believing man, the history of the world might be changed; for “nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? § 31 outside the will of God.’’ That’s why all things are possible to him that believeth, for the believer will only desire those things which lie within the circle of the will of God. The famous Ashley Down Orphanage of Bristol, England, founded by George Muller, that wonder- ful specialist in prayer, is run on principles very much like the Pennsylvania home just referred to. In one of their annual reports they say that never during the year did they come to the bottom of the barrel, but they came within a few days of it at one period. Yet God honoured their faith and gave them that year an income of over $164,000. The total income since the beginning of the work has been somewhere between ten and fifteen mil- lions of dollars—all received in answer to prayer. Pastor Gosner was another man acquainted with God—another one of God’s favourites so to speak, for he prayed out into the foreign field 144 mis- sionaries, with their passage and support, hospitals for them to work in, etc. When one reads of these giant souls and their victories on the battlefield of prayer one realizes that these men themselves are not accomplishing these incredible things—how could they?—but that God is working through them. And this fits in entirely with this new defi- nition of prayer. “Prayer is man giving God a footing on the contested territory of this earth.” IX. HOW TO OBTAIN VICTORY IN PRAYER. ent people. Prayer to some people is a luxury; they use it as they do their good china, on rare occasions, when the minister comes and the like. Prayer to some others is a necessity —they would no more think of doing without it than without food—they employ it as an everyday commodity. Prayer to some again is a duty, they go to prayer with as much delight as to the medi- cine closet; to them it is bitters, not candy. Prayer to others again is an emergency article—they use it like a life-preserver only when the ship is going down. Prayer to still others is a form; they re- peat words with as much enthusiasm as they do the table of tens or the exciting alphabet—it is mere gymnastics for the lips and they hope to be heard for their much vocal exercise. But whatever prayer may be to you or to others or to me, for most people, I’m afraid, it is a failure. They say “We pray and we don’t get anywhere. Why doesn’t it mean more to us?” That is the question we want to try to answer now. There are certain conditions of success in prayer, just as there are everywhere else in life. Prayer 32 P ee p00 means different things to differ- i ts 1a, re VICTORY IN PRAYER St) isn’t a fetish or a bit of magic; it is an art or a science whose laws must be mastered. It isn’t a mechanical thing like touching a button and flood- ing the room with electricity. It is a contact be- tween two personalities and that can never be me- chanical. It is a personal performance. Scripture says: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is” first of all. You never go to meet a fence- post—you always make an engagement with some- body and it is the height of folly to make an ap- pointment to meet God in prayer, if there is no God anywhere to meet. You never ring the telephone number just for exercise—you do it to talk to somebody and if you sit there talking away at the little metal disk, you are a fool. So prayer presup- poses God beyond the disk, beyond the cloud and this God will talk back to you; He is the Answerer, the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. The Cretans of old were very foolish people for they painted their Jupiter without either eyes or ears and this is the sort of prayer they made to him: ‘“O God, whosoever thou art, for whether thou art or who thou art, we know not.” As though they said, “Hello, nobody, I want to talk to you.” Heine said nobody but a fool expects an answer to prayer and I reply, nobody but a fool talks into space without expecting an answer to his plea. 34 SCIENCE AND PRAYER {. The First Essential Then of Victorious Prayer 1s Faith in God: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is.”’ Some time ago I preached a sermon over the wireless and then offered prayer. The operator said to me in effect, “Now the people are there—at the other end of our wave length—you preach to the mouthpiece and your words will be carried to the waiting multitudes.’ I consented to speak out into space believing in the people whom I did not see. He that preacheth to the people whom he sees not must believe that they are. What a senseless performance it would have been other- wise. I should have been indicted for murder, for killing time. You see, then, what unbelief does—it burns down the bridge across which my soul would march to God. It dynamites the receiver at the other end of my telephone wire, so that there is no listening ear. It introduces me to a wax figure so that I’m standing all alone in the universe of space, flinging out my petitions to a hypothesis or a question mark. How can two objects carry on a conversation, one of which is a person and the other a wooden figure dressed up to look like a man? I don’t see the use of shouting Hallelujah to the atmosphere. What’s the object of singing anthems to the Great Unknown? One astronomer said he had turned his glass to all quarters of the VICTORY IN PRAYER 51) starry heavens and had never been able to locate God yet. You would never catch such a man at prayer. He that cometh to God must believe that He is. You never go to a vacant house to make a call—why pray to a vacant and empty heavenr Give me a tenant in my house of faith and then T’ll ring the doorbell; otherwise I'll pass it by. Faith then is the agency which puts a tenant in the house in the sky. Faith fills in the empty void with an almost human Face. Faith calls up the great Central at the Station called “yonder” and hears a response, while Unbelief standing by, smiles in pity. Faith says it’s possible to carry on a real conversation when the soul speaks and God listens, though human lips be silent and human ears catch no sound. Prof. Tyndall wrote of Michael Faraday, after coming from a dinner at which Faraday had asked the blessing, “He said grace. I am almost ashamed to call his prayer spoken. We would rather call it the imploring of a son who prays in perfect faith for the blessing of the Father.” Some time ago in a London hospital, a little girl was taken into the operating room. As she stood beside the operating table the doctors and nurses told her they must put her to sleep before they could make her better. “Well, if you are going to put me to sleep, | must say my prayers” was the innocent answer. Then kneeling down beside the 36 SCIENCE AND PRAYER operating table she joined her little hands and prayed: “This mght I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take; And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. AMEN.” When she finished, the eyes of the doctors and nurses were full of tears. The head surgeon went home to pray for the first time in thirty years. II. I Name as a Second Essential of Victorious Prayer, the Attitude of Expectancy: The way some people pray reminds me of a man who goes to a cashier’s window with a check to be honoured and after passing the same to the cashier, turns and walks away leaving the money to be paid to somebody else or to be put back in the cash drawer. It is as though one should call up a dear friend on the phone and then go away and leave the receiver down and immerse himself in other details, forgetting all about the pleading voice trying to speak to him. It is as though one should write a letter to a friend and then forbid the postman to ever deliver any mail in reply. It’s like a man opening his windows toward Jerusalem long enough to send in his peti- tion and then saying to the maid, “If anybody calls me from Jerusalem, [’m out.” VICTORY IN PRAYER ot One reason we hate to disappoint our children on Christmas morning is because of the attitude of expectancy which is in the air. If nobody was ex- pecting any presents and everybody got up on Christmas morning and went to his work just as usual, I don’t know whether we would trouble our- selves very much about providing gifts. Now, do you find much of a Christmas morning face in the average prayer meeting? Isn’t it true that we act as if we did not expect God to answer our prayers? We act as if prayer always purchased a one-way ticket instead of a round trip. We say “Goodbye, requests, we never expect to see you again.” You have often heard the story of the old lady who asked the Lord one night to remove an unsightly hill which obstructed her view, and in the morn- ing she arose and looked out of the window and said, “There the old thing is, just as I expected.” You have the same thing in that prayer meet- ing described in the Twelfth Chapter of Acts. The people were praying for Peter’s release from pris- on and when their prayers were answered and Peter knocked at the door, Rhoda recognized his voice and came back and told them Peter was there and they said, “You're crazy—it must be his ghost.” They were shocked beyond measure at the mere suggestion that God had answered their prayers. Wiser was the little boy who asked that prayer be offered for his sister that God would put it into her heart to read her Bible, for then he 38 SCIENCE AND PRAYER thought she would be converted. When the prayer began to be offered for his sister, he got up and left the meeting. The next time he came one of the workers reproached him for his rudeness, but he explained that he had no intention of being rude—he just wanted to run right home and see what it looked like to see his sister reading her Bible for the first time. That’s the attitude of ven- ture and expectation which our Lord delights in. You see it so often in His miracles of healing. He says to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stretch it out.” He tells the paralytic, “Take up your bed and walk.” He says to the disciples helpless be- fore the multitude, ‘Give ye them to eat.” So al- ways he expects men to step out on His promises, expecting something to happen. This willingness to venture out expectantly is what we call faith. As Donald Hankey put it, “Faith is betting your life that there is a God.” “Thou art coming to a King; Large petitions with thee bring; For His grace and power are such None can ever ask too much.” ITI. J Name as a Third Essential of Victorious Prayer, the Genius of Perseverance and Persist- ence: It is rather significant that our Lord immedi- ately after the giving of the model prayer (in St. VICTORY IN PRAYER ao Luke’s account) gives the parable of the importu- nate friend. It looks as though Jesus picked out for primary mention the one place where petitioners most often fail—that of stick-at-it-iveness. Christ tells the story of the man who came at midnight to borrow three loaves of bread. His neighbour feels like calling the police probably, but he wants to stop that infernal knocking and so because of the man’s perseverance, he rises and gives him his desire. Once more our Lord recurs to the same theme— in the story of the Unjust Judge. This jurist ad- mits that he fears neither God nor man and yet he is frightened by a poor widow. How is that? Simply because he is afraid of the woman’s perse- verance. He says, “I’m going to grant her re- quest, lest by her continual coming she weary me.” And so it looks as though God expects us to be re- peaters in prayer. He wants us to underscore our petition, to put it in italics, to advertise before Him our needs, to continually call His attention to our bill of desires. Dr. Charles Wood suggests that the phone some- times gives one or two rings and quits and we say, “Oh well, if it is anything important, they will call again. Nobody who amounts to anything would quit as soon as that.” But sometimes there comes a long distance call when the bell rings with a persistency which brooks no denial and then we answer, lest by its continual ringing it get on our nerves. 40 SCIENCE AND PRAYER May there not be a suggestion here about our prayers? When we ring the phone bell of prayer, don’t we often run away before God gets time to answer? George Muller, that apostle of persis- tent prayer, gave five reasons why he prayed as he did and one of them was this: “I have continued in believing prayer for over fifty-two years and shall so continue until the answer is given.” When- ever the Lord showed Muller it was His will he should pray, he continued to ask till the answer came. He thought the object of prayer was an answer, not just an exercise for the lips. Charles M. Alexander, the Gospel singer, tells how he stood one day at a bank counter in Liverpool, England, waiting for a clerk to come. He picked up a pen and began to print on a blotter in large letters “Pray through.” He kept talking to a friend and writing until he had the big blotter filled from top to bottom with a column. He transacted his business and went away. The next day his friend came to see him and said he had a striking story to tell him. A business man soon after Alex- ander left came into the bank. He had grown dis- couraged with business troubles and when his eye caught the message of the blotter he said, “That’s the very message I needed. I will pray through. I have tried to worry through in my own strength and have merely mentioned my troubles to God. Now I am going to pray the matter through till I get light.” So it is that in Alexander’s Gospel VICTORY IN PRAYER 41 Hymns you will find one, doubtless suggested by this incident, entitled, “Don’t Stop Praying,” which begins like this: “Dowt stop praying! The Lord is nigh; Don't stop praying! He'll hear your cry; God has promised and He ts true, Don't stop praying! He'll answer you.” IV. I Name as a Fourth Essential of Victorious Prayer the Substitution of God’s Will For Ours: People sometimes lose confidence in prayer be- cause they say they ask for a thing repeatedly and do not get it. Well, what is the object of prayer anyhow? ‘There is great misunderstanding at this point. Is prayer meant to be a sort of delivery wagon to deposit at our door the things we order over the long distance telephone? Or is it meant to be a tuning process by which we tune our souls up till they are in key with God, after which we hold our hands out to receive what He thinks best? Is prayer demand or petition? Is the prayer-room a restaurant where we order what we want, or is it a hospital where sick souls receive the treatment the Great Physician thinks best? ‘Let us put the question this way. There are two instruments to be tuned in key with each other, a pipe organ anda violin. It’s a great task to change the pitch of the organ but a simple one to tune the violin. Now God represents the organ and we 42 SCIENCE AND PRAYER represent in insignificance the violin. Which shalf we do? How shall we get the two together? Shall we tune the great organ down to the pitch of the violin? Or shall we tune the little violin up to the pitch of the organ? One must give in—which shall it be? Must God accommodate His will to ours or shall we change ours to meet His? Why, of course, if He is our gracious and loving and all-wise Father we shall say, Take our little instrument and bend its pitch to Thine. Hear the words of St. John’s Epistle :—“This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.” That’s it. God is not like a telephone girl who guarantees to connect us with whatever blessing we ask instanter. Not at all. He is a Father who hears His children’s foolish requests patiently and then does what He thinks best. You recall the Greek story of Phaeton: A Greek youth once claimed to be the child of the sun-god and was jeered at by his fellows. He asked his mother for proof of his heavenly birth. She told him to travel to the East to the palace of the stun and ask to be owned as a son. Going to the palace he said, “O my father, give me some proof that Iam your son.” The sun acknowledged his claim and told him to ask any favour desired. The youth demanded to be allowed to drive the chariot of the sun. The father shook his head and begged the boy to give over his request, but VICTORY IN PRAYER 43 the lad insisted, and so, holding his father to his promise, he sprang into the seat of the chariot. He was so unused, however, to the managing of the horses that they ran away and he was thrown from his seat into the River Po and was drowned. Such might be the result of our selfish prayers many times—they would be our own undoing. Phillips Brooks has a very wise word on the function of prayer. “Prayer,” he says, “is not a conquering of God’s reluctance, but a laying hold of God’s willingness.”’ That is a wise word. God is not a passive indifferent Will needing to be aroused to activity, but an active Will desirous of filling His children with blessings if they will open up the obstructing gates between His infinite reser- voir and their empty souls. “Delight thyself in the Lord (i. e. tune yourself to His key) and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” IV. IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? E LIVE ina very practical age. People do things in the twentieth century not be- cause the law compels them to, but because they “get something out of it” worth while. One of the mottoes of the day is ““Where do we come inon this?’ ‘What is there init for us?’ We're willing to invest our money if we get some returns worth while. We’re glad to try this doctor you recommend, if his treatment brings improvement. Is the game worth the candle?—that’s the query. We want compound interest on our time and trouble—6% won’t do any more. We want the name on the dotted line and Q.E.D. at the bottom of the page. It is not to be wondered at that the same prag- matic spirit creeps into our religion. You say I ought to tithe my income—well, what returns do I get if I do? You say I ought to observe the Sabbath day—well, what dividends are declared to Sabbath observers? You say I ought to read the Bible—well, what good will it do me to do so? You say I ought to pray—well, what does prayer accomplish that makes it worth while to pray? 44 IS If WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 45 This is the question we seek to answer. If we can answer it satisfactorily, it may help others to pray. Let us get one thing clear at the outset. We do not have to comprehend a process in order to enjoy its results. I do not understand electricity but I take the car downtown just the same. I do not understand the mechanism of the telephone but I’ve learned that by calling a certain number I get my friend and so I call him up and talk to him over an avenue I cannot see. I do not understand the anatomy of the body and yet I use the doctor’s medicine because it has helped the pain before and it knows where to go though I cannot tell it. So I may use prayer because of its proven helpful- ness though I cannot understand all its mysteries. If I never used an elevator till I comprehended it I would stay downstairs all my life. If I never used an auto till I could make one I should be a confirmed pedestrian. If I never pray till all my queries are satisfied I shall be a stranger to God. Charles Edward Jefferson says, “(Nobody knows what takes place when we drop a lump of sugar into a cup of coffee. Whether the change is mechanical or chemical the wisest men cannot say. For most of us it is enough to know that the coffee is sweetened. So we know that by dropping a prayer into a day we sweeten its hours. Why should we not be as practical in our religion as we are at the dinner table ?”’ Now prayer does accomplish results. It has 46 SCIENCE AND PRAYER been well said that every prayer-action is in doubles, a lower human level and an upper spiritual level. We are thinking about the lower level, the accom- plishments of prayer that we can touch and hear and see. Two men were saying good-bye. One remarked, “I don’t see as much of you as I’d like to; but I think of you and am interested in you and your work and I pray for you constantly.” The other replied with moistened eye, ‘Whatever you do, don’t forget to ring the sky-bells for me.” Now our question is, what reactions and echoes do the sky-bells have on earth? I. Prayer Produces Peace of Mind. Here is one place where psychologists and theo- logians and physicians, warriors and Scripture all agree. Paul said it first, I suppose, when he wrote to the Philippians. Here is the way he put it: “In nothing be anxious, but by prayer and suppli- cation let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understand- ing shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.” Here Paul represents prayer as a sentinel on guard—he has built a rampart or wall of defense around the thoughts of the praying soul and these enemies which we call anxiety and fear can’t get in. Well, Dr. Hyslop, the noted alienist said the same thing. He spoke as Superintendent of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital to the British Medical Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 47 Association at their annual meeting in 1905, and he said this: “As an alienist and one whose whole life has been concerned with the sufferings of the mind, I would state that of all hygienic measures to counteract disturbed spirits, I would undoubt- edly give the first place to the simple habit of prayer.” Professor James speaks along the same line. He holds that prayer as an act of the soul sets in operation hidden forces both within and without ourselves. Thus, instead of being an act of weakness, prayer is the divinely ordained method by which we may utilize spiritual forces which operate in harmony with fixed laws as invariable as the laws of nature. But someone may say, This is all well enough to theorise about but have we any practical proof of it? Yes, we have of the strongest sort. Anybody who was at the front during the great war knows what a calming power was prayer. It was the best possible treatment for — shell-shock, for example. One Christian worker went to a hospital over there one Sunday evening to hold a service with the men suffering from shock who couldn’t leave their ward to come to the regular service. He told them the simple story of how Christ calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee so long ago and then in a simple prayer asked the same Christ to still the trembling tongues and limbs of these lads and to bring a great sense of peace and quiet to their hearts. When the speaker looked up from 48 SCIENCE AND PRAYER his prayer, he found to his surprise that the trem- bling of the boys had perceptibly ceased. There was a great sense of peace and quiet in the ward. The nurse told him next day that the boys had an unusually quiet night. A medical friend said to him, “After all, maybe your medicine is best.” Yes, his medicine, knee-medicine as the Chinese convert called it, was best. It is easy to see why Prayer and Peace are first. cousins. When we pray we turn our eyes away from our own little buzzing circus of confusion to the great calm of the heart of God—we gear our souls up to a pace that is slow and sweet—we put a governor on the machinery that slows down its fevered pace until we possess our souls in patience and peace. “The little sharp vexations, And the briars that catch and fret, Why not take all to the Helper Who has never failed us yet? Tell Him about the heartache, And tell Him the longings, too; Tell Him the baffled purpose When we scarce know what to do. Then leaving all our weakness With One divinely ‘strong, Forget that we bore the burden, And carry away the song.” Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 49 II. J Name as a Second Reason Which Makes It Worth While to Pray, Tius: Prayer Revives the Christian Life: I wish Jesus might come back to earth just for a few days and hold a great world-wide exami- nation class to which all the Christians living on earth today might be summoned and at which they might be graded as to percentage of efficiency and success in their Christian life. How many do you suppose would get a passing mark? How many would Jesus grade at 75%? How many at 507? Would not many of us be glad to get even a 25% grade? One of the surprises of the twentieth century would be the results of such an assize. Do you know the main thing Christ would con- demn? I fancy it would be the low spiritual state resulting from the disuse of prayer. It has been said that every great revival movement of history, where God’s people have been stirred up to take hold of Him, has resulted from a renewal of the prayer-life. It was so away back in the days of Ezra, for we read that when Ezra had prayed and confessed, there assembled unto him a great con- gregation and the result was the revival at the Water-gate. It was so at Pentecost—they con- tinued in prayer and supplication and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. It has been so in modern times. Look at the situation at the outbreak of the eight- eenth century. In Germany, France and England 50 SCIENCE AND PRAYER unbelief was rampant. Blackstone, the legal com- mentator, went the rounds from church to church till he had heard every clergyman of note in London and his sad testimony was that in not one of them had he found more Christianity than in the writ- ings of Cicero, nor could he gather whether the preacher was a disciple of Confucius, Mahomet, Zoroaster or Christ. And yet, out of this darkness came the revivals of Whitefield and Wesley and the birth of the Methodist Church. But these great events were preceded by days and nights of prayer. About 1750, Jonathan Edwards sent out his famous trumpet call to prayer, in which he refers to the day of fasting and prayer, observed the year previous at Northampton which was followed that same night by the utter dispersion of the French Armada. History tells us that several members of Edwards’ church spent the whole night in prayer, the night before he preached his memorable sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The Holy Spirit was so manifested during the preaching of that sermon that the elders threw their arms around the pillars of the church and cried, “Lord, save us, we are slipping down to hell.” When Charles G. Finney roused the dormant church by his tremendous spiritual power, the power behind the throne was a praying man, an invalid, whom Finney carried with him from place Is IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 51 to place. This man never appeared in public, but his room at the hotel became a very Bethel, a house of God, from which the voice of petition continu- ally ascended. An incident is given in the life of Finney which shows some of the mysterious power resident in a life which is bombarded with prayer. Finney was visiting one of the factories in New York. As he drew near the place he saw two girls trying to mend a thread. They laughed in his face. As he drew nearer they began to cry and could not go on with their work because of their trembling hands. As the man of God went nearer still they sank down on the seats before him, while the tears rolled down their faces. Others were touched by the sight. The proprietor of the mill who was present, though not a Christian, said to the super- intendent: “Stop the mill; it is more important that souls should be saved than that the factory should run.”” The work was stopped and a great meeting was held that day with three to four hun- dred souls crying, ‘“God be merciful to us, sinners.” “Oh, that 1t now from heaven might fall And all our sins consume! Come, Holy Ghost, for Thee we call, Spirit of burning, come.” All of you will remember the great Welsh Re- vival in 1903. It had its origin in prayer. Evan Roberts entered into a solemn covenant with a few others that he would spend a whole day once a 52 SCIENCE AND PRAYER month in prayer for a revival of God’s work in Wales. Busy as he was, he kept his pledge and within two years one of the mightiest revivals in all history swept over Wales. And as the move- ment grew in power and numbers the one thing that Roberts seemed to fear was that popularity would make an idol of him and he would be the center of attraction instead of Christ. Similar things are recorded of humbler and less- known men. Ina church in Scotland some years ago the pastor suddenly began to preach with un- precedented power. The congregation was aroused and sinners were saved. The minister himself did not understand the new enduement; but in a dream of the night it was suggested to him that the whole blessing was due to a poor old woman who was stone deaf, but who came regularly to church and being unable to hear a word, spent all the time in prayer for the preacher and individual hearers. It all comes back to what John R. Mott once said—that as he traveled around the world he never yet had seen a movement of real spiritual power that did not root itself in prayer. Some poor man cried and the Lord heard him and sent showers of abundance of rain. Ill. Tis Brings Us to the Third Reason Why Prayer Is Worth While: It Puts Over Against the Burdens of Life the Infinite Grace of God: Robert Speer tells about a little girl who was IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 53 trying to move a large table. Her mother said, ‘Dearie, you can’t move that table; why, it’s as big as you are.” To which her reply was, “Yes I can, for I’m as big as it is.” It all depends on which way you look at it. So when you face your burden, it all depends on the dimensions of your God whether He is as big as the Burden is, or whether the Burden is as big as God is. Now we all have our crosses. There’s a ceme- tery in every garden. Gethsemane and Calvary are not merely historic names of the first century, but facts of everyday life. People have got to have some refuge, somebody to turn to. As Robert Burns wrote so long ago: “When ranting around in pleasure’s ring, Religion may be blinded; Or if she gie a random sting, It may be little minded; But when in life we’re tempted, driven, A conscience but a canker— A correspondence fixed wi Heaven Is sure a noble anchor!” Notice how David fell back upon his corre- spondence with heaven in the midst of his trouble with Absalom. You find this in Psalms 4 and 3; Psalm 4 possibly being composed in the evening and Psalm 3 the following morning. In the last verse of Psalm 4 you have the original of “Now I lay me down to sleep,” for the king says, “In 54. SCIENCE AND PRAYER peace will I lay me down and sleep, for Thou, Lord, makest me to dwell in safety.’ Here he resolves to lie down and sleep and in the third Psalm we find he says he did sleep—he lay down and slept and awoke, for the Lord sustained him. No in- somnia or anxiety for the man who puts God in the balance over against the burdens of life, by prayer. Prayer is the lever that lifts the weight and I know of no other hoisting machine that does it half so well. I venture all of us have had the experience of being driven by our burdens to the feet of God because we had nowhere else to go with them. And prayer, though so long neglected, proved a very present help in time of trouble. There is a real lesson for us all in the remark of the poor scrub woman in the Frauenkirke in Copenhagen who was at work near Thorwaldsen’s famous figure of the risen Christ. A party of tourists stood before the famous masterpiece ad- miring its beauty when the servant said to them, “You will see Him best from your knees.” It is wise advice. It applies not only to the tourists in the cathedral but to all of us. We never get the proper dimensions of Christ, never see how tall He is till we see Him from our knees in prayer. And once on our knees we get a new perspective which shows how able He is to succour all who come to His throne. IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 55 So I believe we all ought to enlarge our concepts of God’s power and magnify His name as the Psalmist told us to: “O magnify the Lord with me.” We keep harping on how big our problems and difficulties and trials and crosses are until we get things out of their true perspective. Prayer is a stabilizer, an adjusting agency to magnify the resources of God and to minimize the annoyances of earth. | When a certain group of men were discussing a proposal of work and were differing about large or small plans, one suggested that they pray about it. Another demurred saying that it was not a thing to pray about but to think out, and added that he had noticed that when men prayed about a thing, they seemed to lose all sense of caution and felt that they could do anything. For his part he did not want that spirit to lay hold of them. That was a striking testimony to the power of prayer—that it broadened the horizons of men and made them “smile to think God’s greatness flowed around their incompleteness, around their restlessness, His rest.” IV. I Mention One More Accomplishment of Prayer: It Binds The World Together In Chains of Love. Charles Lamb said you couldn’t hate a man when you really knew him and surely it is true that you can’t hate a world of folks whom you 56 SCIENCE AND PRAYER seek to find along the long avenues of prayer. The man who prays for others is like a kindly pilgrim starting out along the dark roads of earth’s want and need with the brightly burning lantern of love and sympathy in his hand, ferreting out whoever needs helping and blessing, letting the love-light shine on them for a while. Ruskin said that the deepest gulf which yawns between any two classes of men is the gulf which divides the pray- ing from the prayerless. One lives a provincial life shut up within his own needs, and the other live a cosmopolitan existence in touch with life at every point. The praying man can carry on his prayer list every philanthropist, every hospital, every missionary, every statesman. He makes evening and morning calls on the humble and the great, leaving his card at the throne of grace. Wonderful world traveler does he become, run- ning in an instant from north pole to south and eastern hemisphere to western. Robert Louis Stevenson was in the habit of having family prayers every evening at his home in Samoa. After the labours of the day were over, the war conch was sounded and the white members of the family took their places at one end of the long hall while the Samoans, men, women and children, trooped in through all the open doors, all moving quitely and dropping down in the wide semicircle on the floor. Then the brief solemn service of evening prayer was conducted IS IT WORTH WHILE TO PRAY? 57 by Tusitala, as Stevenson was called by the natives. So we, when we kneel to pray for others, summon whomsoever we will,—friend, relative, statesman, employer, pastor—whoever it may be, into the other end of the long hall of our petitions and there we bid them kneel while we help to lift the burdens of life. Would you join this company of praying souls who send their winged prayers by way of heaven to the man at the other end of life’s long hallway? Then begin today. “The camel at the close of day Kueels down upon the sandy plain To have hs burden lifted off, and rest to gain; My soul, thou too should’st to thy knees When daylight draweth to a close, And let thy Master lft thy load, and grant repose.” Vi HOW DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? fy OW IS one of the biggest words in 1 the English or any other language. Humanity is insatiably curious and we are not satisfied to see a thing done but we want to know how it is done. The little boy isn’t satisfied with the ticking of his watch but he pulls it to pieces because he wants to see how the wheels go round and where the “ticker” is. Some people are satisfied to glance at the watch to get the time, but the “how” people insist on going deeper. Some folks use the phone as a necessity, but others regard it a curiosity and pull it apart to see how it works. Most of us use the human body as a matter of course and let it go at that, but the sur- geon cuts it apart in the operating room to see how and where it’s pasted together. - Some people read the Bible just because their fathers did and ask no questions, but others in- sist on asking how it came to be and who handed it down to us. So it is that some use prayer con- ventionally as a handy article to have around and give it no more thought; but others insist on see- ing the wheels go round in prayer. They even 58 DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 59 want to mount up to heaven and follow a prayer from the time it leaves the suppliant’s lips till the answer is delivered all tied up with a blue ribbon and they want to watch every step in the process, and every time the prayer turns a corner, ask God how. They constitute themselves the Official and Authoritative inspectors of the Prayer Route and they want to bring in a complete report. Humanity has commissioned them to find out and they must know—‘“‘Your Committee to find out how God answers Prayer beg leave to report as follows,” etc. Let me be your “How Committee,” your “Committee on Ways and Means” and while I pretend to no superior wisdom, I may be able to suggest two or three things in answer to the query of our topic. I. God Sometimes Answers Prayer Through The Individual Co-operation of the Praying Soul. I’m afraid too many of us when we take our problem to the Lord in prayer drop it down be- fore His throne and say in effect “Now I wash my hands of all responsibility—it is up to Him.” But that is to mistake the partnership of prayer. It is only the first step when we pray—only a begin- ning; the second step is to live and act in such a way as shall be conducive to the answering of our own petition. It has been well said that intelligent prayer for any blessing is a vow to God to work with Him for the blessing prayed for. Cardinal 60 SCIENCE AND PRAYER Newman put the same thought in this way— “Prayer is not so much the invoking God from heaven as the evoking of God within the soul.” We are not merely calling down supernatural energies from heaven, but we are also calling out spiritual energies from within ourselves. Paul told Timothy, you remember, “Stir into flame the gift of God which is in thee.” To take one or two commonplace illustrations: If a man prays God for health, he will naturally use every means he can to keep himself strong and well. Some folks seem to think that God’s rela- tion to man is that of a phenomenon to an autom- aton—as though God had some mysterious wand to wave over a sickroom while the patient himself neglected all co-operation. Not at all. Moody was once asked to pray for the recovery to health of a spiritual leader and he replied, “Not at all— it is no use to ask for him to be well as long as he insists on working eight or ten out of every seven days ina week.” Or again, if a man prays for the ability to win souls, he will naturally go out and do personal work. If a man prays for a job, he will read the Want Advertisement Column. If a man prays for a wife, he will go out and meet women socially—he won’t sit still and expect some lady to walk up to his door and say, “Good morn- ing, I’m your wife the Lord sent.” If a man prays for success in business, he will probably work early and late at his desk. So it is that real DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 61 prayer is the expression of dominant desire and we naturally will offer ourselves to God as team- mates in the securing of the ends on which our soul is set. Let’s get rid of the idea of prayer as a one man car where God is conductor and motor- man and everything else. No, if God is at the front end of our life, leading us on, He wants us to be at the back end following where He goes. The great word for prayer is “we’’ and “He’’—the sword of the Lord and Gideon—that’s the sys- tem—God and I. George Meredith states the truth this way: “Who rises from his prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.” Peter Annet, one of the old Deists, used to say that praying ‘men were like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock and who foolishly imagine that they are pull- ing the rock ot themselves when really they have all the while been pulling themselves to the rock. Well, no sane man agrees with him. No, the efforts the sailors make to reach the rock are their efforts at causing the result they have been pray- ing for. God usually works through means and very frequently the means is You. We call up God and ask for a thing and He replies in sub- stance, “You want that very much, do you?r— enough to pay for it? Very well then, pay the price and take it.” The old proverb says “No man ever became a saint in his sleep;’ and no man ever got his prayer answered merely by waving a magic 62 SCIENCE AND PRAYER plea before God’s face. Dr. Cuyler used to say that the prayer that influenced God must be a pre- paid prayer, by which he meant that if our peti- tion did not find its way to the Dead Letter Office, it must be because it had sufficient on it—it must be stamped with our own earnest efforts, aye even blood and tears. Listen to “Chinese” Gordon as he tells us how he prayed—he had some temptation, some adversary he was trying to conquer and he writes, ‘“My constant prayer is against Agag who is, Of course, here and as insinuating as ever.” But does he stop there? Did he suppose Agag would disappear as soon as he introduced him to God? No, for he writes again, “I had a terrible half-hour this morning, hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord.’”’ What was his idea of prayer? It was the true idea—that prayer is a fight for the power to see and the courage to do the will of God, as Fosdick says. “If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know.” During one of the dreadful plagues of the Middle Ages a certain city in Italy suffered greatly. The citizens held a special service of intercession in the great Cathedral. Everybody for miles around came and they spent a day of prayer. Near evening, an ascetic-looking man appeared in the doorway, bearing a hatchet. He was well known, for he had risked his own life often in the service of the plague-stricken. Up the crowded aisle he passed to the altar, above which there was a large DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? ~ 63 picture of Christ. It was called “The Frowning Christ” as it showed the Saviour with anger on His brow. ‘To the surprise of all, the monk raised his hatchet and struck at the picture. Bit by bit he cut it away. All thought him crazy till they saw that beneath the picture he cut there was another. When he finished, there stood the face of the smiling and merciful Saviour. The acted parable awoke new hope in the hearts of the multitude, but its true meaning was emphasised by, the monk who cried in a loud voice: “The smiling Christ did not appear till the rubbish had been cleared away. It is too soon for you to pray. Go burn your rubbish and the plague will depart.” That night the city gleamed with fires and the plague departed. Prayer was answered when the people helped God. II. God Sometimes Answers Prayer by Secur- ing the Co-operation Not of the Suppliant But of Other Human Beings. God has a great company of willing spirits apparently awaiting His beck and call to run on errands of love and mercy. He does not send ravens to feed Elijah now; when Elijah gets sick in the twentieth century, God sends human ravens, if you please. He works through the inventions of science, through the ministries of friendship— in a thousand ways to accomplish His purpose. Here’s a vessel sailing out from Vancouver to the 64 SCIENCE AND PRAYER Orient. The Chinese coolies are holding a religious service below decks to insure the ship’s safety. They have a caldron filled with live coals; and forming a circle about it, they throw into it slips of paper with printed prayers, that the gods might sense in the rising smoke the desires of the devotees. Then they shoot off firecrackers to scare away the devils. While all this religious mummery is going on below decks, on the ship’s bridge stands the captain with his sextant, com- pass and wireless, who is really being used of God to answer the prayers of these coolies. What a picture this is of human life. Many people, like the ignorant Chinese on that boat, feel that if prayer 1s answered it must be done in some un- usual and outre way that has nothing to do with natural laws and common sense. And how often God answers our prayers by securing the normal and reasonable co-operation of those who, by their understanding of nature’s processes and their use of — available means will become answerers of prayer. “In yonder hovel lies a man On bed of rags too sick to work; But hear, behold he prays for aid; Then go, thy duty do not shirk. On yonder field of blood, a moan You hear from palid lips of pain. Behold the thirsty sailor prays; Obey thy orders once again. DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 65 Behold a widow prays to God That her poor little ones be fed; Go, take to her thy Father’s bread, And know that thou art Spirit led. Behold, a sinner prays to God For Hs sweet peace and tender care; Go, say that ere a seeker calls, Our Father hears and answers prayer.” The beautiful fact is that God has a providen- tial control of all human lives. He is the man- ipulator of souls and the soul is the part of man that receives suggestions from outside itself and acts upon them. Hence a man may often do a thing as the result of some inner urge, feeling that he is doing it entirely on his own motion, when as a matter of fact his impulse was divinely born as the answer to the gentle pressure of God’s hand which was moved by the cry of His child. Thus the philanthropist instead of being a self- mover is moved upon. He is first passive and then active; passive, to hear the voice of God and then active to rise and do His will. Prayer be- comes a sort of triangular performance, origi- nating in the heart of the suppliant, moving to the ear of God, passing to the responding soul. The height of the triangle is the distance from man to God and the breadth of the triangle is the distance from man to man. Prayer and Work are inseparably joined in the bonds of holy mar- 06 SCIENCE AND PRAYER riage by the Most High and from this union there is no divorce. A Southerner was out with colored Sambo in a boat when a terrific storm came up. “Shall we row or pray?” asked the terror-stricken man. ‘“‘Massa,-let’s mix ’em’’ was the sensible reply. This reminds us of the two Scotch minis- ters who were caught in a gale on a Highland loch. Dr. Norman McLeod, who happened to be one of them, was a big, burly fellow, the other a thin, frail-looking brother. As the sudden mountain storm came up, the little man said to Dr. McLeod, “Brother, let us pray together.” “Na, na,” said the Highland boatman, “the wee one can pray, but the big maun tak’ an oar!’ That was a fine combination certainly of prayer and work. Ill. God Sometimes Answers Prayer by the Di- rect Action of His Will Where No Human Co- operation Can Be Seen. Two different ways of looking at prayer are exemplified by the two women who came to their pastor to settle a dispute. One of them said, “When I lose my thimble, I kneel down and ask God to direct me to the place where it may be found.” The other said she didn’t take this view of the function of prayer. “When I lose my thimble,” she said, “I ask God to teach me more orderly habits.’ There are the two views, one more mystical, the other more practical; the one DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYER? 67 expecting God to do it all, the other expecting man to carry his end of the load. We have just been saying that one can often trace the human co-operation which results in the answer. But now in our closing point we are saying that God sometimes answers prayer in such a way that His tracks are covered. We don’t see anybody pull- ing the wires and we become convinced that God can act immediately as well as mediately, 1. e., without or above means as well as through them. One objection that some people have to prayer is that in certain cases they are entirely helpless to effect any result—they can’t see any way out and hence they won’t insult God by asking Him to do the impossible. They forget that the things that are impossible with men are possible with God and that there are many more strings in God’s fingers that He can pull than we can pos- sibly see. Look at Elijah—what could he do to unlock the heavens after three and a half years of drought? Certainly no human help could avail to make the skies weep for his benefit and yet the answer comes. The cloud takes the shape of a man’s hand as if to assure the prophet that God had heeded the suppliant hand raised to Him in prayer. Look again at Daniel—how powerless he was to reverse the king’s decree—all he could do was to “desire mercies of the God of heaven con- cerning the secret.” It was because he could do nothing else, not even to guess at the interpreta- 68 SCIENCE AND PRAYER tion, that God interpreted and even the heathen king himself was convinced and confessed. All through human history certain crises have arisen when the help of man was vain and God made bare His mighty-arm to show that there was noth- ing too hard for the Lord. Who has not read of Dr. Jessup of Syria and Dr. Bliss as they sat to- gether one day in Constantinople almost in tears over the edict of the Sultan with reference to the closing of all American and religious schools. One finally said to the other, “Jessup, let us lay this thing before the Sultan of Heaven.” They did; far into the night they prayed. The next day the Sultan of Turkey died and the decree was reversed. So I say to you, dear friend of mine, don’t be discouraged because you can’t see around the turn of the road. Light moves only in straight lines to you, but God is Light and in Him is no dark- ness at all. He holds the key of all unknown and you, His child, can be glad. He knows the com- bination of every safe in the universe. He has the keys to every room. He knows the location of the secret springs which compel to action. When you reach Him you are in touch with the central energy of the Universe. Come to Him and be at rest. VI. THE PROBLEM OF UNANSWERED PRAYER HE TELEPHONE is a wonderful conven- ience but sometimes we almost lose our re- ligion over it. The first problem is to get “Central,” which takes time to accomplish. The next task is for “Central” to get your friend— and how discouraging to have the repeated answer “Busy.” Then the third problem is to get your friend to do what you want. This reminds us somewhat, although imperfectly, of the process of prayer. The first thing necessary is to reach heaven and sometimes the heavens seem brass. The next thing is to get God and to get Him to connect you up with the thing that you desire. Now it is at this third step that the problem of Unanswered Prayer appears. Can you say that your prayer is unanswered merely because you do not get what you want? You don’t blame the phone company because your friend refuses to meet you downtown—not at all, they have done their part which was to put you in touch with him. And you must not blame prayer, if it does not deliver the answer at your front door—it has done 69 70 SCIENCE AND PRAYER its part and has put you in touch with your great Friend named God—the rest is up to Him. He can hear you without granting your exact re- quest. There's a wide difference between un- heard prayer and unanswered prayer. God prom- ises to hear those who seek His face aright but He nowhere promises to be a messenger boy whose business it is to deliver all packages upon demand at a given address. One important fact ought to be understood at the outset of a discussion like this and that is that petition, 7. ¢., asking for things is only one element of prayer. That is to say prayer, real Christian prayer, includes other elements besides begging. It includes adoration, in which we adore God for what He is. It includes confes- sion, in which we bemoan our sins. It includes praise in which we thank Him for all His bene- fits. It also includes communion in which we sit and talk over the things of the Kingdom as friend with friend. Then, too, it ought to include in- tercession in which we lift our friends and their burdens to His kindly care. And it should in- volve consecration in which we pledge ourselves anew to His will. So that even if prayer failed us at the one point of petition, that’s no reason why we should throw away its other possibilities and blessings. Do you never call up your friend except when you want to get something out of him? Don’t you ever ’phone him just to say UNANSWERED PRAYER T1 “good morning’ and to tell him you still bear him in mind? What sort of friend is that who never calls on you except when he wants to bor- row five dollars? You see this idea of using prayer just as a special delivery wagon is far be- low the Christian ideal—and yet some people never rise above the heathen level in their con- ception. Now when you turn to the Bible you find that it is full of unanswered prayers and yet men kept on praying just the same. The Psalmist cried out once in despair, “O my God, I cry in the day- time, but Thou answerest not and in the night sea- son, I am not silent.’ There was twenty-four hour service, day and night, but no answer. Job had the same experience. He said he stood up and cried unto God and the Almighty just looked at him, but made no reply. Moses also—he prayed to enter the Promised Land, but died on Nebo’s lonely mountain. Jeremiah lamented once that God had covered Himself with a cloud so that no prayer could pass through. Paul—how earn- estly he asked three times for the removal of his thorn in the flesh and how utterly he was denied! Last and greatest of all, Jesus Himself in the Garden prayed for delivery from the bitter cup but had to drink it all. So we can see from just this glance that some of earth’s best men have had to learn the “patience of unanswered prayer.” And yet every one of these saints of God was 12 SCIENCE AND PRAYER heard,—though not affirmatively answered. There is a passage in the life of Adoniram Judson that throws some light just here. Near the close of his days he said, “I never prayed sin- cerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time—no matter at how distant a day—in some shape, probably the last I should have de- vised, it came.” Now look at his life. He had prayed to go to India but was compelled to go to Burmah; he prayed for his wife’s life but was compelled to bury her and his two children. He prayed for release from prison and yet lay there for months in chains. How could he say he had always been answered? Why, he was answered in the same way in which my child is answered who asks me for a lot of things on his birthday which may not be best for him to have. He wants a knife but is too young for it. He wants a bicycle but the streets are too dangerous and so we talk it over and decide. I am not indifferent to his eager plea—far from it. My boy is heard, patiently heard, but not answered as he desires. And so, let us not accuse God of deafness or in- difference just because He is wise. Let us now see if we are prepared to give three or four answers to the question why prayer is often unanswered. I. Many So-called Unanswered Be Are Really Answered, But in Disguise. Dr. Arthur T. Pierson pointed out to us some UNANSWERED PRAYER (3 years ago the very helpful truth that God’s House of Prayer has several stories and that the answer may come out from the fourth story while we insist on waiting at the gate of the first story. And because the reply does not come out on our level, we go away complaining, while all the time God’s answer is hunting for us and we do not recognize it. For example—there are four pos- sible planes of answer. The lowest plane, the first story, is where the answer is immediate and ob- vious—this is the plane of sight. It doesn’t take any faith to push the slot machine and receive the gum, for that’s what we expect. So God gives this kind of answer to beginners, not to try their faith too much. When Eleazar went to get a wife for Isaac and when Rebekah came in just the way he asked—this was a transaction on the first story, the lowest plane. Then there is a second story where the answer is delayed and disguised, as in the case of Paul who prayed that he might get to see Rome. He did get there, but he entered as a prisoner who had just escaped shipwreck and was almost killed. Certainly that wasn’t the kind of answer he expected. There is a higher plane still, the third story where the prayer is denied and yet answered— that is, the literal request is refused but the real desire is given; refused in letter, granted in spirit. Monica complained of refused prayer when Augus- tine went to Rome. She said, “Lord, if I can’t 04 SCIENCH AND PRAYER control him here at home, what will happen to him in that great city?” But God happened to him— God let him go but directed him to Ambrose of Milan who led him to Christ. Was Monica answered? No.~ Was she? Yes. Finally there is the highest plane—the fourth story, where the prayer is apparently unheeded. All we can do is to leave it to God and to wait for the disclosures of eternity. Give God time—He doesn’t die when you do. He may answer your petition long after you have gone to glory. George Muller ptayed fifty years for the conversion of two men and died in faith believing they must come sooner or later, and so they did, shortly after his death. Now then in view of this four-story House of Prayer, don’t let us limit God in His delivery of replies. The package will come sooner or later wrapped up in such a whirl of events that you may not recognize it; but either it will come or some- thing better. Henry Ward Beecher put the truth tersely when he said, “A woman prays for pa- tience, and God sends her a green cook.” He answered her request but wrapped it up in an in- experienced maid and she did not recognize it till after dinner; then she knew. When she was about to explode in despair, she said, “Look here, this is my Father’s doing.” The request only is ours. The form and fashion of the answer is God’s. Was it not John Newton who wrote out his experience in the old hymn? UNANSWERED PRAYER (os) “TI asked the Lord that I might grow In faith and love and every grace, Might more of His salvation know And seek more earnestly His face. ’Twas He who taught me thus to pray, And He I trust has answered prayer; But tt has been in such a way As almost drove me to despair.” II. Some Prayers Are Really Unanswered Because We Ask For the Wrong Thing. Do you give your children everything they ask for? Would it always be for the best for them to have what they want? Are their ignorant re- quests not the very height of folly sometimes? Isn’t the kindest thing you can do for them, to say “No?’” I recall two boys in my father’s congre- gation in the East years ago—both of them sons of wealth. They got what they wanted when they wanted it. They were the envy of my childish poverty. Where are they today? One of them after a few wasted years died at sea. The other landed as a tramp one day in a Kentucky town and panhandled my father for the railroad fare back home and neither he nor the money has ever been seen since. Spoiled children—we call them. Yes, they were spoiled because their igno- rant prayers were answered affirmatively by over- indulgent parents who didn’t have sense enough to 76 SCIENCE AND PRAYER say, No. Now God has sense enough to say No. And that’s why some of our prayers are un- answered. He is too good a Father to let ig- norant children rule the house. The Book of James has more about unanswered prayer and the reasons for it than any other Book in the Bible, and this is one of the reasons he gives. He says that some people have not be- cause they ask not, and others have not because they ask amiss,—for the wrong thing. Just now we spoke of those who waited at the wrong door for their answer. Now we speak of those who ask for the wrong articles on the counter and father refuses to buy them. Suppose for a moment God answered all our shortsighted prayers. Here’s one man who prayed the Allies might win and another that the Ger- mans might. How can God answer both prayers? Here’s the farmer who prays for rain tomorrow and the autoist asks for fair weather. Here’s the seller who prays steel may go up tomorrow and the buyer prays it may go down. God must have some purpose at the heart of all this mass of events to which everything must be referred. God will accomplish His will and if your petition falls in line with that it will be answered; if not, it will be denied. Hence the wisdom of Augus- tine’s prayer, “O Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were my will; so that Thou mayest do my will as if it were Thy will.” Longfellow = ik ie a lt ee UNANSWERED PRAYER (i) in his table-talk was speaking of the folly of un- iversally answered prayer “What discord should we bring into the universe if all our prayers were answered? Then we should govern the world and not God. And do you think we should govern it better? It gives me only pain when I hear the long, wearisome petitions of men asking for they know not what. As frightened women clutch at the reins when there is no danger, so do we grasp at God’s government with our prayers. Thanks- giving with a full heart—and the rest silence and submission to the divine will!’ “I asked for bread; God gave a stone wstead; Yet while I pillowed there my aching head, The angels made a ladder of my dreams Which upward to celestial mountains led. And when I woke before the morning’s beams, Around my resting place the manna lay; And, praising God, I went upon my way, ) For I was fed. I asked for strength; for with the noontide heat I fainted, while the reapers, singing sweet, Went forward with rich sheaves I could not bear. Then came the Master, with His blood-stained feet, And lifted me with sympathetic care; Then on His arm I leaned till all was done, And I stood with the rest at set of sun, My task complete. 18 SCIENCE AND PRAYER I asked for light; around me closed the mght; Nor guiding stars met my bewildered sight; For storm clouds gathered in a tempest near, Yet in the lightning’s blazing, roaring flight I saw the way before me straight and clear. What though Hs leading pillar was on fire, And not the sunbeam of my heart’s desire? My path was bright. God answers prayer; sometimes when hearts are weak He gives the very gifts believers seek. But often faith must learn a deeper rest. And trust God’s silence when He does not speak; For He, whose Name is Love, will send the best. Stars may burn out, nor mountain walls endure, But God ts true, His promises are sure To those who seek.” III. Some Prayers Are Not Answered Because The Time is Not Ripe And We Are Too Impa- tient to Wait God’s Pleasure. Boys, on Hallowe’en, ring bells and run. A dig- nified southern clergyman noticing a little boy trying to ring a bell and forgetting that it was All Saints’ Eve, volunteered to ring the bell for him. After the bell was rung, the lad said, “Now run like the dickens.” Too many Christians do that—pull the bell of prayer and demand instant Nas na UNANSWERED PRAYER 19 service. God must drop all the other concerns of heaven to attend to their important wants. They want “‘service.”’ ‘They expect to touch a button and have Heaven do the rest—and do it instanter! Spurgeon discussed this point very clearly when he compared our prayers to ships. “It may be your prayer is like a ship which, when it goes on a very long voyage, does not come home laden so soon; but when it does come home it has a richer freight! Mere ‘coasters’ will bring you coals or such ordinary things, but they that go afar to Tarshish return with gold and ivory. Coasting prayers, such as we pray every day, bring us many necessaries; but there are great prayers which, like the old Spanish galleons, cross the ocean and are longer out of sight, but come home deep laden with a golden freight.” Surely this is a reasonable position. God has to wait for certain conditions to mature. ‘“There- fore will the Lord wait,” says the Psalmist, ‘‘that He may be gracious unto you.” He waits in order to make the blessing larger when it comes. We are like an impatient man I saw in a restau- rant in Cincinnati who was just about to leave the place in disgust when his order was brought. We should be somewhat like the farmer when he sows the seed. He prays nature to give him back an abundant harvest, and then he goes away and leaves his petition and waits. If he were to insist on an answer next day or next week, he 80 SCIENCE AND PRAYER would get nothing but the seed back; but, if he will wait, he will get his own with compound interest. Let us remember, as Dr. Fosdick reminds us, there are three answers to prayer—‘‘No,” ‘‘Yes” and “Wait.’’ Some insist there is only one and that is “Yes.” It is easy to believe in a system that always answers “Yes.” But “No” is just as real an answer as “Yes.” If I ask my friend for a gift and he says “No,” he has certainly answered me. But suppose God says “Wait.” God has to make some of us wait on a siding while His through trains go ahead and very fool- ish is the one who gives up the game when the signal says “Stop and wait.” “Wait, I say, on them Words): IV. Some Prayers Are Unanswered Because of Unforgiven Sins: Some people need a course in spiritual fumiga- tion before they are fit to approach God. That’s what St. James says. He gives this rule, “Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you,” and then he seems to stop and think a moment how unworthy sinners are to come near to God and so he adds ‘Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.” That's why the Catholics insist we must go through Pur- gatory—it’s a sort of dry cleaning establishment in which the spots of sin are wiped away. Well, UNANSWERED PRAYER 81 there is a great truth at the basis of all this and ~ that is, that sin unfits us to talk with God. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” So Isaiah told the people that sin shuts the door that leads into the Holy of Holies. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid His face from you.” Vasari tells us that Raphael used to wear a candle in a pasteboard cap so that while he was painting, his shadow would not fall upon his work. Is not this a reminder, a kind of parable of prayer? Many a man’s prayers are spoiled by his own shadow. There may be some pet sin in your life or mine which short-circuits our prayers so that they never get through to God’s throne. Sherwood Eddy on returning from one of his Indian trips told how the great Madras Y. M. C. A. Building was held up for months after the site was chosen, the plans drawn and the money pro- vided, because two shanty owners would not let go their hold on a little ground in the center of the plot. May there not be some unsightly shanty of sin in the foreground of our lives which is keeping God from proceeding with the building of character in us. Oh, how we hold on to our own property! I read of a man who visited a London doctor to consult him about his impaired vision. The doctor, after examination, said “If you do not give up such and such a practice, you 82 SCIENCE AND PRAYER will be blind in six months.” ‘The man hesitated a moment and turning to the window said, ‘“Then farewell, sweet light, I cannot give up my sin.” Oh, my friends, is there some unclean thing, some sin, some idol which we prefer to God? If so, we cannot expect Him to hear us. It’s like trouble on the telephone wire—if the wire is not clear and the connection good, you can’t hear your friend and he can’t hear you. And sin does just that thing,—it musses up the wire—it interferes with the connection. O Thou great Central of the Universe, give us a clean wire to Thee! V. Some Prayers Are Unanswered Because We Fail to Co-operate With God in His Endeavour to Get us to Help Him Answer Our Prayers: It is so convenient to throw the whole respon- sibility on God and to say, “Now I’ve turned the whole proposition over to the safety-vault of Prayer, it doesn’t concern me any more.” You remember the man in the missionary meeting who was so intent on singing the hymn he didn’t see the collection basket. He sang “Fly Abroad, Thou Mighty Gospel,” and the usher had to interrupt his prayer-hymn to say, ‘Faith, man, what will you give to help it fly?” That’s it—if you really mean the prayer, you can help God answer it. Wiser was the little girl who prayed that her brother’s trap might not catch any more little birds and then she went down and kicked the trap UNANSWERED PRAYER 83 to pieces. She was a co-operator with God, a member of His Union. There’s a tremendous lesson here for us all, I believe. Some Christians try to make prayer a substitute for work. Here’s a boy who asks his father to do his algebra for him. The boy wants to substitute prayer for work, but the wise father knows the son needs the intellectual discipline in- volved and he will say “No” to the petition. Some Christians have never risen above the school- boy stage. Look at that scene where the Israelites stood still with the Red Sea in front of them and the pursuing Egyptians behind. Moses goes apart to pray and the answer he receives is amazing; “Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the Children of Israel that they go forward.” That is to say—there is a time when prayer is an insult and co-operation with God’s providence is the order of the day. Thank God we can pray and work together—the two are not mutually exclusive. We can join the army of Nehemiah and make his slogan ours: “We made our prayer and we set a watch.” VI. Finally, Some Prayers Are Unanswered Because of Cur Doubt and Lack of Fath: The first time I visited the Pacific Coast a man showed me a wave-motor. He said that many at- tempts have been made to utilize the restless en- ergy of the sea, and to get its breaking waves to 84 SCIENCE AND PRAYER convert their energy into electric power. But he added that no success had been met with because the sea was so undependable. Now the tide was high and now low. The same wave that carries you in one moment will carry you out the next. So nothing much has ever been accomplished. Well, just bear that picture in mind as you turn to the first chapter of James and now read “Let him ask in faith, nothing doubting; for he that doubteth is like the surge of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord—a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” You see the aptness of the comparison. The doubter doesn’t know which way he is going—he is tempest tossed—doubt and faith, faith and doubt, ever fighting with each other for the victory. James says, “Don’t come to God until the bat- tle is over.” Don’t go to a physician until you are sure of his ability to cure. Don’t go to a lawyer until you have absolute confidence in his legal powers. Halfway measures get nowhere. Ques- tion marks do not make solid foundations. And so, dear friends, go through your soul on a hunt for the question marks and pull them out if you can. Don’t you remember how often Jesus would say to a man before He healed him, “Be- lievest thou that I am able to do this?” And when the man was able to reply ‘Yes, Lord,” the Master honoured his faith. UNANSWERED PRAYER 85 A poet tells of a company of pilgrims gathered by the sea who were bemoaning the losses their lives had known. One spoke of vanished wealth, another of lost opportunities, another of friends and family gone. “But when their tales were done, There stood among them one,— A stranger seeming from all sorrow free— ‘Sad loses ye have met, But mine are sadder yet, For the believing heart has gone from me, And they all turned to lim and said ‘Yes, thine are saddest yet For the believing heart has gone from thee.” VIL. WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? HE PSALMIST says “O Thou that hear- est prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.” This is an affirmation and a prophecy. It affirms that God hears prayer. It prophesies that all flesh shall come with their burdens and needs to this answering God. Now has this prophecy been fulfilled? If so, why—that’s our query to- day. Granted that away back in the primitive days of the Psalmist men came with their de- sires to their knees, why should we in the full light of the twentieth century pray? Let John Huss, the Reformer, as he stands at the opening of the fifteenth century answer. He gave eight reasons _ why people should pray. First, because God wants our prayers and praise and we should do this for His sake. Second, because we become more con- scious of our blessings by returning thanks for them. Third, because our zeal and devotion are heightened. Fourth, because prayer occupies the worshiper and keeps him from evil. Fifth, because prayer incites the worshiper to good deeds. Sixth, because prayer preserves the virtues of the pray- ing soul. Seventh, because he who prays for 86 WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 87 worthy things, obtains them. Eighth, because he who prays, sets others the example of prayer. These eight reasons apply as well to the twen- tieth century as to the fifteenth, though we shall not enumerate so many today. There are special reasons why we Christians should pray, but there are some general reasons why everybody should pray. A father brought his idiotic child to a profes- sor in the Maryland College of Pharmacy to pro- nounce his opinion of its sanity. The doctor asked, “Has the child any idea of the value of money?” The father answered “No.” The physician then asked, “Does the child show any inclination to pray?’ and the father answered “No.” Then said the doctor “You may be sure of the child’s idiocy.” Turning to his class the professor said, “Gentlemen, I asked that latter question because it is as natural for the soul to go out to God as to breathe. If you don’t care for prayer, some- thing is wrong.” Granting then the universal ap- peal of prayer, we come to try to answer the ques- tion ‘““Why should we pray?” I answer I. Because Instinctiwely We Can't Help It: Where does prayer come from anyhow? What room in the soul contains it till it bursts forth? Why does everybody feel the impulse to pray at some time or other? Apparently prayer originates in the feeling of desire (so the Asiatic words all 88 SCIENCE AND PRAYHR indicate). A sense of need or longing pushes prayer like a projectile on its way to the throne of grace. Man is a bundle of desires, as the prov- erb says. The desire for more than we enjoy seems part of our-being. Now, the great religions of the Orient say that the goal of existence is the total extinction of desire and even Stoic philosophy said that the regulation of desire should be the aim of life. But Christianity, on the other hand, insists that we should find in Christ the outlet for our longing desires. We pray then along the ave- nues of our discontent and through the alchemy of God’s grace the common desire-life of human- ity may be transmuted into the prayer-life of ar- dent sons of God. The reason why instinctively we find prayer so natural is that our desires sur- mount our possessions, our liabilities always sur- pass our assets. This was why Carlyle said, “Prayer is and remains the native and deepest im- pulse of the soul of man.” Let us look then for a moment at this idea of the naturalness of prayer. Somebody asked Samuel Johnson what was the strongest argument for prayer and he answered, “Sir, there is no argument for prayer.” Now what did he mean? He meant that prayer goes deeper than all argu- ment. Arguments only go as deep as the brain, but prayer goes as deep as the soul. Instinct is much more fundamental than reason and the best argument for prayer is prayer. WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 89 Do you remember Solomon’s prayer at the ded- ication of the temple? He assumes that any stranger or foreigner coming from anywhere on earth is likely to be a praying man. Prof. James of Harvard said, ‘We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of prayer; and many reasons are given why we should not pray while others are given why we should pray. But in all this very little is said of the reason why we do pray. The reason why we do pray is sim- ply that we cannot help praying.” Let’s take a little spin for a moment around the globe and note that we can’t lose prayer wherever we may roam. One long ago Greek afternoon Socrates fled the city heat to sit beside a cool fountain underneath a plane-tree beyond the city walls. After the heat of the day was over, Phaedrus proposed that they return within the gates. Socrates said “Ought not you and I to pray before we leave?” And there in that beautiful Attic scene, Socrates prayed thus: “O thou Author of nature, well-be- loved, grant that I may be beautiful in the inner man!” No wonder Erasmus said ‘“Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis.” Socrates prayed, we discover. ! | Come now to the harbor of Athens on another historic day, the day of the sailing of the Sicilian expedition. Thucydides tells that when all was ready for departure, silence was proclaimed by 90 SCIENCE AND PRAYER the sound of the trumpet and all with one voice before setting sail, offered up the customary prayers; these were recited not in each ship sep- arately but by a single herald, the whole fleet ac- companying him. The citizens and onlookers from the beach also joined in the prayer and when the libations were completed, the crews put to sea. So even the artistic and philosophic Greeks prayed. Some years ago, there were presented to the New York Public Library, two cylinders inscribed with the royal records of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, said to be the most cruel king in all history. A goodly part of the inscriptions con- sists of three prayers to three of his favourite dei- ties. This oppressor, who was so wicked that tradition says the gods changed him into a calf for seven years, felt the impulse to pray,—hea- then, benighted prayers to be sure—but they show the outflow of the impulse to pray deep in the heart of man. : The Japanese know how to pray too, and some years ago at the time of the Russo-Japanese War the daily papers contained in every issue paragraphs of Shinto prayers. I have read some of these Shinto prayers and they seem to be charged with as deep feeling as our Christian prayers. One recalls Paul’s words, “Whom therefore ye igno- rantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” Then too there are Buddhist prayers. Why, you say, surely there is no place for prayer in Buddhism. WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 91 Logically, of course not; and yet to meet this craving of the soul, certain formulae have been composed and are heard at every Buddhist shrine. Many times the question has been put to wor- shipers on the platform of the great Shue Dagon pagoda, “Are you praying to Gautama, or to the pagoda?” The answer always is “I am praying to no one.” “Then what are you praying for?” “For nothing, but I hope in some way, I know not how, to get benefit.” The devout Buddhist has a prayer to accompany every act of the day, from the folding up of his quilts in the morning to the two short prayers at bedtime. The Mos- lem is famous for the frequency, if not fervency, of his petitions, for five times during the day he must face Mecca and pray—first the liturgical and then the personal prayer. Even Comte, the philosopher who utterly banishes God, soul and immortality from his creed, prescribed for his disciples two hours of prayer daily because he recognized the act itself as one of the elemental functions of human nature. This brief survey indicates the truth of our propo- sition that human nature can’t help praying. Henry Ward Beecher summed it up well when he said “I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of the bottle. There is an inward fermentation and there must be a vent.” “O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come.” 92 SCIENCE AND PRAYER II. We Should Pray Because Christ Prayed: Jesus is the Christian’s model man. Whatever He did we should do. Some one described Jesus in this way: ‘He came marching out of eternity a great praying soul.” Surely, if He came into Time with the dew of prayer upon Him, it looks as though we pilgrims to the Brighter Land need the rest-house of prayer frequently as a stopping- place in our pilgrimage. This is an argument which applies only to Christians, as you can see, but for us it is a commanding one. If we are to model our lives after His, then every act becomes law for us. We are like the little boy in school trying painfully to copy the handwriting at the top of the page. However poorly we follow Him, yet surely we ought to enroll as scholars in His school of prayer and learn His lesson of compan- ionship with the Father as best we can. As D. L. Moody said once: “Jesus never taught His dis- ciples how to preach, but He did teach them how to pray.”” When you stop to think of it, Jesus never taught His followers how to run churches or raise money or do a hundred other things, but He did teach them to pray. He never left on rec- ord a model sermon or a model burial or wedding service or a model anthem or hymn, but He did go out of His usual way to leave them a model prayer. That is very significant, as it shows how important He thought prayer was. WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 93 But some people do not follow us here: they say that if God is Wisdom and Love, He knows all about our needs before we ask Him and it is presumptuous and useless for us to bother Him with our needs. They are somewhat like the Russian sect of “Non-Prayers’’ who insist that God can be worshiped only in spirit and who re- ject all forms of spoken prayer. But in this they are going beyond Jesus, for curiously enough the very argument that the twentieth century uses against prayer was Christ’s strongest argument for prayer. He said “Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before you ask Him.” But just because of God’s understand- ing of our situation Jesus told us to pray in con- fidence of being heard. You can’t change God’s purpose but you can release it. Through prayer you can give God an opportunity to do what He wants to get done in the world. Til. We Should Pray Because the Bible Com- mands It: The Bible is a Book of open windows. Some years ago a physician in the south was struck with the fact, as he toured many miles through coun- try districts, that he rarely saw an open window in the school-houses which he passed; yet in those school rooms scores of children were breathing vitiated air and thus lowering their vitality. This matter of ventilation is so important that our 94 SCIENCE AND PRAYER laws are now insisting upon it for the health of the race. Very well, the Bible insists on the open window of prayer in the same way. It is said ‘of Daniel that he prayed three times every day with his windews open toward Jerusalem. The prayerless life is a suffocated life. It is only by opening the windows of our soul to the ozone of heaven that we shall kill the poisonous infections of earth. Now when you turn to the Bible you find that the Jew has taught the world to pray—not only the great Jew whom we call Lord, but the Jew as a race. From first to last the Bible proposes prayer as its medicine for a sick world. What was the Bible conception of prayer? Even a cas- ual reading of its prayers will answer that. Prayer was a turning of the heart to God. Jeremiah told the people they had turned their back and not their face to God. He said “In the time of your need you'll turn around quick enough, but God will tell you to let your idols save you. He doesn’t care for over-the-shoulder prayers.” Prayer was just the natural talking together of the soul and God and so you find that Hebrew prayer was mostly extempore. Outside of the Psalms which were used liturgically the people were free to choose their words. When two friends meet to commune together they do not use the conventional language of formal discourse and so with prayer. It depends on your acquaintance WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 95 with God how informal you can afford to be. I call my friend by his first name, but strangers do not. The Talmud shows how the Hebrew baptised his whole day with prayer. On waking, he uttered one thanksgiving. While he washed, while he dressed, when he put on his shoes, when he adjusted his belt, when he put on his hat—all these simple acts were attuned to prayer. The sight of the sky at night, of the opening buds of spring, of an earthquake or hurricane—all the phases of nature were opportunities for corre- spondence with heaven. Hence, when the Bible tells us to pray without ceasing, it is not to be dis- missed as a mere figure of speech, but is to be taken literally in the sense that we are to have souls with open windows, ventilated spirits if you please, ready to receive any breezes that may blow from Heaven-Land and ready to broadcast our soul-throbs up to God without delay. “My God, is any hour so sweet From blush of morn to evening star— As that which calls me to Thy feet, The hour of ‘prayer? — No words can tell what sweet relief There for my every want I find; What strength for warfare, balm for grief, What peace of mind!” 96 SCIENCE AND PRAYER IV. We Should Pray Because the Practice of Prayer is the Only Way to Realise its Blessings: Experience is the great teacher after all. I might lecture to a thirsty man for an hour on the blessings of water, but the only way he will really know them is to drink. I might seek to tell a man what love is like but the only way to know love is to love. So it is with prayer. The best argument for prayer is prayer. Try it and see, is our advice. ‘Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord.” There can be no fairer test than that. A satisfied customer is the best advertisement, for prayer as well as for earth’s business. Gladstone found it so, according to John Mor- ley. When Morley’s biography of Gladstone was opened it proved to contain some of the intimate secrets of the great leader’s life. One was an entry in his Journal as follows: “Spoke thirty to thirty-five minutes on the University Bill with more ease than I hoped, having been more mind- ful of the divine aid.”” Then he adds the words, “Hidden manna!’ You would have had pretty hard work to convince Gladstone that he was not being fed by hidden manna. A hungry man knows when he is being fed—but here again the thing that strengthened Gladstone’s belief in prayer was not argument, but experience. When that young Yale man was dying in Den- ver his father did everything money could do to WHY SHOULD WE PRAY? 97 save him. He sent for a specialist to come on a special train from Chicago to attend him. One day he went into his boy’s room and said “Son, is there anything more I can do for you? I will do anything that money can do.” (But there are a few things money can’t do.) The boy said “Father, pray for me.” The father walked to the window and bit his lips till the blood ran, but he couldn’t pray. Four days later as he was re- turning from the grave of that boy he said “I would give all I have if I could call that boy back from the grave and pray for him as requested.” He was poorer than you and I are, for he could- n't pray and we can. May God give us grace to pray before the funeral day comes. “A little talk with Jesus, how it smooths the rugged road! It seems to help me onward when fainting ’neath my load; When worn with care and sorrow, my eyes with tears are dim, There is nothing gives me comfort lke a little talk with Him.” VIII WHAT ARE SOME OF THE HINDRANCES TO SUCCESSFUL PRAYER? TOOK a walk through the Dead-Letter Of- fice. It looked like a cemetery. It’s too bad to think of all these epistles never reaching their goal. Here, what’s the matter with this one? Oh, it had no postage and of course even our great government can’t carry letters free. Well, what’s the trouble with this second one? Oh, it was misdirected—there is no such address and after vainly trying several we gave up in despair. Our carriers do not have time to be Pinkerton detectives. Here’s a third—what’s the trouble with it? Well, the handwriting is illeg- ible—read it yourself—can you make out what that is? Neither can we. The writer deserved to have his letter lost who is so careless as that. Well, here’s a fourth—what’s the disease that killed it? Why, it contained such foul matter we couldn’t transport it—its illness was contagious and we feared it might corrupt other clean mail. And so I went to one desk after another in this great cemetery of dead letters and I said to my- self, “Every one of these letters is a prayer—it is 98 UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 99 a request to the government to carry the envelope somewhere and not one of the petitions has been an- swered”’ and then I thought of the words of James, “Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss.” Then I took another walk—this time through the Dead-Prayer office. And that was a sadder cemetery still. For there I saw countless peti- tions piled up as so much refuse. Some of them looked like they had never gotten any higher than the ceiling—they didn’t look like aviators—they had no aroma of heaven about them—their wings were clipped—something was wrong. I took them up one by one as I did the letters and thought I would tell you the reason for their having died. That resolve is my message today. I. We Do Not Give Enough Time to Prayer: I’d hate for somebody to punch the time-clock on us when we go into the prayer-room and when we come out from it,—wouldn’t you? Suppose . we took a census and honestly asked for an esti- mate of the amount of time per day we spend in prayer. Suppose we averaged it up. Do you know what I prophesy? That the average would not be much above five minutes. The ordinary Chris- tian is so busy with things on earth that he doesn’t _ take enough time to look up, unless there is an eclipse of the sun and then he finds time to quit looking at Broadway and glance at the Milky Way for a change. 100 SCIENCE AND PRAYER How many of us would treat our most casual acquaintance the way we treat God? It reminds us of the man who saw Voltaire uncover his head at a religious procession in France. The friend said, “Have you and God made up? Are you on speaking terms?’ And Voltaire replied, “We salute, but we do not speak.” Just a hasty salute, a pious gesture is all our prayer is often. Dr. South reminds us that nobody but a fool would rush carelessly into the presence of a great man and how big a fool is he who dashes directly into the throne-room of God without going through the anteroom of silence and preparation. You know what would happen to a man who dashed wildly past all the guards into the office of the King of England or the President of the United States of America. But we treat the King of Kings with as scant courtesy as that. You would think we would be decently polite to God even if we are in a hurry with the awfully important engagements of earth. Some Christians ought to take a course in good manners. Do you know some of our great church gatherings and conven- tions actually put the devotions at the most im- possible hour of the day, apparently on the prin- ciple that God ought to be glad to get any of the time of such an important group of men as that. Anything will do for Him. Even in our own Assemblies we for years have had scanty attend- ance at prayers because they come at the early UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 101 hour. But now we are wiser grown and stop in the middle of the day for the blessing of the Eternal. ! Open for a moment the Book of Great Saints and see how these men and women took time for an office-hour appointment with God. Horace Bushnell writes on one of the shining pages “I fell into the habit of talking with God on every occasion. I talk myself asleep at night and open the morning talking with Him.” Sir Thomas Browne, the famous physician, has another illu- minated word: He resolved so to pray both on the highway and in the home that there would be no street or passage in the city where he lived that could speak out and say it had never heard him pray. He sowed the seeds of prayer along all its highways and byways and a great fruitage of spiritual power was the result. Brother Lawrence is another of the immortals, and he decided that by continually carrying on conversation with God he could bring himself to realize in a spiritual manner God’s presence in any place he might be. John Wesley would be expected to be methodical in his prayer-life as in other things. Scores of his diaries have been preserved, and on the first page of each one is found the vow that with God’s help he will devote an hour morning and evening to private prayer and that he will talk face to face with God with no lightness or facetiousness. 102 SCIENCE AND PRAYER “There is a viewless, cloistered room As high as heaven, as fair as day, Where, though my feet may join the throng, My soul can enter in and pray. One harkening, even, cannot know When I have crossed the threshold o’er; For He alone, who hears my prayer, Has heard the shutting of the door.” Of course one secret of getting more time for prayer is in having a definite season of the day or night for devotion. The morning-watch is being emphasised by many of our young people’s socie- ties, before business crowds in on the affairs of the day. This hour may best suit some, another may suit others. Dr. F. B. Meyer tells of a godly man of his acquaintance who, no longer able to exercise the ministerial office, devoted his life to the high and noble work of intercession. From breakfast till his midday meal and again from six to ten p.m. he was accustomed to bear up before God his brethren in the ministry, missionaries and other Christian workers. As he prayed the area of his prayers widened and the power of his prayers increased. It looks as though it takes all three dimensions to measure the reaches of prayer, for it is as wide as human need, as high as the eternal God and as deep as the lowest reaches of man’s sin. Prayer then is to be computed in cubic measure and when we speak of time for UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 103 prayer, it is not a mere matter of length we think of, but also breadth and depth. Some people’s prayers are long but that’s all you can say for them—they never get very high and they never reach very far. However, length is one possible dimension of acceptable prayer and that is not to be forgotten. Il. We Do Not Gwe Enough Thought to Prayer: Bishop Whipple of Minnesota tells of one of his clergy who was called to comfort a dying girl. The house in which she lay was kept by an “in- carnate devil” who was much offended that he should pray there. The woman finally met him at the door with a knife saying he was not to pray in that house again. He had in his hand a stout walking-stick and turned to her and said, “Madam, I came here to commend this dying girl to Jesus Christ. I can pray with my eyes open. I shall now pray and if you stir one step while I am praying I will break your head with this stick.” Thus he prayed with open eyes. More Christians should do so. The thing to be commended for our purpose today is not the weapon but the vision. Too many Christians are slovenly in prayer. They are actually so careless and thoughtless they almost yawn in the presence of God. Their minds go wool-gathering. They fail to concen- 104 SCIENCE AND PRAYER trate their thoughts. When the Scripture says, “Watch and pray,’ I wonder if it doesn’t mean, watch what you're saying—pray with your mind’s eye open to the needs you are presenting. Chester- ton has pointed out the difference between the Buddhist saint and the Christian saint. The former is represented with a sleek, comfortable body, closed eyes, lost in meditation; while the latter has his eyes open looking bravely at the world’s burdens and needs. It is a valid distinc- tion. Intelligent prayer demands thought. Benjamin Jowett, the great Master of Balliol, had the same experience that all of us have, in the difficulty he experienced of keeping his mind on his work when he went to prayer. He bemoaned his wayward mind, for when he read a great work of fiction he could hardly take his mind from it; but when he went to prayer he said he could hardly keep his mind on it for two consecutive minutes at a time. Haven’t you heard people praying who were lost? They didn’ t know where they were going—in fact they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, only running around in a circle. The three rules for a good speech apply also to prayer: first, have something to say; second, say it; third, quit. Philip Sidney was advised by his father, when he went away to school, never to neglect “thoughtful prayer.” It was golden ad- vice, especially the adjective. Sidney followed it and he was the man for whom months after his UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 105 death, every gentleman in England was mourning. Thoughtful prayer requires thought. Some people go into God’s presence and just turn on their mouths and let them ramble along—what an in- sult to Infinite Intelligence—treating the Almighty with less respect than you would the ice-man! You have no right to waste anybody’s time, much less God’s, unless you have something to say. D. L. Moody once said that most of the great prayers of the Bible were short prayers, but they were packed full of meat. Why, he said, when Peter found himself sinking on the water and was about to cry “Lord, save me,” if he had put as long a preamble into his devotions as many do nowadays, he would have been forty feet under water before he got to the petition for rescue. I can just imag- ine the sinking disciple gurgling “Lord, this will be continued in our next—I haven’t got to what I wanted to say yet.’”’ Poor Peter—brevity is the soul of prayer sometimes. Wiser was the young Scotchman who rushed into a Highland vestry, his reason gone, and said “Let us pray; O Lord, give us power, give us point, give us brevity. Amen.” He wasn’t as insane in that prayer as one might suppose. God alone can give us power, but we alone can give point and brevity to our prayers. Rowland Hill said he liked short, ejac- ulatory prayers because they reached heaven be- fore the devil could get a shot at them. L106 SCIENCE AND PRAYER A collection of the thoughtless and inane prayers of Christians would surprise you. You would not believe that people would take so literally the in- junction “Take no thought what ye shall speak.” If you are going to meet some earthly dignitary, you ponder in advance what you shall say when you are introduced to him. But how few of us plan our prayers in advance! We make a list be- fore we call up the grocer or the druggist; how absurd it would be to telephone such a place and say “O no, I have no special food or drug in mind—yjust anything you have on the shelves.” The “Christian World” once made a collection of some of these rambling inane prayers that waste God’s patience and time. One of them told how a man reminded the Lord that ‘Thy servant of old said, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian ;’ and another quoted this same over- worked individual “Thy servant of old” as saying “Oh, to be nothing, nothing!” A workhouse Chaplain prayed that his hearers might not trust in uncertain riches and a prison Chaplain that God would conduct the worshipers in safety to their several places of abode. One old man of eighty on crutches always used to pray at prayer meet- ing that the Lord would keep him from running with the giddy multitude to do evil. One man prayed with great feeling. “O Lord, we praise Thee, we are Thine—we feel that we are Thine— we know that we are Thine. Lord, make us UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 107 Thine.” A cautious Scotch elder who had dined at his minister’s home was returning thanks after the meal for the various blessings. He concluded by invoking blessings on the pastor’s wife who had always upheld his hands in every good work— “at least,’ he added carefully, “as far as we know.” Father Taylor, of the Seaman’s Bethel, was a direct man in prayer who talked with the Lord sensibly; but once on the day before the State elections he seemed to think it necessary to use grandiloquent language. He asked that a man might be chosen who would rule in the fear of God, never fearing the face of clay, defeating cor- ruption and wire-pullers and so on; when sud- denly he paused and exclaimed “O Lord, what's the use of boxing the compass in this way? Give us George N. Briggs for governor. Amen!” Well, you say, what suggestion have you to give for this trouble of what we might call “joy- riding in prayer?” Simply this: “the prepara- tion of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” With God’s help let us prepare for prayer. The Missionary Calendars of Prayer have this very thing in mind—intelli- gent petition, and so they suggest to us the differ- ent workers at home and abroad who may be re- ‘membered each day. Anyone can make his own prayer list and thus increase wonderfully his feel- ing of reality in prayer. The Director of the Africa Inland Mission prays daily by name for 108 SCIENCE AND PRAYER every one of the fifty missionaries on his field and so with some of the workers of the China Inland Mission. Mr. Frost calls it the “stage of speci- fication”? in intercessory prayer and it is a mile- stone too few of us have reached. Paul was that kind of an intercessor, as he wrote both to the Roman and Ephesian Churches that he could call God to witness how unceasingly he mentioned them in his prayers. God give us more such pas- tors and such pray-ers as that! Ill. We Do Not Give Enough Trust to Prayer: There is a very significant incident recorded in the first chapter of Acts in which it looks as though the early church made a great mistake. The question was, to find a successor to Judas Iscariot, to take his place among the apostles. Now listen to their prayer—they chose two men, Joseph and Matthias and then said, “Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two Thou hast chosen.”” They picked out two men and limited God’s choice to one of the two. But suppose God wanted to vote for a third man who was neither the one nor the other of these two. As a matter of fact I believe God’s choice for the vacant place was Saul, who be- came thunderstruck into Paul. Do you ever hear of Joseph or Matthias again? Were they not colorless men? ‘They were stationary engines UNSUCCESSFUL PRAYER 109 when God wanted a Mogul for the place. But you see the apostles first tied God’s hands and then asked Him to pick out a man. Now, brethren, let us give God some credit of confidence. When Charles Kingsley was asked to pray for fair weather, he refused because he said it might be that God’s will was rain. God cannot get His will done through us if we are going to insist that His answer come marching down boulevards which we have chosen. We cannot dictate at which floor His elevator of blessing shall stop. Maybe He wants to come by the elevated while we suggest the subway or surfaceway. In- stead of tying His hands why not hold His hands and let Him do what He wills with ours? Henry Drummond tells of a little girl, who, when crossing the ocean, dropped her doll over the side of the ship. She had seen the captain stop the ship to rescue a man who had fallen over- board, so she went to him and asked him to stop the ship that she might recover her doll. When he refused her request she thought him cruel, but when the vessel reached the harbour, the first thing the captain did was to buy the little girl the most beautiful doll in the city. He refused her spe- cific request, but he gave her something better than was asked. She did not tie the captain’s hands, but he filled hers! Why don’t we get more out of prayer—that has been our query and we have tried to answer 110 SCIENCE AND PRAYER that we need more time, more thought, more trust. Perhaps we might sum it all by saying that we need to be converted from the active to the pas- sive voice. The prodigal son passed through the revolution and you will notice that his prayer changed from “give me” to “make me.” At first it was “give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me’ and at last it was “make me as one of thy hired servants.” When we graduate from the “give me” class and into the “make me” class, then God can do more with us and through us. Let’s all go back to school and let God work with us until He has gotten us out of the beggars’ class and into the builders’ class—till we all come to graduation day—‘‘to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” IX. WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER? the Catholic Church in France is the “conference.” This is a debate between two of the most learned priests in the great Church of the Madaleine, one taking the side of the believer and the other the part of the heretic. It is said that the great church is packed to listen to these discussions and that the “heretic” priest takes his part with great fidelity. At one such dis- cussion in his student days, Joseph Ernest Renan, who later became the famous French infidel, but who was at that time a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood, insisted so strongly on the opposite side that the professor angrily closed the debate, telling Renan that he relied on reason alone and that it would make him a great heretic. The Book of Job is built along the lines of such a conference. This dramatic poem, oldest of the Bible books, attempts to debate the question why the godly suffer. The book is a series of argu- ments between contending parties. First, there are Job and his wife in discussion; then Job and O)*:: of the most interesting features of 1 | 112 SCIENCE AND PRAYER his three friends; then Job and Elihu; and finally Job and Jehovah. The main portion of the book is occupied with the debate between Job and his three friends. At one point in the argument Job is replying to Zophar. Zophar has suggested that Job is afflicted because he is a secret sinner. Job replies that the prosperity of the wicked refutes that view. They sin both secretly and openly and yet they succeed. On that basis, if he were a secret sinner, he would be prospered instead of cursed with misfortunes. Says Job, “The wicked are greatly blessed. Everything they touch turns to gold. So they say to God, ‘Why should we bother with you? We don’t need God. What profit should we have if we pray unto Him?” I take this as a challenge, today, from the op- posing side. They have reasons for their opposi- tion to prayer. As far as I have followed their arguments they all seem to be reduced to three: — first, prayer is powerless if law rules—it can’t ac- complish anything; second, prayer is useless if God is omniscient for He knows what we are going to say beforehand; third, prayer is imper- tinent if God is good; for He knows what is best for us and will perform all His gracious will. Let us look at these three objections in turn. I. Prayer is Powerless if Law Rules the W orld: Let us go and sit under the pulpit of the here- OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 113 tic or doubter for a moment and listen to him: “Let me read from Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam: ‘O mother—praying God will save Thy sailor—while thy head 1s bowed, His heavy-shotted hammock-shroud Drops in his vast and wandering grave.’ “See the helplessness of that mother’s prayer. O the irony of it! Her sailor boy died from nat- ural causes and God was powerless to interfere. God is like a benevolent old gentleman kindly dis- posed and all that, trying to stop the machinery of a world whose engine drives with the regularity of aclock. What can He do? Nothing but wave His hands in dumb despair. “But let them go on praying, for it helps them to feel that they are talking to somebody or some- thing. It’s a helpful soliloquy—the reflex action is beneficial. It’s mere dumb-bell exercise, as some one has said. When a man lifts dumb-bells, he doesn’t expect to strike anybody but just to strengthen his own muscle and so it is with prayer. They are like the Pharisee who stood and prayed with himself. They are like a man who talks into a telephone receiver, failing to get Central but comforted by hearing himself talk and vainly imagining that somebody else is hearing him.” Well, we know the familiar argument. It is simply the deification of law. Nature follows the 114 SCIENCE AND PRAYER tracks laid down, the iron tracks of convention and custom and no switchman can turn the train to the right or to the left. And yet that’s exactly what does happen. When you ride on the train you see it. The force of the engine, the law of force will pull the train straight ahead, mile after mile, but personality, in the shape of a brakeman, opens the switch to the right and personality in the shape of the engineer, slows down the speed —and the first thing you know the great caravan has responded to the prayer of the train dispatcher who has begged the engine and train to wait on a siding until another train has passed by. Men have taken the great power of steam and co- operated with it and conquered it and made it do their will. So they make Niagara light the streets and run the cars of Buffalo. So they have made submarines and airplanes and telephones and radio possible. Every invention and convenience that we use in civilized life is man’s victory over nature. My house is on a hill and yet in the highest part of that house I turn on a faucet and lo, water runs up hill right into my room, to wash my hands. Our forefathers would have called that a miracle —but it isn’t—it is simply man’s combination of contradictory forces, to make nature do what she herself would never do. Now the twentieth century demands a big God. The Christian comes forward and says, “I present my God. He is big enough for today.” If OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 115 our God is a Person, He can surely do on a large scale with nature’s forces what you and I can do on a limited scale. A plant is a miracle to a stone, for the plant can grow and the stone cannot. A dog is a miracle to a plant, for the dog can walk and the plant can’t. A boy is a miracle to a dog, for the boy can speak and the dog can’t. A man’s a miracle to a boy, for the man can do many things the boy can’t. And Christ is a miracle to a man, for Christ in God can do so many things the man can’t. And yet, why should we imagine that the ladder stops when it reaches man? It’s our con- ceit which imagines we are at the top of the ladder. It’s our conceit which imagines we know all the laws that are to be known. Why, we are discover- ing new ones almost every day and they shame our ignorance. Why may it not be that there are angels and principalities and powers stretching on between us and God? Why may there not be higher laws known and used by God which make it possible for Him to answer prayer, just as there are higher laws known by us today than our fore- fathers knew? Many a telegram is a prayer and we can answer prayers today in a way which our grandparents could never attempt. What most doubters need is a larger conception of God. I would commend to all such the reading of Bishop Samuel Foss’ poem on the two boys. 116 SCIENCE AND PRAYER “A boy was born ’mid little things, Between a little world and sky, And dreamed not of the cosmic rings Round which the circling planets fly. He lived in hittle works and thoughts, Where little ventures grow and plod, And paced and plowed Ins little plots, And prayed unto Mis little God. But as the mighty system grew, His faith grew faint with many scars; The cosmos widened in his view, But God was lost among his stars. Another boy, in lowly days, As he, to little things was born, But gathered lore in woodland ways, And from the glory of the morn. As wider skies broke on his view, God greatened in his growing mind; Each year he dreamed his God anew, And left his older God behind. He saw the boundless scheme dilate, In star and blossoms, sky and clod; And, as the universe grew great, He dreamed for it a greater God.” II. Prayer Is Useless If God Is Ommscient: This is a very superficial objection when you come to analyze it. The objector says something like this: According to your view God knows all - se OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 117 things. Very well then, He is acquainted with the thoughts of men. He knows the desires and in- tentions of your heart. He knows just what you are going to say and hence your confession or peti- tion to Him is just so much wasted time. It isn’t wasted time to tell the grocer what to send you for he can’t know beforehand what you want, but it is different with God. Why then pray? Well, let us answer this question by raising an- other: Is the imparting of information the main requisite in dealings between friends? You go to see your friend tomorrow evening. He has been reading the afternoon paper as well as you have. You do not go to him as a vender of news or a lecturer on topics of the day, but just to commune with him as a friend. You get a love letter, let us say. Does it contain any news? No, just the old, old story. You know he loves you— why, he has told you so a thousand times; and yet people do not cease to write love letters simply because they do not contain forecasts of the weather. No, there are many other things to prayer beside information. There is communion which is as much desired by our great Friend as it is by our human friends. Curiously enough, Jesus Himself used this very argument, namely, God’s omniscience, as a plea for prayer rather than an argument against it. He says, “Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him. There- 118 SCIENCE AND PRAYER fore be not as the heathen are who use vain repe- titions and think they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not like unto them, but after this manner pray ye, ‘Our Father, etc.’”’ The Master evidently saw no conflict between God’s omnis- cience and our prayer. The solution of the diffi- culty is that prayer is a two-sided performance. Of course God’s side is all right. He knows all about us, but our side needs the tonic of prayer to get us in shape to receive the things he has given us. For infinite wisdom and love cannot do much for a human life that has shut its doors against their blessed ministry. When you turn to the Bible you find that there are forty-nine special prayers in the Old Testament and fourteen in the New, making sixty-three altogether. Now these are not sixty-three pieces of information, sixty- three bits of news; but sixty-three open doors though which God could look into the souls of men _and help them with their problems. Read the life of Thomas Aquinas, turning now from sacred to secular history. Aquinas is usually thought of as a philosophical theologian and I fancy he had as logical a mind as some of the modern objectors to prayer. And yet his belief in God’s all-seeing eye did not keep him from the throne of grace. One who described him in his pulpit just before one of his sermons which seemed to sweep the University of Paris toward the king- dom of God said: ‘Men did not know as he stood OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER TAL9 there with the striking eloquence of ease, that in the dark night, amidst the shadows of the church, he had wept his heart out, prostrate before the altar. They were not aware of the fact, but they were impressed by its effect.’ One who knew Aquinas well said after his death that he had been forbidden to tell much that he knew of him, but this he could tell—that no human talent, but prayer, was the secret of his great success. Similar is the case with Bernard of Clairvaux, another of the great preachers and thinkers of the Church. He preached one day in Paris and his sermon was a sheer failure, but he spent all night in prayer and the next day he preached with such power that many were converted. He wrote to a young abbot regarding the secret of success in preaching and he said, “These three abide; the word, example and prayer and the greatest of these _ is prayer.” Now when such men as this are so tremendously helped by prayer—certainly nobody could accuse them of deficiency of intellect—it shows that prayer must accomplish something besides informing God. What prayer accomplishes is not the information of God but the transformation of men. “Prayer changes things” we say—it doesn’t change God, ‘but it changes men. One of the brightest girls in this city, a poetess, an authoress of a book on nervous diseases and withal almost an invalid, asked me the other day in her sickroom what she could 120 SCIENCE AND PRAYER accomplish for us in prayer. I named her some of the needs of the Church. I love to think of her lying there in her sickbed and yet lifting us in the arms of prayer to the throne of power. Ill. Prayer Is Impertinent If God Is Good: Let us review the argument thus far. The first objection is—God can’t help Himself. He is hemmed in by laws of nature. Yes, but we answer, God can answer prayer, for He is bigger than nature. Well, then, they ask a second question: Suppose God can help us but doesn’t know what to do! Yes, we answer, He knows all things. Well, then, a third query, Maybe God can help us and knows what to do but won’t do it because He is mean. Oh, but we say, God is infinite Goodness. Then, replies the objector, prayer is an imperti- nence if God is good; for He will do better for us than we can ask Him to. Rousseau took this attitude to prayer. He said, “I bless God but I do not pray. Why should I ask of Him that He would change for me the course of things? I who ought to love above all the order established by His wisdom and main- tained by His Providence, shall I wish that order to be dissolved on my account?” Well, this ob- jection sounds very pious. The man seems to say that he shrinks from prayer because it is imperti- nent for human ignorance to instruct divine wis- dom and to tell perfect Love what to do. And yet OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER 121 Jesus did not refrain from prayer for this reason but again He used it as a plea for prayer. You remember His analogy. Speaking to the parents before Him He said, “If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children (pre- sumably because they have asked for them), how much more shall your Father give good things’— does this sentence stop there? No. “Give good things to them that ask Him.” | Goodness cannot give to those who won’t re- ceive and prayer puts us in a receptive mood. I know a father who would have given his son the finest education Europe could have afforded, but the boy wouldn’t take it. The father was good and wise. If the boy had prayed for an education, that father would have been the happiest man in the world. So God can’t force things on us unless we are in a receptive mood. Giving and re- ceiving is not a mechanical performance. If we were things, God could unlock our soul and shove in anything He wanted; but as we are persons with wills like His, He must wait on our co-oper- ation and there comes in prayer. Let us take one illustration: The goodness of God is seen, among other things, in the provision He has made for our physical health. When bacteria gain entrance to the blood, they are assailed by the white corpuscles and are eaten up by the corpuscles called the leucocytes which first envelop the germs and then digest them. Millions of these 122 SCIENCE AND PRAYER leucocytes concentrate in this infected area and engage in hand to hand fight with the bacteria. Perhaps no battle in history compares with the struggle between the bacteria and leucocytes in an ordinary boil. Here is a case of the automatic goodness of God. We don’t need to tell Him to start this fight. Nature starts it automatically. Well then, since it would be impertinent for us to tell God what to do, shall we let the battle proceed without prayer? He’s handling the situation— we should worry! But here comes the psycholo- gist and the physiologist to assure us that we can greatly help on the victory of health over disease by a prayerful attitude on our part. By prayer we can open up the clogged channels of our souls so that even the physical body will respond to the pressure of the divine. Prayer, then, is co-opera- tion with the Infinite Goodness instead of in- difference to it. You remember George Eliot represents Stradivarius, the skilful maker of violins, as saying that God couldn’t get along with- out him in the violin business, for while God gave men musical skill, he gave them violins on which to exercise that skill. And we too are just as necessary to the accomplishment of God’s purpose in the world as Stradivarius was in the musical world. cones, and Xx. SYMMETRICAL PRAYER » ‘HE average prayer is not a symmetrical prayer. It is lopsided. If a building were erected in the shape of the average prayer, it would falldown. Itis builtin arut. It follows the accustomed grooves and there are whole areas of unexplored territory it never touches. When Jesus said to the disciples, ‘“‘Be ye therefore per- fect,’ He did not mean sinless perfection but He meant symmetry of character. ‘Be well-rounded and not one-sided.” When we are told that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man, it is the same thing as though the Bible said “Jesus grew symmetrically, building up the threefold man, body, soul and spirit.”