UBRARYOFPRINCSPN 
 
 fi! iq I 8 2003 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
Hoto Can ^tita 9lnstoer 
 draper? 
 
How Can God Answer /^;;0>^^ . 'Q 
 Prayer? \3!-''-^'^^ >-?a 
 
 Being an exhaustive treatise on the Naturey 
 
 Conditions and Difficulties 
 
 of Prayer 
 
 BY -IX 
 
 WILLIAM EDWARD BIEDERWOLF 
 
 Author of "A Help to the Study of The Holy Spirit," "The Growing 
 Christian," "The White Life," etc. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
COPYRIGHTED I906, 
 THS WINONA rVBUSHIMQ GOMTANV 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 THROUGH WHOSE CHEERFUL SACRIHCE AND HELPFUL COM* 
 
 PANIONSHIP THE HOURS OF STUDY DEVOTED 
 
 TO THIS VOLUME WERE MADE 
 
 POSSIBLE AND JOYOUS 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 There has always been a tendency on 
 the part of some to look upon prayer as a 
 sort of spiritual gymnastic, its sole pur- 
 pose being idealistic. To pray, they tell 
 us, is to become like the One whom we 
 contemplate in the exercise. This idea of 
 prayer is not without its sanction. Even 
 noted physicians like Dr. Hyslop tell us 
 that the effect of prayer on the mind is 
 more beneficial than any other therapeutic 
 agent known. But these pages are writ- 
 ten to show that the whole truth is far 
 from being found in any such theory of 
 prayer, and to put the emphasis where 
 it rightly belongs. 
 
 Another purpose of this book has been 
 to answer such questions as may arise in 
 the mind of every thoughtful Christian as 
 he contemplates this mighty privilege of 
 making known his requests unto God, and 
 to make clear so far as possible the per- 
 
8 Foreword 
 
 plexities which for him may have gathered 
 about this sacred duty. The author has 
 been permitted to write some things for 
 which he has looked in vain elsewhere and 
 which he sincerely believes will be a real 
 help to many inquiring souls. 
 
 Grateful to God for the long hours of 
 study he has been permitted to enjoy upon 
 this subject, and for the help that has 
 come into his own life from it, he sends 
 out these printed pages with a prayer that 
 the subject of which they treat may have 
 a richer and fuller meaning and its privi- 
 lege become immeasurably sweeter for 
 every one who may read them. 
 
 William Edward Biederwolf. 
 
WHAT THE VOLUME CONTAINS 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 I. The Privilege of Praying 13 
 
 II. Prayer Universal 16 
 
 III. The Neglect of Prayer 20 
 
 IV. Why We Pray so Little 24 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 THE NATURE AND VALUE OF PRATER 
 
 I. The Scripture Idea of Prayer .... 37 
 
 II. The Influence of Prayer on Man ... 49 
 
 III. The Influence of Prayer on God ... 65 
 
 BOOK THREE 
 
 HOW CAN GOD ANSWER PRATER? 
 
 I. Is It Consistent with God's Exalted 
 
 Dignity and Man's Insignificance? . 81 
 II. Why Pray if the Benevolent God 
 
 Knows What We Need? 89 
 
 III. Can God in Order to Answer Prayer 
 
 Interfere with Natural Law? . . 91 
 IV. Why Pray if Everything Is Predeter- 
 mined by God? 104 
 
 9 
 
10 What the Volume Contains 
 BOOK FOUR 
 
 TOW TO PRAY 
 
 I. The Holy Spirit Helping Our Infirmity 125 
 
 11. If Ye Abide In Me, Ask What Ye Will 152 
 
 III. Whatsoever Ye Ask In My Name . . 164 
 
 IV. If Ye Ask Anything According to His 
 
 Will 178 
 
 V. When Ye Pray BeUeve 197 
 
 VI. Importmiity in Prayer 215 
 
 BOOK FIVE 
 I. Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered . 229 
 
 BOOK SIX 
 I. A Study in Words 257 
 

floto Can i^oti anstoer ^rajer? 
 
 THE PRIVILEGE OF PRAYING 
 
 " Wherefore let us come boldly to the throne of grace, 
 that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in 
 time of need." — Heb. 4: 16. 
 
 What an unspeakable privilege ! the ap- 
 proach of you or me, weak, insignificant 
 children of a day, into the presence of the 
 everlasting God. "Men ought always to 
 pray." The Word of God speaks plainly 
 about the matter. It is an imperative 
 duty. And yet it is the duty of prayer a 
 living up to our privilege rather ^^^^ ^^s^" 
 than the perfunctory fulfillment ^uty. 
 of an obligation to which expression is 
 given; hence we find our Lord not so much 
 enjoining the duty as teaching how to best 
 realize the privilege in our own experience. 
 
 And what a privilege it is ! Is there not 
 some mistake about it? Is it possible that 
 God from His throne in the heavens can 
 13 
 
14 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 find any delight in my worship, or any 
 inclination to commune with me, or any 
 time to bow down his ear to the voice of 
 my supplication! Is it possible that this 
 little creature to whom has been given the 
 brief existence of a day can have free ac- 
 cess to the audience room of the eternal 
 God and there urge upon Him the infini- 
 tesimal interests of my vanishing life? Is 
 it not presumption to think that the im- 
 portunate pleadings of so insignificant a 
 being can have any influence with Him 
 upon whom are the concerns of this vast 
 unmeasured universe? No, there is no 
 mistake about it. Other thrones 
 
 God's ear 
 
 always ready may be guarded ; approach may 
 be difficult, may be fatal, but 
 from the throne of God the golden scepter 
 of His grace is ever held out, and for every 
 true supplicant the Eternal King has a 
 patient, listening ear, and into His pres- 
 ence we are not only invited but urged to 
 come boldly that we may obtain mercy 
 and grace to help in time of need. 
 
 Precious privilege! to have my praise 
 
The Privilege of Praying 15 
 
 accepted, my petition heard, yea, to abide 
 in His presence and there to commune as 
 with a friend. How ought the heart to 
 swell with gratitude, how ought the soul 
 rejoice, and how zealous ought we all to 
 be in unceasingly claiming this unspeak- 
 able privilege for ourselves. 
 
 *' My God ! is any hour so sweet, 
 
 From blush of mom to evening star. 
 As that which calls me to Thy feet — 
 The hour of Prayer? 
 
 ** Lord ! till I reach that bhssful shore. 
 No privilege so dear shall be. 
 As thus my inmost soul to pour 
 In prayer to Thee!" 
 
n 
 
 PRAYER UNIVERSAL 
 
 "0 thou that hearest 'prayer, unto thee shall all 
 flesh come." — Ps. 65: 2, 
 
 If reaching out after a Supreme Being 
 is prayer and bowing down to idols is re- 
 ligion, then prayer has ever been coex- 
 tensive with the idea of religion ; then men 
 have always prayed. Prayer^ is an in- 
 stinct. Wherever men have believed in a 
 Hifi-her Power — and such be- 
 
 Pr2iy6r 21 
 
 universal Hcf has always been universal — 
 there they have not waited for 
 an argument to prove the possibility of 
 entering into converse with such a Being, 
 but have taken for granted and acted upon 
 the privilege of so doing. 
 
 Rather than a command from the Deity, 
 prayer has been a specific demand of 
 man's own nature. Prayer is the heart 
 of religion. Prayer is religion. It is the 
 connecting link between God and man. 
 
 16 
 
Prayer Universal 17 
 
 If you could lift yourself far above the 
 earth and look down upon its people, you 
 would see them everywhere bowing down 
 to the Being whom they conceive to be 
 their God. The Mohammedan in his 
 Mosque, the Jew in his Synagogue, the 
 heathen in his Temple, everywhere, upon 
 lonely deserts and wild promontories, in 
 crowded cities and costly cathedrals, you 
 would see them praying. An ancient his- 
 torian has said that you could travel the 
 world over and find cities without walls, 
 [^without letters, without kings, without 
 P^ wealth, without schools or theaters, but a 
 city without ajemple or where people did 
 not pray you would never see. 
 
 What is true of other religions is true of 
 our own. The Christian is preeminently 
 a person of prayer; not that he did not 
 pray before, but that what was then a 
 blind instinct becomes now an intelligent 
 principle. What then was a dictate of his 
 own nature gives place now to the prompt- 
 ings of God's Spirit within him. What 
 then he was led to do out of sheer necessity. 
 
18 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 he now esteems the sweetest of all his priv- 
 ileges. What then he sought by sacrifice 
 The and penance he now obtains as 
 
 diflerence • t_ . i • i. 
 
 between ^ gracious Dcstowal m answer to 
 cSStan "'^ his petition. What then he un- 
 prayer. dcrtook with fainting heart he 
 
 now pursues with boldness by the "new 
 and living way." What then he sought to 
 use as a means toward temporal blessing 
 becomes now the channel of spiritual grace 
 as well. What then was a mere pleading 
 in his own behalf becomes now a gracious 
 intercession for others as well. What then 
 was mere asking of an infinitely removed 
 Divinity is now the most intimate com- 
 munion with the God and Father of us all. 
 This is the difference between heathen 
 prayer and Christian prayer. 
 
 Deprive the unregenerate man of prayer, 
 
 and though his prayers avail not you make 
 
 him miserable and forlorn; de- 
 
 Prayer Is _ ' 
 
 the nerve privc the Christian of prayer 
 
 of the ^ - 11- 1 • 
 
 reugious and you not only deprive nim 
 
 of his sweetest privilege and 
 
 dearest solace, but you take from him the 
 
Prayer Universal 19 
 
 key that open sets the storehouse of his 
 God; you not only take away his chief 
 support, but you cut the nerve of his reli- 
 gious life; you rob him of his "vital breath." 
 
 " For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 That nourish a bUnd life within the brain, 
 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
 Both for themselves and those who call them 
 
 friend ? 
 For so the whole round world is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
m 
 
 THE NEGLECT OF PRAYER 
 
 " Ye have not, because ye ask not." — J as. 4: 2. 
 
 If prayer be so great a privilege and one 
 so universally recognized, what more rea- 
 sonable expectation than to find people 
 everywhere and always praying? More 
 especially would we expect to find this true 
 of the Christian. With his more intelli- 
 gent understanding of what prayer is 
 and what it means for the soul, it ought 
 not be surprising if he be found always 
 at it. 
 
 And yet, alas ! for the number of God's 
 people for whom prayer is but the cry of a 
 
 child in distress. Possibly the 
 that despoils Hfc is uot without the form of 
 
 prayer — a sentence of thanks 
 for general mercies on retiring and a brief 
 petition for protection through night's de- 
 fenceless hours — but let the storm come 
 and like the heathen and the atheist it 
 20 
 
The Neglect of Prayer 21 
 
 drives us to our knees in earnest appeal to 
 God. 
 
 But even then we ofttimes do not pray. 
 The form is there, a certain earnestness 
 and agony of sou] are there, but the ele- 
 ments that make prayer real are wanting. 
 He who does not pray when the sun shines 
 knows not how to pray when the clouds 
 arise. But how many of us do pray in 
 sunshine as well as shadow? How many 
 of us are not only stirring ourselves up to 
 take hold on God in crisnl times, but are 
 giving heed to God's injunction to "pray 
 without ceasing ".'^ With how many of us 
 is prayer a habit of the soul? 
 
 Is it- not the deplorable lack of the 
 church to-day that we pray so little? On 
 every hand comes the sad confession. Let 
 that one to whom these pages come an- 
 swer for himself or herself — 
 What place has prayer in your ^^^^j**"®°* 
 life? Is the secret of His pres- 
 ence the place where your soul delights 
 to hide, or is it the thought that you ought 
 to pray out of respect to the divine 
 
22 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 command that takes you betimes to your 
 knees ? 
 
 God says, "Ask and ye shall receive." 
 Prayer is the appointed means for bring- 
 ing the blessing of heaven down to earth. 
 God is just standing in heaven's portal, 
 more ready than an earthly parent to give 
 good gifts to His children, and with His 
 hands full of choicest favor is saying, 
 *' Ask what I shall give thee." What more 
 grateful to His heart than the confidence 
 which leads His children to ask these 
 favors at His hand? What more unfilial 
 than to ignore the yearning of His great 
 heart to give? 
 
 If God's Word is true as to what 
 prayer has done and will do; if what we 
 
 The need of ^^^^^ ^^^* prayer has wrought 
 the church as it "movcd the arm that 
 
 and the . i i »» • . i 
 
 source of movcs the world is true, where 
 supply. further need we look for what 
 
 the church needs to-day to make His will 
 prevail throughout the earth? 
 
 If history be true, God's great men were 
 all men of prayer. Prayer is the channel 
 
The Neglect of Prayer 23 
 
 of power. It is true what Macgregor 
 once said, that, "So important a factor is 
 prayer in Christian experience, that the 
 history of a man's progress in the Divine 
 life is just the history of his progress in the 
 knowledge and in the use of prayer." 
 And yet we pray so little. Why is it.^ 
 
 "Why, therefore, should we do ourselves tliis 
 
 wrong, 
 Or others — that we are not always strong; 
 
 That we are ever overborne with care; 
 That we should ever weak or heartless be. 
 
 Anxious or troubled, while with us is prayer, — 
 And joy, and strength, and courage are with 
 Thee?" 
 
rv 
 
 WHY WE PRAY SO LITTLE 
 
 "Could ye not watch loith me one hour?"—' 
 Matt. 26: 40. 
 
 Why do we pray so little.^ Why is 
 prayer so much neglected.'^ More an- 
 swers than one have been given to the 
 question, though each needs all the rest 
 to make the answer all-complete. Three 
 reasons, among them all most prominent, 
 suggest themselves to me: 
 
 1. The first, which is after all the great- 
 est and most inclusive, is our natural dis- 
 like for prayer. Who can doubt it was 
 the first man's chief est joy to hold con- 
 Man's verse with his God. What de- 
 ntti^e leads lightful hours thosc must have 
 forge«uiness ^^^n, thosc first swcct days, 
 oi God. when Adam, with soul all pure 
 and clean, could meet his Maker in com- 
 munion face to face. But Adam sinned, 
 and straightway something took hold of 
 
 24 
 
Why We Pray so Little 25 
 
 Adam's God-like nature and twisted it 
 and left it ever after predisposed to that 
 which was crooked and distorted. It left 
 him unable to please God (Rom. 8:8), 
 unable to love God (Rom. 8:7), or to 
 know the things of God (1 Cor. 2: 14). It 
 was the same thing Paul had when he said, 
 *' When I would do good, evil is ever pres- 
 ent with me"; the same thing that has 
 been with us all through all the years since 
 the first man's sin. It is our iwrverted 
 human nature, — the carnal life, — the self- 
 life, and although there is freedom from 
 it (Rom. 8:2), it is, alas! ever ready to 
 assert itself and carry the mind in the very 
 moment of communion away to the vain 
 pleasures and perplexing business of the 
 world. 
 
 The holiest souls of earth have con- 
 fessed that such disturbance is not unfre- 
 quent in their devotions, and ^^^ houest 
 unless the tendency of the self- samts 
 
 •^- disturbed 
 
 life be checked by the overmas- m their 
 
 , . e ii /^i ■ j_ devotions. 
 
 termg presence or the Christ- 
 life, we are going to find our whole lives 
 
26 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 given to such things as tend not only to 
 make prayer an uninviting duty instead 
 of a joyful soul-absorbing privilege, but to 
 make any prolonged communion a series 
 of earthly interruptions. 
 
 "Never any more wonder," says an old 
 writer, *'that men so seldom pray, for 
 there are very few that feel the relish, and 
 are enticed with the deliciousness, and re- 
 freshed with the comforts, and acquainted 
 with the secrets of a holy prayer," And 
 why? Simply because the self-life, which 
 has created the natural dislike for prayer, 
 has put a rake in the hands of so many of 
 God's children to-day and set them 
 scratching in the muck of the earth. Well 
 has Austin Phelps asked, "Who is it that 
 has said, 'I will make them joyful in my 
 house of prayer.^' " 
 
 2. The second reason for the present- 
 day lack of prayer is fJie awful rush of 
 modern life. "Evening, morning and 
 No time noon will I pray," said David, 
 
 lor prayer. |^^|. jjlOSt pCOplc are tOO busy 
 
 for that in these strenuous times. A man 
 
Whij We Pray so Little 27 
 
 hardly has time to stop and tie his shoe- 
 string, and we are allowing the rush of 
 things to steal our minds away from 
 God. 
 
 One does not need a cloister to com- 
 mune with God. He can make, he ought 
 to make, "the common round, the trivial 
 task," the tiresome toil of business life, 
 the joyful sport of field or home a ministry 
 for Christ even as the service in 
 the sanctuary, and m them ail pray 
 find fellowship with God. Yea, ^^^^ 
 ^ore , behi nd desk or counter or on the 
 3usy^reet brushing sleeves^with our hur- 
 rying fellowsTyou ^n foFa moment^ Jrom 
 time to time, build an altar and be alone 
 with God. 
 
 But all this we are sure will not be 
 enough for the one who would know God 
 intimately and who would experience the 
 fulness of His strength for the toil, the 
 trial and the temptation of life's every day. 
 Such a one needs more time where with 
 life's busy cares and fretting noise shut 
 out he can be quiet before his God. 
 
28 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 But, you say, "How can I spare the 
 time?" How can you afford 7iot to spare 
 it? You, a professing Christian, and not 
 find time to pray ! Wherefore hath God 
 given you all the time there is save to im- 
 plore His mercy and do His will? Take 
 time ! ! You never lack for time to implore 
 Seeing ^^^ importuuc tliosc wlio hold 
 
 things from earth's favors in their hands, 
 
 tlie right _ ' 
 
 perspective, and yet, O God! no time to re- 
 ceive the eternal mercies from heaven's 
 gracious King. Do the concerns of this 
 world outw^eigh those of the next? If God 
 ministers to the fowls of the air, that 
 neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, 
 must you neglect your soul that your body 
 may not starve? Time was never given 
 us to waste, but its rigid monopoly to ma- 
 terial interests is cheating the heart out of 
 its chief est joys and robbing life of all its 
 beauty and its sweetness. 
 
 Take time for other things ! Take time 
 for the good-bye kiss ! It will leave a 
 lighter heart behind and send a braver 
 one forth to the struggles of the day. Take 
 
Why We Prmj so Little 29 
 
 time to be agreeable. The interest it will 
 bear as the years go by you will some day 
 find to be larger than all the worldly emol- 
 uments you have sought so hard to gain. 
 Take time to show a little appreciation. 
 It was only a bunch of dandelions, but the 
 little one thought they were the sweetest 
 of the flowers, and she meant them all for 
 you. To have kissed her for them, much- 
 occupied mother, would have been quite 
 as easy as to have said, "Too busy to be 
 bothered." It would have paid a thou- 
 sand times more than any tidy home with- 
 out a mother's caress. Take 
 
 Taking time 
 
 time to get acquainted with the for things 
 
 p •^ ■\- ' ^ ' that pay. 
 
 lamily. lour companionship, 
 busy father, may be worth a good deal 
 more to your boy, who is now almost a 
 stranger to you, than your fortune; the 
 latter is a doubtful blessing. Take time 
 to encourage the down-hearted brother. 
 Its income will be better than gold in the 
 day when the angels of God stoop down 
 to bind up your own broken heart. 
 
 Take time to pray. Even so the Mas- 
 
30 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 ter did. It will make you a braver and a 
 better man. 
 
 " No time to pray ! 
 Oh, who so fraught with earthly care 
 As not to give to humble prayer 
 Some part of day? 
 
 "No time to pray! 
 What heart so clean, so pure within, 
 That needeth not some check from sin. 
 Needs not to pray ! 
 
 " No time to pray ! 
 'Mid each day's dangers, what retreat 
 More needful than the mercy-seat? 
 Who need not pray? 
 
 *' No time to pray ! 
 Must care or business' urgent call 
 So press us as to take it all, 
 Each passing day? 
 
 "What thought more drear 
 Than that our God His face should hide. 
 And say, through all life's swelling tide. 
 No time to hear!" 
 
 A note of warning may well be sounded 
 here to the busy minister and those given 
 
Whij We Prmj so Little 31 
 
 to special forms of religious work. With 
 all these demands upon us, the sermon 
 that must be written, the letters that must 
 be answered, the calls that must be made, 
 the unexpected that must be attended 
 to, how little time we have for prayer. 
 In Andrew Murray's first chap- 
 ter on the "Ministry of Inter- Jon^felsfon 
 cession" he has called atten- °' *^t 
 
 ministry. 
 
 tion to the confession that came 
 up on every side from the ministers and 
 workers in convention as to the little place 
 that closet prayer had occupied in their 
 busy lives, and they were wondering how, 
 with all the pressure of duty, they could 
 ever hope for much change. But, Be- 
 loved, if it is God's work we are doing and 
 He has told us to give ourselves somewhat 
 to prayer, will He not take care of that 
 work while we are doing it.'^ 
 
 If we are to believe the records that 
 have come down to us, then God's most 
 useful men have mostly been those who, 
 according to their own testimony, had so 
 much to do they could not get along with- 
 
32 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 out several hours of prayer each day; if 
 they could not be found at one time, they 
 were found at another. It is said of J. 
 Alone with Hudson Taylor that he rose at 
 9°'^ ^°- , three o'clock in the mornino: that 
 
 tne early o 
 
 hours. he might spend two hours alone 
 
 with God before the other business of the 
 day broke in upon him. Note you, that 
 of praying he made a business, too. 
 
 If God calls to prayer, all other calls for 
 the time being are calls of men, and if God 
 is waiting to meet us and to better prepare 
 us for the work that lies before us, it would 
 certainly seem the part of wisdom as well 
 as duty to wait on God before we go. 
 
 Oh, how few the hours before the day is 
 done, and when perchance there comes an 
 hour on which some duty does not lay im- 
 mediate demand, what books we fain 
 would read and feel we ought to, what 
 lines of study follow out. But after all, I 
 wonder if a little less study and a little 
 more prayer wouldn't make better preach- 
 ers out of us anyhow. I wonder if, after 
 all, the amount of real success may not be 
 
Why We Pray so Little 33 
 
 measured somewhat by the amount of real 
 prayer in our lives. And when we think 
 of the solemn service to which we have 
 been dedicated, with its holy functions, its 
 vast responsibilities, its issues The strength 
 of life and death, with its per- °* ^°^ 
 
 _ _ A made over 
 
 plexities and its trials, how to man. 
 much we need the nearest presence and 
 the fullest strength of our God which 
 comes to us and which we take with us 
 from the place of prayer. 
 
 " I pray for strength, O God ! 
 To bear all loads that on my shoulders press 
 Of thy directing or Thy chastening rod. 
 
 Lest from their growing stress 
 My spirit sink in utter helplessness. 
 
 " I pray for strength to run 
 In duty's narrowest paths, nor turn aside 
 In broader ways that glow in pleasure's sun. 
 
 Lest I grow satisfied, 
 Where Thou from me Thy smiling face must hide. 
 
 " I pray for strength to wait 
 Submissively when I can not see my way, 
 Or if my feet would haste, some close-barred gate 
 
34 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Bids my hot zeal delay, 
 Or to some by-path turns their steps astray. 
 
 " I pray for strength to live 
 To all life's noble ends, prompt, just and true; 
 Myself, my service, unto all to give, 
 
 And, giving, yet renew 
 My store for bounty of life's journey through. 
 
 ** 1 pray, O God, for strength. 
 When, as life's love and labors find surcease. 
 Cares, crosses, burdens to lay down at length, 
 
 And so, with joy's increase. 
 To die, if not in triumph — in Thy peace." 
 
 3. The third reason for our lack of 
 prayer is that we realize so little the value 
 of prayer. Doubtless no Christian would 
 excuse himself by saying, What good will 
 it do? But he is all the while impoverish- 
 ing himself by failing to realize how much 
 good it really will do. This brings up the 
 whole question as to what prayer is and 
 God's Idea what God meant it should be 
 of prayer. |.q ^-j^^ Christian. This opens 
 a most interestino^ field of investig-ation 
 to which we urge your attention in the 
 immediately following pages. 
 
TOje Jgature anb "Falue of draper 
 
THE SCRIPTURE IDEA OF PRAYER 
 
 "What profit shall we have, if we pray to Him?'* 
 —Job. 21:15. 
 
 Frederick W. Robertson, in his sermon 
 on Prayer, says: "Prayer is one thing and 
 petition is quite another," but in reality 
 prayer and petition are quite one and the 
 same thing. 
 
 The first essential to intelligent argu- 
 ment is clear definition, and before either 
 of the above statements which ciear 
 are so plainly contradictory can ?he^st° 
 be rightly appreciated it be- f^tgjjf *gn° 
 comes necessary to know just argument, 
 what idea of prayer is entertained by those 
 making them. What is prayer? Evi- 
 dently Mr. Robertson's idea of prayer is 
 something quite removed from petition or 
 supplication. Prayer is commonly con- 
 ceived to be communion with God. But 
 what does the word itself mean and what 
 
 37 
 
88 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 is the first and root meaning of its equiva- 
 lents as used in the Word of God? This 
 is without doubt the surest way and the 
 safest to discover the essential nature of 
 this exercise we commonly call prayer. 
 
 That prayer primarily means petition, 
 supplication or entreaty, the etymology of 
 the word makes certain; it means neither 
 to meditate nor to commune 
 ogy TSt' nor even to talk with another 
 word. person, but it does mean to pe- 
 
 tition something at his hand. This is not 
 only true of the word in English, but of its 
 equivalent in all other languages, and if 
 you will trace its origin you will find it 
 comes from the same root as the Sanscrit 
 word praach, which means to ask. Usage, 
 however, has given to the word a much 
 wider meaning, no less than five Greek 
 words in the New Testament and twelve 
 Hebrew words in the Old Testament be- 
 ing translated prayer. 
 
 This is, however, natural when we think 
 for a moment of what is involved in asking 
 anything at the hand of God. When ap- 
 
The Scripture Idea of Prayer 39 
 
 proach to God is made various thoughts 
 and emotions stir the soul to which ex- 
 pression are most naturally given. One 
 cannot contemplate God without being 
 overwhelmed at His infinite and awe in- 
 spiring greatness, without be- ^^^ ^^^ 
 coming deeply sensible to His i^^a oi 
 
 n 1. ^ ^ prayer is 
 
 boundless graciousness and made so 
 humbly repentant of the wrong 
 done to Him. How especially is this true 
 and how appropriate its expression when 
 we come as a supplicant for His favor. 
 
 Hence prayer is usually divided into the 
 following component parts: Adoration, 
 Thanksgiving, Confession and Petition. 
 This suggests a splendid order for the ex- 
 pression of what is doubtless in the mind 
 of every one as he comes to God, though 
 there can be nothing stereotyped in so 
 vital a matter. Some of the most effective 
 / prayers in the Bible are simple, earnest 
 , cries for mercy; but the Bible abounds 
 with prayers in which something of the 
 order noted is observed. 
 
 But since it is quite as proper for the 
 
 \ 
 
40 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 soul to approach God without being urged I 
 into His presence by some petition it 
 would bring, we have even come to define 
 prayer more broadly as ._Qo7rim'union, by 
 which simple address to or talking with 
 God is understood. The first meaning of 
 communion is something else (partner- 
 ship, sharing), but it is used twenty-eight 
 times in the English Version as a transla- 
 prayer as t^^n of Hebrew and Greek 
 communion, ^grds which mean to speak or 
 talk. In Exodus 25 : 22, where it is said, 
 *'I will commune with thee from above 
 the mercy seat," the word is dabar, which 
 literally means to speak. 
 
 Some have thought to still further 
 weaken the conception of prayer by call- 
 ing it religious meditation, but if by such 
 expression is meant mere thinking about 
 God, it is not prayer in any sense of the 
 word; it is not even religious; but if by 
 meditation is meant such exercise of mind 
 and soul as involve the sentiments and 
 disposition mentioned a moment ago and 
 which are sure to arise with any one who 
 
The Scripture Idea of Prayer 41 
 
 has even a half-conception of the real 
 character of God (and the wri- prayer as 
 ter knows of no other kind of "leditation. 
 religious meditation), then, even as com- 
 munion, such exercise may be defined as 
 prayer, for whether such sentiments and 
 disposition be audibly uttered or silently 
 felt it is, after all, an approach to God in 
 which the mind and heart and soul com- 
 mune with Him. 
 
 The trouble with such definitions of 
 prayer is that they are partial, and, like all 
 other half-truths, often work serious in- 
 jury to the whole truth. 
 
 Granting now for the moment that the 
 element of petition may be legitimately 
 eliminated from prayer, *'What profit 
 shall we have if we pray to Him.?" What 
 benefit is there in thus communing with 
 God? 
 
 Now, we would not for one moment in- 
 sinuate that no practical results come from 
 such praying, but we do mean to say that 
 they are hardly to be compared with those 
 that follow when petition, which is the 
 
42 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 very heart of prayer, is allowed its true 
 The reflex P^^^e in the communion we 
 influence have with God. Without peti- 
 greater with tiou the benefit is plainly limit- 
 of^pemion cd to the effect upon the mind 
 involved. ^^^^ character of the one who 
 prays; but even this is limited in compar- 
 ison with the same benefit as derived from 
 prayer in its truest and most vital sense. 
 Directing the mind and soul toward any 
 superhuman object or fixing them upon 
 any lofty ideal will naturally result in 
 healthy reaction upon the one so engaged. 
 And to contemplate the divine greatness 
 of the Most High God, to mention before 
 Him His boundless providence and to ac- 
 knowledge His excellent wisdom in all 
 His rulings must of necessity leave with 
 the human soul a greater sense of its own 
 littleness and a correspondingly greater 
 humility of mind, a deeper gratitude of 
 heart and a holier submission to Him who 
 worketh all things together for good. 
 
 All this we would not underestimate; 
 much less deny. Indeed, this subjective 
 
The Scripture Idea of Prayer 43 
 
 effect of prayer might be still further ana- 
 lyzed and doubtless many other elements 
 of worth discovered. We do not say it 
 would be improper to speak here of a cer- 
 tain calmness of temper, of certain free- 
 dom from distraction, of sympathies and 
 self-disinterestedness and other traits of 
 moral excellence, all of which touch the 
 character with a beauty that is much 
 worth while. 
 
 But what we would have the reader now 
 to appreciate, and what many who have 
 thought more profoundly on petition a 
 this subject than we presume to p^^otg^. ^j 
 have done have failed to dis- communion, 
 cover is this, that not only are such effects 
 themselves very much heightened when 
 due place is given in prayer to petition, but 
 that with petition eliminated there would 
 be but little if any communion with God 
 at all ; not that one only goes to God when 
 he has a petition to offer (for there is much 
 communion without petition), but that if 
 a man had any sort of assurance that such 
 approach of the soul to God as commun- 
 
44 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 ion involves was being made to a Supreme 
 Being whose ear was deaf and whose heart 
 indifferent to our cries of distress and our 
 petitions for help or hearing could not help 
 us because of the inevitable course of 
 things over which He has no control, the 
 probability is that that man would soon 
 begin to incline toward a state of dumb 
 resignation to the inevitable, which in turn 
 would rapidly tend toward the neglect of 
 prayer altogether. We pray too little as 
 it is. If with Frederick W. Robertson we 
 Frederick w. scc in prayer only such contem- 
 fd°ea"o?°°'' plation of the character of God 
 prayer. as cnds with the resignation of 
 
 ourselves to His will, most men, we fear, 
 would not put themselves even to such 
 effort to obtain it. They would be more 
 likely to accept the inevitable and devote 
 the time otherwise required for such con- 
 templation to making the best out of a 
 condition of affairs for which there is no 
 help, at least from above. 
 
 But, on the contrary, to know that God 
 hears my cry for help as well as my voice 
 
The Serif ture Idea of Prayer 45 
 
 in praise and thanksgiving and confession, 
 and that like as a father He not only piti- 
 eth His children but, having the power, 
 He giveth unto them what would not be 
 theirs but for the asking, then indeed are 
 we constrained to come to Him, not alone 
 with our petitions but with the expression 
 of grateful hearts; then indeed are we 
 drawn into His presence by that very fact, 
 not only in the hour of special need but 
 continually, even as with the closest 
 friend; how much sweeter and more inti- 
 mate fellowship with such a God than 
 with the one contemplated a moment ago. 
 Now that true prayer not petition the 
 only includes petition, but that sc"*turai 
 petition is the very heart of prayer, 
 prayer, even a cursory glance into Scrip- 
 ture will show. 
 
 Of the five Greek words in the New 
 Testament which the translators have 
 chosen to translate prayer, the primary 
 meaning of the three most frequently used 
 (deomai, ten times; erotao, seven times; 
 EUCHOMAi, eighty-five times) is to peti- 
 
46 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 tion, to ask, to supplicate. Of the other 
 Greek two words SO translated and 
 
 words lor i i ■ i / 
 
 prayer. used Dut once each, one (en- 
 
 TEUXis, to hold converse with) is used in 
 the sense of thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:5); 
 the other (parakaleo, to call along side 
 of) is used in the specific sense of a petition 
 for help (Matt.. 26: 53). 
 
 But apart from the fact that the pri- 
 mary meaning of the word prayer is pe- 
 tition; apart also from the fact that one 
 hundred and two times in the New Tes- 
 tament (to say nothing of the numerous 
 instances of the Old Testament), are 
 foreign words whose primary meaning 
 is also petition translated prayer, thirty- 
 three times in the New Testament and 
 thirty-nine in the Old Testament we 
 Biblical ^^^ ^^^ simple word ask (which 
 
 translations fs the cxact translation of its 
 onyms lor foreign equivalents) used to de- 
 prayer, scribe the act of going to God 
 in prayer. As we think this over we won- 
 der if we are not wasting words and time 
 in proving that prayer means primarily 
 
The Scripture Idea oj Prayer 47 
 
 petition. Of course it means petition, and 
 when the great prayer Teacher said, "Ask 
 and ye shall receive," He most assuredly 
 meant that we were to obtain something 
 through our asking. 
 
 How much richer and fuller, we again 
 remark, is the meaning of prayer when 
 thus correctly understood. The word is 
 now big with meaning, and when one thus 
 sees it to be his privilege to make known 
 his requests before a God who will concern 
 Himself about their answer all the other 
 inducements into His presence are much 
 intensified, it seems to me, and not until 
 we have thus fully realized all that 
 prayer involves are we in a position to 
 fully realize how valuable the exercise is. 
 
 With these thoughts on the nature of 
 prayer in our mind, let us see what answer 
 can be ffiven to the question The twofold 
 
 ,. , , ipi* value of 
 
 standing at the head ot this prayer, 
 chapter : *' What profit shall we have if we 
 pray to Him.?" We are now prepared to 
 see that the value of prayer is, (1) in its 
 reflexive or natural effect on the soul, and 
 
48 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 (2) in its direct efficacy in securing what / 
 we ask of God. These two phases of the 
 value of prayer may properly form the 
 substance of separate chapters. 
 
II 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF PRAYER ON MAN 
 
 "It is good for me to draw near to God." — Ps. 73 : 28. 
 
 Even Professor Tyndall, with all his 
 skepticism, has said: "It is not my habit 
 of mind to think otherwise than solemnly 
 of the feelings which prompt to prayer. 
 Often unreasonable, even con- „^ 
 temptible, in its purer forms diaerence 
 prayer hints at disciplines which a prayerful 
 
 p p I . •.•I . and a non* 
 
 tew Ot US can neglect without prayerful 
 
 moral loss." How true it is "'*• 
 that we need but compare the life and 
 bearing of the Christian much given to 
 prayer with that of the one who thus com- 
 munes but little with his Lord in order to 
 see the quickening, purifying and elevat- 
 ing effects of prayer upon the soul. 
 
 When Mrs. Browning asked Charles 
 Kingsley the secret of his beautiful life, 
 saying, *'tell me that I may make mine 
 beautiful, too," he replied, "I had a 
 
 49 
 
50 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 friend." God pity the man who even in 
 earthly associations has not had the com- 
 panionship of some pure andgen- 
 
 Cbarles j. x i o 
 
 Kingsiey's uincsoul; for there are naturcs 
 
 friend. • i • 'j.!, i, 
 
 m close communion with whom 
 we are conscious of a sort of baptism and 
 consecration binding us over to a life pure 
 and genuine like their own. Think, then, 
 what unceasing communion with God 
 must mean — how the soul is fixed in 
 steadfast gaze upon His image and glory, 
 *' until," as another has said, "that image 
 is daguerreotyped, as it were, on the soul ; 
 nay, till the soul itself is "changed into the 
 same image, from glory unto glory, as by 
 the Spirit of the Lord." 
 
 Many have doubtless read the beautiful 
 story of the young girl who wore about her 
 neck a locket that contained the secret of 
 her own pure and beautiful life. Her 
 character was so ripe in its loveliness that 
 
 her friends wondered while they 
 oi a beauti- admired. Into the locket that 
 
 hung continually about her 
 neck no one had been permitted to look. 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 51 
 
 At length, however, in an hour of sickness, 
 one of her closest friends was allowed to 
 open the sacred ornament, and there she 
 saw the words, " Whom having not seen I 
 love." That was the secret of her heav- 
 enly life; communion with the unseen 
 Christ whom she loved had transfigured 
 her life into a likeness with His own. To 
 pray is to become Christ-like. 
 
 But what are some of the more particu- 
 lar effects of prayer on the soul ? It would 
 be a lengthy task even to endeavor to men- 
 tion them all, but here are some of the best : 
 
 1. Prayer enables us to realize the pres- 
 ence of God. Austin Phelps begins his little 
 classic on *'The Still Hour" by quoting 
 from Bishop Hall his lament, " If God had 
 not said. Blessed are those that hunger, I 
 know not what could keep weak Chris- 
 tians from sinking in despair. Many 
 times, all I can do is to com- 
 
 I . 1 T TT- 1 • 1 Realizing 
 
 plain that 1 want Him, and wish the presence 
 to recover Him." In comment- 
 ing on this pathetic utterance Austin 
 Phelps says it only echoes the wail that has 
 
52 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 come down through all living hearts from 
 the old patriarch when he cried, '*Oh, that 
 I knew where I might j&nd Him." This 
 awful consciousness of the absence of God 
 is what, so many complain, makes reli- 
 gious life so unreal. But was it not the 
 Holy Spirit who said, " Draw nigh to God 
 and He will draw nigh to you".? and is 
 not this a special promise for the hour of 
 prayer? 
 
 He has promised to manifest Himself to 
 those who love Him and those who really 
 love Him will not find communion with 
 Him tedious and irksome, for in such 
 sweet hours it is that God becomes real 
 as at no other time; in such hours so close 
 does God draw nigh that you can close 
 your eyes and see Him; in such hours 
 we are veritably on the road to 
 
 A road that -ry 1.1.1 *i.i 
 
 is open to ii<mmaus, but we know with 
 traveller whom we are going. We hear 
 others tell how they enjoy the 
 presence of God, and we covet a like expe- 
 rience for ourselves, but this is no privilege 
 for the favored few; what has been for 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 53 
 
 others in this respect is also for you and 
 me. There is a road to such experience; 
 it is that 
 
 *' . . . Sweet hour of prayer I 
 
 That calls us from a world of care." 
 
 If we would experience with Edwards 
 that inward sense of the Divine Presence 
 which he describes as a "calm, sweet ab- 
 straction of soul from the concerns of this 
 world in which he found himself rapt and 
 swallowed up in God," it must be found 
 in the self - same way that Edwards 
 found it. 
 
 Truly one can see God in everything, 
 but, after all, one can see Him best with 
 his eyes shut. Some one has said that 
 prayer is a closing of the eyes on things 
 seen and opening them on things unseen. 
 There is a legend which represents Saint 
 Bridget engaged in holy conversation with 
 a devout but blind nun called Dara. It 
 was in the evening as the sun was going 
 down, and as they talked of God and Jesus 
 and of heaven they did not notice the 
 
54 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 hours go by until the sun came back in the 
 mornine* and threw his ffolden 
 
 Seeing with . 
 
 the eyes of Hght ovcr the bcautiful land- 
 scape, and then Bridget wished 
 that Dara might see the beauties which 
 God had made. She prayed and touched 
 Dara's eyes and they were opened. Dara 
 looked at the golden sun, at the rare land- 
 scape that stretched before her, at the 
 flowers glistening with dew drops that 
 shone like jewels, and all the glory that 
 was spread about her. After a while she 
 said, " Now close my eyes again, for w^hen 
 the world is so visible to the eyes, God 
 appears less clearly to the soul." 
 
 There is a lesson here for you and me. 
 As much as God speaks to us in the beau- 
 ties and wonders of the world, it is some- 
 times well to shut out even the glories of 
 nature that brighter visions still of God 
 may fill the soul. 
 
 2. Prayer impresses the mind with the 
 real character of God, and consequently 
 tends to produce in us a disposition con- 
 sistent therewith. 
 
U The Influence of Prayer on Man 55 
 
 (a) It produces holiness of heart. When 
 prayer once brings man into the felt pres- 
 ence of his God and reveals to him some- 
 thing of God's own infinite holi- ^od's 
 ness. His awe-inspirino- purity jffi""® 
 
 ' r n r J holiness 
 
 and His perfect hatred of sin revealed. 
 there, if anywhere, will he who prays 
 learn to abhor himself, to loathe his own 
 deep sinfulness, to repent, to cleanse his 
 hands and purify his heart, "perfecting 
 holiness in the fear of the Lord." 
 
 (6) It produces humility of mind — so 
 ornamental to Christian character. Paul 
 was like the rest of us in one respect: in 
 danger of being " exalted above Man's 
 due measure." Job had a ffood ^^signm- 
 
 o cance made 
 
 deal to say about himself. It manliest. 
 was all Job: what Job was and what Jo6 had 
 done, until God took him to task, told him 
 to gird up his loins and answer a few ques- 
 tions, when Job learned his lesson — that 
 he was but a worm as compared with God, 
 and he went down in the dust and said, 
 *'I abhor myself." When we see God's 
 greatness we recognize our own littleness. 
 
56 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 (c) It produces peace of soul. It is 
 written in the Word, "Thou wilt keep 
 him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed 
 on Thee, for he trusteth in Thee.'' Trust- 
 ing in Him is something altogether differ- 
 ent from a dumb resignation to what oc- 
 curs because there is no help for it. When 
 we come to know the heart of God, whether 
 we fully understand His mind or not. 
 The peace wc realize that He is a kind and 
 that passes compassionatc and almio-hty 
 
 understand- Jt^ o *' 
 
 ing. Friend and that we can trust 
 
 ourselves to Him amid all the storms and 
 distractions of this world. *' Casting all 
 your care upon Him, for He careth for 
 thee," and you will find worry giving place 
 to a calm and quiet resting upon God for 
 everything which He knows is best for His 
 child to have. Every praying Christian 
 knows this is true. It is the prayerful 
 Christian who can sing: 
 
 *' When peace like a river attendeth my way, 
 And sorrows like sea billows roll, 
 Whate'er be my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, 
 It is well, it is well with my soul." 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 51 
 
 (d) It produces that submission of will 
 which is one of the chief conditions of ac- 
 ceptable approach unto God. More ele- 
 ments than one enter into true religion. 
 To be truly religious is to do ^ ^, 
 
 J n God's will 
 
 the will of God. But Liddon made 
 has shown us how prayer is also than man's 
 religion in action. To pray is °^^ ^*^' 
 not only to put the affections in motion, 
 the will in motion, but the understanding 
 in motion as well. Thus in prayer one 
 comes to see that other interests than his 
 own are in the hands of God, that what 
 He asks might not in the end be best, and 
 that in view of God's infinite wisdom He 
 must know what is best, in view of His 
 infinite justice He must do what is best, 
 and in view of His perfect love He must 
 desire what is best, and so believing with 
 all his heart that even as God hath said, 
 "All thinefs work together for 
 
 . God Is 
 
 good to them that love Him," always on 
 he can say with becoming grace, °"^ ^^^^' 
 *' Thy will, O God, and not mine, be done." 
 God is always on our side ; it is necessary 
 
58 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 sometimes to pray ourselves over to His 
 side. It was Dr. Cuyler who said, " The 
 pull of our prayer may not move the ev- 
 erlasting throne, but, like the pull on a line 
 from the bow of a boat, it may draw us 
 into closer fellowship with God and fuller 
 harmony with His wise and holy will." 
 
 3. Prayer, by directing the thoughts 
 towards that which is holiest and besti 
 tends to elevate and ennoble the soul. 
 Paul tells us to think on things that are 
 lovely and pure, on things that are honest 
 and true, and to such things no man can 
 direct his mind without becom- 
 Influence of ing better for it. "As a man 
 a high 1 ea . |-jjjj^]^g^j^ jj^ j^jg j^gart SO is he." 
 
 Even a man's face changes according to 
 the nature of his thoughts and reflects the 
 soul that has formed within him. It is 
 Hillis who says, *'He who sows foul 
 thoughts shall reap the foul countenance 
 of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts 
 shall reap the sweetness and nobility of 
 the face of Fra Angelico." Thus prayer 
 has also its physical effects. 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 59 
 
 4. Prayer tends to keep the soul sensi- 
 tive to spiritual impression and receptive 
 to spiritual influence. Some one has 
 painted a picture of a woman mourning 
 by the seaside. The look on her face is 
 that of hopeless despair as she sits on the 
 low rocks with her eyes fixed 
 upon the black waters beneath and recep- 
 which the treasures of her heart 
 have gone down. Just above her almost 
 touching her mourning robes hovers the 
 shadowy form of an angel with a harp 
 filling the air about her with the soft, 
 sweet strains of music. But the woman, 
 absorbed in dumb, unconscious grief, is 
 not aware of the angel's nearness, nor does 
 she hear the heavenly consolation his harp 
 would speak. 
 
 Something not very different from that 
 
 is sometimes true of us. We sometimes 
 
 through neglect of prayer allow our minds 
 
 and our hearts to become so 
 
 1 1 I'c 1 Look up 
 
 centered on the earthly lire about and not 
 
 n J ii down. 
 
 US, our eyes so nxed upon the 
 
 dusty soil at our feet, that we are not 
 
60 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 only often unconscious of what is and 
 what otherwise would prove for us to be 
 the very presence of God, but our spiritual 
 senses, through lack of exercise, are un- 
 able to appreciate what in reality is the 
 choicest good that can come from God. 
 But not so the one who is "instant in 
 prayer." Such a one God always finds 
 with a soul open and receptive into which 
 He can pour the blessings of His Spirit 
 and with a soul so cultivated that His 
 blessings are rightly appreciated when 
 they come. 
 
 The natural position of the hands when 
 stretched out to God in prayer is with up- 
 turned palms as if to receive and hold the 
 blessing they would have. This, too, is 
 the attitude of the prayerful soul — ever 
 upturned to receive what God will give. 
 
 5. Prayer impresses the mind with a 
 becoming sense of our dependence upon 
 God. He who is the source of our life, 
 both physical and spiritual, is also the 
 source of its sustenance. "In Him we 
 live and move and have our being." We 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 61 
 
 could not live without Him, neither in 
 the one sense nor in the other. But if 
 we were privileged to come to 
 God but once in many months of iife° 
 or years, how would we not be- ^ HZzIa 
 come thoughtless of God in the 
 busy endeavor to take care of ourselves? 
 We might keep physically alive this way; 
 animals do. But what about our spiritual 
 life.? 
 
 It was a command of Zoroaster that his 
 followers should at stated times extinguish 
 the fires on their hearths and rekindle 
 them from the sacred fire in the temple in 
 order that they might not forget that fire 
 was a gift from heaven. How can we not 
 remember this of the gift of spiritual life 
 and strength as well as physical sustenance 
 when we are privileged to "pray without 
 ceasing," and are taught to pray, " Give us 
 this day our daily bread ".^^ 
 
 6. Prayer is a promoter of activity. It 
 puts us at the disposal of God for our part 
 in bringing about the thing we have de- 
 sired of Him. Unless we are thus ready 
 
62 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 to be used of God we can have no guar- 
 antee that our praying has been in any 
 sense acceptable. Prayer was 
 An earnest ucver intended as a substitute 
 wm^riways f <5i' earnest self-sacrificing effort, 
 lead to g^j. Jq yQ^ think that any one 
 
 earnest •/ J 
 
 eflfort. can earnestly pray, *' Thy king- 
 
 dom come" and then use the 
 time God has given him as though he little 
 cared whether it ever came or not.^ Do 
 you think that any one could ever ear- 
 nestly pray for the salvation of a friend 
 without rising from his knees and seeking 
 out if possible that friend that he might 
 urge him to Christ and help him on his 
 way to God.^ To pray in any other way 
 may relieve somewhat the conscience of a 
 \ not very conscientious Christian, but God 
 \l is not deceived thereby. What labor can- 
 not do prayer often will do, but prayer will 
 never do what labor can do for itself, save 
 as it inspires a man to such effort as may 
 be necessary to do it. 
 
 A pastor once said to the young people 
 of his congregation, **I want you to spend 
 
The Influence of Prayer on Man 63 
 
 fifteen minutes every day praying for mis- 
 sions; but beware how you pray, for I 
 warn you it is a very costly ex- 
 periment." "Costly!" they The cost 
 
 , , . . . •'of praying 
 
 asked, ni surprise. "Aye, cost- for missions. 
 ly," he reiterated, "when Carey 
 began to pray for the conversion of the 
 world, it cost him himself, and it cost 
 those who prayed with him very much. 
 Brainerd prayed for the dark-skinned sav- 
 ages, and after two years of blessed work 
 it cost him his life. Two students began 
 to pray the Lord of the harvest to send 
 forth more servants into the harvest, and 
 lo! it is going to cost our country five 
 thousand young men and women who 
 have, in answer to this prayer, pledged 
 themselves to the work. Be sure, it is a 
 serious thing to pray in earnest for this 
 v^ork; you will find that you cannot pray 
 and withhold your labor, or pray and 
 withhold your money ; nay, that your very 
 life will no longer be your own when your 
 prayers begin to be answered." 
 
 Prayer always intensifies the heart's de- 
 
64 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 sire and the very act of praying opens the 
 eyes of the supplicant to the obligation 
 upon him for the answer to the prayer he 
 has offered. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF PRAYER ON GOD 
 
 " The prayer of a righteous man availeth much." — 
 Jas. 5: 16. 
 
 "Ask what I shall give thee." — 1 Kings 3: 5. 
 
 In the foregoing section we have seen 
 some of what may be reasonably consid- 
 ered the reflex or subjective effects of 
 prayer; that is, what prayer means indi- 
 rectly to the one who prays. 
 
 But we have already said that prayer 
 means primarily petition, and unless it 
 can be shown that the world's uncounted 
 supplicants are consciously practicing a 
 species of trickery upon them- ^^^ ^.^.^^^ 
 selves with a view to their moral efficacy 
 
 Tn .' 1. /¥ • 1 °' prayer. 
 
 edmcation by oitermg up de- 
 sires to God without any expectation of 
 having them answered, or, on the other 
 hand, be clearly proven that God is indis- 
 posed or unable to heed the cry of the 
 human heart, may we not reasonably ex- 
 
 65 
 
66 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 pect that prayer has also an objective or 
 direct efl&cacy, that it has, in other words, 
 an influence on God Himself and leads 
 Him to do for us what otherwise He would 
 have no occasion to do? 
 
 What is the ground of this expectation? 
 
 "'^ The argument from instinct is not 
 without weight. The belief that prayer is 
 heard and answerea is as universal as is 
 the impulse itself to pray. The one is an 
 instinct as well as the other. Never has 
 beast or bird been led astray by their God- 
 given instinct, and do you think that God 
 would plant an instinct so holy in the 
 human soul which either His indifference 
 or His impotence would lead Him to dis- 
 appoint? The imprisoned vine struggles 
 away toward the cellar window 
 suppiylind ^^d fiuds the light the uncon- 
 thrworid" scious impulsc of its nature im- 
 pels it to seek. The robin flies 
 away before the winter's chill and finds 
 the genial clime to which its inborn sense 
 urged it on. Man's physical nature also 
 has its God-given adaptability and ap- 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 67 
 
 petency for just what is needed in order to 
 its life. With these things God is lavish. 
 The ear has but to listen ; the world is full 
 of sound. The eye has but to open; there 
 is sunlight all around. The lungs have 
 but to expand; the exhaustless air will fill 
 them. The heart has but to unlock its 
 fleshy door; the veins are at its threshold 
 with blood. But what about man's spir- 
 itual nature.? Must it alone be doomed to 
 disappointment.? Must the soul struggle 
 on towards God and its eyes be 
 left in darkness because heaven ment from 
 has no light to give.? Must it *"*^°^^' 
 soar up on wings of faith and hope and 
 find no atmosphere in which to breathe 
 and live.? Must it strain its ears and catch 
 no sound of heaven's voice or music? 
 Must it breathe out its prayer to God and 
 then suffocate for want of heaven's sweet 
 elixir.? Must it open its heart and wait 
 for God to fill it and go away empty be- 
 cause God has no favors to bestow.? 
 
 2. There is argument from the very 
 nature of God, if so be that He is a per- 
 
68 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 sonal, kind-hearted, potent Being who can 
 consistently grant the petition we desire 
 of Him. 
 
 There is (^) That there is a God we will 
 a God. jjQ^ even stop to argue. We 
 
 hope none of us are atheists. 
 
 ih) That He is a personal Being is not 
 worth the while to argue in these days of 
 A personal advauccd thought, even if He 
 God. were not so revealed in Scrip- 
 
 ture. Of course He is personal. Reason 
 will not be satisfied with a God who is 
 merely an unseen, unthinking, unfeeling 
 force in the universe. Prayer to such a 
 God would of course be fruitless. 
 
 (c) That He is kindhearted: who for a 
 moment could doubt it.^ Shall we, the 
 A kind- crcaturcs of His hand, be kind 
 hearted God. ^^^ considerate of each other, 
 and He who planted such feelings in our 
 breasts be Himself without them.^ Man's 
 deepest feeling tells him God is good; the 
 providence we experience proclaims it, 
 and how tenderly is it revealed in Jesus 
 and in His teachings about the Father- 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 69 
 
 hood of God; and shall an earthly parent 
 know how to love his children and bestow 
 good gifts upon them and the Divine 
 Father be a stranger to an instinct of 
 which He is the author in His offspring? 
 
 (d) That He is j^otent: how could He be 
 otherwise and be the God of the universe? 
 Shall He who made the ele- a potent 
 ments not control them? Shall ^°^- 
 
 He "who made the universe by His 
 power" be shut outside His own creation, 
 a helpless spectator impotent to use the 
 very laws of which He is the author? 
 
 (e) That He can consistently answer pe- 
 tition we shall see further on. 
 
 But we have something better than ar- 
 gument for our belief in this matter. We 
 have the sure Word of the Lord. 
 
 3. We are commanded thus to pray 
 and given specific promise of the answer. 
 If prayer was intended for nothing more 
 than its reflexive influence on the suppli- 
 cant, what did the Lord mean by saying, 
 "All things w^hatsoever ye ask in prayer, 
 believing, ye shall receive"? (Matt.21 : 22.) 
 
Kl 
 
 70 Hoio Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 What did the Master mean by saying, " I\ 
 ye then being evil know how to 
 
 The words • •pi . ^ '^ j i_ 
 
 01 Christ give giits to your children, now 
 utteSnce Hiuch more shall your Father 
 who is in heaven give good 
 things to them that ask Him"? (Matt. 
 7: 11.) How any human being, with all 
 his prejudice and all his preconceived 
 ideas, can, in the face of such Scripture 
 and a Bible full of other Scripture just like 
 it — how he can honestly affirm that it is 
 not God's plan to bestow His favors for 
 the right kind of asking, is the hard thing 
 after all for the simple, believing spirit to 
 understand. 
 
 For those who teach that the efficacy of 
 prayer ceases with its reflexive influence 
 there are some good words in Patton's re- 
 markable volume on *' Prayer and Its An- 
 swers." After quoting several passages 
 from F. W. Robertson in which prayer is 
 resolved into mere submission, and we are 
 advised to "pray until prayer makes us 
 cease to pray"; and after a passage from 
 a letter of a ministerial friend who says, 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 71 
 
 ** The true value of prayer is that it stops 
 people from wanting what they can't 
 eet," Dr. Patton goes on to 
 
 o ' ° Dr. Patton's 
 
 apply this theory to some ot reply to Dr. 
 the Master's teaching about 
 prayer. We are told to asky to seeJc^ and 
 to knock. 
 
 *' Imagine," he says, "a child asking for 
 some favor, or for the relief of some want, 
 and standing hour after hour, repeating 
 his requests, and being told by the father : 
 *Go on asking, my child; it does you 
 much good to ask. The longer you ask 
 the more good it will do you. Do not ex- 
 pect to receive anything, however, as the 
 principal benefit of asking is that, by and 
 by, you will not want anything, and will 
 cease to make any request.' Imagine a 
 mother seeking a lost child. She looks 
 through the house and along the streets, 
 then searches the fields and woods and 
 examines the river banks. A wise neigh- 
 bor meets her and says: 'seek on; look 
 everywhere; search every accessible place. 
 You will not find, indeed, but then seeking 
 
72 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 is a good thing. It puts the mind on the 
 stretch; it fixes the attention; it aids ob- 
 servation; it makes the idea of the child 
 very real. And then, after a while, you 
 will cease to want your child.' Imagine a 
 man knocking at the door of a house, long 
 and loud. After he has done this for an 
 hour, a window opens and the occupant of 
 the house puts out his head and says: 
 ' That is right, my friend ; I shall not open 
 the door, but then, keep on knocking. It 
 is excellent exercise, and you will be the 
 healthier for it. Knock away till sun- 
 down, and then come and knock all day 
 to-morrow. After some days thus spent 
 you will attain to a state of mind in which 
 you will no longer care to come in.' Is 
 this what Jesus intended us to understand 
 when He said, 'Ask, and ye shall receive; 
 seek, and you shall find; knock, and it 
 shall be opened unto you/ No doubt," 
 says the author we have quoted, "one 
 would thus soon cease to ask, to seek, 
 and to knock; but would it not be from 
 disgust?" 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 73 
 
 If prayer does not, cannot obtain, its 
 very name and act is a mockery; and the 
 injunction thus to pray a cruel deceit on 
 the part of God. 
 
 4. But, again, we have occurring all 
 about us the practical demonstration that 
 God does answer prayer. The Bible is 
 full of recorded instances and human his- 
 tory is packed with others. In this respect 
 all saints have shared alike. 
 When Hannah came to God ®™^ 
 with definite request and ear- ^^^°^ 
 nestly prayed, God's priest bade 
 her go in peace; in peace she went away 
 and later came again, and to the priest 
 she said, " Lord, my lord, as thy soul liv- 
 eth, my lord, I am the woman that stood 
 by thee here, praying unto the Lord. For 
 this child I prayed and the Lord hath given 
 me my petition which I asked of Him." 
 And this has been the experience of mil- 
 lions who have prayed the prayer of faith.. 
 
 Prayer does influence God's actions in 
 our favor. Prayer does "move the arm 
 that moves the world." Prayer does have 
 
 practically 
 demon- 
 strated. 
 
74 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 a direct as well as an indirect effect; and 
 the influence it thus exerts with God se-- 
 cures for us blessings both of a spiritual 
 and a physical nature. 
 
 Think just a moment of the spiritual 
 The soul benefit: The direct impartation 
 b^^the^*'*"^^ o/ spiritual power by which the 
 direct im- soul is strengthened and invig- 
 spirituai oratcd for the life that God 
 P*"^"' would have us live. 
 
 We recall just here the difficulty Her- 
 cules found in overcoming the giant An- 
 taeus. He could slay the lion or any other 
 shape of beast or man, but in Antaeus he 
 met more than his match, until 
 
 Hercules i i t it 
 
 overcoming at length hc discovered the source 
 
 Antaeus. ^£ j^-^ s|-j.gjjg^^]j ^jj^J cutting the 
 
 connection he slew his fierce antagonist. 
 As long as Antaeus was in contact with the 
 earth he was enriched with a power that 
 made him victor over all who came against 
 him. He was defeated by being lifted from 
 the earth and crushed while in the air. 
 So with him who puts himself in connection 
 with God in prayer. Just how we cannot 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 15 
 
 tell — we need not — but God does lend His 
 strength to such a soul. "My grace is 
 sufficient for thee ; for my strength is made 
 perfect in weakness," was His word to 
 Paul, and Paul is not alone in such experi- 
 ence, for who that has kept in prayerful 
 touch with God has not been able to look 
 back upon some time of special need and 
 know that heaven's grace was given to 
 preserve and keep the soul. 
 
 The affections are purified; the mind is 
 quickened; the will is energized and the 
 whole man made strong. God ^^^ ^^ 
 makes Himself over to us, so to ra&n's 
 speak; He bids us receive Him- 
 self in all His illimitable fullness, and such 
 receiving means a life of beauty, a life of 
 peace and a life of power. It means the 
 heroic life, and all God's heroes are men 
 of prayer. 
 
 There are some who would limit the 
 direct efficacy of prayer to spiritual bless- 
 ing. But recently such a position was 
 taken by the occupant of a certain sup- 
 posedly orthodox pulpit. Prayer for ma- 
 
76 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 terial blessing he characterized as igno- 
 rance, cowardice and superstition. In 
 commenting; on the sermon one 
 
 Direct r 
 
 efficacy of of the leading dailies said that, 
 to^be^iimited "Probably no superstitious 
 wesSng."*^ heathen idea has so long per- 
 sisted in the ideas and practices 
 of Christianity as that of the direct per- 
 sonal response of the Supreme Being to 
 the petitions of individuals for purely 
 material things." 
 
 But this is not the word of Scripture. 
 It is not the testimony of experience. The 
 will of Almighty God rules in the material 
 as well as in the spiritual universe, and if 
 He has told us to pray we may be sure that 
 somehow He has made room in His plan 
 of government for prayer as a determining 
 factor in the course of events. 
 
 But what intellectual short-sightedness 
 to admit such efficacy in the spiritual 
 
 intellectual ^^^]^ ^^d deny it in the ma- 
 short- terial ! Does not God's ffovern- 
 
 sightedness. ^ • i i 
 
 ment extend over the mind and 
 heart and will, and are there no laws in 
 
The Influence of Prayer on God 77 
 
 the spiritual world? Unless these ques- 
 tions are answered in the negative, and in 
 the negative no sane man will think of 
 answering them, it does not take very 
 close thinking to see that whatever objec- 
 tion may be brought against the answering 
 of prayer in the material world, if they be 
 true, are equally true for the spiritual 
 world. 
 
 Here is something good from Austin 
 Phelps; it fits admirably just here; 
 
 *' In the mind of God, we may be assured, the 
 conception of prayer is no fiction, whatever man 
 may think of it. It has, and God has determined 
 that it should have, a positive and an appreciable 
 influence in directing the course of a human life. 
 It is, and God has proposed that it should be, a 
 link of connection between the human mind and 
 the divine mind, by which, through His infinite 
 condescension, we may actually move His will. 
 
 " It is, and God has decreed that it should be, 
 a power in the universe, as distinct, as real, as 
 natural, as imiform, as the power of gravitation 
 or of light or of electricity. 
 
 " A man may use it as trustingly and as soberly 
 as he would use either of these. It is as truly the 
 
78 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 dictate of good sense that a man should expect to 
 achieve something by praying as it is that he 
 should expect to achieve something by a telescope 
 or the mariner's compass or the electric tele- 
 graph." 
 
?|oto Can <@ob 9nfi(ttier draper? 
 
GOD'S DIGNITY AND MAN'S INSIGNIF- 
 ICANCE 
 
 "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" — 
 Ps. 8:4. 
 
 While affirming the Scripture doctrine 
 of prayer we cannot here be unmindful 
 that many earnest Christians are not a 
 Httle embarrassed with a vagueness of be- 
 lief and even skeptical suggestions as to 
 the need of prayer and whether God can 
 or does really answer prayer in case one 
 prays. 
 
 Before passing to the more practical 
 discussion of what constitutes real pray- 
 ing, if anything helpful can be said to one 
 who is beset with the difficulties just men- 
 tioned, it ought to be said just here. The 
 following few pages are not, therefore, 
 meant in any sense as a reply to the " mod- 
 ern thinker" with his scientific (?) objec- 
 tion to prayer. It is barely possible that 
 
 81 
 
82 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 even a "modern thinker" may have a 
 little yet to learn, and after we have all 
 gotten through down here, is it not still 
 The primer barely possible that some things 
 the°^o°dern will be made a little plainer 
 thinker." ^p there? But the one thing 
 that the "modern thinker" ought to 
 learn first is the one thing from which 
 he is probably farthest away, namely, 
 that he can learn more about God and 
 the mysteries of His government through 
 his conscience and his heart and actual 
 obedience to the Word of God than he 
 ever can with all his brains when these 
 things are forgotten. 
 
 But what we are now to say is said to 
 relieve, if possible, and possible to a large 
 degree it certainly is, the embarrassment 
 Earnest ^^ mind Concerning this matter 
 Christians that anuovs at times even the 
 
 perplexed. ^J" . . ^^ 
 
 earnest Christian. You esteem 
 highly the privilege of prayer; you feel 
 quite sure you would rather comfort your- 
 self with God's promise to answer prayer 
 than anything man might say to prove the 
 
Gocfs Dignity and Mart's Insignificance 83 
 
 answer to prayer a reasonable thing, and 
 yet you have found your mind at times 
 searching after a purely rationalistic basis 
 upon which to ground the possibility of 
 answered prayer, and the search has 
 landed you in something of perplexity and 
 possibly not a little doubt. Confused 
 somewhat after the fashion of Nicodemus 
 in his attempt to understand the mystery 
 of regeneration, you find yourself saying 
 to yourself as he did to Christ, " How can 
 these things be?" 
 
 It is not, of course, to be presumed that 
 one must refrain from prayer until he 
 thoroughly understand whatever mystery 
 may surround the subject. As 
 well refrain from wearing the ^°°^^^Yi. 
 warm garment until there are 
 no mysteries surrounding the process by 
 which the grass growing on the hillside is 
 converted, after entering the sheep's stom- 
 ach, into wool growing on its back. As 
 well refrain from eating till you have 
 learned the chemical constituents of the 
 food of which you are about to partake. 
 
84 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Yet we are told to love God with our mind 
 and so far as our reason will take us we 
 are certainly privileged and obligated to 
 go, but reason is bounded, and were we to 
 believe nothing but what we can under- 
 stand, we leave no room for faith at all 
 and both worlds become cold and dark 
 and cheerless. What transcends reason 
 you may be asked to believe, but what can 
 be shown to be contrary to reason you 
 never will be asked to endorse. 
 
 Some of these prayer perplexities we are 
 now going to examine. 
 
 One of them relates to the infinite dignity 
 and exalted character of God. How can 
 such a Being concern Himself with the 
 'petty affairs of so insignificant a creature 
 as I ? Is it not a piece of inexcusable pre- 
 sumption as well as derogatory to the 
 character of the Almighty to suppose that 
 God's On^ so glorious and so infinitely 
 
 greatness^ great cau stoop to an interest in 
 Insignia- the concerns of man who, after 
 all that can be said about his 
 position among created things, is but "a 
 
G6cVs Dignity and Man's Insignificance 85 
 
 worm crawling on the surface of one of 
 God's smallest planets"? 
 
 We reply to the one who is thus think- 
 ing, that your idea of true dignity is false 
 and mistaken. Such dignity as you have 
 in mind often belongs to human royalties, 
 but is in itself beneath the true dignity of 
 the King of kings. You have thought such 
 condescension to be unworthy of One so 
 exalted, whereas it is one of His brightest 
 glories that His love and His care extends 
 to the small and insignificant as well as 
 the great and important. The ^^^^ 
 God who paints the evening conception 
 sunset is the God who touches 
 the butterfly's wing with its gorgeous hues. 
 The God who planned the organ harmony 
 of the spheres is the God who fashioned 
 with such delicate care that sweetest of 
 musical instruments in the throat of the 
 nightingale. He feeds the fowls, clothes 
 the grass and arrays the lilies in their more 
 than Solomon-like glory. Are you not as 
 important as these? 
 
 It was not beneath God's dignity to 
 
86 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 create so unimportant a being as yourself. 
 Why, then, should His glory be tarnished 
 if He lends His thought to your wants and 
 your necessities? Augustus Thompson 
 has well said, *' If He numbers your hairs, 
 will He not also, your tears?" 
 
 But, after this truth is gratefully appre- 
 ciated, let us be reminded in the next place 
 that the perplexity in question arises 
 partly from a mistaken conception of 
 man's true place in creation. You have 
 thought of this vast universe with its im- 
 measurable space filled with innumerable 
 worlds swinging about each 
 other, and you have thought of 
 God as having something more 
 important to do than to busy Himself with 
 the trivial affairs of so unimportant a be- 
 ing as yourself. But possibly in God's 
 estimation man is not of such infinitesimal 
 consequence after all. Bulk is not the 
 highest test of greatness. If it were, the 
 question, "Of how much more value is 
 man than a sheep?" would find its answer 
 in the difference of avoirdupois. But if 
 
God^'s Dignity and Man's Insignificance 87 
 
 man reads aright the Word of God he 
 will know that he outweighs in worth ten 
 thousand times all the sheep Manhood 
 the world has ever held; and »»* ^^^^ 
 
 . . ured by 
 
 if he interpret aright the signifi- inches o 
 cance of his mental and moral ^°"" ^* 
 endowments, if he seriously reflecV upon 
 his place and influence in the developing 
 world of which he is a part, he will not find 
 it hard to believe that God has crowned 
 him with a glory and honor far above all 
 the other forms of life about him; and 
 unless a huge bulk of senseless matter is 
 nobler than that which lives and feels, and 
 unless this last be nobler than that which 
 thinks and aspires after God, we need not 
 feel that man is too insignificant and of too 
 little worth to attract the attention and the 
 care of Him whose handiwork he is. Man 
 is God's own child; he is "Nature's scep- 
 tered king"; for his coming God had bus- 
 ied Himself preparing the earth through 
 all the untold ages of the past; and unless 
 God, who is Himself all intelligence and 
 goodness, is more interested in things than 
 
88 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 He is in souls; unless He is more con- 
 ^^A ^1, cerned about the fowls of the 
 
 God will 
 
 Interest air than He is about the child 
 
 himself in „ . 
 
 his own of His owu Hkeuess, we need 
 not feel that He is too exalted 
 or too busy to take account and care for 
 even you and me. 
 
 ** I know not where His islands 
 Lift their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care." 
 
II 
 
 WHY PRAY IF GOD KNOWS AND IS 
 KIND? 
 
 " Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye 
 have need of, before ye ask Him." — Matt. 6:8. 
 
 A second perplexity shapes itself thus: 
 Is not God all-knowing? Why, then, tell 
 Him that with which He is already famil- 
 iar? And is He not kindhearted and be- 
 nevolent and therefore infinitely disposed 
 to supply all our needs without any asking 
 on our part? Does not, indeed, our im- 
 portuning imply an unreadiness on His 
 part to give, and is it not therefore an 
 affront to Him? 
 
 Yes, "Your heavenly Father knoweth 
 what things ye have need of before ye ask 
 Him," but He has told us, nevertheless, to 
 pray, and whatever His design may be it 
 will certainly be to our interest to follow 
 His instruction. 
 
 Again, His knowing does not exclude 
 
 89 
 
90 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 the possibility of our asking being pleasing 
 to Him. It is a sure mark of confidence 
 in Him. 
 
 Again, not to mention the reflex benefit, 
 for we are now thinking of the direct effi- 
 cacy of prayer, to say, *' Oh, well, no use 
 to pray; if it's best to be, it will be," is 
 utterly incompatible with the disposition 
 that would appreciate and make the most 
 of the favor if it came. Earnest prayer is 
 not only the most appropriate evidence 
 that the sinner feels his needs but the most 
 appropriate evidence of his 
 fitness to moral fitness to receive the 
 receive blessinff that otherwise would 
 
 evidenced o 
 
 by earnest be bcst for him. You mav 
 know your neighbor is in want 
 and be most anxious to help him, and yet 
 he may in his present state of mind be so 
 indifferent to his poverty as to make it 
 quite as much worth your while to throw 
 your help away. 
 
Ill 
 
 PRAYER AND THE REIGN OF LAW 
 
 - J ^ 
 
 " The thing that is done upon the earth He doeth ^}-vt'^ 
 
 it Hiviself." 
 
 Another diflSculty presents itself thus: 
 Are not all things controlled by law ? How, 
 then, can God interfere to bring about any 
 change for my sake without causing con- 
 fusion and disaster? How can God, in 
 order to answer prayer, interfere with the 
 fixed and immutable laws that reign in the 
 universe ? 
 
 Thousands of earnest, praying Chris- 
 tians are troubled at this point. 
 
 Better trust God and pray on as He has 
 told you to. 
 
 But think for a moment. What do you 
 have in mind when you think or speak of 
 law.? \ WliaL-do^ you mean by law? jT on 
 mean, do you not, a regularized The soiirce 
 mode of action ; you mean an °* ^*^- 
 observed order of sequence; a rule by 
 
 91 
 
92 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 which the same effect always follows the 
 same cause. But something must be re- 
 sponsible for all this exact regularity. 
 What is it? Is it some self -sustained in- 
 visible force.? If so, then the nature of 
 God is impugned and the universe is 
 robbed of its Deity. 
 
 Think but a little further and this will 
 be plain. Either the self-sustained force 
 in question is self -originating, in which 
 case there is no Being responsible for all 
 the universe contains, and if such be true, 
 there is in fact no Supreme Being — no 
 God at all ; or, such force having originated 
 with God has been voluntarily surren- 
 dered to itself and the creatures of this 
 world to it, which in the last analysis re- 
 solves God into a heartless monster whose 
 offspring are left to rail with embittered 
 soul against the inevitable from which 
 there is no hope or help; or, such force, if 
 self-sustained, originating with God, has 
 gotten altogether beyond His control, 
 which means that you must divest God of 
 the name Almighty, for He has plainly set 
 
Prayer and the Reign of Law 93 
 
 in motion machinery that He cannot man- 
 age. How such a view holds 
 God up to ridicule ! How much make an un- 
 it makes Him like the fabu- °ianae«awe 
 
 universe? 
 
 lous inventor who prepared an 
 automobile which, when started, would 
 run for days and weeks; but he neglected 
 to provide any way of stopping it, or of 
 regulating its speed. He mounted it, but 
 found he could not control it ; he got hun- 
 gry, thirsty and sleepy, but the machine 
 carried him on until he perished. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we see in the re- 
 sponsible agent back of all the workings 
 of nature God Himself, then what are 
 these various modes of action which are 
 so regular and so immutable and which 
 we call Law, but expressions of God's own 
 will? Law is the expression of 
 God s Will. It is the way God definition 
 decides that force shall act upon ° *^* 
 matter. In itself it has no existence; it is 
 simply our name for expressing God's 
 mode of working. It is the way God does 
 things. The only thing science can say 
 
94 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 is, certain effects follow certain causes be- 
 cause they do: the Christian says they do 
 because God 'provides for their so doing. 
 In other words, "the thing that is done 
 upon earth He doeth it Himself." 
 ' Since this is true, where is the folly of 
 asking God to control the forces of either 
 the natural or spiritual world for the bene- 
 fit of His trusting, praying children? "As 
 if," says Boyd Vincent, " God had some- 
 how created the world like a great clock, 
 and set it a-going, and were now afraid to 
 touch it lest, like some meddlesome boy. 
 He should get His fingers into the works 
 and stop it." 
 
 Surely God would leave room for the 
 freedom of His will without necessarily 
 violating the order He established. More 
 than this, who will dare say that God can- 
 not, if He choose f without disaster, modify, 
 suspend or even change what we call a 
 law. But to answer prayer no such heroic 
 measures are necessary. Every result 
 which even man produces is brought about 
 by the combination and adjustment of 
 
Prayer and the Reign of Law 95 
 
 forces existent about him. Science has 
 proven beyond a shadow of doubt that 
 every force in the world is wholly inoper- 
 ative unless certain conditions ^ ^ „,, 
 
 God utlliz- 
 
 are fulfilled and that when mg ws own 
 these conditions are fulfilled answer 
 that force begins to work its p"^"* 
 wonders. Shall the creature be privileged 
 thus to utilize the forces which he found 
 here at his coming and the like prerogative 
 be denied the Creator who brought them 
 into existence.^ Has man any good reason 
 for believing that his will is more closely 
 linked with these things than is the will of 
 God.? 
 
 For instance, if man had but the means, 
 he could make it rain whenever he wanted 
 to. Rain is condensed vapor falling in 
 drops to the earth. It is produced by 
 known physical agencies, the more appar- 
 ent of which are heat and air currents. 
 Now, if man could generate sufficient heat 
 to alter the atmospheric currents what 
 would hinder him from bringing rain to 
 the earth at his will? And in case he 
 
96 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 fired some vast plain or mighty city to 
 effect his purpose, could we say that in 
 Eain in producing rain he had violated 
 answer to naturc's established laws? No, 
 he had simply used them. 
 Shall we now admit that man can make it 
 rain and God cannot? By no means, 
 but when God, in answer to prayer, wills 
 that it shall rain He simply provides that 
 the natural forces over which He has 
 control and which are productive of 
 such result be brought into operation. 
 
 We children of lesser ability look upon 
 some great modern scientific thinker and 
 wonder at his prodigious learning, but he 
 must look very small in the eyes of God, 
 though he does not seem to know it, when 
 he ventures the gratuitous assertion that 
 God can not at His pleasure manipulate 
 or control the laws He has brought into 
 existence. As, for instance, when Tyn- 
 dall says it would be as unreasonable for 
 a shower to come from heaven in response 
 to a human prayer as for the St. Lawrence 
 river to roll up the falls of Niagara; when. 
 
Prayer and the Reign oj Law 97 
 
 in fact, the one is no more unreason- 
 able than the other. What would be re- 
 quired to roll the St. Lawrence Tyndaii's 
 up Niagara Falls .? Simply a denance 
 
 t^ ^ ^ '^ of God. 
 
 force stronger than that of 
 gravitation and the thing is accomjjlished, 
 and that without the violation or even the 
 suspension of any of nature's laws. Pope 
 in his *' Essay on Man" voices the skepti- 
 cism with which we are dealing, in these 
 lines : 
 " Think we, like some weak prince, th' Eternal 
 
 Cause 
 Prone for His fav'rites to reverse His laws? 
 
 When the loose mountain trembles from on high, 
 Shall gravitation cease if you go by?" 
 
 The only sensible answer is, Yes, if 
 God so choose. 
 
 That God would do a thing like that is 
 not likely, but it is perfectly absurd to say 
 that He cannot. Man's arm is not so 
 strong as God's, else he could put out his 
 hand and hold the mountain back him- 
 self. In smaller matters he is doing it 
 
98 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 every day. By an impulse of your will 
 you order your hand lifted up and it goes 
 right against the same force of gravity that 
 is pulling the mountain down. By lifting 
 The forces your hand you temporarily 
 
 of nature ■ ■.! i? p •. 
 
 at man's Overmaster the lorce oi gravity, 
 disposition. Every boy who catches a de- 
 scending ball and every child who throws 
 a dam across a laughing rivulet does the 
 same. When the engineer reverses his 
 engine and stops the onrushing train he 
 has neither annulled nor violated any law ; 
 he simply overbalanced one mighty force 
 by calling into play another. No violence 
 has been done to the reign of law in any 
 case. Everywhere in nature this overpow- 
 ering of one force by another is going on. 
 Kinsley, in his little work on " Science 
 and Prayer," takes for illustration a tum- 
 bler of water. Says he, *' If it were not for 
 „. , , the cohesive attraction between 
 
 Kinsley's 
 
 tumbler the particlcs of the fflass being 
 
 of water. ^ ° . ° 
 
 stronger than the gravity, the 
 sides would crumble into dust and sink 
 with the water to the lowest attainable 
 
Prayer and the Reign of Law 99 
 
 level. Gravity lias not been destroyed, 
 but simply mastered by a stronger antag- 
 onist. Remove a part of the heat from the 
 water and it will become a crystallized 
 solid, showing that until now the heat 
 force had been holding the crystalline in 
 check. Lower still further the tempera- 
 ture and the sides of the tumbler will burst 
 into pieces, the crystalline force overcom- 
 ing the cohesive. Raise the temperature 
 and the water will change to steam and a 
 repellance between the particles will ap- 
 pear, the heat driving them asunder, de- 
 spite all that cohesion and gravitation 
 can do." 
 
 If man by an effort of his will can thus 
 exercise such power over the forces of 
 nature, assuredly we cannot be unwilling 
 to concede that God can do likewise. How 
 did you lift your hand.^ Virtually by put- 
 ting your will under it. Likewise the boy 
 overcame the force of gravity by putting 
 his will under the ball, and the little child 
 by putting its will against the streamlet. 
 And so could God if He choose put His 
 
100 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 will under the toppling mountain, as He 
 did put His will under the floating axe in 
 the days of Elisha, and in precisely the 
 same way could God by a direct effort of 
 His will deliver any one who prays to Him 
 Natural law ^^^^m the Operation of any of 
 and the will His natural laws. Just how 
 God could so dispose His will 
 is the real mystery after all, but who has 
 ever discovered just how he gets his own 
 will under his hand or just how a boy 
 gets his beneath a ball? In short, the 
 last is quite as mysterious as the first. 
 God often works indirectly through hu- 
 man agencies or natural forces whose 
 operation is visible to us, but that He 
 should work directly or invisibly does not 
 alter the principle involved. 
 
 Tyndall, who has so laboriously op- 
 posed the Christian faith in this respect, 
 admitted that prayer might avail for spir- 
 itual aid, but said that no good could come 
 " of giving it a delusive value by claiming 
 for it a power in physical nature." Dr. 
 Patton has aptly remarked that, *' A meta- 
 
Prayer and the Reign oj Law 101 
 
 physical philosopher might indeed exactly 
 reverse the statement, with much greater 
 plausibility. He might affirm that, know- 
 ins: from constant experience 
 
 ^ . Dr. Pattou's 
 
 the power of free will over the reply to 
 laws of matter, and the ease ^" * 
 w^ith which it can overrule, or combine, 
 or counterbalance them, to work out its 
 own results, he was ready to concede 
 that prayer might lead God to produce 
 physical effects ; but that the real difficulty 
 lay in understanding how God could an- 
 swer prayer by producing mental and 
 moral changes, where He would have to 
 deal not with dead matter but with living 
 spirits; not with necessitated forces but 
 with freedom itself." 
 
 In the presence of skeptical assaults on 
 prayer, or the honest perplexity of one's 
 own mind, it may be gratifying to recall 
 the life and the attitude of some of the 
 world's masters in matters of science. 
 Let one example here be enough — Agas- 
 siz, a man who studied nature as few have 
 ever done. His was no common intellect, 
 
102 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 and yet he prayed. He knew the laws of 
 matter as few have ever known them 
 A ^oo*», since, but he knew that mind 
 
 A master 
 
 scientist -yvas back of them all. He saw 
 the unchangeable precision with 
 which they ruled about him, but yet 
 he prayed for he knew they were expres- 
 sions of some master will. He is gathered 
 with his pupils on an island shore; they 
 have come for study and investigation. 
 Listen as he speaks to them and then 
 watch him as he bows his mighty mind 
 in the presence of nature and the God 
 from whence all nature came. Whittier 
 has described the scene: 
 
 *' Said the master to the youth : 
 ' We have come in search of truth. 
 
 Trying with uncertain key 
 
 Door by door of mystery ; 
 We are searching through His laws. 
 To the garment-hem of cause, 
 
 Him, the endless, unbegun. 
 
 The Unnameable, the One, 
 Light of all our light the source 
 Life of life and Force of force. 
 
Prayer and the Reig7i of Law 103 
 
 By past efforts unavailing 
 Doubt and error, loss and failing, 
 
 Of our weakness made aware, 
 On the threshold of our task 
 Let us light and guidance ask. 
 
 Let us pause in silent prayer !' 
 
 "Then the master in his place, 
 Bowed his head a little space. 
 And the leaves, by soft air stirred. 
 Lapse of wave and cry of bird. 
 Left the solemn hush unbroken 
 Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
 While its wish, on earth unsaid. 
 Rose to heaven interpreted." 
 
 No, child of the kingdom, the reign of 
 law does not make it impossible for God 
 to answer your prayer. *' It dissolves into 
 thin air, as we look at it, this fancied bar- 
 rier of inexorable law; and as the mists 
 clear off, beyond there is the throne of the 
 Moral King of the universe, in whose eyes 
 material symmetry is as nothing when 
 compared with the spiritual well-being of 
 His moral creatures" (Liddon). 
 
IV 
 
 PRAYER AND PREDESTINATION 
 
 "Known unto Him are all His works from the be- 
 ginning of the world." — Acts 15: 18. 
 
 There Is still another difficulty. Are 
 not all things that are going to occur pre- 
 determined in the mind of God? And if 
 everything has been eternally foreknown 
 and predestinated, does not any later ar- 
 rangement of events because of prayer, or 
 for any other reason, involve God in a 
 hopeless contradiction and reflect there- 
 fore upon His perfect character? How, 
 then, can prayer have any influence with 
 God in bringing to pass the things that 
 are to take place? 
 
 This is, we admit, after all a serious per- 
 plexity. It is, in fact, the only serious 
 The most perplexity, and it is at this point 
 serious the subjcct passcs more fully 
 
 beyond the grasp of finite 
 reason than at any other. It practically 
 
 104 
 
Prayer and Predestination 105 
 
 brings up the old bone of contention be- 
 tween the advocates of God's sovereignty 
 on the one hand and those of man's free 
 will on the other. 
 
 Once more our advice would be, Trust 
 God and pray on as He has told you to 
 do. If God has told us that He will an- 
 swer our prayers, He w411 take care of His 
 sovereignty. Anyhow, after we have done 
 all our reading and all our thinking upon 
 this enigma we will be left pretty much 
 where we are now, namely, looking along 
 two seemingly parallel lines of thought, 
 both of which seem to be true and yet 
 apparently contradictory, but which, after 
 all, must meet at some point in God's own 
 plan of perfect wisdom far beyond the 
 vision of any finite intelligence. 
 
 There are three explanations in each of 
 which millions of Christians have found 
 encouragement to pray. 
 
 Each of these explanations ^^^ ^^^^ 
 teach that prayer and predes- expiana- 
 
 ^ ^ . , , tions. 
 
 tmation are bcriptural truths. 
 
 They might be distinguished as Ab- 
 
106 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 solute Predestination, Conditional Pre- 
 destination, and Limited Predestina- 
 tion. 
 
 The first explanation declares that 
 everything which comes to pass is first 
 predetermined in the mind of God. It 
 declares that God's predestination pre- 
 cedes His foreknowledge as the ground of 
 certainty for human action. God only 
 foreknows that which He has predeter- 
 mined to take place. 
 
 The second explanation, while admit- 
 ting that God absolutely predetermines 
 some things, contends that such things as 
 respect the government of his free moral 
 agents are only conditionally predeter- 
 mined. God purposes to do under cer- 
 tain conditions, which depend upon the 
 free agency of man, what He would not 
 do under other conditions. This explana- 
 tion further declares that God's fore- 
 knowledge precedes His predestination. 
 God only predetermines that which He 
 foreknows will take place and the fore- 
 knowledge of human action has no influ- 
 
Prayer and Predestination 107 
 
 ence upon its taking place; it does not 
 necessitate the action. 
 
 The third explanation denies that God's 
 foreknowledge is necessarily all-compre- 
 hending. 
 
 We will think for a while about these 
 explanations. 
 
 1. Suppose we accept the first one. We 
 remark in passing that if the foreordina- 
 tion of events be a sufficient reason for 
 not praying, it is an equally 
 sufficient reason for not doing ticmSai*'to 
 anythinsj else. As well might f" activity, 
 
 •/ o ^ ^ o it to prayer. 
 
 one say, '* If it be ordained that 
 I shall live, it is not necessary for me to 
 eat," as to say, *'If it be ordained that I 
 shall obtain any good, it is not necessary 
 for me to pray for it." But it is very evi- 
 dent that such reasoning is a swift and 
 sure road to the starkest fatalism. If fore- 
 ordination be a valid objection against 
 praying, it is also a valid objection 
 against every other form of human 
 activity. 
 
 Still the question confronts us, What 
 
108 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 use to pray if God has eternally settled all 
 things ? 
 
 In answer to this we propose another 
 question. If God encourages us to pray, 
 does it not seem reasonable to suppose 
 that somehow in His eternal planning He 
 made allowance for it? And 
 Allowance closc ou the hccls of this ques- 
 
 made for . , __^, .„ 
 
 prayer in tiou comcs another. What II 
 
 the plan /^ j i? j • j „ 
 
 of God. God loreordamed our prayers 
 
 and embraced them within His 
 plan as predestinated factors toward the 
 accomplishment of His purposes in the 
 world.? What if God so arranged the suc- 
 cession of events as to give due place and 
 influence to prayer in bringing them 
 about .'^ In other words, what if God fore- 
 ordained the means as well as the end.? 
 To illustrate: Suppose that God fore- 
 ordained that a certain temporal blessing 
 should be yours as a result of some prayer, 
 which prayer He also foreordained as the 
 influence with Him in securing the bless- 
 ing.? The former, I am aware, you might 
 call a provisional predestination, but since 
 
Prayer and Predestination 109 
 
 it depends upon predestinated means it is, 
 after all, as absolutely certain as it other- 
 wise could be. 
 
 The perplexity is a stubborn one. One 
 can easily wish for still clearer light; yet 
 the foregoing explanation is that given by 
 scores of the closest thinkers in every por- 
 tion of the church, and so general has 
 been the satisfaction it has given that by 
 many it is considered as the accepted 
 creed of Christendom. And if such ex- 
 planation be accepted, then so far from 
 God's unchangeableness being 
 an objection to prayer, it be- fha^ngeawe- 
 comes the sure ground of our "®^^ *^® ^"" 
 
 c5 ground of 
 
 confidence in prayer; fot so far successful 
 
 p . , . , petition. 
 
 irom it being necessary that 
 God should change His will in order to 
 answer prayer, it becomes absolutely nec- 
 essary that His will should not be changed. 
 Fail to answer He cannot without a re- 
 versal of His decree and a contradiction 
 of His own perfect nature. 
 
 2. Suppose we accept the second ex- 
 planation. Now if some events are pre- 
 
110 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 destinated only upon certain conditions, 
 which you or I as free moral agents may 
 or may not fulfill, and if prayer be made 
 in Scripture to be one of these conditions, 
 then the influence which prayer has with 
 God is plainly manifest. 
 
 But you ask, " If God foreknows every- 
 thing, as this theory also admits, does He 
 not then also foreknow that the particular 
 prayer in question will be made, and if so, 
 is not both the prayer and the supposed 
 consequent event made certain from all 
 eternity? Wherein, then, does this ex- 
 planation differ from the other?" In this 
 reply the exponents of this explanation, 
 that while the predetermination of an 
 event necessitates its occurrence, God only 
 
 « ^. , predetermines what He fore- 
 
 cod's fore- L 
 
 knowledge kuows is goiug to occur and 
 his prede- the forcknowlcdgc of an occur- 
 
 termlnation. i . 'l t. 't. 
 
 rence does not necessitate it, 
 for the plain reason that it is mere knowl- 
 edge and not influence, and so has no 
 effect upon the freedom or certainty of the 
 action. 
 
Prayer and Predestination 111 
 
 This theory is best set forth in "Whe- 
 don on the Will" (Part II, Sec. 3, Chap. 
 11). He shows us how that God's fore- 
 knowledge is not so much "a foreknowl- 
 edge of a peculiar kind of event, as a 
 knowledge in Him of a peculiar quality 
 existent in the free agent." God *'under- 
 standeth the thoughts of man afar off." 
 He so understands the temperament and 
 disposition of every one of His creatures 
 as to be altogether sure of how each of 
 them will act under any given circum- 
 stances; and when we are told that God's 
 foreknowledge must be to some degree 
 uncertain unless He has Himself prede- 
 termined the action in question, the advo- 
 cates of this second explanation are at 
 once by our side to say, "not unless any 
 person can prove that the Divine pre- 
 science is unable to dart through all the 
 workings of the human mind, all its com- 
 parison of things in the judgment, all the 
 influences of motives on the affections, all 
 the hesitancies and baitings of the will, to 
 its final choice." 
 
112 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 This is the explanation which has ap- 
 pealed to multitudes of the world's best 
 thinkers. Some of us are doubtless not 
 yet altogether satisfied. Truth seems to 
 lie on either side. But you can pray intel- 
 ligently and with assurance on 
 reconcile ° ^^^ basis of either explanation, 
 predestina- ^y^ niust uot forffct, howcver, 
 
 tion with ^ ^ o ' ' 
 
 the sovereign that this is an attempt of the 
 
 will of man. „ . , . ^ . , 
 
 nnite to grasp the mnnite, and 
 we have no way of understanding Him 
 "whose ways are past finding out," except 
 through our own imperfect notions of those 
 attributes and capacities which would seem 
 to be niecessary in us to accomplish what 
 we ascribe unto God. But even though 
 we may not with our limited and imper- 
 fect notions be able to reconcile God's ab- 
 solute predestination or certain fore- 
 knowledge with the sovereign will of man, 
 we ought not therefore to lose faith in our 
 Thomas God or in His promises, for as 
 Watson the writer just quoted (Thomas 
 
 Watson) has said, '* If God has 
 established it as one of the principles 
 
Prayer and Predestination 113 
 
 of His moral government to accept 
 prayer, in every case in which He has 
 given us authority to ask, He has not, we 
 may be assured, entangled His actual 
 government of the world with the bonds 
 of such an eternal predestination of par- 
 ticular events as either to reduce prayer to 
 a mere form of words, or not to be able 
 Himself, consistently with his decrees, to 
 answer it, whenever it is encouraged by 
 his express engagements." 
 
 3. Suppose we accept the third explana- 
 tion: the explanation which affirms that 
 God's foreknowledge and foreordination 
 are not necessarily all-comprehending. 
 
 You shrink from an attitude of thought 
 like that toward the Supreme Being. It 
 appears, does it not, to reflect discredit 
 upon His perfection.? Yet, let ^^^^ ^^^ 
 us not be too hasty in our judg- foreknow 
 ment. Many earnest and noted 
 scholars defend the position and strenu- 
 ously maintain that not only does it not 
 dishonor God, but that it is the only 
 scheme of thought which does not divest 
 
-^ 
 
 114 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Him of the essential attributes of His 
 divinity. 
 
 The position is quite clearly set forth in 
 W. W. Kinsley's " Science and Prayer," 
 one of the required books for the Chau- 
 tauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. 
 This explanation, if it may be maintained 
 consistently with the perfection of God's 
 character, relieves us, of course, of the 
 difiiculty in question. 
 
 It is contended by the advocates of this 
 explanation, that when God created us in 
 His own image and made us equally with 
 Himself of sovereign will (and we know 
 we are free to choose as we will) by His 
 very so doing He surrendered at least par- 
 tially His control over us and of necessity 
 limited thereby His foreknowledge con- 
 cerning us. Plainly it is the old time-worn 
 controversy between two great schools of 
 theology; between God's sov- 
 fontrovcKy. erciguty on one side (involving 
 as it does His absolute fore- 
 knowledge and predestination) and man's 
 free will on the other, and between the 
 
Prayer and Predestination 115 
 
 horns of such a dilemma the only thing to 
 do is to confess a wise ignorance and hang 
 on to both. 
 
 A controversion of God's perfect fore- 
 knowledge does not set well with most of 
 us, regardless of our denominational bias. 
 The fear, however, of any belittling con- 
 ception of God its advocates would over- 
 come by showing what the theory of such 
 foreknowledge really involves, leaving us 
 to decide which is the greater injustice, if 
 any, to the all-perfect character of God. 
 
 The following from the work above 
 quoted on " Science and Prayer" will help 
 us to an appreciation, if so be such is pos- 
 sible, of the position assumed by the ad- 
 vocates of the limited knowledge theory. 
 The author says : " No petitioner can plead 
 with any genuine unction unless he be- 
 lieves that he can actually effect some 
 change in the purposes existing in the 
 divine mind at the time his prayer is 
 offered. ... If God foreknows every- 
 thing that will ever come to pass, all His 
 own mental states must necessarily be in- 
 
116 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 eluded in that foreknowledge. A mo- 
 ment's reflection will convince us that 
 Does God othcrwisc there is not a single 
 
 foreknow his ■ • i • • i r ■ 
 
 own mental present mtcutiou or plan but 
 states? what is exposed to the possi- 
 
 bility of modification. If a single thought 
 or emotion is ever going to spring up in 
 God's mind unanticipated, God Himself 
 must be as ignorant as we as to what part 
 of His vast plan it will pertain. And so, 
 if we would logically defend a belief in 
 the all-comprehensiveness of God's fore- 
 knowledge, we must aflfirm that not a 
 single new idea can arise in His mind — 
 not a single new emotion be felt — and that 
 if He is thus limited now He must have 
 been equally so at every moment in all the 
 eternal past, and must be through all the 
 years to come; for if there ever has been, 
 or ever will be, a moment when a new 
 thought caij. thus come, then during all the 
 time preceding that moment the fore- 
 knowledge was incomplete. Where does 
 this lead.'' In what sort of an intellectual 
 or emotional condition does this irrefraga- 
 
Prayer and Predestination 117 
 
 ble logic compel us to assert God to be 
 continually? Unquestionably that of per- 
 fect stagnation. No thought processes can 
 be carried on under such condi- 
 tions — no succession of ideas, conclusions 
 no change of mental state; but j^e^J^JlJ 
 God must have been and must 
 still be imprisoned in a hopelessly dead 
 calm. . . . When, then, did He form His 
 plans for creation.? Under this supposi- 
 tion there never could have been a time 
 when He began to think about them. . . . 
 If God has had no thought succession, He 
 can have had no feeling; His emotional 
 state having ever necessarily been that of 
 unbroken placidity — of absolute apathy. 
 His heart throbless as a stone. He could 
 experience no change of feeling, for that 
 would involve thought-succession. From 
 all the sources of joy or sorrow of which 
 we can conceive He would be utterly de- 
 barred — from pleasurable or painful 
 memories, from hopes and forebodings, 
 from social sympathies, from emotions 
 that accompany changes, contrasts, sur- 
 
118 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 prises, from the glow of activity, even 
 from the delights and griefs of contempla- 
 tion; for they all involve thought-move- 
 ment. Therefore, under this supposition 
 God can have no emotional activity, for 
 He would have no thought-activity for its 
 background. Thoughts must, of course, 
 come and go, or the heart lies dead." 
 ■*3uch," he says, *'are the absurdities in 
 which we become hopelessly entangled the 
 moment we attempt to defend the doc- 
 trine of God's perfect foreknowledge." 
 
 No Christian scholar would for one sec- 
 ond espouse or teach a doctrine of which 
 
 toyait to ^^ ^^^ ^^ least suspicion that 
 the character it is in auv scusc dcroffatorv to 
 
 of God. ^ J T^ M -^ -^ ' • 
 
 God. l^or the writer it is im- 
 possible to conceive of God's all-compre- 
 hending foreknowledge and absolute pre- 
 destination without including His mental 
 states, for blindly and irrationally He 
 certainly does not act, and because this is 
 true, the conclusions of the above author, 
 some seem to think, are well nigh irre- 
 sistible. 
 
Prayer and Predestination 119 
 
 Again, some things are to be apprecia- 
 ted and not defined. For instance, such a 
 thing is Power. Who can tell you what 
 power is, though definition be piled up 
 mountain high.^ Power is to be appreci- 
 ated and the simplest child can do it. On 
 the other hand, some things are to be de- 
 fined and not appreciated. Such 
 
 ^, . . 1 , • , • 1 Things hard 
 
 a tnmg is predestination ; such and easy 
 is omniscience. These things *° '^«^'^®- 
 are easy to define; the very words 
 speak out their own meaning, but who 
 can appreciate them.? Who can under- 
 stand how God can be everywhere 
 at once.? or that His mind can reach 
 at the same time every speck of mat- 
 ter in the vast universe, absolutely deter- 
 mining the motion of every dust particle, 
 the juxtaposition of every infinitesimal 
 molecule and its relative position with 
 every other atom in the world, the exact 
 time, direction and rapidity of ^^^ ^^ 
 action of the world's every mote «* predesti- 
 of moving protoplasm.? Yet 
 to just such an extreme and even farther 
 
120 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 does predestination take us when followed 
 absolutely to the conclusion towards which 
 it points. 
 
 That such must necessarily be predi- 
 cated of a Being before He can be worthily 
 thought of as God we have sometimes 
 found ourselves wondering. Could He 
 not quite as well have committed these 
 things to the care of chemical and vital 
 forces the invariable operation of which 
 He has secured by laws which are under 
 His control.? Now if, while God prear- 
 ranged such forces as well as the forces 
 that give us the sustained harmony of the 
 universe and surround us with such provi- 
 The action ^ences as meet our probable 
 of the wants, He could leave the ac- 
 
 will in tion oi the human will m uncer- 
 
 uncertainty. |.^jj^^y ^yy delegating to man 
 
 through all the coming ages the power of 
 free and unhindered choice, and at the 
 same time leave nature with her govern- 
 ing laws in such responsive condition that, 
 having all matter and all force obedient to 
 His bidding, He can, in response to the 
 
Prayer and Predestination 121 
 
 petition of His confiding child, alter what 
 without such petition would have been 
 otherwise; we have found ourselves won- 
 dering if such a view is not, in comparison 
 with that of absolute predestination, equally 
 honoring to God and quite as stimulating 
 to man. To many it seems far more so. 
 It is not necessary to know which of the 
 three views are seen to be right from the 
 eternal sighting place. Some time we will 
 know what now we do not or „,,^ 
 
 Either ex- 
 
 cannot know. But if any child pianation an 
 of His, who is troubled with the ment to 
 question we have been consid- ^^^^' 
 ering should read these pages, there is one 
 thing we hope he will not fail to see, that 
 whether he prefer the one or the other of 
 the explanations which divide the Chris- 
 tian thought of the world, they are all 
 of them encouragements to prayer, and 
 one can pray trustingly and confidingly, 
 whether he think one way or the other. 
 
 We may be sure that if God has told us 
 to pray and that He would answer, that 
 He will make arrangements for that an- 
 
122 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 swer, whatever be the difficulties that 
 appear to our little minds to stand in His 
 way. Let us be grateful that it is so, and 
 let us honor Him with a large faith as we 
 take hold of His exceeding great and 
 precious promise to hear us and answer 
 when we pray. 
 
^otD to $rap 
 
PRAYER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 "J vnll pour upon the house of David the Spirit of 
 grace and of supplication." — Zech. 12: 10. 
 
 "Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of 
 His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." — 
 Gal. 4: 6. 
 
 "For through Him we both have access by one 
 Spirit unto the Father." — Eph. 2: 18. 
 
 " The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity for we 
 know not what we should pray for as we ought; but 
 the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with 
 groanings that cannot be uttered, and He that search- 
 eth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, 
 because He maketh intercession for the saints accord- 
 ing to the will of God." — Rom. 8: 26, 27. 
 
 "With all prayer and supplication praying at all 
 seasons in the Spirit." — Eph. 6: 18. 
 
 "Praying in the Holy Spirit." — Jude 20. 
 
 No one can read the above passages 
 without seeing at once that the Holy Spirit 
 bears a very intimate relation to the 
 prayers of a Christian. All spiritual ex- 
 perience finds its source in the indwelling 
 
 125 
 
126 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Spirit of God, and as prayer plays so 
 important a part in such experience, 
 
 An im or- ^^ ^^^^ J^^* Stated OUght tO 
 
 tant factor occasion no surprise. It is An- 
 
 in prayer. , _ _ ^ ^ cirr(\ 
 
 drew Murray who says, Ihe 
 mystery of prayer is the mystery of the di- 
 vine indwelHng," and John Owen, who has 
 remarked "that it cannot be denied that 
 the assistance which the Holy Spirit gives 
 in our prayers and supplications is more 
 frequently and expressly asserted in the 
 Scripture than any other operation of His 
 whatsoever," and many a one has con- 
 fessed his agreeable surprise in discover- 
 ing, on going through the Word, how 
 much real prayer is one of " the things of 
 the Spirit," and has lent glad testimony 
 that prayer becomes immeasurably sweet- 
 er, an altogether new experience, when 
 the soul is properly under His control in 
 this most holy exercise. Let us therefore 
 
 endeavor to see something of 
 
 The subject .i ^ • -4.' l 
 
 not without the Spirit s place in prayer, 
 mystery. Everything may not be alto- 
 gether clear to our limited vision, but if 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 127 
 
 our study help us to appreciate Him a little 
 more, it will be time well spent. Just how 
 "the Spirit helpeth our infirmity" ; just the 
 way in which He " intercedes for us with 
 groanings that cannot be uttered," we may 
 not know ; but to know that He does ; what 
 an encouragement to ** come boldly to the 
 throne of grace." Our 'Spraying in the 
 Holy Spirit" may not be without its mys- 
 tery, but that we may so pray, and so pray 
 acceptably; what an encouragement to 
 take our place in the school of prayer that 
 the Spirit Himself may teach us how to 
 pray. 
 
 If you will turn first to the Old Testa- 
 ment you will find that one of the distinct 
 purposes of the Holy Spirit's ^^^ ^^^ 
 coming was that He might have Testament 
 a part in the prayer life of God's 
 children. The passage is Zechariah 2 : 10, 
 **I will pour upon the house of David and 
 upon thj inhabitants of Jerusalem the 
 Spirit of grace and of supplication." Sup- 
 plication is not needed for any member of 
 the Godhead, and the Spirit's work in this 
 
128 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 respect must therefore be for us, and what 
 is promised here to the weakest saint in 
 the outgoing of his soul to God is the co- 
 operation of the all-knowing, all-powerful 
 Spirit of God Himself. 
 
 If you will now turn to the appointed 
 time for the fulfilling of Old Testament 
 promise, you will read in Galatians 4:6, 
 ** Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth 
 The New ^^^ Spirit of His Son into our 
 Testament hearts, cryinff, Abba, Father." 
 
 tuimiment. ^-. / i>( i i • i 
 
 Here we tind God domg exactly 
 what He promised to do; sending the 
 blessed Holy Spirit, and sending Him as a 
 Spirit of prayer, enabling us to say, " Our 
 Father, who art in heaven." Notice in 
 passing, please, that this Spirit is called 
 the Spirit of His Son. Because we have 
 the Spirit of His Son we are Sons. Now 
 read 1 John 3:1, and think of all this 
 means ! It is rich with blessing for those 
 who understand. It is through the Son 
 that "we have access by one Spirit unto 
 the Father" (Ephesians 2: 18). We can 
 *'come boldly to the throne of grace" be- 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 129 
 
 cause our Father sits upon it. It is the 
 Spirit of Sonship that distinguishes prayer 
 from beggary. "When the evidence of 
 sonship grows dim we knock feebly at 
 mercy's door." 
 
 But this is not all the Word says about 
 the Holy Spirit in prayer. We read in 
 Romans 8:26, "The Spirit also helpeth 
 our infirmity; for we know not 
 what we should pray for as we StercesSon. 
 ought, but the Spirit Himself 
 maketh intercession for us with groan- 
 ings which cannot be uttered." 
 
 The word "infirmity," while referring 
 to our human weakness in general, has its 
 special reference here to our weakness in 
 prayer. The word "helpeth" is a queer 
 compound in the original, composed of 
 three different words, and literally means, 
 "to lay hold of in connection with." It is 
 the same word Martha used when she told 
 the Master to bid Mary help her in the 
 work she was doing. How precious this 
 truth! What if the new birth does not 
 wholly relieve us of all infirmity.? Have 
 
130 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 we not One ever with us whose strength 
 is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 
 12:9)? 
 
 And when "we know not what to pray 
 for as we ought," how does He help us? 
 It is said that "He maketh intercession 
 for us with groanings that cannot be ut- 
 tered." The word "intercession" is the 
 same word used of Christ in 1 John 2:1, 
 "If any man sin, we have an advocate with 
 the Father, Jesus Christ the 
 
 The 
 
 Christian RightCOUS." We haVC, there- 
 
 advocates. 
 
 has two fore, two advocates continually 
 
 pleading our cause before the 
 throne of grace. Christ's intercession 
 takes place in heaven; the Holy Spirit's 
 takes place on earth in the believer's heart. 
 Christ pleads at the throne of glory for His 
 redeemed that He may obtain for them the 
 benefit of His sacrifice; the Holy Spirit 
 pleads at the throne of grace for all the 
 deep and hidden needs of the soul. 
 
 As to the precise character of the Spirit's 
 intercession for us, we find ourselves in the 
 realm of that which, to a certain degree 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 131 
 
 must remain unintelligible. The verse is 
 a mine of truth, and if you would discover 
 all of its hidden treasure, you must dig 
 deep down. There are two interpreta- 
 tions, and since what we are writing is 
 designed as a help in the study of this so 
 very important subject, we shall here en- 
 deavor to set them forth in such way as to 
 help you to a conclusion of your own, re- 
 serving, of course, the same privilege for 
 ourselves. 
 
 One of these interpretations has been 
 developed recently and at length in Kuy- 
 per's somewhat overloaded work on the 
 Holy Spirit ("The Work of the „, ^„^^^,.^ 
 Holy Spirit," pasje 636). explanation 
 
 n^i . . ^ ° . 1 • 1 1 Ot Rom. 8 :26. 
 
 i his interpretation, which has 
 remained for Dr. Kuyper to elaborate in 
 such detail, is very ingenious, and withal 
 so attractive that we have found our- 
 selves almost wishing that the Scripture 
 in question had made it a little clearer that 
 such is really its meaning; for Dr. Kuy- 
 per's explanation is by no means an un- 
 substantiated one, though much he has 
 
132 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 written in connection with it is gathered 
 by inference rather than from the Word 
 of God. 
 
 In a word, Kuyper argues that the in- 
 tercession of the Holy Spirit is altogether 
 independent of our spirit, and that the 
 unutterable groanings in our heart are 
 His, the Holy Spirit's, and not those which 
 we, incited by the Spirit, heave forth. 
 
 His reasons for this view are as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 1. Since the groanings of verse 23 prop- 
 erly belong to us, the "likewise" of verse 
 26 must "introduce a new thing," and the 
 groanings therefore are not ours as in verse 
 23, but the Spirit's. 
 
 2. The word "intercession" is the same 
 as used in verse 34, and since Christ's in- 
 tercession is wholly His own, why is the 
 same not true of the Spirit? 
 
 3. One of the prepositions (anti) in the 
 word "helpeth" confirms this explanation. 
 The word "helpeth" is made up of two 
 prepositions and a verb. The word is 
 "sunantilambano" ; sun (with), anti (over 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 133 
 
 against, or in place of), and lambano (to 
 take hold). 
 
 4. Verse 27 says that God knoweth the 
 mind, not of the man, but of the Spirit 
 who maketh intercession. 
 
 5. The intercession is made "according 
 to the will of God," and this can be said 
 of the Holy Spirit alone. 
 
 With this explanation thus confirmed in 
 his mind, Kuyper deducts from it a most 
 pleasing view of the Spirit's work in 
 prayer. Such independent intercession of 
 the Spirit in our behalf takes place be- 
 cause of our infirmity. If we were brought 
 at once by regeneration into the condition 
 of perfect holiness, such intercession of the 
 Spirit for the saint would not be necessary, 
 for the saint then being himself „^ „ . .,, 
 
 o The Spirit's 
 
 all that he ought to be could intercession 
 
 pray as he ought to pray. Such uy our 
 unutterable groanings of the ^"^°^^*y- 
 Spirit in the Christian's behalf are there- 
 fore to be thought of as taking place in 
 proportion as the Christian fails to prop- 
 erly pray for himself. Such we are to be- 
 
134 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 lieve to be especially the case in the heart 
 of the young Christian, because in his 
 early Christian experience, being yet a 
 babe in the new life, he knows neither how 
 nor what to pray for as he ought. Such, 
 Kuyper would have us believe, is true of 
 "the child regenerated in the cradle and 
 deceased before conversion was possible, 
 and who could not pray for himself" : The 
 Holy Spirit in him, therefore, prays for 
 him with groanings that cannot be uttered. 
 Such intercession He also makes for the 
 indifferent disciple and the backslider and 
 for the one who *'has fallen into tempo- 
 rary apostasy." Thus, when the man has 
 ceased praying altogether, the Holy Spir- 
 it's prayer within him continues and never 
 fails. 
 
 But even while the Spirit thus prays in 
 our behalf. He is teaching us more and 
 more to pray correctly for ourselves, and 
 _ , as we advance in the art. His 
 
 Praying ^ ^ ' ^ 
 
 tor us and qwu intercession becoming; 
 
 with us. . . , ° 
 
 thereby more and more super- 
 fluous, He takes up his work in our own 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 135 
 
 prayers, and cries unto God through hu- 
 man lips. His praying jor us gives place 
 more and more to His praying with us. 
 While He is praying for us, He is at the 
 same time teaching us better how to pray 
 for ourselves, that gradually His own in- 
 dependent praying may become superflu- 
 ous ; not that it will ever in this life become 
 wholly superfluous, for even in our most 
 advanced state on earth we will still have 
 our limitations, and be circumscribed 
 somewhat by our infirmity. Nor is it 
 meant that the Spirit teaches us to pray, 
 that He may leave us to ourselves in 
 proportion as His intercession becomes 
 unnecessary, for only as we "pray in the 
 Spirit" (Jude 20) can we really pray at all, 
 but, comforting as the thought of His inter- 
 cession for us may be, how infinitely better 
 that our own prayer life be perfected by 
 Him than to live in such spiritual infirmity 
 as forces Him to cry continually 
 to God in our behalf. We ask view!^ °^ 
 you now, whoever you may be 
 that reads these pages. Is not this a most 
 
136 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 inviting thought? It is rich with mean- 
 ing. It flashes with beauty like a jewel in 
 the sunlight. It is full of comfort. Just 
 to sit and think of it means to be "lost in 
 wonder, praise, and love." And it is not 
 an unlikely thought. Nor is there any 
 reason for doubting its truth. It is not 
 unscriptural. I mean by that, there is 
 nothing in Scripture to oppose it even if it 
 be not explicitly taught in the verse under 
 consideration. 
 
 Now let us see what others have said 
 
 about this remarkable verse. There is 
 
 another interpretation. It belongs to the 
 
 expositors of the earlier period, and is the 
 
 interpretation that has been 
 
 The other ,, • i t • i i 
 
 interpre- usually rcceived. It IS that the 
 tation. groanings in question are the 
 
 unutterable sighs of the human soul as it 
 is incited and wrought upon by the Holy 
 Spirit. Olshausen and most critical stu- 
 dents of the past century are so emphatic 
 in their opposition to ascribing groans to 
 the Holy Spirit that it takes several ex- 
 clamation points to express their sur- 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 137 
 
 prise that any one would ever think of 
 doing it. 
 
 Ponder over the verse as we will, we 
 cannot get away from the impression that 
 in some way these groanings are to be 
 associated with the consciousness of the 
 individual, and when once this is admitted, 
 it becomes, in part at least, fatal to the 
 view which Dr. Kuyper has championed. 
 Doubtless you have already inferred from 
 the discussion of that view that the inde- 
 pendent intercession of the Spirit is in 
 Kuyper's mind something altogether apart 
 from the believer's consciousness. In fact, 
 he says, "We are not conscious of it." 
 
 We remark: 
 
 1. This does not necessarily follow, 
 even though you think of these groanings 
 as belonging wholly to the Spirit. Strange 
 enough, Kuyper himself admits that these 
 groanings may be through the human 
 organs of speech (and so, of course, some- 
 thing, we must say, in which the believer 
 necessarily shares), though seemingly un- 
 aware that such admission is utterly in- 
 
138 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 compatible with the teaching for which 
 he makes the verse responsible. This we 
 will make clear in a moment. 
 
 2. The groanings may be attributed to 
 the Spirit, as the author, inspirer, and 
 finally the interpreter of them, and yet in 
 a very certain sense be said to be our own. 
 
 In two other instances the Holy Spirit 
 is said to be the agent of expression within 
 us. In Matthew 10:20 it is said, "Take 
 no thought (overanxious concern) how or 
 what ye shall speak; for it shall be given 
 unto you in that same hour what ye shall 
 speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the 
 Spirit of your Father that speaketh in 
 you." It is here the Spirit who speaks, 
 and yet not apart from the disciple's con- 
 sciousness nor without the use of the 
 human organs of speech, nor in such a 
 way that it cannot be said in a very certain 
 sense that it is, nevertheless, the disciple 
 who speaks. This is made clearer still by 
 other Scripture. In Galatians 4:6 it is 
 said, "Because ye are sons, God sent forth 
 the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, cry- 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 139 
 
 ing, Abba, Father," and in Romans 8 : 15 
 it is said, "But ye have received the Spirit 
 of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Fa- 
 ther." What in one passage the Holy 
 Spirit is said to do, in the other is predi- 
 cated of ourselves as influenced and in- 
 cited by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 3. The words, "We know not what we 
 should pray for as we ought," which serve 
 to introduce the particular help given by 
 the Spirit, strongly intimate an effort on 
 the believer's part. 
 
 4. The words "cannot be uttered" favor 
 this view. They must refer to human in- 
 capacity. If the phrase, which is one 
 word in the Greek, could be translated 
 "unuttered," that is, mute, inaudible, it 
 might not be altogether inadmissible to 
 say they belong wholly to the Spirit, for 
 such groanings might then be thought of 
 as some fervent internal sighing of the 
 Holy Spirit constituting a silent, inarticu- 
 late outgoing to God on the Spirit's part 
 in our behalf. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, the transla- 
 
140 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 tion, "unutterable," that is, cannot be 
 
 uttered or expressed in words, — if this 
 
 translation be preferred, then. 
 
 The mean- ^ ^ ' _ ' 
 
 ing of whether the ejroaninsjs be silent 
 
 unutterable. ^ • ^ i 
 
 or otherwise, now can we pred- 
 icate of the Holy Spirit any such incapac- 
 ity? Is there any thought that cannot be 
 expressed, if only we are capable of find- 
 ing the proper vehicle of expression? And 
 in this we may fail, but certainly not the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Now that both the Authorized and Re- 
 vised translation of the word is correct, 
 and that the emphasis is to be laid not on 
 the groanings being unuttered, inaudible, 
 but on their being unutterable, that is, in- 
 capable of being expressed in words or 
 distinct terms, is evident from the fact that 
 only this can be proved by linguistic usage, 
 and is favored by the analogy of all words 
 of like ending with this one, and adopted 
 by nearly all scholars, past and present. 
 
 5. There is an argument in the soul's 
 experience. What child of God has not 
 been in the place of uncertainty when he 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 141 
 
 was not sure of the Father's will; in the 
 place of a straightened soul when he 
 could hardly find the heart to „^ , 
 pray (2 Sam. 7 : 27) ; or (if his experiences 
 experience has been in any de- 
 gree what it ought to be) to the place of 
 spiritual exaltation which seemed like a 
 foretaste of something still beyond, in all 
 of which he felt that no distinct words 
 could express to God the infinite good for 
 which he longed or the blessing that w ould 
 allay the distress of his heart? 
 
 Since such experience, which is actual, 
 harmonizes with what many have always 
 supposed to be the meaning of the Scrip- 
 ture in question, it cannot be unreason- 
 able to suppose that the one finds, to some 
 extent, its explanation in the other. And 
 if it be true, what comfort then in mo- 
 ments of such uncertainty and such in- 
 tensity when the only human relief is in 
 our own unutterable sighings and groan- 
 ings, just to be assured that the Holy 
 Spirit is beneath it and back of it and in 
 it all, and that in these outgoings of the 
 
142 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 soul God can see the mind of the Spirit 
 who is through them making known our 
 hidden needs at the throne of grace. 
 „ . 6. The arguments set forth 
 
 Kuyper's o 
 
 ■view by Dr. Kuyper to confirm his 
 
 examined. . , , • i i 
 
 View are not unquestionably 
 conclusive. See them again on page 131, 
 for we are now to examine them. 
 
 (a) The "Likewise" simply introduces 
 a new ground of encouragement. Our 
 patience born of hope is the first ground, 
 and now is introduced the Holy Spirit's 
 help as a second. Even though we grant 
 the word looks further on to the new 
 groanings to be introduced, it can hardly 
 be said to define in any way, even by con- 
 trast with verse 23, the more particular 
 character of the groanings. 
 
 (6) The fact that the usual word for 
 intercession is used carries little if any 
 weight in determining this particular ques- 
 tion, unless Dr. Kuyper can show that the 
 view he opposes could more reasonably 
 expect some other word. 
 
 (c) The word *'helpeth," which Kuyper 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 143 
 
 argues in support of his position, favors, 
 we are forced to feel, the very opposite. 
 It is only used twice in the New Testa- 
 ment, the other passage being in Luke 
 10 : 40, where Martha begs the assistance 
 of Mary to help her in the work she was 
 doing — to share with her in serving. It is 
 used a few times in the Greek translation of 
 the Old Testament, and always with this 
 same meaning; not to do something in 
 place of another, but to share something 
 with another. This the preposition "sun " 
 (with) argues. It may also be argued 
 from the preposition "anti," whose pri- 
 mary meaning is "over against," "oppo- 
 site," and not "instead of" or "in place of," 
 which are secondary and derived meanings. 
 
 {d) and (e) These are Kuyper's strongest 
 arguments. Yet even these hardly war- 
 rant the wide distinction he has drawn in 
 this operation between the acting of the 
 Holy Spirit and our own. 
 
 It does not say that God knows the 
 mind of the man, for the man has prac- 
 tically no mind himself in the matter; his 
 
144 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 spirit, stirred and exalted by the Holy 
 Spirit, has gotten beyond his understand- 
 ing, and while he knows he 
 fo?*int?nse wants Something, just what that 
 sion*^^^^^" infinite good for which he 
 yearns may be he cannot tell, 
 and under the operation of God's own 
 blessed Spirit he comes to the place where 
 his emotions are too big for utterance, and 
 where he can do nothing but give himself 
 to inexpressible groanings, and whether 
 they be groanings vocal or sighings inaud- 
 ible, God can see in them, deeper down 
 than human thought or feeling, what is the 
 mind of the Spirit who is the responsible 
 agent in it all. And why? Not because 
 He is or must be informed by the Spirit, but 
 because the Spirit, having searched the 
 deep things of God (1 Cor. 2 : 10), has only 
 been urging the believer on toward what 
 God Himself has prepared. It is all "ac- 
 cording to God," and must therefore be in- 
 telligible to Him, and in it all He discovers 
 in all its sublime reality His own holy pur- 
 pose for His praying child. 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 145 
 
 Now, with such help as we have tried 
 to give, you must decide for yourself which 
 explanation in your own judgment is pref- 
 erable. We repeat that by our ^^^^^^^^ ^^ 
 judgment we are inclined to the *^e reader's 
 second, and prefer to think of 
 these inexpressible sighings as those of the 
 human soul under the influence and in- 
 citement of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 And now it is quite easy to see how such 
 a view, which we accept as correct, is 
 fatal, in part at least, to the teaching 
 which Dr. Kuyper draws from his. And 
 this will be seen by simply asking, Who is 
 it that longs so unspeakably for what God 
 may have to give? If these groanings 
 may, in the sense above described, have a 
 reference to the acting of the human soul, 
 of what Christian is it that such reaching 
 out after God may be aflarmed.^ Plainly 
 not the half-hearted and indifferent one, 
 not the one who has "'fallen into tempo- 
 rary apostasy," but just the one whose 
 prayer life has been most perfected, the 
 one who has progressed furthest in divine 
 
146 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 things. The more such an one drinks at 
 the fountain, the deeper becomes his 
 thirst. Conscious still of unsatisfied 
 yearnings, though he may not understand 
 just what the needed blessing is, nor ex- 
 actly how to pray under the given circum- 
 stance, not knowing altogether "what to 
 pray for as he ought," he knows full well 
 his need is understood at the throne of 
 grace whence comes all supply, and 
 though carried on by the Spirit beyond 
 the experience of the more ordinary Chris- 
 tian, because of his "weakness," w^hich he 
 may not expect to disappear entirely in 
 this life, he finds relief only in those Spirit- 
 wrought sighings and groanings so intense 
 as to be unutterable, and so leaves his case 
 in the hands of God. This is certainly 
 true of spiritual blessing, and not unfre- 
 quently so when seeking for material good. 
 "This arises," says Principal Brown, 
 principal "partly from the dimness of 
 Brown our Spiritual vision in the pres- 
 
 quoted. -i i 
 
 ent veiled state and the large 
 admixture of ideas and feelings which 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 147 
 
 spring from the fleeting objects of sense 
 that there is in the very best views and 
 affections of our renewed natures; partly 
 also from the necessary imperfection of 
 all human language as a vehicle for ex- 
 pressing the subtle spiritual feelings of the 
 heart. In these circumstances how can it 
 be but that a degree of uncertainty should 
 often surround our spiritual exercises, and 
 that, in our nearest approaches and the 
 fullest outpouring of our hearts to our 
 Father in heaven, doubts should spring 
 up within us as to the exact needs of the 
 soul and the precise frame of mind alto- 
 gether fitting and well pleasing to God in 
 such exercise. Nor do these anxieties 
 subside, but rather deepen with the depth 
 and ripeness of our spiritual experience." 
 Consequently, instead of the Spirit's 
 intercessory aid decreasing as we advance 
 in spiritual life until it "grad- 
 ually becomes superfluous," it gauge*for 
 is just in proportion as we thus fnter^ceSion 
 advance that His help is most 
 needed. The higher we climb the more 
 
148 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 we need His help to reach out after the 
 things beyond. And thus we see that the 
 main reference of the verse, so far as the 
 child of God is concerned, is to one of the 
 highest aspects of prayer in the experience 
 of the most advanced believer, and not to 
 prayerless, indifferent, and thoughtless 
 Christians. 
 
 Of course, the Master at whose feet 
 such an one has sat all th« course through 
 is the same all-sufficient Spirit of God, and 
 the intercessory help to which we have 
 been referring, although the chief import 
 of this wonderful verse in Romans is but 
 one form in which His much needed assist- 
 ance is vouchsafed to us, and the perfect- 
 ing of the prayer life, which Kuyper rep- 
 resents as increasing in proportion as the 
 Spirit's intercession decreases, is just the 
 course through which the Christian passes 
 on his way to those deeper experiences in 
 which the Spirit makes intercession for 
 him with groanings that cannot be ut- 
 tered. 
 
 And all this is what Paul meant by 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 149 
 
 "praying in the Holy Ghost." Oh, if we 
 did but realize vividly all that true prayer 
 implies, and our own spiritual geif sufn- 
 infirmity as we undertake to to®°ra'er*^ 
 engage in prayer, I am sure ^^' 
 we would as vividly realize our own utter 
 helplessness apart from the Spirit's gra- 
 cious help ; but thank God, the Holy Spirit 
 knows our infirmity, and with divine pity 
 He looks upon us, and lends Himself to 
 us, and so purifying our affections, en- 
 lightening our minds, and begetting holy 
 desires He works in us the prayer that 
 God would have us utter. 
 
 McCheyne used to say that a great part 
 of his time was occupied in getting his 
 heart in tune for prayer. It does take 
 time sometimes, and the heart never 
 would get in tune if it were not Qetyng 
 for the Holy Spirit of God. It ti^e i^eart 
 
 ready. 
 
 is He Y>^ho prepares the heart 
 for prayer; He who creates within us the 
 desire to pray. This does not mean that 
 we ought never to pray save as we are cer- 
 tain of the impulse of the Holy Spirit. We 
 
150 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 "ought always to pray," and even though 
 the heart be out of tune, though it be dull 
 and cold and heavy, even though we do 
 not feel like praying, we ought to bow 
 humbly and reverently before God, and 
 tell Him how cold and prayerless our 
 hearts are, and as we thus wait in silence 
 before Him our hearts will be warmed and 
 stirred and strangely impressed with the 
 mind of God, and coming thus into tune 
 with the heart of God it shall be made 
 indeed a heart of prayer. 
 
 What a wonderful Helper He is ! 
 
 But more. When you have waited, and 
 are still uncertain, and the impulse of hope 
 almost fails, or have reached the place 
 where some spiritual good beyond any- 
 thing we have ever known we feel must 
 come if what we may rightly call the dis- 
 tress of our hearts is to be relieved, and 
 we can do nothing but pour out our soul 
 in fervent and unutterable sighings — 
 when we have reached such a place; that 
 He, the Holy Spirit, should give to these 
 inexpressible yearnings which He Himself 
 
Prayer and the Holy Spirit 151 
 
 caused to well up within us a language in 
 which God reads His own best thought 
 for His praying child — this is help in itself 
 wonderful beyond expression. Do you 
 remember the Holy Spirit's other name? 
 It is Paraclete, *'One called to our aid." 
 Is He not exactly what His name implies 
 He is? 
 
II 
 
 THE LIFE THAT PRAYS 
 
 "If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ask 
 what ye will and it shall he done unto you." — John 
 15:7. 
 
 But the last word about the Spirit's help 
 in prayer has not been said. What has 
 been said encourages us, but surely this 
 does not exhaust Paul's meaning when he 
 says, *'The Spirit also helpeth our infirm- 
 ity"; surely this does not make up all that 
 is contained in His thought when he tells 
 us to do our "praying in the Holy Spirit." 
 If it did we might well despair of ever 
 praying acceptably to God; for when we 
 search the Scriptures we find that His 
 promises to answer prayer all 
 
 TTnderlvlne l u 
 
 conditions? de'pend upon the julfillment of 
 certain conditions by those to 
 whom they are made. And these condi- 
 tions, who could fulfill them if left to him- 
 self ! But as the Holy Spirit is the source 
 
 152 
 
The Life That Prays 153 
 
 of all our spiritual excellency, surely we 
 can make no mistake if we seek through 
 Him, and through Him solely, the ability 
 to pray after the manner prescribed by 
 God. 
 
 Many a child of God is complaining of 
 ^ unanswered prayer, and who can number 
 the prayers that have fallen from human 
 lips to which no response has petitions 
 come from Him for whose ear without 
 J they were intended? 
 I / Yet who was it that said, "Ask and ye 
 / shall receive"? Surely there must be 
 (_ something wrong somewhere; we need 
 only to remember that with God's prom- 
 ise to answer prayer is linked always an 
 inseparable condition, and if 
 
 * 11 ^X^hfiTfi fill 6 
 
 prayer is not answered, then fault ues. 
 either God is unfaithful or we 
 have fallen short in what is required of us 
 to make our prayers availing, and as the 
 first alternative is not for one second to 
 be entertained, it becomes us to consider 
 very carefully what are the conditions 
 which if fulfilled place God Himself under 
 
154 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 obligation to answer the prayers of His 
 children. 
 
 These conditions of acceptable prayer: 
 let us study them now. They are, of 
 course, to some extent mutually inclusive. 
 They might, indeed, all be gathered up in 
 one. I have seen mention of no less than 
 a score of them, and since it is, after all, as 
 some one has said, *'the life that prays," 
 these as well as all other elements of Chris- 
 tian character may with no impropriety 
 be called conditions of acceptable prayer. 
 Humility and sincerity and reverence and 
 such like must all enter into the disposi- 
 tion of the praying soul if God is to have 
 respect to the offered petition. All this is 
 very plain; there is no diflficulty about it. 
 But there are other requirements, and if 
 we may not say they are more essential, 
 they are indeed not only absolutely indis- 
 pensable but they are the very ones which 
 necessarily involve these which we have 
 just mentioned and others like them. 
 
 These are the conditions which some- 
 times the children of God say are not easy 
 
The Life That Prays 155 
 
 to fulfill. Certainly not ! apart from the 
 aid of that Divine One who "also helpeth 
 our infirmity," but, oh, if we 
 did but accept God's word con- ^^y to^^ 
 cerning what He would have p^^y^^^ ^" 
 the Holy Spirit accomplish in 
 us and then trust Him to verify His truth 
 in these lives of ours surrendered to His 
 purpose, how mighty we would become 
 even in prayer because His strength will 
 have been made perfect in our weak- 
 ness. 
 
 There are four of these conditions men- 
 tioned in Scripture. 
 
 The first all-inclusive one you will find 
 in John 15 : 7, "If ye abide in me and my 
 words abide in you, ask what 
 ye will and it shall be done unto condition, 
 you." We often hear it said of 
 Martin Luther, as though it were a re- 
 markable thing, that he could have what- 
 ever he would from God; but what more 
 remarkable that than what is here said to 
 be possible for every child of God to have? 
 Godjias no favorites in this matter, and 
 
156 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 the conditions were alike for Luther as 
 they are for us and all others. 
 
 "If we abide in Him and His words 
 abide in us." His promise is one of unlim- 
 ited power in prayer. But what does it 
 mean to abide in Him and to have His 
 words abide in us ? Evidently it has to do 
 with the life we live, for the Master who 
 made the statement had just finished 
 speaking of Himself as the Vine in whom 
 „^ . as branches believers are to 
 
 The vine 
 
 and the abide. It is, after all, the life 
 that prays ; the prayer of a 
 righteous man is like music to the ear of 
 God, and in sending back the appropriate 
 answer God Himself takes infinite delight. 
 Now, it is here said that if we would 
 have power to pray aright we must abide 
 in Christ as the branch abides in the vine. 
 Certainly our relationship with Christ is 
 in a sense and in a degree mystical, but 
 there ought to be no such mystical inter- 
 pretation of any Scripture as leaves the 
 thought to an ordinary mind utterly un- 
 intelligible. For instance, Christ said, 
 
The Life That Prays 157 
 
 "Abide in Me and I in you," and as an 
 explanation of the meaning involved it is 
 not unfrequent to hear reference made to 
 a piece of iron brought to a white heat in 
 the furnace; thus the iron is in the heat 
 and the heat is in tneif on ; but to my mind, 
 so far as concerns my relationship to 
 Christ, such an illustration conveys no 
 appreciable conception whatsoever. What 
 Christ said is really not so difficult to un- 
 derstand. It is the branch life, said He, 
 that gives to prayer its potency. What 
 now does it mean for a branch to abide in 
 a vine.? It means simply that it is to be in 
 such close touch, such living union with 
 the vine that the life of the vine 
 may flow unhindered through branch* 
 it on its fruit-bearing: mission. f^*^l^ ^^ 
 
 o the vine. 
 
 The branch is utterly depend- 
 ent upon the vine for its existence; it has 
 no life of its own ; unless the sap from the 
 vine flows into the branch, the branch 
 must wither and be fit only to be cut away 
 and be burned. It has no purpose of its 
 own; it is there simply and solely to be at 
 
158 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 the disposal of the vine in receiving sap 
 and carrying it up into ripened fruit. 
 
 This, and precisely this, is what is 
 meant when it is said that the believer is 
 likewise to abide in Christ. He is to keep 
 in such close and vital touch with Christ 
 that there may be and will be a constant 
 inflow of Christ's own life. It means to so 
 The vital utterly renounce the self -life as 
 and depend- to havc uo othcr life. Spiritually 
 
 ent touch. , . . „ 
 
 speaking, save as it comes irom 
 Him. It means to renounce all self-de- 
 pendence and to so abandon ourselves to 
 Christ that He may fill us with His 
 thoughts, and fire us with His emotions 
 and incite us with His purposes so that 
 our desires are really no longer our own 
 but His, and since His life is His Spirit 
 the prayer we now offer is really not our 
 own but the prayer of Christ's Spirit 
 within us. Thus do we pray in the Spirit. 
 A meaning ^o abide in Christ! Why, 
 not obscured child of God, this is something 
 
 by mystery. -ii <• n -^ • 
 
 possible tor us all; it means sim- 
 ply to so love Him, to so continually think 
 
The Life That Prays ' 159 
 
 such sweet thoughts about Him, to so 
 
 trust Him and so devote ourselves to Him 
 
 that our Hves will be absolutely at His 
 
 i disposal to work out His purpose con- 
 
 I cerning us and the world about us. Is not 
 
 [ this plain and simple? It means to be a 
 
 branch and this, in short, means to live 
 
 solely and exclusively for the Vine. It is 
 
 the branch life that is privileged to lay 
 
 claim to the unlimited whatsoever in 
 
 prayer. 
 
 But Christ also said that His words 
 must abide in us. This condition is really 
 involved in the other; it in fact „, 
 
 ^ His words 
 
 precedes the other as a means abiding 
 to it. I know of no other way 
 to abide in Christ save as His words abide 
 in me. 
 
 Christ's words are in a most vital sense 
 equivalent to Himself, because in His 
 words He reveals Himself to us and 
 through our acceptance of them He im- 
 parts Himself to us with all His power for 
 what He wishes us to become. His prom- 
 ises, when believingly accepted, bind 
 
160 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Christ Himself over us to bring to pass 
 the thing He hath spoken; His commands^ 
 when gladly received, carry with them the 
 guarantee of Himself with His power to 
 make us strong to do His will. 
 
 But plainer still it will doubtless be to 
 
 say that His words abide in us when we 
 
 believinglv receive them into 
 
 The o " 
 
 meaning our hcarts and then feed upon 
 
 made plain. ^ . ^ , ^ . 
 
 them and ponder over them in 
 deep study and then, best of all, gladly 
 and constantly obey them in our lives. If 
 Christ's words abide in us we can say with 
 the Psalmist, "Thy word have I hid in my 
 liSart,'* and like him we will find in them 
 our chief delight, and not only will we 
 "meditate therein day and night," but our 
 whole life will be one continued exposition 
 of that for which they stand. 
 
 Thus again it becomes plain that it is 
 the life that prays. The prayer which 
 James says "availeth much" is the prayer 
 of a righteous man. Therefore is it that 
 we read in John, "Whatsoever we ask we 
 receive of Him, because we keep His 
 
The Life That Prays 161 
 
 commandments and do the things that 
 are pleasing in His sight" (1 John 3:21, 
 22). If Jesus could say, "I know Bight uving 
 that Thou hearest me always," again 
 it was because the Father could 
 say, "This is my beloved Son in whom I 
 am well pleased." When God is pleased 
 with the life, when we so abide in Him 
 and His words so abide in us as to make 
 our life what it ought to be, we can begin 
 to pray with an assurance of being heard 
 and God will give us what we ask. 
 
 A feeble prayer always points to a feeble 
 life. If prayer is not effective, it is evident 
 from the condition set forth in the parable 
 of the vine that the life must be defective. 
 To live aright is to pray aright. 
 
 How plain it is that this is the all-inclu- 
 sive condition, and how evident the need 
 of the Holy Spirit before we can even 
 begin to fulfill it. Look at it as we will, it 
 all depends upon Him. Is my life to be an 
 abiding one.^ How can it be except the 
 Holy Spirit, the sap of the Heavenly Vine, 
 flow richly into it to sustain it and make 
 
162 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 it healthy and vigorous. Are His words 
 to abide in me? How can they except the 
 Holy Spirit apply them to my 
 topoSfbie heart and work them out in my 
 without the lifgp Apart from Him Paul 
 
 Spirit's aid. ^ 
 
 tells us we can neither know 
 the things of God nor do the things that 
 are pleasing to God. To pray with these 
 conditions fulfilled is to "pray in the 
 Spirit." If I am abiding in the Vine, the 
 constant inflow of the Spirit, which is the 
 life of the Vine, brings into my spiritual 
 being the very desires and purposes of the 
 Spirit, and so the prayer that is formed is 
 not so much my own, though I make it so, 
 as it is the Holy Spirit's, and so God 
 is safe in His promise of the unlimited 
 whatsoever. 
 
 If Christ's words are abiding in me, it 
 is because they have been the instrument 
 through which the Holy Spirit has worked 
 in me the mind of Christ. The Word is 
 indeed the sword of the Spirit, and as we 
 ponder carefully the words given to us of 
 God, trusting the Spirit to enlighten the 
 
The Lije That Prays 163 
 
 mind as we study, the prayer that has been 
 possibly long in our heart will begin to 
 shape itself anew under the direction of 
 the Spirit. Thus the Spirit is the real 
 author of the prayer, and we can trust God 
 to give us whatsoever we ask, because we 
 are thus kept from asking amiss. How 
 evident it becomes that to neglect the 
 Word is to rob oneself of the sweet privi- 
 lege of praying in the Spirit, which in short 
 is to be denied the privilege of praying at 
 all. Disciple of Christ, are you abiding in 
 Him ? Is His word abiding in you ? 
 
Ill 
 
 PRAYING IN THE NAME OF CHRIST 
 
 "Whatsoever ye shall ash- in my name, that will 
 I dor— iomi 14: 13. 
 
 A second condition of prayer Jesus sets 
 forth in the Scripture quoted above. 
 Prayer, in order to prevail, must be made 
 in the name of Christ. No less than six 
 times in close succession (John 14: 13, 14; 
 15: 16; 16: 23, 24, 26) He mentions it "m 
 my name/* as though the disciples were 
 slow to understand and He longed to have 
 them know, and we as well, the all-pre- 
 vailing power His name contained to 
 secure the favor of God. 
 
 But what does it mean to pray in the 
 name of Christ.^ 
 
 To pray in the name of Christ means, 
 no doubt, that we go to God in His name 
 The second ^^^ ^^ot in ouv own. What is a 
 condition. namc.^ It is a designation 
 which calls to our mind the person 
 
 164 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 165 
 
 bearing it; it sums up the knowledge 
 we possess of a being and stands for what 
 he is and has done. This is at least the 
 meaning Scripture has given to the term. 
 Thus, when Jesus says, 'T have mani- 
 fested thy name unto the men which thou 
 gavest me out of the world" (John 17: 6), 
 He meant that He had manifested to them 
 all that God is in Himself and in His rela- 
 tions; the full divine character. Thus, to 
 believe "in the name of the only ^^^ 
 begotten Son of God" means to meaning of 
 believe in the person of Christ 
 in all that He is and has done and lives to 
 do. The name stands for all that goes to 
 make up a personality. 
 
 Now, to do anything in the name of an- 
 other is to do it as his representative and 
 with the authority and power which be- 
 longs to him in virtue of who and what he 
 is. This is precisely what Jesus meant 
 when He said, 'T am come in my Father's 
 name and ye receive me not; if another 
 shall come in his own name, him will ye 
 receive" (John 5:43). This is what he 
 
166 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 meant when He said, "The works that I 
 
 do in my Father's name, they bear witness 
 
 of me" (John 10:25). When, therefore, 
 
 we are privileged to pray in the Name of 
 
 Christ, the most evident meaning is that 
 
 we have been granted permission to use 
 
 that Name as the ground upon 
 
 name* the which to Urge our plea before 
 ground of Qq(J p^^^ ^jjy jg |.jjg Name of 
 
 our petition. ^ J ^ ^ 
 
 Christ of any value in securing 
 for us the favor of God.^ Because the 
 Name stands for the One whose it is, for 
 His glorious person. His atoning work and 
 His ever-continuing intercession, and God 
 will have respect to our petition for the 
 sake of such a One if we truly come in His 
 Name. 
 
 When I use another's name I practically 
 discard my own name as being of no value 
 in securing what I want; and why.? Be- 
 cause my name stands for me, and what 
 is there in me to put the Almighty under 
 obligation to send down His favors from 
 on high.? To go to God in my own name 
 is to go as did the Pharisee. Five times in 
 
 I 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 167 
 
 his few short sentences he used the pro- 
 noun "I" to tell God who he was and what 
 he had done. After all, he was only out 
 on parade. He really went up to the tem- 
 ple to brag and not to pray ; he The 
 asked for nothing, and got on^drets 
 what he asked for. But when p"**^®- 
 the publican prayed he prayed as every 
 sinner ought to pray; with a becoming 
 sense of his own worthlessness he plead 
 the atoning merits of his Christ. To pray 
 in the Name of Christ is primarily to 
 plead favor on the ground of Christ's 
 merits and none other. 
 
 Mr. Torrey has made this part of the 
 subject plain by the use of a very simple 
 illustration. He says, "If I go to a bank 
 and hand in a check with my name signed 
 to it I ask of that bank in my own name. 
 If I have money deposited in that bank 
 the check will be cashed ; if not, it will not 
 be. If, however, I go to a bank with some- 
 body's else name signed to the check I am 
 asking in his name, and it does not matter 
 whether I have money in that bank or 
 
168 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 any other, if the person whose name is 
 signed to the check has money there, the J 
 „ ^ , check will be cashed. So it is ■ 
 
 How bank 
 
 checks are when I go to tlic bank of heaven, 
 
 honored; i, t 4. r-' J • T 
 
 when 1 go to (jod m prayer. 1 
 have nothing deposited there, I have ab- 
 solutely no credit there, and if I go in my 
 own name I will get absolutely nothing; 
 but Jesus Christ has unlimited credit in 
 heaven, and He has granted me the privi- 
 lege of going to the bank with His name 
 on my checks, and when I thus go, my 
 prayers will be honored to any extent." 
 Sweet privilege ! Praying in the Name of 
 Christ. It was *'by Christ Jesus," Paul 
 said, that "My God shall supply all your 
 need according to His riches in glory." 
 
 But there is something more to praying 
 in the name of Christ than this. The free 
 An use of another's name certainly 
 
 additional • i* • j.' l ^ l' 
 
 meaning to implies somc mtimatc relation- 
 the phrase, gjjjp between the one who gives 
 his name and the one who is privileged to 
 act in it. 
 
 The only question which has divided 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 169 
 
 opinion is whether such an idea actually 
 resides in the phrase itself, "in my Name," 
 or whether it is an idea to be gathered 
 from what genuine prayer in that Name 
 involves. Critical scholarship seems to 
 preponderate in favor of the first opinion, 
 and hence would have us believe that to 
 pray in the Name of Christ means at once 
 to pray in His Spirit, with His 
 mind and in His nature. (Thol- ™nonoSous 
 uck, Lange, Olshausen, Alford, J"^^™^ 
 Stier, Jukes, Murray.) If this 
 be true it appears at once to be not unlike 
 the condition we previously discussed 
 where we saw that to pray with power was 
 the privilege only of him who was abiding 
 in Christ and had Christ's Spirit and 
 Christ's Mind abiding in him. That this 
 view is not without argument in its favor 
 is evident from what we saw to be ex- 
 pressed in a name. What a profound 
 thing this makes praying in the Name of 
 Christ to be ! 
 
 But in spite of all that one can say, it is 
 not easy to depart from the old conception 
 
170 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 of praying on the basis of the Saviour's 
 merits, and since this conception so plainly 
 inheres in the phrase and since pleading in 
 prayer the Name of Christ as the meritori- 
 ous cause of our acceptance necessarily 
 implies all this other view maintains, 
 which, vice versa, would not be true, it 
 seems best to adhere to the old interpreta- 
 tion and to bring in this other idea as its 
 natural consequence. 
 
 Thus we see that praymg in the Name 
 of Christ is not so easy an achievement as 
 ,^ ^ „ ^ some may be inclined to think. 
 
 What Ood J 
 
 takes into As Henry Clay Trumbull has 
 said, *Tt is not our saying, but 
 our showing, that what we ask is in the 
 Name of Jesus, that God notes and takes 
 into account." It is the place which the 
 Name has in my life that determines the 
 power it is to have in my prayer. 
 
 It is a mighty privilege — to pray in the 
 Name of Christ. It behooves us, there- 
 fore, to think for a while what is implied 
 in the use of that phrase and who has a 
 right to use it. We recall how certain 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 171 
 
 unworthy characters "took upon them to 
 call over them which had evil spirits the 
 name of the Lord Jesus, saying, "We ad- 
 jure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth," 
 and the evil spirit thus adjured answered 
 and said, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, 
 but who are you?" and the occasion re- 
 sulted disastrously for those who un- 
 worthily and fraudulently sought to make 
 use of that great and blessed Name. 
 
 We have already remarked that the use 
 of one person's name by another implies 
 some intimate relationship between them. 
 It, in fact, supposes a community of inter- 
 ests. Would you be willing to grant me 
 the unqualified use of your ^he deter- 
 name to use it when and for mining right 
 whatever purpose 1 chose, un- another's 
 less you felt that your honor "*°^*' 
 and your interests were as safe with me as 
 with yourself? And think you the Lord 
 of heaven could trust His all-powerful 
 Name with any one out of harmony with 
 His Spirit or in whose hands the interests 
 of His kingdom would not be secure? 
 
172 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 The use of another's name supposes the 
 surrender of my individual interests to his 
 interests or to such interests as are com- 
 mon to us both by virtue of the union ex- 
 isting between us. When an oflScer col- 
 lects money in the name of the government 
 it is not to fill his own purse, but for the 
 government's sake; when he makes an 
 arrest in the name of the state it is not for 
 personal spite, but in the interest of the 
 commonwealth. 
 
 Andrew Murray, in his splendid vol- 
 ume, "The School of Prayer," shows the 
 Andrew Mur- right to usc another's name in 
 lowReia- **" virtuc of a threshold union. It 
 tionship." ^jii \yQ helpful just here. 
 
 1. A legal union. When a merchant, 
 before going on an extended vacation, 
 gives to his partner or even to his clerk the 
 power of attorney to use his name in the 
 transaction of business, involving the right 
 to draw upon it for thousands of dollars 
 when necessary, it is understood that that 
 name be used only in the interests of the 
 business, and it is because he can trust 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 173 
 
 this second party to be faithful to the in- 
 terests involved that he puts his name and 
 his property at his command. 
 
 2. A life union. A son bears his father's 
 name because he has his life, and his 
 father's friends will honor and help him 
 when he comes to them in his name, if he 
 be found with his father's character and 
 not seeking anything destructive to his 
 father's interests. 
 
 3. A union of love. The bride gives up 
 her name to wear that of the bridegroom. 
 So he, having chosen her for himself, gives 
 to her his name and counts on her to use 
 it only for his interests, for being now one 
 his interests are hers as well. 
 
 All this is true of us in using me name 
 of Christ. 
 
 1. Having gone back to heaven Christ 
 has committed to us the interests of His 
 kingdom, with full power of 
 attorney, so to speak, to use His Jmstration 
 Name in drawing; supplies for app"®^ *o 
 
 o rl^ ^ prayer. 
 
 the advancement of His busi- 
 ness and in so far as our lives are yielded 
 
174 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 to the interests of the kingdom (and these 
 interests are always ours if we only knew 
 it), so far may we plead His Name trust- 
 ingly and confidingly, for it will set open 
 for us the very treasure house of heaven. 
 
 2. Christ and the believer are one; hav- 
 ing His life we bear His Name and in pro- 
 portion as we have His character and are 
 in harmony with His Spirit we may expect 
 to prevail with God in the use of His 
 Name. 
 
 3. Being united in a love-union with the 
 Heavenly Bridegroom, His interests have 
 become mine, and in so far as I give my- 
 self to living in my new Name does that 
 Name become the all-prevailing plea in 
 which I may ask and receive whatsoever 
 I will. 
 
 Thus we see, after all, what depths of 
 meaning there is to praying in the Name 
 
 of Christ. It is no mere saying, 
 name no **For Jcsus' sakc," as though 
 formula ^^^^ Were somc magic formula 
 
 but it is to pray in union with 
 the life and mind of Christ. If He has 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 175 
 
 bid me pray in His Name it must be a 
 prayer which He can endorse. 
 / Such a prayer I cannot make save as the 
 Holy Spirit teach me the art. He must 
 keep my heart fixed on Jesus whose aton- 
 ing merit is the only open way to God. 
 He must reveal to me the full meaning of 
 the name of Jesus and help me to make it 
 supreme in my life, for if my 
 
 . . . Prayer in 
 
 life has anything to do with my Christ's 
 
 1 f 1 name 
 
 prayer how can my prayer tul- impossible 
 fill the condition of power save *J"*i^'"°°* 
 as my life is open to the influ- «' ^^« Hoiy 
 ence of Him who alone can 
 make it what it ought to be. Oh, Chris- 
 tian, take it to heart: You cannot pray 
 aright without the. Holy Sj^rit. "Hither- 
 to," said Jesus, *'ye have asked nothing in 
 my name. In that day ye shall ask in my 
 Name." In what day.? In the day when 
 He Himself came back in the Holy Spirit 
 to dwell in the believer's heart, and "in 
 that day," which is this day, when the 
 Holy Spirit, who came to "teach us all 
 things," is given the supreme control in 
 
176 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 our lives we will be able to go to the 
 Father in the name of Him whom we 
 represent and say, "Father, this is His 
 wish for me," and when the Father dis- 
 covers in the tones of our voice and the 
 throbbings of our hearts our love and like- 
 ness to His Son, for the sake of that dear 
 Son whatsoever we ask He will do it. Oh, 
 let us lay hold of this precious truth. 
 
 It is said that when Queen Elizabeth 
 was in power in England that she gave to 
 her friend and lover, the Earl of Essex, a 
 ring set with a most precious stone, and 
 told him that in case he ever came into any 
 
 The ring set P^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ personal trou- 
 witfi a ble, if he would send to her the 
 
 ring he should have her help 
 and her deliverance, no matter what the 
 circumstance might be that brought him 
 into unpleasant straights. Some years 
 after it so came to pass that the Earl fell 
 into the displeasure of the authorities. He 
 had likewise become estranged from the 
 queen, and the outcome of it was that he 
 was condemned to the block. He sent up 
 
Praying in the Name of Christ 177 
 
 the all-powerful ring to the queen, but no 
 help came from the throne and the man 
 was beheaded. But all the while the 
 queen had waited patiently for the ring, 
 and it was discovered after the execution 
 that through the intervention of an enemy 
 it was hidden from her. Such a ring God 
 has given us, set with a Name that is 
 sweeter and more costly than any dia- 
 mond or precious stone. Let us send it up 
 for, blessed be God, He will not disown it 
 nor can any power in heaven or earth or 
 hell keep it from Him. 
 
IV 
 
 PRAYING ACCORDING TO THE WILL 
 OF GOD 
 
 "And this is the confidence we have in Him that 
 if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth 
 us, and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we 
 ask, we know that we have the petitions we desired of 
 Him."—! John 5: 14, 15. 
 
 Here is the third condition of successful 
 prayer — prayer according to the will of 
 God. That there ought to be some limi- 
 tation to the right of petition; 
 condition. that there ought to be some 
 limit within which a child can 
 reasonably expect his Father to grant 
 what he asks for, no right reasoning indi- 
 vidual can for a single moment doubt, and 
 at the fact that there is such a limitation 
 mentioned in Scripture he cannot there- 
 fore be surprised. 
 
 If we desire to know the testimony of 
 the Word upon any subject, it is evident 
 
 178 
 
Praying According to the Will oj God 179 
 
 that we must take its teaching upon that 
 subject in its entirety. It could not be 
 expected either of Christ in His teaching 
 or of the Apostles in their writing that 
 they set forth the whole doctrine of prayer 
 on every occasion where reference to it 
 seemed appropriate. The Bi- 
 ble is full of theology, but it is safe con- 
 
 , , , • 1 J '£ elusions call 
 
 not systematized, and ii you for a com- 
 want its teaching on any sub- g^^^y^oj 
 ject, you must compare Scrip- scripture, 
 ture with Scripture to get it. 
 For instance, while we read in one place 
 that repentance is necessary to salvation, 
 we must not forget that elsewhere in the 
 Word salvation is made to depend on 
 other conditions as well. It is so with 
 prayer, and just here is where so many 
 make their mistake. They will read, for 
 instance, the Master's words in Mark 
 11:24, "What things soever ye desire, 
 when ye pray, believe that ye receive them 
 and ye shall have them," and argue at 
 once that anything they may feel they'd 
 like to have, they may ask and receive if 
 
180 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 only they believe as they pray that it will 
 come to pass. But I think we'll come to 
 see very soon that this all depends upon 
 The danger t^c kind of faith wc havc, and 
 siin^^one *^^^ ^^ txnYii depends a good deal 
 Scripture to upou the character of the re- 
 
 the ezclu- ^ p r^ ^ 
 
 sion of quest we make oi God. 
 
 another. Supposc for a moment it 
 
 were true that God gives His people every 
 thing they ask so long as they make them- 
 selves think He will do it.^ To where 
 would this lead.?^ 
 
 1. It would simply keep God busy run- 
 ning this universe according to the whims 
 of His shortsighted children on earth. No 
 , , . ^ . matter what His plans for the 
 
 Asking God ^ ^ 
 
 to abdicate general good and His own glory 
 God must practically step down 
 from His throne and permit man to be- 
 come the ruler in His stead. 
 
 2. It would involve us and those for 
 whom we pray in untold ruin. What does 
 Ecclesiastes 6: 12 say.^ "For who know- 
 eth what is good for man in this life.^" 
 You will remember that Jesus said to a 
 
Praying According to ihe Will of God 181 
 
 very ambitious woman in Matthew 20 : 22, 
 **Ye know not what ye ask." How often 
 that is true. What was it we read in Rom- 
 ans 8:2Q? "We know not how to pray as 
 we ought." Some poet has said: 
 
 'We, ignorant of ourselves, often beg our own 
 
 harm, 
 Which the wise powers for our good deny. 
 And so we find profit in the losing of our 
 
 prayers." 
 
 How glad we ought to be that this is so. 
 Here is a father who has in his hand a 
 bottle of aconite, and his little geggmg God 
 boy, for whom bottles have a *or our own 
 
 . . injury. 
 
 peculiar fascination, pleads 
 with him earnestly to give it to him. And 
 so we often go to God for things which if 
 granted would prove quite as injurious to 
 us as the deadly drug would have been to 
 the child had the father thoughtlessly 
 granted the little one his request. 
 
 3. Such a conception of prayer is self- 
 contradictory. It makes it utterly im- 
 possible for God at times to answer prayer 
 
182 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 at all. Suppose two opposing petitions 
 
 should go up to God, as they 
 
 SrSiWe did from the South and the 
 
 lor God to North durinsj the Rebellion? 
 
 answer. ^ o 
 
 What is God to do? Suppose 
 one man desires rain for the benefit of his 
 particular crop; another man living in the 
 same community is raising such things as 
 at that particular time are in need of dry 
 weather, and he sends up his petition ac- 
 cordingly? Do you think any statement 
 in this Word when rightly interpreted 
 could land God in any such embarrass- 
 ment as the theory of prayer now in ques- 
 tion necessarily involves? 
 
 4. Such a conception of prayer would 
 be destructive of Christian character. 
 Have you ever heard of children being 
 spoiled by their parents giving them 
 everything they wanted? If you will 
 „ ^ thin^ a moment you will see 
 
 The spoiled ^ «/ 
 
 chiTdren of that Dossibly somcthiuff not 
 
 carelessly . 
 
 indulgent vcry different from that might 
 parents. |^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ were the heavenly 
 
 Father as carelessly indulgent in this 
 
Praying According to the Will of God 183 
 
 respect as are some of the fathers of this 
 earth. 
 
 5. And, lastly, such a theory does not 
 stand the test of experience. Here a circle 
 of friends pray with all faith as Experience 
 best they can, but the woman fatal to 
 
 ^ , , the theory. 
 
 whose health they have desired 
 does not survive. Here is a nation praying 
 for the life of its wounded president, but 
 the president does not live. 
 
 But, some one asks. Is not the promise 
 in Mark 11 : 24 an unqualified one.? Yes, 
 we answer, but within the limits that are 
 well understood to exist between the two 
 contracting: parties. Here is a man with a 
 well-deliu».d p-rn' for a house. He turns 
 the work over to the coniractA-r „,^ 
 
 The mcoa- 
 
 with a promise to supplv what- sistency 
 
 , ^ . , Vr " Illustrated. 
 
 ever he might want. Very soon 
 there comes a request for an extra sih^]*}.- 
 of material to erect p few torvers whic:: in 
 the opinio^; ji the contractor would very 
 much beautify the building. Here is a 
 father Avho has a plan for his boy's future. 
 He sends him to college, saying, "Send to 
 
184 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 me for whatever you want and you shall 
 receive it." In a few months the boy sends 
 home for an extra supply of cash for cer- 
 tain side issues of questionable propriety. 
 Each of these requests are properly de- 
 nied. "But," says each of the petitioners, 
 "was not the promise unqualified?" 
 "Yes," comes the reply, "unqualified 
 within the limits which the very circum- 
 stance of the promise made evident as 
 existing between us." 
 
 So God has a plan for the universe look- 
 ing toward the advancement of His king- 
 dom, and doubtless a plan for the life of 
 each of His children, and any promise He 
 might make must be cop^f'-ji^j In har- 
 mony wiin the well-understood 
 hirmony limitation as necessarily implied 
 ^^^ V^^ . ^^- the existing: relations l^etween 
 
 will of OoO. ^ o 
 
 Hi' i^rselves. And what 
 
 is that limitat uiii It is> that our petition 
 be not contrary to His o'^m all-wise and 
 benevolent will. This is exactiv w^at He 
 has told us. "And this is the confidence 
 we have in Him, that if we ask anything 
 
Praying According to the Will of God 185 
 
 according to His will, He heareth us, and 
 if we know that He hears us, whatsoever 
 we ask, we know that we have the petition 
 we desired of Him.'* 
 
 Prayer according to the will of God. 
 So Jesus prayed. Listen, as He prays in 
 the Garden, *'Thy will, O God, and not 
 mine, be done." But did you ever notice 
 that Jesus in that remarkable prayer for 
 those whom God had given Him, the high- 
 priestly prayer of John 17, using exactly 
 the same word in the original, says, "I 
 will," but here in the Garden it is "not as 
 I will." There must be a difference, and 
 I think it is just this difference that will 
 reveal to us the right rule for prayer. Had 
 Jesus been absolutely certain that the cup 
 could not pass away, assuredly He would 
 not have made the petition. This we 
 must concede if the petition is to have any 
 real meaning at all so far as 
 Jesus is concerned. We are, of jesus^*^ 
 course, face to face in Geth- ^^*?^!^Jl„„„ 
 
 ' Getusemane. 
 
 semane with the deep mystery 
 
 of his two natures. It is evident, however, , 
 
186 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 that He was acquainted with the Father's 
 plan in which He was even then taking 
 such an agonizing part. But it is equally 
 evident that He was not altogether certain 
 of what the Father under the circum- 
 stances might think necessary or best to 
 do concerning the desire which He three 
 times expressed with his agonizing, "if it 
 be possible." This appeal was not the 
 blind outcry of a despairing soul. 
 
 But, on the other hand, when Jesus 
 prayed for His disciples and for us as re- 
 corded by John, His Father's thought con- 
 cerning the matter was as clear in the 
 mind of Jesus as it was in the mind of God 
 and certain that what He prayed for was 
 for His Father's glory. He makes known 
 His desire in terms of His own will be- 
 ™^ . ,^ cause He knew His will to be in 
 
 The decid- 
 ing element harmouy with the will of God. 
 
 kinds of And just here is the secret of 
 petition. prayer. In some things we may 
 not know the Father's mind; we may not 
 know the Father's will, and for these we 
 only pray acceptably when we add the 
 
Fraying According to the Will of God 187 
 
 **nevertheless" of Gethsemane, as Jesus 
 did. But in other matters we may know 
 His will, and when we do, we too can pray 
 as Jesus prayed and say, "I will," because 
 we know our wills to be in harmony with 
 His and we have simply to count the an- 
 swer sure and thank Him for it. 
 
 But, you say, this is rather a bold atti- 
 tude to take in prayer. But what did John 
 say.? "This is the confidence," and that 
 word "confidence" really means "bold- 
 ness," that we have in Him that if we ask 
 anything according to His will. He heareth 
 us, and in His hearing is involved His 
 answering. John's Epistle tells us so. 
 
 But just here is the difficulty. So many 
 complain they do not know when their 
 desires are in harmony ..with the will of 
 God, and so cannot pray with any appre- 
 ciable degree of assurance. But if any 
 portion of God's will has ever ^.^^ 
 been or ever is revealed the fault i ^now the 
 must be with us if we do not 
 find it out. If we did but give serious 
 attention to what He has said and did but 
 
188 Hoio Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 allow ourselves to be kept in condition to 
 understand when He speaks we might not 
 always be without the knowledge we 
 would like so much to have. 
 
 How, then, may I know the will of God? 
 
 1. I may know it through the Word of 
 God. The Word is full of general prom- 
 ises which we have only to apply to the 
 particular circumstance of our own life in 
 order to ask within the limits of the re- 
 vealed will of God. Such are the general 
 promises of deliverance and protection 
 and provision, and if the special favor we 
 crave be so covered by the Word, what 
 better guarantee of its bestowal could we 
 reasonably expect.'^ 
 
 But, to be a little more specific: Read 
 1 Cor. 10: 13, "There hath no temptation 
 taken you but such as man can 
 God revealed bear; but God is faithful, who 
 S (^oV^"'*^ ^^ ^^^ suffer you to be tempted 
 above that ye are able; but will 
 with the temptation make also the way of 
 escape, that ye may be able to endure it." 
 Here it is plainly revealed that it is His 
 
Praying According to the Will oj God 189 
 
 will that we should not yield to temptation 
 and a promise is given of grace sufficient 
 to overcome. In such an hour, therefore, 
 when we pray for strength what need have 
 we to say, "If it be Thy will"? Read 
 James 1:5, *'But if any of you lacketh 
 wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to 
 all liberally and upbraideth not; and it 
 shall be given him." In any emergency, 
 therefore, we may virtually make our 
 prayer for wisdom an expression of our 
 own will because that will we know is the 
 will of God. Read 1 John 5: 16, "If any 
 man see his brother sinning a sin not unto 
 death, he shall ask and God will give him 
 life." Here is a promise; and who would 
 think of praying, "Oh, God, save my 
 child ; nevertheless, if it be Thy will that 
 he be lost forever in hell. Thy will, O God, 
 and not mine, be done." The very 
 thought of such a prayer is re- 
 pulsive; it would be a slander fj*^®''°'^ 
 
 r ' ^ ^ the unsaved. 
 
 against God and is utterly in- 
 conceivable from the pages of God's 
 Word. Where is it said that "the Lord is 
 
190 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 not willing that any should perish, but 
 that all should come to repentance" ! and 
 so far as God is concerned, when you pray 
 for the salvation of an unsaved soul you 
 may and you ought to throw your *'ifs" to 
 the wind. Other promises might be 
 quoted. He has promised the Holy Spirit 
 to them that ask Him. He has bidden us 
 "be filled with the Spirit," and to pray for 
 such blessings with an "if" in our petition 
 is to distrust God and to dishonor Him. 
 It is not always submission but absolute, 
 unwavering expectation that honors God 
 when we pray. 
 
 On the other hand, so far as the testi- 
 mony of God's Word goes, it has not been 
 revealed that it is best for us or our dear 
 ones to remain in unimpaired health or to 
 be spared from death, and 
 the^sick"' therefore, unless there be some 
 revelation above and beyond 
 the Word, we only pray acceptably for 
 such favors when we say, *'Thy will, O 
 God, not mine, be done." Not knowing 
 what is best, it is our duty to leave it to 
 
Praying According to the Will of God 191 
 
 Him to give or to withhold as He sees best, 
 knowing, as we do, that all things work 
 together for good to them that love the 
 Lord. 
 
 2. Again, we may often discern the will 
 of (jrod by the indications of divine provi- 
 dence. Jesus told the Jews that they 
 might have known the will of God had 
 they studied as studiously the signs of the 
 times as they did the signs of the weather. 
 Oftentimes, when in perplexity over some 
 contemplated undertaking, the spiritually 
 minded one needs but closely observe the 
 providential arrangement of ^^^ ^^ 
 circumstances and occurrence o* God 
 of events in order to become through 
 reasonably sure of the Father's ^^°'^^^^^^- 
 mind concerning the matter in question. 
 This is what the Quakers mean when they 
 talk about *'the way opening." If events 
 seem to be so arranging themselves as to 
 "open the way" for the answer to come, 
 it is but a sign they declare that the leading 
 is of God and faith ought to grow strong. 
 Those who have read the history of the 
 
192 How Can God Aiiswer Prayer? 
 
 founding of George MuUer's orphanages 
 will understand what is meant by what 
 has just been said. Some helpful instruc- 
 tion concerning this important matter is 
 found in the little leaflet, *'How I Ascer- 
 tain the Will of God," written by this 
 same giant in prayer who prayed so much 
 wealth and such a marvelous work into 
 existence. 
 
 3. And now, once more and lastly, we 
 
 are brought to the knowledge of God's 
 
 will by the help of the Holy Spirit. We 
 
 saw in our study of Romans 8:26, that 
 
 », . whatever else that Scripture 
 
 The will of ^ i^ 
 
 God and the taught, it was made plain that 
 the Holy Spirit prays with us 
 and through us and draws out our prayers 
 in the line of God's will. "We know not 
 what to pray for as we ought," but "The 
 Spirit helpeth our infirmity." In some 
 way the work of the Holy Spirit has to do 
 with the human mind. His influence is 
 on the understanding as well as on the 
 heart. "The Paraclete," said Jesus, "shall 
 teach you all things and bring all things 
 
Praying According to the Will of God 193 
 
 to your remembrance, whatsoever I have 
 said unto you." 
 
 It has been the experience and testi- 
 mony of more than one of God's saints 
 that he has found himself strangely and 
 strongly drawn out to desire some certain 
 thing, and that when he was certain within 
 himself that his own will in the matter had 
 been put away, he felt deep within his soul 
 a strong and increasingly stronger convic- 
 tion that the blessing in question was 
 God's desire for him. It is Macgregor 
 who says, *'If we are under the Spirit's 
 control, obedient to His voice and atten- 
 tive to hear it. He will whisper to us what 
 our Father's purpose for us is, and lead us 
 to pray for things which are according to 
 His will." And so the Spirit makes known 
 the mind of God; and what other oUght 
 one to do under such circumstances than 
 to honor the Spirit by asking with bold- 
 ness according to the promise given to us 
 in the Epistle of John.? 
 
 It is here, however, that a word of cau- 
 tion is needed. Some are indeed of the 
 
194 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 opinion that it is "through the "Word and 
 the Word alone" that the Spirit leads to a 
 Near the knowledge of the Father's will, 
 border line While we know \h.aiHis leading 
 
 of danger. . J j7 rr/ 7 
 
 IS never away from the Word, 
 we are not prepared to assert that it is in 
 no instance independent of it, only we call 
 attention most emphatically to the need of 
 being ruled by a wise caution lest depend- 
 ing wholly upon the "inward light" we be 
 led by human fancy and one's own feeling, 
 and not by the authority of God. While 
 the Holy Spirit is the great Teacher, the 
 Bible is the great lesson book, and we do 
 not hesitate to affirm that His usual 
 method of "guiding us into all truth" is by 
 applying the Word of God to our hearts, 
 and no sort of supposed personal inspira- 
 tion can ever warrant us in neglecting the 
 written Word if we would know which 
 way God would have us go and what 
 things He would have us ask or do. 
 
 The Word and the Spirit — to deliber- 
 ately separate them often, if not always, 
 leads to error and fanaticism. The Spirit 
 
Praying According to the Will of God 195 
 
 without the Word — ^what false mysticism, 
 what folly and sin have in the past been 
 traceable to the theology, un- Mysticism, 
 
 ,1 p ,1 •■ • fanaticism 
 
 worthy oi the name as it is, and false 
 advocating their divorce. On rationalism. 
 the other hand, the Word without the 
 Spirit — to thus study it alone by the light 
 of our own mental tapers is to be rewarded 
 only by cold and barren conclusions full 
 of false rationalism and untruth. But 
 what a light is the Spirit on the Word ! 
 Even the promises which are so plainly 
 written and which all may read and study 
 can only be revealed to the soul in the full 
 glory of their meaning by the Spirit of 
 God; but, furthermore, how often has it 
 been true that some Spirit-filled child of 
 God, when waiting in some season of 
 prayer and meditation, has been surprised 
 at his own previous ignorance as the Spirit 
 has revealed a new richness of some famil- 
 iar promise or applied to the special cir- 
 cumstance before him some declaration 
 which otherwise he would never have 
 dreamed could have any such connection 
 
196 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 with the matter that lay upon his heart. 
 ..,^. o ,-44. There are countless things we 
 
 The Spirit ^ ^ o ^ 
 
 Illumining oft desire for which no specific 
 promise is found in the Word 
 of God, but, on the other hand, it is hard 
 to imagine a want that God could at all 
 be willing to grant (sinful, selfish desires 
 are of course excluded) that may not be 
 covered by some general promise which it 
 is the Spirit's work to discover to us and 
 apply to the particular object engaging 
 our petition. 
 
 The same caution is needed in our seek- 
 ing to read aright the providential order- 
 ing of circumstances. Indeed, to depend 
 upon any one of the three named methods 
 to the exclusion of the others is to leave 
 oneself open to the liability, if not the 
 likelihood, of conviction other than that 
 which comes from God, but one who is 
 earnestly seeking to know the mind of God 
 will give himself carefully and devotedly 
 to them all, and that one God will cer- 
 tainly lead to the knowledge he so much 
 desires to have. 
 
PRAYING IN FAITH 
 
 *' Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, be- 
 lieve that ye have received them and ye shall have 
 them."— M.ABK 11:24. 
 
 We are now prepared to say a word 
 about the remaining condition of prevail- 
 ing prayer. It is Faith. It may be God's 
 pleasure to give; it may be His will to give; 
 anl yet, not until we believe He is going 
 to give will His pleasure or His 
 will bring to us the thing we cohdition. 
 have desired of Him. Some 
 people make a mistake here. They think 
 that whatever God wills for us must, of 
 course, come to pass. But this is by no 
 means true. For example, "This is God's 
 will, even your sanctification," but has 
 this come to pass fully in your life.? Alas, 
 that so many of us should fall so far short 
 of what God in His goodness wills for us. 
 Though His will be revealed, only so much 
 197 
 
198 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 will be fulfilled as our faith accepts. God 
 may, in His Word, or in His providence, 
 or by His Spirit, reveal His will for us, but 
 the responsibility for realizing that will in 
 our own experience rests with our own 
 will. 
 
 This answers, at least partially, the old 
 question, "Does not prayer influence 
 God?" It does influence His action, even 
 though it be granted, for the present, that 
 it does not influence His will or purpose 
 which are embodied in the love plan He 
 has thought out for every one of His chil- 
 dren. God proposes to give, but what He 
 ^ ^, would have given is withheld, 
 
 God's ^ o » 
 
 thought and if you would know why, 
 always you havc Only to ask Him to 
 
 realized. hear Him say, as He once did 
 to some other crushed and defeated dis- 
 ciples, "because of your unbelief." Speak- 
 ing about one of our needs, which every 
 one must, at times, more or less feel, James 
 says that the one conscious of his need 
 shall "Ask of God who giveth liberally . . . 
 and it shall be given him," but He says. 
 
Praying in Faith 199 
 
 "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, 
 for he that wavereth is Hke a wave of the 
 sea, driven and tossed with the wind; for 
 let not that man think that he shall re- 
 ceive anything of the Lord." Were it 
 possible that every other condition of 
 prayer could be fulfilled and faith be lack- 
 ing, the petition would be only words, 
 vain and unavailing, which, for reasons 
 not hard to discover, are painful enough 
 to the great heart of the Father, and which 
 it would have been better never to have 
 bten uttered. 
 
 Faith is the hand that takes, and all 
 God's best thought for you and me is ac- 
 tualized in our experience only through a 
 confidence in God which counts a thing 
 done before it really takes place. With 
 what nicety the Revised Version opens up 
 the deeper meaning of Mark 11:24, so 
 long lost to the English reader. 
 It has usually been read, m^tue 
 *' Whatsoever things ye desire, yg^fo^. 
 when you pray, believe that ye 
 receive them and you shall have them," 
 
200 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 but the "ye receive" of the older transla- 
 tion is now correctly made to read, "ye 
 have received." It is the business of faith 
 to believe that the answer has already 
 been given by God in Heaven before it is 
 received or felt on earth. Rather search- 
 ing, isn't it.^ And presumptuous, did you 
 say.^ No, child, not that, but blessed is 
 the man who so believes in God and un- 
 derstands the might of God, that he 
 accepts by faith the yet unseen and unre- 
 ceived, and thanks the Giver for what he 
 knows "he shall receive." 
 
 Faith is the key to the Father's store- 
 house. Rather annoying, isn't it, to twist 
 and turn with a key that will not work.^^ 
 But the lock is perfect, the bear- 
 enter the ings all in order, and if Faith is 
 of God's of the right quality and then 
 abundance, ^^jj tempered, the door will not 
 
 be hard to open. 
 
 So necessary was it and is it for men to 
 see this that it stands out with chiefest 
 prominence in all the teachings of Jesus. 
 Had Jesus done the writing Himself I 
 
Praying in Faith 201 
 
 think he would have underscored the word 
 with a double line of deepest black. Did 
 He run the press, it might be with raised 
 letters He would burn this truth into our 
 minds. "All things are possible to him 
 that believeth" (Mark 9:23), He said to 
 the father of the afflicted child when the 
 disciples through lack of faith could do 
 nothing. *'A11 things," He said. Puts it 
 rather strongly, doesn't He.? These little 
 hearts of ours can scarcely take it in, but 
 that is what He said. He wants us to see 
 hovv really omnipotent Faith is, and that 
 the disciples who stood rebuked in the 
 presence of their humiliating failure might 
 be assured that He was not , 
 
 Jesus 
 
 speaking with unmeasured emphasizing 
 
 1 TT ■ 1 '11 *^® omnip- 
 
 words. He took as an illustra- otency 
 tion the unlikeliest thing that °* '*"^' 
 might occur — a mountain slipping away 
 and tumbling off into the sea. If you are 
 looking for a good personification of faith, 
 you must not stop at Hercules. Faith is 
 almightiness. "If you have faith, nothing 
 shall be impossible to you." 
 
202 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 "Faith does not doubting ask, *Can this be so?' 
 The Lord hath said it and there needs no more." 
 Is it hard to see why faith is so essential? 
 Surely, it cannot be. Prayer without faith 
 is self-contradictory. What sort of an 
 insult is it to a man to approach him for 
 a favor and at the same time tell him you 
 have no faith whatsoever that he will give 
 you what you ask.^ And why mock God 
 in a way like that and at the same time 
 stultify ourselves and treat with such utter 
 contempt the power we might have with 
 Him who "supplieth all our need accord- 
 ing to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus .^" 
 Now, when Jesus says, "Whatsoever 
 things ye desire, when ye pray, believe 
 that ye receive them and ye have received 
 them," it is clear that we are to believe 
 \that we shall receive the very thing we ask. 
 But, of course, faith that a thing shall be 
 j^ given implies faith in the per- 
 God's person sou from whom we expect it. 
 in His You cannot believe in a man's 
 
 promise. promise until you first be- 
 lieve in the man himself. And for this 
 
Praying in Faith 203 
 
 reason Jesus, just before He made that 
 wonderful prayer promise, first said, 
 *'Have faith in God." "He that cometh 
 to God must believe that He is and that 
 He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
 seek Him." We must believe in God as 
 a living, mighty, loving God. We must 
 have faith in His power — that He can do 
 whatsoever He wills to do. We must 
 have faith in His love — that it is His de- 
 light to bless ; that He would like to give 
 us all we ask, and that He is willing to 
 give us whatsoever is best for us to have. 
 
 Yet the Faith we are thinking about 
 now goes beyond even this. We are not 
 only to believe that God can but that He 
 will and that He will give us the 'particu- 
 lar thing we ask. 
 
 Andrew Murray ("With Christ in the 
 School of Prayer," page 81) calls attention 
 to a distinction between what ^^^ ..prayer 
 he calls the "Prayer of Faith" of Faith- 
 and the "Prayer of Trust. "The "prayer of 
 Prayer of Trust, he says, has 
 reference to things of which we cannot 
 
204 How Can God Answer Prayer ? 
 
 find out if God is going to give them. As 
 children we make known our desires in 
 the countless things of daily life, and leave 
 it to the Father to give or not, as He thinks 
 best; but "The Prayer of Faith," he says, 
 "of which Jesus speaks is something 
 different, something higher, having taken 
 its stand on some promise of God it knows 
 that it will receive exactly what it asks.'* 
 Now we are prepared to see the force of 
 the statement made at the beginning. 
 Though you know the will of God, you 
 cannot without faith pray with any assur- 
 ance that it will be done for you. 
 
 So far all is clear, but now we have 
 come to a place where every one is not 
 quite of the same opinion. 
 
 Know the will of God ; believe when you 
 pray and the answer is sure. No difficulty 
 Is faith about that. But here is a ques- 
 possibie tion that is as practical as it is 
 
 when the „ . . ^ 
 
 will of God lascmatmg. Suppose you have 
 
 is unknown? . i i,i i. j* .i 
 
 not been able to discover the 
 will of God about a certain thing; is it 
 possible to pray with any faith that this 
 
Praying in Faith 205 
 
 particular thing will be granted? It is no 
 use to answer, as some have done, by say- 
 ing, "If you are the right kind of a Chris- 
 tian and are praying in the Spirit you will 
 know what is the will of God concerning 
 any matter." 
 
 Such an answer is not satisfactory for 
 two reasons: 
 
 1. When there is no absolutely clear 
 and definite promise in the Word upon 
 which to rest one's faith, we saw a few 
 pages further back that one might be so 
 strongly inclined to believe that he knew 
 God's will from what he thought was the 
 leadings of God's Spirit and of providence 
 as to be fully satisfied in his own mind 
 about it and yet discover in the end that 
 all the while he had been mistaken. This 
 is true not only of those whose 
 peculiar religious notions, de- I^^^^^H^ 
 rived, as they claim, from divine christians 
 
 , . , , , sometimes 
 
 revelation, lay them open to the mistaken 
 
 • ,• • J ,• •■ i? about God's 
 
 criticism and sometimes pity oi ,^^1, 
 
 sober-minded people, but just 
 
 as true oftentimes of the most sane 
 
206 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 and devoted Christian. Here is a man 
 well known to the writer, a man of the 
 highest spiritual attainment. His child, a 
 lad of six, is near death's door. Through 
 the Spirit, he told me, he was so power- 
 fully impressed that it was God's will the 
 child should live that he rested his faith on 
 this assurance and prayed and his child 
 recovered. For years he used this, and 
 honestly, as an illustration that it was our 
 privilege to be absolutely sure of God's 
 will through the voice of His Spirit and so 
 pray with faith. A few years later and the 
 child was again at the point of death. 
 Again he received the assurance of his 
 recovery in the same way, and again he 
 prayed with faith that his child would live, 
 but the child did not live. 
 
 2. It is often true when the thing is not 
 definitely promised in the Word, that the 
 The most ^lost spiritually-mindcd and 
 spiritual trulv-devotcd Christian cannot 
 
 often per- . „ . . ,„ i • i 
 
 piexed about satisiy liimseli as to what is the 
 
 God's Will. ^jjj ^f (. ^^ ^^^^^ j^^ ^^^ j^ jg 
 
 hardly kind or necessary to find fault with 
 
Praying in Faith 207 
 
 his life and Christian attainment because 
 this is so. Andrew Murray, speaking of 
 the prayer of trust, says it has reference to 
 "things of which we cannot find out 
 whether God is going to give them," and, 
 after all, I wonder if it is not true that 
 where there is no specific promise in the 
 Word to cover the thing desired — I won- 
 der, even though the leadings of provi- 
 dence seem to be plain and the voice of 
 the Spirit distinct, if we must not leave a 
 little room at least for an equation of un- 
 certainty. I think so. And a rule that 
 will not work down among the finer dis- 
 tinctions cannot consistently be used in 
 solving the problem in general. 
 
 Now, what about the two conditions of 
 mind just mentioned.'^ 
 
 In the first case, the man was convinced 
 that it was God's plan for him that he 
 should have the thing he desired. He was 
 mistaken, but his conviction „^ , 
 
 '^ The lessons 
 
 was genuine, and so, of course, o' mistaken 
 
 there w^as just as much room for 
 
 faith as if he had rightly interpreted the will 
 
208 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 of God. Was his faith genuine? Cer- 
 tainly, only it was resting on a false hope. 
 (The faith of a heathen in his idol is just 
 as genuine per se as the faith of a Christian 
 in his God.) When, in the end, the Chris- 
 tian finds his petition denied, he will then 
 know that he was asking for something 
 which could not consistently, with the all- 
 wise and loving plan of God, be granted, 
 and he will not only have learned a little 
 more of how patient and careful one 
 should be in the endeavor to discover the 
 will of God, but he will bow with reverent 
 loving submission to what he knows was 
 for his Father's glory and his own good. 
 (Romans 8:28.) 
 
 In the second case, when the Christian 
 cannot satisfy himself as to what is the will 
 of God, what is to he done? Here is where 
 so many of us find ourselves in spite of 
 our effort to meet every requirement 
 which comes from God. Here is where 
 most Christians need help. 
 
 The question is, can a Christian under 
 such circumstances have any faith that he 
 
Praying in Faith 209 
 
 will receive the thing for which he prays? 
 The tendency is to answer, No. One of 
 our leading religious instructors „^ 
 
 o o The ques- 
 
 said, "You cannot have uncer- won stated 
 tainty and certainty at the same 
 time." Another said, "No; faith is not a 
 thing to be pumped up; you cannot just 
 say, 'I am going to believe,' and then be- 
 lieve. Unless you have an absolute prom- 
 ise, a clear revelation of God's will con- 
 cerning the matter, you can have no faith 
 regarding it whatsoever." 
 
 We will not conceal the fact that we 
 have wanted to say. Yes, to the above 
 question — wanted to, because of the help 
 we have felt such an answer would be to 
 the average Christian. For, if we can 
 only pray with faith for what we are cer- 
 tain is God's will, how few of us can really 
 ever so pray, and how very few are the 
 things for which even such Christians so 
 pray. Sift the matter carefully down and 
 see if this is not true. 
 
 I am going to answer. Yes, to the ques- 
 tion, not for the reason mentioned, how- 
 
210 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 ever, which would be no reason at all, but 
 because I am convinced that I can other- 
 wise reasonably do so. 
 
 I am quite willing to admit that without 
 an absolutely clear and definite revelation 
 of God's will, there cannot be an abso- 
 lutely clear and unquestioning faith in the 
 matter of prayer, and this admission, I 
 presume, makes us all at one in the ques- 
 tion at hand. 
 
 But one may have a conviction, and a 
 
 strong one, without an absolutely clear 
 
 and definite revelation, and he 
 
 One may 
 
 have faith may believe in proportion to 
 
 though un- - '^ 7 7 7 p 7 
 
 certain of the Strength or depth of that 
 ° ^ ^ ' conviction. He knows how 
 kind and good the Father is; he has 
 studied carefully and waited on his knees 
 and sees no reason why this thing should 
 not be granted; he knows he is unselfish 
 in what he asks, and thinks surely it will 
 glorify his God; and as he waits, willing 
 to lay aside his petition the very moment 
 it becomes certain by an absolutely clear 
 and definite revelation that it is not God's 
 
Praying in Faith 211 
 
 will; as he thus waits, there is borne in 
 upon him from time to time a conviction — 
 an impression; it never weakens; it in- 
 creases and deepens the rather, and satis- 
 fies him that what he is asking God is 
 going to give. Who will say that this 
 influence upon his soul, this impression 
 that has become a conviction with him, is 
 not the working of the Holy Spirit Him- 
 self drawing the man out into this very 
 prayer which subsequent events prove to 
 have been in harmony with the will and 
 plan of God for him? 
 
 Now, of this will the man had at no 
 time an absolutely unquestioning certainty 
 of knowledge. Such a clear revelation 
 had not been given him and yet it was his 
 privilege and duty to believe, to have faith 
 in proportion at least to the depth of the 
 conviction that came to him. (Study care- 
 fully Matthew 9:2 and 22 and 28; Mat- 
 thew 15 : 28 and Mark 10 : 50, and see if it 
 was not just this faith that was exercised 
 there.) 
 
 Now, here is a question : Did that faith 
 
212 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 do him any good? Did it have any value 
 in God's sight in securing the desire of his 
 heart? Unhesitatingly we answer, Yes. 
 And just as unhesitatingly we say that 
 without such faith God might never have 
 done for him what He did do because 
 such faith was exercised. (See page 199.) 
 Under such circumstances as the above 
 I would then: 
 
 1. Put an added petition in my prayer, 
 asking God to give me increased light as 
 
 to His will in the matter, and 
 pray when give myself to scck that light 
 uncertain through meditation, the study 
 
 of God's wilL o . "^ 
 
 of the Word, the observation of 
 providence and waiting on the Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 2. If God does not show me that the 
 request is not according to His will, keep 
 on praying for it with faith as just ex- 
 plained until He does, and should He 
 make it plainly known that the thing is 
 NOT His will, then cease praying, humbly 
 submit to His will, and thank Him for the 
 denial; for God's No in such a case is 
 
Praying in Faith 213 
 
 better than His Yes. Do not, however, 
 cease praying unless the knowledge that 
 the request is not according to His will 
 be just as clear and certain as must be the 
 knowledge in the case of a man who 
 knows that he is praying according to the 
 will of God. 
 
 3. Always close such a petition by say- 
 ing from the heart, *'If it be not Thy will. 
 Thy will, O God, and not mine, be done." 
 
 And is it necessary to stop a bit just 
 now that we may be reminded once more 
 of the Holy Spirit and His relation to the 
 faith we have been talking about all the 
 while? If no man can call Jesus "Lord" 
 save through the Spirit, and if 
 the faith that first puts us in the of^faft^h^^' 
 right condition to pray by mak- ^°J *s*irit 
 ing us children of the heavenly 
 Father is the gift of God through His 
 Spirit, how plain it is that He must stand 
 back of every taking hold of God for any- 
 thing. Faith must have some ground 
 upon which to rest. The Holy Spirit sup- 
 plies it. It is the Holy Spirit who first 
 
214 How Can God Answer Prayer ? 
 
 reveals to us our need. It is the Holy 
 Spirit who reveals to us our God in His 
 love and in His power. It is the Holy 
 Spirit who reveals to us the promises of 
 God. It is the Holy Spirit who draws us 
 out in prayer for such things as are pleas- 
 ing to God, and the it is the Holy Spirit, 
 the source of all spiritual capacity, who 
 quickens the faith faculty and helps the 
 soul to believe. 
 
 How true it is, after all, that without the 
 Holy Spirit abiding in us we can do 
 nothing; and just as true it is that without 
 Him abiding in fullness our prayer life 
 and our whole life will be weak and ut- 
 terly fail. Say, then, child of the Almighty 
 One, "O Holy Spirit, be Thou my all 
 in alL" 
 
VI 
 
 TIGHTENING THE GRIP 
 
 "And he said, I will not let thee go except thou 
 bless me." — Gen. 32. 
 
 "Men ought always to pray, and not to faint." — 
 Luke 11. 
 
 The last word about "How to Pray" has 
 not yet been said. All that has been said 
 might be true, and yet the answer some- 
 time slips from us because we failed at 
 the last ditch, so to speak. Some one has 
 said, "Prayer is the soul's sincere desire." 
 It is, and if it is, the heart will not faint 
 at a slight delay or at what may seem the 
 indisposition of God to answer. Many 
 pray well up to this point and then utterly 
 fail, and failing, lose all. Too many fail 
 to "pray through." If the request is not 
 granted at the first or second 
 asking, they cease praying and and'^S^ 
 say, "Perhaps it isn't God's f"^,ent°ilted'" 
 will," and this they call Sub- 
 mission. Dr. Torrey calls it "spiritual 
 
 215 
 
216 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 laziness," and the Word implies as much 
 quite as emphatically. 
 
 Let us give our minds now for a while 
 to what is known to us all at least by name 
 as Importunity. No phase of prayer is 
 more emphasized in New Testament 
 teaching than this. In both the Gospels 
 and the Epistles it stands out in clear re- 
 lief. Our study would not be complete if 
 this important factor in prayer were omit- 
 ted, and our own prayer life wiH never be 
 what it ought to be until we appreciate as 
 fully as possible God's thought in the 
 exceptional emphasis He has placed on 
 this quality in prayer. 
 
 This emphasis reveals itself in two 
 ways. 
 
 (1) In Illustration. (2) In a skillful 
 choice of richly expressive words and 
 phrases. These words will form a brief 
 and interesting study in the following 
 chapter. Let us examine the illustrations 
 now. 
 
 They are in the form of Parables. Both 
 are furnished by Luke. Luke is the one 
 
Tightening the Grip 217 
 
 who tells us most about the prayer habit 
 of Jesus. The first illustration is that of 
 the Midnight Appeal (Luke 11 : 5-13). A 
 supperless friend has arrived. 
 Not to have placed something ot^the"*''^* 
 before him would have been an J^^^nisJi* 
 
 petitioner. 
 
 unpardonable breach of orien- 
 tal courtesy. And now a most morti- 
 fying situation presents itself in the 
 utter absence of all provision from the 
 house. He hastens to his neighbor, makes 
 known his need, and doubtless, to his own 
 surprise, is gruffly repulsed. Although it 
 was evidently a case of misplaced confi- 
 dence, a repulse was not what he came 
 for, and finally, because of his Importun- 
 ity (literally, impudence ; shamef acedness) 
 his lazy, ungenerous neighbor got up and 
 granted him what he wanted. 
 
 Notice, this neighbor was the most un- 
 likely man to represent God. He was 
 selfish, ungenerous and heartless. To do 
 what he did is justly to incur the contempt 
 of all good people. The thing that moved 
 him to grant the request was his own self- 
 
218 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 ishness. It looks as if, had Jesus done 
 His best, He could not have presented the 
 case any more disadvantageously for God 
 than He did. But He outdoes the parable 
 in this respect by another. This time it 
 is the parable of the "Unjust Judge" 
 (Luke 18:1-8). 
 
 A widow, whose trying position in those 
 days is well known, came to a judge, ask- 
 
 The arable ^^^S ^™ ^^ avcngc her or to do 
 of the un- her lusticc in a claim against 
 
 Just judge. 11 rr«i J 
 
 ner adversary. ine word 
 "came" in the original means "kept com- 
 ing." This judge, the parable says, 
 "neither feared God nor regarded man," 
 and he boasted about it too (vs. 4). He 
 had neither piety nor pity. He was a self- 
 ish, hardhearted, unprincipled man. As 
 a public functionary he was unjust; as a 
 man he was unkind and cruel, and in his 
 selfish concern for his own comfort he 
 said, "I will avenge her, lest by her con- 
 tinual coming she wear me out" (literally, 
 beat my face black and blue). 
 
 The immediate point of each parable is 
 
Tightening the Grip 219 
 
 that Importunity has a power of annoy- 
 ance that can gain its object in the face of 
 the greatest obstacle. Jesus is supposing 
 the case. Men sometimes have thought 
 unkindly of God because of what seemed 
 His indifference to their needs, and these 
 characters chosen are not pictures of what 
 God is or of what Jesus would have us 
 believe God to be, but of what even pious 
 people have sometimes thought Him to 
 be. Read the experience of Job and the 
 77th Psalm. *'Very well," said Jesus, in 
 substance, "suppose God to be as heart- 
 less and as ungenerous as you seem to 
 fancy Him to be; pray on and you shall 
 succeed, for I have shown you what im- 
 portunity will do even under such circum- 
 stances. " 
 
 But Jesus did not leave the illustration 
 here. He gave us something vastly 
 better than that. He is really teaching by 
 contrast, and that contrast is this: If 
 an ungenerous, indifferent neighbor, for 
 whom a little fleshly repose outweighs a 
 friend's dire distress, could be induced to 
 
220 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 grant a sorely needed favor by sheer per- 
 sistence that would not brook a denial, 
 how much more will God, whose love is so 
 God's intense and whose chief delight 
 
 character 'l • l • u J u 
 
 magnified it IS to givc, be movcd by 
 by contrast, faithful, persistcut entreaty to 
 grant His children what they ask. If a de- 
 fenseless widow's persistent appeal can 
 wring from a hard-hearted, unscrupulous 
 judge her heart's desire, how much more 
 will our petitions, if likewise faithful, 
 secure the thing we ask from God, who in 
 character is the very opposite of this God- 
 less judge and whose own dearest interests 
 are involved in ours. That this is the real 
 point in each of these parables there can 
 be no reasonable doubt, and consequently 
 when any one asks, as people often do, 
 "Why is it that I must go so repeatedly to 
 God and so persist in the request I would 
 make, as if 'His mercy were clean gone 
 forever' and He were loath to give," the 
 plain teaching of these parables must be 
 that the difficulty is not with God but with 
 ourselves. If importunity in praying to 
 
Tightening the Grip 221 
 
 God presents to your mind a diflSculty, in 
 justice to the character of God it can be 
 resolved in no other way. Hence Jesus 
 hastens in either case to speak of the real 
 character of God. He says in one in- 
 stance, "If an evil, earthly parent knows 
 how to give good gifts to his children, 
 how much more will the Father in heaven 
 give good things to His children who ask 
 of Him," and in the second instance, "And 
 shall not God avenge his own elect which 
 cry day and night unto him, and He is 
 longsuffering in their behalf.'* That is, 
 "If an unrighteous judge, how much more 
 a God such as the elect have." 
 
 Importunity is not a test of God, but a 
 test of you and me. The difficulty lies with 
 us; and what is it.^^ What other 
 
 , , „ Importunity 
 
 can it be but our own uniit- a test of the 
 
 , '1m. 1 J Christian 
 
 ness to receive what we ask and and not of 
 what He longs to give.^ Impor- JJ^^^.g^Qo^ 
 tunity is one of the instructors 
 in God's training school for Christian cul- 
 ture. "There are secrets of love and wis- 
 dom in the workings of the *Delayed 
 
222 How Can God Answer Prayer ? 
 
 Blessings Department' which are Httle 
 dreamt of," but asking and seeking and 
 knocking patiently and persistently not 
 only secures the blessing, but discovers to 
 us the "secrets" of that "love and wisdom" 
 in the undoubting faith and unfaltering 
 trust, the enlarged consciousness of our 
 utter helplessness apart from Him, the 
 heart searching and the surrender of all 
 that seemed to be in the way, the close 
 fellowship with God — in a word, the 
 strengthened and ennobled character that 
 always comes from the refining fires of 
 diflBiculty and trial. Don't read the para- 
 bles so hastily and you'll see it all written 
 there. 
 
 "Shall not God avenge his own elect, . . . 
 though He is long-suffering over them.?" 
 Why should scholars be puzzled here.? 
 The long. '^^^ English revised version 
 suflering of rcads, "and He is," etc., but 
 this with what goes before 
 makes an unwieldy sentence. The Amer- 
 ican revised version is better, "and yet He 
 is," etc. This leaves the construction 
 
Tightening the Grip 223 
 
 practically as in the authorized version, 
 *' although He is longsuffering over them." 
 Over whom? the wicked? No. Over 
 the elect; over us who are the children of 
 God. Literally it is "in their behalf." 
 
 Now look at James 5 : 7. "Behold the 
 husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit 
 of the earth, being longsuffering over it 
 till it receive the early and the later rain." 
 This shows us what longsuffering means; 
 that it is for a purpose. Some one has 
 said, "Men would pluck their mercies 
 green, when the Lord would have them 
 ripe." We are so like children, but the 
 Husbandman knows what proper devel- 
 opment needs. It needs time; it needs 
 culture; it needs training. He is therefore 
 patient, longsuffering, until all these ele- 
 ments have poured their influence upon 
 the soul and made it ripe to receive and 
 keep and properly use what He has long 
 planned to give them. "Longsuffering in 
 our behalf" — that exactly this may be true 
 of you and me. This is the meaning of 
 importunity. 
 
224 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 ''Unanswered yet? The prayer your lips have 
 pleaded 
 
 In agony of heart these many years? 
 Does faith begin to fail; is hope departing, 
 
 And think you all in vain those falling tears? 
 Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer; 
 You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere. 
 
 ''Unanswered yet? Though when you first pre- 
 sented 
 This petition at the Father's throne. 
 It seemed you could not wait the time of asking. 
 
 So urgent was your heart to make it known. 
 Though years have passed since then, do not de- 
 spair; 
 The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere. 
 
 Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted; 
 
 Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done. 
 The work began when first your prayer was ut- 
 tered, 
 
 And God will finish what he has begun. 
 If you will keep the incense burning there, 
 His glory you shall see sometime, somewhere. 
 
 " Unanswered yet? Faith can not be unanswered. 
 Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock; 
 
Tightening the Grip 225 
 
 Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted. 
 Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock. 
 She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer. 
 And cries, 'It shall be done,' sometime, some- 
 where." 
 
3§oofe jFibe 
 
WHY OUR PRAYERS ARE NOT 
 ANSWERED 
 
 * Ye ask and ye receive not because — ' — J as. /5:3. 
 
 If parts of this study have been a trifle 
 hard and a bit difficult to understand, we 
 are now at the part where writer and 
 reader must understand whether they will 
 or not. This may not be the most pleas- 
 ing part to read for some of us, for some 
 of it is sure to rise up from the page and 
 condemn us, but it is the easiest to write 
 about, because there are no knotty prob- 
 lems to solve; no mysteries to unravel in 
 answer to the question that stands with 
 such searching emphasis at the head of 
 this chapter. 
 
 God does answer prayer, and yet 
 so many thousands are com- ^^ ^^^ 
 plaining of prayers that have question to 
 been unanswered ; and you may 
 be thinking the question now, If it be 
 
 229 
 
230 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 true that God can and does answer prayer, 
 and why is it that He does not answer 
 mine? Let me say it in the bluntest possi- 
 ble way. You can answer that question 
 for yourself a good deal better than any 
 one else can answer it for you. It used to 
 be said of Luther, that he could ask any- 
 thing he wanted of God and get it, but 
 God has no favorites in this matter, and if 
 your prayers are not answered, nothing is 
 surer in the world than this, that the fault 
 is yours and not God's. 
 
 By an answered prayer is meant one to 
 which God has said Yes. No use to evade 
 this by tampering with definitions. Some 
 
 say that **asking and getting 
 meant by things from God is a pitiably 
 ^raTr?*^ Small couccptiou of prayer." 
 
 Well, it is if all that is implied 
 in prayer ends in your mind just there. 
 Nevertheless, the fundamental idea of 
 prayer is just that. Both your Bible and 
 your dictionary are authority for this. 
 *'Ask and ye shall receive" — i. e., the 
 thing you ask: not something else. Some 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 231 
 
 say God's No is as much an answer to 
 prayer as His Yes. But No is a denial — 
 it is a negative answer, but when you pray 
 the answer you wish and expect is God's 
 Yes and not His No, and this is what the 
 average child of God has in mind when 
 he is thinking or talking about answered 
 prayer. 
 
 Let us ponder awhile over these unan- 
 swered petitions. Bear well in mind, in 
 the first place, that 
 
 DELAYED ANSWERS ARE NOT DENIALS 
 
 God's purposes are planet sized, and 
 even His plans for you and me are often- 
 times much bigger and better than our 
 short-ranged vision warrants us in believ- 
 ing. You may pray in strictest 
 keeping with the conditions uett/r for ^ 
 laid down in the preceding ?J*° **^*" 
 
 i o his own. 
 
 pages, which sort of praying we 
 have seen makes the answer certain, yet 
 it does not follow therefrom that the an- 
 swer must come just at the time or just in 
 the way expected. 
 
232 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 But if the answer is delayed, you may 
 be sure some purpose in the divine mind 
 is being served, or some obstacle stands 
 in the way which a little time only can 
 remove. 
 
 1. The answer may be delayed as a 
 
 means of spiritual disciplinco We are 
 
 here to be educated and God 
 
 ^chooror^^ knows best how to time His 
 
 spiritual ^ood ffifts to that end. Humil- 
 
 character. o o 
 
 ity, patience and hope; how 
 much we need such virtues as these and 
 a Faith that 
 
 *' Knows Omnipotence hath heard her prayer. 
 And cries, 'It shall be done,' sometime, some- 
 where"; 
 
 and what heavenly graces are to-day 
 adorning many a soul because of a period 
 of suffering hard to bear and a good deal 
 harder to understand, except for the sweet 
 knowledge that God's best is being accom- 
 plished, and that some glad day *'the 
 whole of life's painful experience will be 
 poured into song before the throne." 
 If Jacob's desire had been given to him 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered . 233 
 
 in time for him to get a good night's rest, 
 he might never have become the prince of 
 prayer we know to-day. If Hannah's 
 prayer for a son had been an- Hannah's 
 swered at the time she set for prayer tor 
 herself, the nation might never 
 have known the mighty man of God it 
 found in Samuel. Hannah wanted only a 
 son, but God wanted more. He wanted 
 a prophet, a ruler and a saviour for His 
 people. Some one has said that in this 
 instance "God had to get a woman before 
 He could get a man." This woman He 
 got in Hannah precisely by delaying the 
 answer to her prayer, for out of the disci- 
 pline of those weeks and months and years 
 there came a woman with a vision like 
 God's, with tempered soul and gentle 
 spirit and seasoned will, prepared to be 
 the kind of a mother for the kind of a 
 man God knew the nation needed. 
 
 2. The answer may be delayed by the 
 very force of circumstances. You want to 
 know if God cannot overcome these in- 
 stanter? Yes, He doubtless can, but it is 
 
234 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 hardly the part of reverent trust to ask 
 Him to do the miraculous if He can do this 
 „ ^ , thing; in His own good time 
 
 God works o o ^ 
 
 along the in auv othcr way. Impatience 
 
 line of • 1 /-I 1 • 1 
 
 least With (jrod IS the meanest sort 
 
 resistance. ^£ distrust. To pray for the in- 
 stant healing of a diseased body is to 
 ignore every second cause and every law 
 of nature and to ask God to do the same, 
 and that we fear not so much for His glory 
 as for our own gratification. 
 
 May not the same thing be true in some 
 instances when prayer is sent up for the 
 instant conversion of some soul.^ In fact, 
 of the two is not the former much more 
 reasonable.^ God can handle the laws of 
 nature as He will, but can He thus handle 
 a human will and still leave the individual 
 a free, moral and responsible agent .^^ A 
 man's will must be influenced by motives ; 
 the evil of sin must be seen and something 
 of the character of God appreciated. The 
 power of these motives depends a good 
 deal upon their proper presentation by 
 the proper person and at the proper time. 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 235 
 
 We do not need to explain why, but just 
 to recognize what God has shown us to 
 be true, that He has chosen to limit Him- 
 self very largely to human instrumentality 
 in saving another man's soul. God will 
 not coerce a man's will, but He may re- 
 move him from influences that have made 
 it hard for him to be reached and bring 
 him into new surroundings that may lead 
 to the saving of his soul. In all these 
 things the element of time must not be 
 ignored. 
 
 No ! child of faith, a delay is not a de- 
 jiial. The answer must come, but at a 
 time known only to His infinite wisdom. 
 "For the vision is yet for an appointed 
 time, but at the end it shall speak and not 
 lie; though it tarry, wait for it, for it will 
 surely come; it will not tarry." 
 
 And yet prayers do go unanswered. 
 *'Ye ask and ye receive not because — " 
 Well, it might be, thinking back through 
 what has been said before, because the 
 specific petition you make is not in har- 
 mony with God's better plans for you. 
 
236 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 1. Petitions are sometimes denied be- 
 what cause if granted they would 
 
 answered bring US Dositivc iniurv. True 
 
 prayer . . . 
 
 would some- wisdom, if we had it, would 
 
 times mean. ^^^^^ alloW US tO be at CrOSS- 
 
 purposes with God. 
 
 "... So weak is man, 
 So ignorant and blind, that did not God 
 Sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask. 
 We should be ruined at our own request." 
 
 You denied your little one the razor he 
 craved, but you knew why. (And possi- 
 bly if we would all think back a little 
 through our own history we could recall 
 some earnest prayer of the heart, some 
 cry of the soul, which later events proved 
 to be against our own best welfare.) Is 
 not a word of warning appropriate just 
 here.'^ Is there not some peril in prayers 
 that are uttered rashly and persistently. 
 Some of our best lessons are learned in the 
 school of adversity. Here is an illustra- 
 tion gathered from the writings of a fellow 
 minister : 
 
 *'A pastor's wife once prayed for the life 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 237 
 
 o^ her child, sick with scarlet fever. She 
 pemanded that her child be spared, telling 
 God that she could not give up her boy. 
 The child lived, but was deaf, dumb and 
 idiotic. It would have been far better if 
 the mother had consented to the Lord's 
 will and the Lord had taken the lad to 
 Himself. 
 
 Does God do things like that? What 
 ponderous questions come up about God ! 
 Is God responsible for everything.? No, 
 He certainly is not. Yet we know that 
 Israel prayed amiss in the wilderness and 
 God "gave them their request, but sent 
 leanness into their soul." God answered 
 Hezekiah's prayer, but the fifteen years 
 of life He gave him brought sorrow into 
 his own family and woe and misery to 
 Jerusalem and all Judea. *'Be not rash 
 with thy mouth, and let not thine 
 heart be hasty to utter anything before 
 God." 
 
 2. Petitions are sometimes denied that 
 the larger desire of our heart may be 
 granted. Augustine's mother prayed fer- 
 
238 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 vently that her boy might be kept from 
 
 going to Rome, but God permitted him to 
 
 go. Yet the going to Rome 
 
 One petition i . i e k 
 
 denied lor became the means oi Angus - 
 another* °' tine's Conversion, and very 
 beautifully he says that God 
 denied his mother once to grant her 
 what she had prayed for always. 
 
 3. Closely akin to this is the denial of 
 our prayer in order that a higher and bet- 
 ter blessing may come to us. Earnestly 
 and repeatedly did Paul pray that a cer- 
 tain thorn in his flesh — some constantly 
 pricking irritation that had come into his 
 life — might be taken away; but God let 
 him know it was a thing in which he 
 
 Why the 7^"^^ ^^^^ ^^y gi^^y' ^^^ I 
 
 thorn in imagine when Paul looked back 
 was not upon it from the close of his 
 removed. jj^^ j^^ would tell thosc gathered 
 
 about him of the special nearness of God 
 and the glory presence of Jesus which had 
 been a millionf old sweeter to him than any 
 fleshly ease the removal of that ugly, an- 
 noying thorn might have brought him. 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 239 
 
 If a mother bending over her sick child 
 and praying with all the intensity of 
 motherly affection could only have lodged 
 in some way in her heart the unmistak- 
 able conviction that its early removal was 
 the sure condition of its eternal salvation, 
 would she not gladly relinquish the smaller 
 desire of her heart that it might be swal- 
 lowed up in the greater blessing that 
 represented the answer to the greatest 
 prayer a mother heart can make. 
 
 Those of you who have read the little 
 book entitled "Expectation Corner" will 
 remember how Adam Slowman's guide 
 stopped in front of a handsome ^^^ ^^ ^^ 
 storehouse and told him it was Exchange 
 the Royal Exchange Ofl&ce,*'the 
 place," he said, *Svhere our Lord Himself 
 considers our applications and changes 
 His grants to what is really most for our 
 good. Some ask for success and speedy 
 deliverance," he said, "and they get dis- 
 appointments which bring them nearer 
 to Him who will deliver them gloriously 
 in trouble if not always out of trouble. 
 
240 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Some ask for health of body and they get 
 health of soul instead and learn what it is 
 to gain the highest attainable gift of a 
 submitted will which brings changeless 
 peace and is worth all the prosperity gifts 
 put together." 
 
 If we could only pass, like Doddridge 
 in his famous dream, into the spirit world 
 and find, as he did, our own life traced 
 on the wall of our own chamber, we too 
 could run our eyes along the mysterious 
 lines and discover His appointment in 
 every disappointment, and learn that our 
 final glory is reached through prayers that 
 have been answered in larger measure 
 than we had ever ventured to implore. 
 
 What we have said so far may be taken 
 as a partial answer to the question intro- 
 ducing this chapter, but it has not one 
 thing to do with the difiiculty as presented 
 in the Scripture which stands alongside 
 the question. These have been denials 
 because of petitions either out of harmony 
 with God's richer plan for us or out of 
 the line along which God must act to bring 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 241 
 
 us the larger blessings we have craved, 
 but the Scripture to which we have re- 
 ferred says, "Ye ask and re- The reason 
 ceive not because — " and then an'swered 
 
 follows a reason that startles P'^je*" ac- 
 cording to 
 you. The longer you think st.james. 
 
 about it the bigger it gets. It brings 
 
 a sensation with it — not the most pleasant, 
 
 did you say.^ You begin to search your 
 
 own heart and to think about your own 
 
 life, and the first thing you know you find 
 
 yourself wondering if, after all, this may 
 
 not be that which more than anything else 
 
 has kept the blessing away. The matter 
 
 of the prayer may have been all right, but 
 
 the heart which indited it has been all 
 
 wrong. It is the life, you will recall, that 
 
 prays, and some evil in your life has 
 
 broken the connection between yourself 
 
 and God. 
 
 What does God say about this.? 
 
 1. First, He makes it plain that it is 
 our sin that deafens His ear. "Behold, 
 the Lord's hand is not shortened that it 
 cannot save; neither his ear heavy that 
 
242 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 it cannot hear. But your iniquities have 
 separated between you and your God, and 
 your sins have hid His face from you, that 
 He will not hear" (Isaiah 59: 1, 2). God 
 says it is your sin that is hindering your 
 prayer. God hates sin with a perfect 
 Touveinsin l^^tred. His greatest horror is 
 Is to lose the to havc hauds stretched out to 
 Him that are all soiled and be- 
 smirched with it. In fact, He will not 
 look; He will not listen. "And when ye 
 spread forth your hands, I will hide mine 
 eyes from you" (Isaiah 1: 15). The very 
 privilege of prayer implies the most inti- 
 mate relation with God. Indeed, some 
 say its chief essence is communion with 
 God. It is communion and more: it is 
 community, just because it is communion 
 of the most intimate sort. God maker; 
 over to me what belongs to Him, and I 
 am expected to be thus equally loyal to 
 Him. It is, in fact, partnership. But I 
 have sinned against my partner. I have 
 done the mean, low thing that has injured 
 Him, and not only have I lacked the de- 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 243 
 
 cency to apologize for it, but I am doing 
 the thing repeatedly! How, then, can I 
 expect any fellowship with Him or any 
 favor from Him? 
 
 Here is the trouble. We have looked 
 down deep into our own hearts and we 
 have found the thing that God has put 
 His finger on time and again, and it's 
 there still. It may be some sin of the past 
 yet unconfessed and unforgiven, or it may 
 be some sin that is being cherished to-day, 
 and all the while here is His word: "If I 
 regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will 
 not hear me" (Ps. 66: 18). It is the in- 
 wrought, fervent prayer of the righteous 
 man that availeth much. "Your iniqui- 
 ties have separated between you and your 
 God, and your sins have hid His face from 
 you that He will not hear." Is it not time 
 to say, "Search me, O God, and know my 
 heart" .'^ If we want power in prayer we 
 must be merciless in dealing with our 
 sins. No quarter must be shown here. 
 
 2. There is another certain thing, just 
 a special form of sin that is mentioned as 
 
244 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 crippling our power to pray, and that 
 is the unforgiving spirit. Can an un- 
 prayerand Pardoned sinner hope to have 
 theunfor- any influence with God? Then 
 hear! *'If ye forgive not men 
 their trespasses, neither will your Father 
 in heaven forgive you.*' This lack of 
 loving one another — ^Aye, this actual 
 hatred of each other — what a dark, ugly 
 thing it is ! "Murder already," God calls 
 it, and to hold it and to harbor it is to lose 
 His pardon and His favor. If prayer is, 
 or implies, or is based upon communion, 
 community, partnership, then the dispo- 
 sition of the one must be the disposition of 
 the other. The closet door of prayer has 
 two hinges. One is, "Love God su- 
 premely," and the other "is like unto it," 
 "Love your neighbor as yourself." The 
 "recompense" of the "Father who seeth 
 in secret" comes when the "door is shut," 
 but the door will never swing on broken 
 hinges. Many a person who might have 
 power with God is losing the best wish of 
 their heart — some mighty blessing from 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 245 
 
 heaven — ^just for the contemptible and 
 miserable gratification of hating some one 
 who has possibly injured them. Jesus 
 makes it very plain that we must say 
 farewell to enmity or stand back from 
 the holy place. 
 
 In the fifth chapter of Matthew, He 
 says, *'If thou bring thy gift to the altar — 
 that is, when thou comest to 
 
 1,1 I, J. The message 
 
 pray — and there rememberest ouesusto 
 that thy brother hath aught g^^^g*"'" 
 against thee; leave there thy 
 gift and go first and be reconciled to thy 
 brother, and then come and offer thy gift.'* 
 Reconciliation goes before worship. "A 
 broken and contrite heart" He will not 
 despise, but His message to the unforgiv- 
 ing heart is, "Leave thy gift and go and be 
 reconciled." It is S. D. Gordon who has 
 said, "The shortest way to God for that 
 man is not the way to the altar but around 
 by that man's house." "But, Lord, here's 
 $100,000 to endow a Christian univer- 
 sity." "Leave there thy gift and go and 
 be reconciled." "But, Lord, I'm a pillar 
 
^ 
 
 246 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 in the church, and the largest subscription 
 to its treasury is mine." "Leave there thy 
 gift and go." *'But, Lord, others speak 
 well of my life and Thou knowest I am 
 faithful to all the services in the sanctuary, 
 and every one knows I am not the one to 
 blame in this offense." "Leave there thy 
 gift and go first and be reconciled, and 
 then come and offer thy gift." Plain 
 enough! isn't lU But He would have no 
 misunderstanding about it. So munifi- 
 cent and liberal, so bountiful and unspar- 
 ing might be your gifts for charity's sake, 
 that all the world would be singing doxol- 
 
 Good works pgies ^^ P^^is.e to your generos- 
 do not com- ity. You might be counted a 
 ningman Christian of deep spiritual ex- 
 perience ; Aye, you might go as 
 a herald of the Gospel into heathen lands, 
 but if you left behind one unreconciled 
 person whom you have not in the tender 
 and loving spirit of the Christ endeavored 
 to reconcile, whatever you give, whatever 
 you are, wherever you go, your heart will 
 not be right in the sight of God, and when 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 247 
 
 you bow down at His altar you will hear 
 these words, *'Go and be reconciled to thy 
 brother," and when you have gone and 
 done your part and come again, then will 
 the heavens open and your prayer will 
 enter and the blessing of God will be upon 
 you. 
 
 3. Yet one other thing brings denial to 
 our prayers. This is that in particular 
 which St. James had in mind when he 
 wrote the Scripture part of which we 
 started with at the beginning of this chap- 
 ter. *'Ye ask and ye receive not." Now let 
 the Apostle finish it for us — " be- „^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ The prayer 
 
 cause ye ask amiss," that is, that-asks 
 
 3rIXllSS " 
 
 wickedly; and now he tells us 
 why — "that ye may consume it upon your 
 lusts," or, more literally, *'that ye may 
 spend it in your pleasures." This means 
 praying with a selfish purpose. The very 
 form of the second verb "ask" is changed 
 into what is called the middle voice, that 
 is, "asking for oneself," and this is the 
 secret that explains why so many prayers 
 go unanswered. They are selfish prayers. 
 
248 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 Possibly if we would hold this text up 
 before us as a mirror we might some of us 
 see our own face reflected there. We 
 sometimes want a thing just because we 
 want it — ^want it for ourselves. With 
 God's great purpose for the world and 
 some part, whether small or great. He 
 would have us take we are not concerned. 
 The truth — the plain truth, spoken as 
 bluntly as words can speak — is that our 
 selfishness is paralyzing our petitions. 
 Here is an individual praying that the 
 power of the Holy Spirit may be upon 
 him. It is a splendid prayer to make. It 
 is just for that which God so much wants 
 
 SeeMngthe ^^^^7 child of His tO haVC, but 
 
 glory of self wav back in the breast of the 
 
 Instead of , ™ , 
 
 the glory ouc who oiiers the prayer is 
 something that spoils it all and 
 makes the petition a sheer waste of words 
 and a thing abominable in the sight of 
 God. What a fine thing for himself it 
 would be to have this power. He has seen 
 some mighty man of God in a marvelous 
 ministry, and the power that man had he 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 249 
 
 has coveted for himself; and why? This 
 is it — the purpose — that makes it right or 
 wrong. And if we search honestly for the 
 reason, some of us, I fear, would find our 
 own ambitions striking us full in the 
 face. 
 
 You have asked God to heal your dis- 
 ease, but just why do you want your fail- 
 ing health restored ? One of the members 
 of Dr. Dixon's church came to him once 
 and said, "Pastor, I want you to pray for 
 my healing, for I am afflicted." Dr. Dixon 
 said, "I knew why she was afflicted; she 
 had been spending two or three 
 nights a week at a ball or thea- member's 
 ter, and as a result of her dissi- Y!^^^" *°' 
 
 \ ^ health. 
 
 pation she was afflicted." He 
 said, "What do you want to live for, any 
 way.^" and he said, "I could see that her 
 principal reason for desiring health was 
 that she might attend more balls, give 
 more parties and have a better time in the 
 world. She wanted health that she might 
 spend it in her own pleasures and for God 
 to have answered her prayers would have 
 
250 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 been to fix her in a worldly life forever," 
 and he did not pray. 
 
 Here is a mother praying for her boy. 
 It would make such a nice young man out 
 of him to be a Christian; it would keep 
 her from any further disgrace — it would 
 be such a joy to her to have such a son, 
 and then the thought of his being lost for- 
 ever is so painful. But if God should say, 
 "I need a missionary for the jungles of 
 Africa, and I shall redeem your boy for 
 that noble work," she would cry, "Oh, 
 no. Lord, not my boy for that!" Selfish 
 prayer! Many a woman is praying the 
 same way for the conversion of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 And if we would dig down deep and 
 examine the tap-root at its very end possi- 
 bly we might discover some such motive 
 in many of our prayers for a revival. Of 
 course, we persuade ourselves 
 sometimes — if wc Can — that it is other- 
 revfyir* wise; the thing is so contempt- 
 ibly mean that we spurn the 
 thought of it; in fact, we don't think it; 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 251 
 
 we don't allow ourselves to. But a revival 
 means something; increased membership, 
 easier finances, splendid reports at Con- 
 ference or Presbytery, prestige among the 
 brethren and possibly a better call. We 
 know better than any one else that we are 
 zealous for God's glory, but if while we are 
 planning and praying for a revival these 
 other unworthy thoughts flit through the 
 mind with persistent recurrency, we'll 
 ( have to account for them some way, and 
 \ usually just a bit of deep, genuine heart- 
 \ searching will do it; and the revival does 
 I not come. 
 
 / Oh, for a hungering and thirsting only 
 for God's glory; for a passion something 
 like the Son of God's, that cannot bear to 
 see men lost; for a zeal for the house of 
 God that cannot endure to see it dishon- 
 ored by the worldliness of its professed 
 worshipers. Oh, for an utter self -forget- 
 ting concern for the thing that is dearest 
 to God that cannot bear to think of one 
 jot or tittle of His word being made void 
 by the proud unbelief of the day! How 
 
252 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 the sound of abundance of rain would be 
 heard in the land; how the windows of 
 heaven would go up; how the mighty 
 floods of blessing would come ! 
 
 *'Ye ask and ye receive not because — " 
 Fill it out for yourself, and when you have 
 hit upon the thing that is hiding God's 
 
 face and taking the sense of His 
 Making the prescucc away from you, put it 
 personal. away by His grace, tor it is sm, 
 
 and where there is sin He will 
 not tarry. It may be something we have 
 not thought of before as wrong, but if we 
 say, and say it sincerely, "Search me, 
 O God, and know my heart; try me and 
 know my thought, and see if there be any 
 evil thing in me," He will discover the 
 thing to us that ought to go from us. 
 
 " Oh, for the times when on my heart. 
 Long prayer hath never palled; 
 Times when the ready thought of God 
 Would come when it was called. 
 
 "What can have locked these fountains up. 
 Those visions what hath stayed; 
 
Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered 253 
 
 What sudden act hath thus transformed 
 My sunshine into shade? 
 
 *' One thing alone, dear Lord, I dread. 
 To have a secret spot 
 That separates my soul from Thee 
 And yet to know it not. 
 
 ** If it hath been sin of mine, 
 Then show that sin to me; 
 Not to get back the sweetness lost, 
 But to make my peace with Thee." 
 
SI ^tttbp in Witxhsi 
 
A STUDY IN WORDS* 
 
 We want in these closing pages to con- 
 sider in a few lines what might well be 
 made a volume in itself. There is a wealth 
 of meaning hidden away in the various 
 words which the Bible uses when speaking 
 of prayer and in various other words used 
 in connection with prayer; and there is 
 much about prayer that can be learned 
 better if not only by a study of these words. 
 To those of us who believe that God Him- 
 self had a care even in the wording of the 
 thoughts He inspired, this study will be 
 doubly significant. 
 
 We shall do nothing more than pre- 
 sent the matter in briefest outline. 
 
 I. There is, first, the words which 
 are themselves used to designate prayer. 
 There are seven Greek words in the New 
 Testament variously translated "to pray," 
 
 * The suggestion for the study in this Chapter comes 
 to the writer from Macgregor's "Praying in the Holy 
 Ghost," a most helpful and inspiring little volume. 
 257 
 
258 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 "to beseech," "to supplicate," "to ask," 
 "to intercede," "to entreat," "to call up- 
 on," each of which might without violence 
 to the term be translated by our English 
 
 Greek and ^^^^^ "p^ay." We are now, of 
 Hebrew coursc, referring to prayer in its 
 
 words used . ^ o j. ./ 
 
 to designate; broadcr meaning as an ap- 
 prayer. proach uuto God. In the Old 
 
 Testament there are twelve Hebrew words 
 similarly translated. Some of the terms 
 are to a degree synonymous, words of the 
 New Testament finding their equivalents 
 in the Old Testament. For the spirit and 
 temper in which we ought to pray no bet- 
 ter guide can be found than these words 
 themselves. 
 
 Of course, in setting forth the primary 
 significance of these words it is not meant 
 that they are used in Scripture only with 
 this particular shade of meaning. It 
 would be quite impossible to go through 
 Scripture and establish any such distinc- 
 tion which would hold true in each par- 
 ticular use of the word in question, but the 
 lesson to be learned in this study is that 
 
A Study in Words 259 
 
 each word carries its own particular truth 
 and when taken together they enrich the 
 meaning of prayer as nothing else can do. 
 
 Now, if prayer is to secure the thing for 
 which it goes to God, certain things must 
 be true of God and certain other things must 
 be true of man. There must be on God's 
 part, first the power and then the willing- 
 ness to give. True prayer implies a recog- 
 nition of these two things. 
 
 1. It implies a recognition of divine 
 sovereignty. God's willingness to give 
 would boot us nothing if the power were 
 not His to do it. It is a rich word which 
 teaches us this, and the one 
 most frequently used in the Old 
 Testament. It is palal, and with its noun, 
 tephillah, is used 147 times. It appeals 
 to the sovereign majesty of God as one 
 whose prerogative it is to decide the merits 
 of the case and who has the power to put 
 His will concerning the matter into swift 
 execution. It rests its case with Him in 
 entire self-surrender, confident that the 
 Judge of all the earth will do right. It is 
 
260 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 used in petitions of various sorts, but es- 
 pecially in prayers of intercession. It is 
 the word used by Samuel in 1 Sam. 12 : 23, 
 where he said, "God forbid that I should 
 sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for 
 
 you." 
 
 2. It implies a recognition of divine 
 grace. Power to give and willingness to 
 give are often at farthest extremes. But 
 it is true not only that "Power belongeth 
 unto God," but that "The Lord 
 is plenteous in mercy unto all 
 them that call upon Him" (Ps. 86 : 5). How 
 could one pray without believing this to 
 be true.? This lesson is taught especially 
 in the Old Testament word chanan. The 
 verb primarily means "to be inclined 
 towards," then "to be gracious," and then 
 it comes to mean in one of its tenses, "to 
 entreat for mercy." It is usually trans- 
 lated "supplication." It is the word Sol- 
 omon uses so often in the dedicatory 
 prayer of the temple. (1 Kings 8 : 33, 
 47, 59.) 
 
 There must be also certain dispositions 
 
A Study in Words 261 
 
 on the part of raan who is to approach 
 God in prayer, and these all are implied 
 in true prayer. 
 
 1. True prayer implies a recognition of 
 one's own need. He will never pray suc- 
 cessfully without this. This is brought 
 out by the Greek word deomai, translated 
 by "pray" in Matt. 9:6, "Pray deomai and 
 ye therefore the Lord of the i-achash. 
 harvest," etc., and by "beseech" in Luke 
 9: 38, "Master, I beseech thee look upon 
 my son." Prayer without the sense of 
 need is purposeless and therefore power- 
 less. Quite similar to this is the Hebrew 
 word lachash, in Isa. 26:16, "Lord, in 
 trouble have they visited Thee; they 
 poured out a prayer when thy chastening 
 was upon them." It is the prayer of dire 
 extremity. 
 
 2. True prayer implies the most ardent 
 desire. It is "they who hunger and thirst" 
 whose souls are filled and satisfied. To 
 fail here is to fail utterly. This 
 message is brought to us in the 
 Hebrew word beah. It is a rare word, is 
 
262 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 translated "pray" in Dan. 6: 11, and lit- 
 erally means "to boil," as boiling water. 
 From this is derived metaphorically the 
 idea of the fervent, ardent longing of the 
 soul. 
 
 3. True prayer implies a recognition of 
 one's own helplessness. The midnight 
 petitioner said, "I have nothing to set be- 
 fore my unexpected guest." It was a situ- 
 ation of utter impotence. Perhaps the 
 word more suggestive of this than any 
 other is the New Testament word jmra- 
 haleo. The preposition i^ara means "along 
 side of," while the verb haleo means "to 
 call." From this comes the word Para- 
 PARAKA- clete, John's designation of the 
 LEO. Holy Spirit, the Divine Helper 
 
 and Sustainer. Parakaleo is usually 
 translated "beseech." It is the word used 
 by Jairus when "he besought Jesus greatly, 
 saying, My little daughter lieth at the 
 point of death" (Mark 5 : 23). "Thrice," 
 said Paul, "for this thing I besought the 
 Lord" (2 Cor. 12:8). Self-sufficiency 
 never finds its way to the feet of God. 
 
A Study in Words 263 
 
 4. True prayer implies a becoming 
 sense of reverence and awe. It recognizes 
 the divine splendor and magnificence and 
 the true supplicant will feel something of 
 what Isaiah experienced when he saw the 
 Lord "sitting upon a throne high and 
 lifted up" and heard the seraphims crying 
 one to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the 
 Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of 
 His glory." The word most expressive of 
 this is the Hebrew athar. It carries with 
 it the idea of worship. In fact, 
 
 ATHAR 
 
 its first meaning is "to burn in- 
 cense," and the noun is used in Zeph. 
 3:10, to designate a worshiper of God. 
 Every prayer, to be genuine, must first be 
 an incense. The one who prays will re- 
 member that he is entering the holiest of 
 holies and that God, the infinitely Holy 
 One, is there. 
 
 5. True prayer implies a recognition of 
 one's own unworthiness. This truth 
 seems to lie especially in the 
 
 Old Testament word chalah, 
 
 which is used so frequently when God's 
 
264 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 wrath is deprecated and when one in pen- 
 itence seeks to appease His anger. It 
 means Uterally "to stroke," "to smooth," 
 and then "to concihate by caress," to 
 stroke one's face and smooth its stern 
 furrows. This is the word Moses used 
 when praying for idolatrous Israel (Ex. 
 32: 11). See also 1 Kings 13: 6; 2 Kings 
 13 : 41 ; Dan. 9 : 13, and 1 Sam. 13 : 12. It 
 is the "God be merciful to me a sinner" of 
 the publican. It is the "contrite heart" 
 such as David presented in his Psalm of 
 confession, which the Lord will not de- 
 spise (Ps. 51). 
 
 6. True prayer implies a proper reflec- 
 tion. It is studied and deliberate, and not 
 hurried. Remember in whose presence 
 thou art, and "Be not rash with thy mouth 
 and let not thine heart be hasty to utter 
 anything before God." The soul must be 
 calm and meditative. The word teaching 
 siACHand us this is the Hebrew word 
 HAGA. siach. It is the word used of 
 
 Isaac when he went out into the field to 
 meditate, and is so translated in Gen. 
 
V. 
 
 A Study in Words 265 
 
 24:63. It is the word used when the 
 Psalmist says, *'My meditation of Him 
 shall be sweet" (Ps. 103 : 34). It is trans- 
 lated "prayer" in Ps. 55 : 17, and literally 
 means "to muse," "to ponder over." In 
 the Greek translation of the Old Testa- 
 ment this last reference is rendered "nar- 
 rate fully," that is, going over it all care- 
 fully beforehand. There is one other 
 word containing somewhat the same idea, 
 though hardly so expressive. It is haga, 
 and is used quite as frequently as the 
 other. (See Ps. 63:6.) 
 
 7. True prayer implies frank, open 
 simplicity and directness. It is our privi- 
 lege to "come boldly," without fear, but 
 that so far as the Father's heart is con- 
 cerned, the very thing we want is the very 
 thing He would delight to give. Our re- 
 quests will then be direct and definite. 
 This seems to me the meaning brought 
 out especially by the New Tes- ^j^^o 
 tament words aiteo and erotao erotao 
 and their Old Testament equiv- 
 alent shaal. The exact distinction between 
 
266 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 aiteo and erotao has been much disputed. 
 Some would have us think aiteo gives prom- 
 inence to the superiority of the person 
 addressed, while erotao implies a certain 
 equality and familiarity between the two; 
 but New Testament usage does not bear 
 this out. That probably is the true dis- 
 tinction (if there is any) which makes 
 aiteo (which seems to be a little less in- 
 tense than the other) lay emphasis more 
 especially on the thing to be given, and 
 erotao on the person who is to do some- 
 thing for you. The words mean simply 
 *'to make request." Such frankness and 
 simplicity in prayer is possible only with 
 a conscience void of offence. When clean 
 hands are lifted up, God's greatest delight 
 is to fill them. 
 
 8. True prayer implies the childlike 
 spirit and a confiding approach unto God. 
 This is brought to us in the Greek word 
 ENTUNCH- entunchano. It is the word that 
 ANo. gives prominence to childlike 
 
 confidence, and represents prayer as the 
 heart's converse with God. It is the word 
 
A Study in Words 267 
 
 used in intercession, as when a child goes 
 to its father in behalf of another. We are 
 children in Christ, and nothing pleases 
 the Father more than the utter absence of 
 all misgiving and affectation in the appeal 
 of his own child to His heart. It is used 
 in 1 Tim. 2:1, "that . . ; intercessions 
 be made for all men," and is the word that 
 represents the pleadings of Christ in our 
 behalf (Heb. 7:25). 
 
 9. True prayer implies an expectant 
 attitude of the soul. An expectancy that 
 gladdens the heart in anticipation of the 
 coming blessing and is an utter stranger 
 to surprise when the thing desired comes 
 to pass. This is really the faith that be- 
 heves we "have received" (Mark 11:24, 
 R. v.). It is a confidence born of the 
 Spirit and, if so, it can never be betrayed. 
 Its ground is the intimacy of the soul with 
 Jesus. This lesson is the one more espe- 
 cially peculiar to the Aramaic 
 
 TSALA 
 
 word tsala. The word is used but 
 
 twice ; once in Dan. 6:10, and once in Ezra 
 
 6 : 10. It means "to bend," and in its root 
 
268 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 significance, as may be seen by tracing it 
 in the Arabic, has reference to the bending 
 in the back of a mare before foaUng, ac- 
 companied as it always is by the strength- , 
 ening of the tissues in anticipation of the 
 strain about to come upon them. It is ^ 
 this root to which Daniel and Ezra have 
 gone to select for us a word which means 
 *'to pray." They would not have us tarry 
 before God in idle utterance and call it 
 prayer. 
 
 10. True prayer implies earnestness 
 and intensity. The word which carries 
 this meaning with it more especially than 
 any other is a New Testament one. It is 
 the word ektenos, as used in 
 ^^7if?J?! Acts 12: 5, where it is most un- 
 
 andPAGA. _ ' 
 
 happily translated in the Au- 
 thorized Version by "without ceasing,'* 
 but in the Revised Version it is made to 
 read "earnestly." It literally means 
 "stretched-out-ed-ly." "Intensely" would 
 be a good translation. It is a word repre- 
 senting the soul under the sway of an in- 
 tense passion ; stretched out, with its every 
 
A Study in Words 269 
 
 energy strained in the exercise to which it 
 is devoted. It is the prayer that forgets 
 all things else in the intensity of its desire 
 and its determined hold upon God. There 
 is no wandering of thought here. All 
 there is of a man goes into a prayer like 
 that. It is this word which is used of 
 Jesus in Gethsemane, where it is said, 
 "being in an agony he prayed more ear- 
 nestly.^' 
 
 There is an Old Testament word cor- 
 responding somewhat to this word ehtenos. 
 It is faga. In its first sense it means *'to 
 strike upon, or against." Among its sev- 
 eral derived meanings are, (1) to rush 
 upon any one with hostile violence (1 Sam. 
 22 : 17, 18, and Judges 8:21); (2) in a good 
 sense, "to assail any one with petitions," 
 to earnestly urge upon him your request. 
 True prayer is an intense work both of the 
 mind and of the heart. We pray only as 
 we "stir ourselves to take hold on God." 
 Augustine speaks of one who prayed as 
 if he would expire, "expirare orando" — 
 expire while praying; breathe out his 
 
270 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 very life, as some one has said, in the 
 exercise. ■ 
 
 This is not the same as Importunity, 
 although it is a part of it. Importunity 
 means not only to pray thus earnestly, but 
 above all to be persistent in it, but how 
 naturally it associated itself with such 
 prayer; for one who prays with such in= 
 tensity is not likely to falter or be dis- 
 couraged if the first effort does not bring 
 the desired response. How naturally, 
 then, it follows that: 
 
 11. True prayer implies a persevering 
 faith. A faith that will not falter at delay. 
 It believes and keeps on believing. This 
 is the other element of importunity {anai- 
 deia, literally "shamelessness") in the 
 parable of the ungenerous neighbor (Luke 
 11 : 5-8), and of the unjust judge who was 
 worn out {hupopiadzine, literally "to beat 
 the face black and blue") by the continual 
 coming of the widow. The same Hebrew 
 word paga, as just noted, car- 
 ries this idea along with it. We 
 need that sanctified energy of will that 
 
A Study in Words 271 
 
 persists in its suit till God clearly bids it 
 cease. God has His postponements as 
 well as His appointments. 
 
 12. True prayer implies humility and 
 the submissive spirit — a will resigned to 
 God. We may not always know God's 
 will, but we do know always 
 that, "All things work together ™^^^" 
 for good to them that love G od ; 
 to them who are the called according to 
 His purpose," and can therefore well 
 afford to say, "Thy will, O God, be done." 
 If this lesson is taught in one word more 
 than in another it is in the Greek word 
 hiketaria. It is used only once in all the 
 New Testament (Heb. 5:7), and then 
 concerning the One who in Gethsemane 
 prayed and said, "Not my will but thine, 
 O God, be done." It really means a hum- 
 ble, prostrate entreaty against impend- 
 ing evil. The word has a history worth 
 finding out, and the study of it is fas- 
 cinating. 
 
 If we own ourselves the Lord's, the 
 surrender must be complete and the will 
 
272 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 cannot be kept back. Gethsemane's 
 "nevertheless" may mean thorns instead 
 of roses for a while, but God's best is 
 always at the end of the way. 
 
 13. True prayer implies loyalty and 
 devotion to God. So far are His interests 
 above our own that if the "cup cannot 
 pass away" we will drink it even though 
 it lead us to Calvary. This seems to be 
 
 the lesson taught us by that 
 oMAi^^^^' sacred word proseuchomai, used 
 
 120 times in the New Testa- 
 ment. It is used only of prayer to God. 
 It is always translated by the word "pray" 
 and is used of Jesus when He prayed in 
 Gethsemane. "He kneeled down and 
 prayed" (Luke 22:44). This is some- 
 thing more than resignation; something 
 more than submission. It is saying, "Thy 
 will, O God, be done"; but it is more. It 
 is the devotement of self to God in seeing 
 that His will is done. 
 
 II. But rich as are these lessons which 
 come from a study of the words which 
 themselves mean prayer, none the less so 
 
ADIALEI- 
 POS. 
 
 A Study in Words 273 
 
 are those we learn from the words used in 
 connection with prayer. 
 
 1. From 1 Thessalonians 5:17, comes 
 the lesson that 
 
 WE ARE TO PRAY UNCEASINGLY 
 
 The word is adialeipos. It means sim- 
 ply "without leaving off." It is used only 
 in three other places.* It is 
 quite like in meaning to the 
 word diajyantos (used of Cor- 
 nelius in Acts 10:2), and to the quite 
 frequent and more common word pantote, 
 used eleven times in connection with 
 prayer.f "Men ought always to pray." 
 Frugality here is dangerous economy. 
 Not always on one's knees, but always 
 living and moving in the atmosphere of 
 prayer. This is that "closer walk with 
 God." Something is wrong where the 
 life languishes. Health of soul demands 
 "the unbroken connection." 
 
 *Rom. 1:9; 1 Thess. 1:3; 1 Thess. 2:13. 
 
 tRom. 1:9; 1 Cor. 1:4; Eph. 5:20; Phil. 1:4; Col, 
 1:3, 4:12; 1 Thess. 1:2, 33; Thess. 1:3, 11; Phil. 4:11', 
 2 Thess. 2:13. 
 
274 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 2. Not very unlike this is the lesson that 
 
 WE ARE TO PRAY UNDER EVERY 
 CIRCUMSTANCE 
 
 The expression which seems to me to 
 more especially convey this truth is the 
 one found in Luke 21 : 36, "Watch ye 
 
 therefore and pray in every 
 KAiRo^^^ season," and also in Ephesians 
 
 6:18, " praying in every 
 season.*' The expression is en panti kairo, 
 and is used only the twice. We are wres- 
 tling against powers (Eph. 6) that lie in 
 wait for us. They will take us unawares 
 if they can. If we forget God when the 
 sun shines and are grieved at Him when 
 the clouds come, we shall find our feet 
 slipping from beneath us and the Evil One 
 will have gotten the victory in a struggle 
 for which there would have been no occa- 
 sion had we remembered and practiced 
 what our Lord did say, that, in every 
 season, under every circumstance, we need 
 to pray. 
 
 3. Another message comes to us out of 
 1 Corinthians 7 : 5, where we learn that 
 
A Study in Words 275 
 
 WE ARE TO TAKE TIME FOB PRAYER 
 
 The word is scholazo. It is used only 
 \ here in the New Testament with refer- 
 \ ence to persons. It is used 
 
 \.. ,^, .,, ^^ . . SCHOLAZO, 
 
 (^ \ twice elsewhere (Matt. 12:44 
 \ ynd Luke 11 : 25) with reference to things. 
 ^In the latter sense it means "empty," and 
 i:§ applied both times to a house left un- 
 occupied. When used with reference to 
 persons, the word means unoccupied in 
 the sense of being at leisure, having 
 nothing to do and at liberty to devote 
 one's time and self to a thing. 
 
 We are not to be hurried in our devo- 
 tions. Who was it that said, "Could ye 
 not watch with me one hour?"' As if that 
 were a little while to devote to a thing like 
 that! But many of us would doubtless 
 be embarrassed by arithmetical calcula- 
 tions just at this point. If prayer is im- 
 portant we ought to have time for it. If it 
 were a pleasure we would have time for it, 
 and if we could really say of Him, "Whom 
 having not seen we love," what a pleasure 
 it would be! When the white handker- 
 
276 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 chief lay just before Gordon's tent door, 
 the weightiest matters of his queen's king- 
 dom must wait, for Gordon was commun- 
 ing with God. "Give yourselves unto 
 prayer." Put other business aside. Let 
 the mind and the soul be at leisure for this 
 one thing. This is the message of the 
 verse. 
 
 4. And now, from another word, comes 
 the command that sounds somewhat 
 strange. It tells us that 
 
 WE ARE TO BE SOBER WHEN WE PRAY 
 
 In 1 Peter 4 : 7 the revised reading is, 
 "Be ye therefore of sound mind and be 
 sober unto prayer." The word is ncpho, 
 and its primary meaning is a 
 physical one, namely, "to ab- 
 stain from wine," and so passes spiritually 
 into the general sense of calm, temperate, 
 collected in spirit, self-controlled. It is 
 used five times elsewhere,* but only this 
 once in connection with prayer. 
 
 Another has suggested that "many 
 
 * 1 Thess. 5 : 6, 8. 2 Tim. 4:5. 1 Pet. 1:13. 1 Pet. 
 5:8. 
 
A Study in Words 277 
 
 things intoxicate which are not wine," and 
 that one can be drunk with worldly gaiety 
 and worldly business, with pride, or envy 
 or anger. How could one pray in such a 
 condition ! We must bring with us when 
 we pray a mind that is steady and com- 
 posed; if we do not have it we must seek 
 it in quietness before God. Many of our 
 best lessons are missed for the lack of it. 
 That we have been permitted to pray at 
 all is the marvel, and when we do pray 
 the very best of intellect and heart is the 
 very least we should expect to devote to 
 this high and mighty privilege. 
 
 5. We find next, in Colossians 4: 2, an- 
 other word which tells us that 
 
 WE ARE TO BE VIGILANT WHEN WE PRAY 
 
 The passage reads, "Continue stead- 
 fastly in prayer and watch in the same with 
 thankssriving;." The word is 
 
 , . , 1 GREGOREO. 
 
 gregoreo, and is the same word 
 used by the Master in Matt. 26:41 and 
 Mark 14:38, when He said to His three 
 disciples, "Watch and pray that ye enter 
 not into temptation," and the same word 
 
278 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 He uses just before in telling them to tarry 
 in the distance and watch while He prayed. 
 The word is quite general, and while the 
 Colossian passage calls chiefly for a spir- 
 itual emphasis, the Gospel passages show 
 that the physical reference is not to be 
 entirely ignored. The prayer life, to be 
 successful, calls for the most rigid mental 
 attentiveness. There is sometimes so 
 much self-indulgence and mental lassi- 
 tude in our attempts at prayer that the 
 good which might be ours is lost entirely. 
 The soul must be on its guard. If the 
 Evil One can change the hour that ought 
 to bring us strength from above into a 
 season of distracted mind-wandering, how 
 surely will he do it. One always prays 
 best when the mind is clear, keen and 
 alert. Only so can the senses be exercised 
 to discern both good and evil (Heb. 5 : 14). 
 The use of this word gregoreo gives no 
 sanction to any but an active, energetic 
 prayer. 
 
 As a figure of this spiritual circumspec- 
 tion, it will be interesting to note the use 
 
A Study in Words 279 
 
 of the same word in a physical sense in the 
 following passages : 1 Peter 5:8; Matt. 
 24:43; Mark 13:34; Acts 20:31. 
 
 6. From this same passage, Colossians 
 4:2, comes a second lesson from which 
 we learn that 
 
 WE ARE TO MAKE PRAYER THE CHIEF BUSINESS 
 OF OUR LIFE 
 
 Besides urging us to watchfulness in 
 prayer, the passage says, "Continue stead- 
 fastly in prayer." The same message is 
 found in Acts 1: 14; 2: 42;6: 4, 
 and also in Rom. 12: 12, while Hl^^^"^^' 
 the same expression is also 
 found in five other passages without refer- 
 ence to prayer. The two words, "continue 
 steadfastly," are one in Greek. It is pros- 
 kartereo, and the underlying thought of 
 the word is that of "giving exclusive atten- 
 tion to a thing." In Acts 6 : 4 the Apos- 
 tles told the other disciples to select seven 
 of their number who might look after the 
 daily ministrations of food, since they 
 themselves must be relieved of this busi- 
 ness, that they might give themselves (con- 
 
280 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 tinue steadfastly) to prayer and the min- 
 istry of the Word of God. The Apostles 
 were to "give constant attention" to this 
 latter even as the other disciples were to 
 the former. It was to be their business, 
 just as serving tables was called the busi- 
 ness of the others. 
 
 When, in Mark 3 : 9, Jesus gave a com- 
 mand "that a small ship should wait on 
 Him," He used this word, and when, in 
 Acts 10 : 7, we are told that certain soldiers 
 "waited continually" on Cornelius, it is 
 this word proskartereo that is used to ex- 
 press such service. It was their business, 
 their one chief duty, to attend this Roman 
 Centurian. Think of a merchant prince 
 pleading the pressure of other duties as an 
 excuse for neglecting his business ! Prayer, 
 God would have us know, is our business. 
 How neglect it, therefore, and hope to 
 succeed in our religious life! When we 
 "enter the closet" we are told to "shut the 
 door." We are supposed to be there for a 
 purpose; important matters are on hand. 
 Successful business demands vigorous 
 
A Study in Words 281 
 
 thought, but our indolent minds some- 
 times so affect our bodies that we go to 
 sleep on our knees. Successful business 
 averts bankruptcy only by enthusiasm, 
 and thousands of Christians are in spir- 
 itual disaster to-day because they have 
 been heedless of the spirit of business in 
 their devotions. 
 
 7. There is yet another word and one 
 other lesson in advance of any yet learned. 
 It is the lesson which comes from the word 
 Paul used when he told the Christians at 
 Rome to "labor fervently" (strive. Re- 
 vised Version) with him in their prayers 
 for his sake (Rom. 15:30). It 
 
 , , \ 111 AGONIZO. 
 
 IS the word he used when he 
 said of Epaphras, in Colossians 4 : 2, that 
 he "always labored fervently for them in 
 his prayer." From this word comes the 
 message that 
 
 WE ARE TO MAKE PRAYER A MATTER OF LIFE 
 AND DEATH 
 
 The word is agonizo, and is the word 
 from which we derive the English "agon- 
 ize." Translated by the Authorized Ver- 
 
£82 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 sion into "laboring fervently," it was 
 made to read in the Revised Version 
 "striving," but the English reader will 
 hardly grasp the fullness of its import 
 until he sees it written "agonize." It is 
 really a tragic word and one we would 
 hardly expect to see used in this connec- 
 tion. Do we not find ourselves thinking 
 that if this is what it means to pray, how 
 little praying, at least such praying, have 
 we really ever done? To pray after this 
 fashion means the absolutely unreserved 
 devotement of every power of one's 
 soul and mind and body to the doing 
 of it. 
 
 The word as used in describing other 
 effort will help us a good deal in our study 
 of its use here. 
 
 {a) In 1 Corinthians 9 : 25, Paul says, 
 "Everyone that striveth (agonizomenos) 
 for the mastery is temperate in all things." 
 We are to agonize in prayer as does an 
 athlete in the arena for the prize he so 
 much covets. The very last measure of 
 such a man's strength goes into the con- 
 
A Study in Words 283 
 
 test. In Hebrews 12:1 the "race" is 
 called an "agony" (agonia). 
 
 (b) In 1 Tim. 6:12 the young soldier 
 for Christ is told to "fight the good fight 
 of faith," the same thing which Paul said 
 of himself that he had done (2 Tim. 4:7). 
 It literally reads "agonize the good agony 
 of faith." We are to agonize in prayer as 
 does a faithful soldier on the field of bat- 
 tle. Is there any service so desperately 
 earnest as his.? and it is unselfish and per- 
 sistent as well. If we prayed as he fights 
 we would often turn into victory what 
 otherwise would be humiliating and dis- 
 appointing defeat. 
 
 (c) In John 18:36 Jesus says, "If my 
 kingdom were of this world, then would 
 my servants fight (agonizonto) that I 
 should not be delivered to the Jews." Our 
 striving in prayer is to be like the agony 
 of a friend fighting to save another's life. 
 If it be like this all the finer qualities of 
 our nature will go into it. It will be un- 
 selfish and heroic. It will be resolute and 
 determined, and neither delay nor any- 
 
284 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 thing else will discourage us, and nothing 
 but the clearly revealed will of God will 
 cause us to loosen our hold upon Him for 
 the thing we have asked. 
 
 (d) In Hebrews 12:4 the writer says, 
 "Ye have not resisted unto blood, striving 
 (agonizomenoi) against sin." He has been 
 talking about martyrdom. Sympathy 
 with Christ means suffering with Christ. 
 "To you it is given not only to believe on 
 His name, but also to suffer for His sake." 
 If we bring this spirit into our prayers we 
 will join hands with God to bring about 
 the answer. True prayer is costly ! It 
 means labor, sacrifice and, if need be, 
 martyrdom. 
 
 (e) In Luke 13 : 24 are found the Mas- 
 ter's words urging us to eternal life. He 
 says, "strive (agonizesthe) to enter in at 
 the straight gate." We are to agonize in 
 prayer as a truly awakened sinner ago- 
 nizes to save his soul. It is a matter of 
 mighty concern to him when once the 
 true condition of his soul flashes upon 
 him. Fancy yourself back at that place 
 
A Study in JVords 285 
 
 with a knowledge of eternal matters such 
 as you now have ! With what intensity of 
 desire, with what earnestness of soul, 
 would you endeavor to lay hold upon 
 eternal life, that you might not perish. 
 Something like that, with the same con- 
 suming desire and the same intense appli- 
 cation to the matter at hand, must we 
 pray if our prayers are to accomplish the 
 will of God in our lives. 
 
 (/) There is, however, one example 
 from which we feel we can learn more 
 about this kind of prayer than any study 
 of words could ever bring us. It is the 
 Gethsemane agony of our Lord. With 
 uncovered head let us stand within the 
 shadows and reverently behold. **Being 
 in an agony {agonia)" says the evangelist 
 (Luke 22:44) "He prayed more ear- 
 nestly" (ektenesteron, comparative degree 
 of the word ektenos, page 268, meaning ''in- 
 tense," "stretched out." See also Heb. 
 5: 7, "With strong crying and tears" His 
 soul being sorrowful unto death) "until 
 His sweat was, as it were, great drops of 
 
286 How Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 blood falling down to the ground" (Luke 
 22:44). 
 
 Here we see what agonizing in prayer 
 really is. Here is prayer at its best, even 
 though the cup did not pass from Him. 
 It needs a mighty concern to pray like 
 that. A concern that comes only from 
 realizing something of what Jesus realized 
 in those agonizing moments. We need 
 first the Gethsemane vision; the hideous- 
 ness of sin, the horror of its consequences, 
 and then something of the mind of Christ 
 that will keep us from turning back and 
 bring us into fellowship with His suffer- 
 ings for the deliverance of this world from 
 the just judgment of God for its sin. Then 
 we shall know what really we have never 
 known before — ^what it means to pray. 
 
 Oh, Thou Man of Sorrows, we wonder 
 how little the disciples really knew when 
 they said, "Lord, teach us to pray," how 
 great would be the lesson they would have 
 to learn if the full answer to that petition 
 came. But we have seen it now, seen it in 
 word, in precept and in Thy own most 
 
A Study in Words 287 
 
 holy example, and coming fresh from this 
 study, we see now how little we can pray 
 without Thy Spirit to inspire and to help, 
 and humbly confessing before God our 
 own past poverty in prayer, we voice with 
 deep desire the petition, "Lord Jesus, 
 teach us to pray." v^ 
 
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