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Post by Admin on Apr 27, 2024 12:27:47 GMT -5
THE STILL HOUR. OH THAT I KNEW WHERE I MIGHT FIND HIM !
Job 23 :
' If God had not said, " Blessed are those that hunger," I know not what could keep weak Christians from sinking in despair. Many times, all I can do is to complain that I want Him, and wish to recover Him.'Bishop Hall, in uttering this lament, two centuries and a half ago, only echoed the
wail which had come down, through living hearts, from the patriarch, whose story is the oldest known literature in any language. A consciousness of the absence of God is one of the standing incidents of religious life. Even when the forms of devotion are observed conscientiously, the sense of the presence of God, as an invisible Friend, whose society is a joy, is by no means unintermittent.
The truth of this will not be questioned by one who is familiar with those phases of religious experience which are so often the burden of Christian confession. In no single feature of ' inner life,' probably, is the experience of many minds less satisfactory to them than in this. They seem to them selves, in prayer, to have little, if any, effluent emotion. They can speak of little in their devotional life that seems to them
like life ; of little that appears like the communion of a living soul with a living God. Are there not many ' closet hours,' in which the chief feeling of the worshipper is an oppressed consciousness of the absence of reality from his own exercises ? He has no words which are, as George Herbert says, ^ heart deep.' He not only experiences no ecstasy, but no joy, no peace, no repose. He has no sense of being at home with God. The stillness of the hour is the stillness of a dead calm at sea. The heart rocks monotonously on the surface of the great thoughts of God, of Christ, of Eternity, of Heaven — * As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.'
Such experiences in prayer are often startling in the contrast with those of certain Christians, whose communion with God, as the hints of it are recorded in their biographies, seems to realize, in actual being, the scriptural conception of a life which is hid with Christ in God.
We read of Payson, that his mind, at times, almost lost its sense of the external world, in the ineffable thoughts of God'
glory, which rolled like a sea of light around him, at the throne of grace. We read of Cowper, that, in one of the few lucid hours of his religious life, such as the experience of God's presence which he enjoyed in prayer, that, as he tells us, he thought he should have died with joy, if
special strength had not been imparted to him to bear the disclosure.
We read of one of the Tennent's, that on one occasion, when he was engaged in secret devotion, so overpowering was the revelation of God which opened upon his soul, and with augmenting intensity of effulgence as he prayed, that at length he recoiled from
the intolerable joy as from a pain, and be sought God to withhold from him further manifestations of his glory. He said, ' Shall Thy servant see Thee and live ?
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We read of the 'sweet hours' which Edwards enjoyed 'on the banks of Hudson's River, in secret converse with God,and hear his own description of the inward sense of Christ which at times came into his heart, and which he ' knows not how to express otherwise than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world ; and sometimes a kind of vision * * * * of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God.'
We read of such instances of the fruits of prayer, in the blessedness of the suppliant, and are we not reminded by them of the transfiguration of our Lord, of whom we read, ' As he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering?' Who of us is not oppressed the contrast between such an experience and his own ? Does not the cry of the patriarch come unbidden to our lips, 'Oh that I knew where I might find Him'?
Much of even the ordinary language of Christians, respecting the joy of communion with God, —language which is stereotyped in our dialect of prayer, —many cannot honestly apply to the history of their own minds. A calm, fearless self-examination finds no counterpart to it in anything they have ever known. In the view of an honest conscience, it is not the vernacular speech of their experience. As compared with the joy which such language indicates, prayer is, in all that they know of it, a dull duty.
Perhaps the characteristic of the feelings of many about it is expressed in the single fact, that it is to them a duty as distinct from a privilege. It is a duty which, they cannot deny, is often uninviting, even irksome.
We should attempt to define the advantage we derive from a performance of the duty, we might be surprised, perhaps shocked, as one after another of the folds of a deceived heart should be taken off, at the discovery of the littleness of the residuum, in an honest judgment of ourselves. Why did we pray this morning f* Do we often derive any other profit from prayer, than that of satisfying convictions of conscience, of which we could not rid ourselves if we wished to do so, and which will not permit us to be at ease with ourselves, if all forms of prayer are abandoned ? Perhaps even so slight a thing as the pain of resistance to the momentum of a habit, will be found to be the most distinct reason we can honestly give for having prayed yesterday or to-day.
There may be periods, also, when the experiences of the closet enable some of us to understand that maniacal cry of Cowper,
when his friends requested him to prepare some hymns for the Olney Collection.
' How can you ask of me such a service ?
I seem to myself to be banished to a remoteness from God's presence, in comparison with which the distance from East to West is vicinity, is cohesion If such language is too strong to be truthful to the common experience of the class of professing Christians to which those whom it represents belong, many will still discern in it, as an expression of joylessness in prayer, a sufficient approximation to their
own experience, to awaken interest in some thoughts upon the causes op a want of ENJOYMENT IN PRAYER.
The evil of such an experience in prayer, is too obvious to need illustration. If any light can be thrown upon the causes of it, there is no man living, whatever may be his religious state, who has not an interest in making it the theme of inquiry. 'Never any more wonder,' says an old writer, ' that men pray so seldom. For there are very few that feel the relish and are enticed with the deliciousness, and refreshed with the comforts, and acquainted with the secrets, of a holy prayer.' Yet, who is it that has said,
* I will make them joyful in my house of prayer'
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Post by Admin on Apr 27, 2024 14:23:21 GMT -5
WHAT IS THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE ? WILL GOD HEAR HIS CRY ? — Job 27 : 8, 9.
An impenitent sinner never prays. In an inquiry after the causes of joylessness in the forms of prayer, the very first which meets us, in some instances, is the absence of piety. It is useless to search behind or beneath
such a cause as this for a more recondite explanation of the evil.This is, doubtless, often all the interpretation that can be honestly given to a man's experience in addressing God. Other reasons for the lifelessness
of his soul in prayer are rooted in this,—that he is not a Christian.
If the heart is not right with God, enjoyment of communion with God is impossible.
That communion itself is impossible. I repeat, an impenitent sinner never prays. Impenitence involves not one of the elements of a spirit of prayer. Holy desire, holy love, holy fear, holy trust —not one of these can the sinner find within himself. He has, therefore, none of that artless spontaneity, in calling upon God, which David exhibited when he said, ' Thy servant hath found 171 his heart to pray this prayer unto thee.' An impenitent sinner finds no such thing in his heart. He finds there no intelligent wish to enjoy God's friendship. The
whole atmosphere of prayer, therefore, is foreign to his tastes. If he drives himself into it for a time, by forcing upon his soul the forms of devotion, he cannot stay there. He is like one gasping in a vacuum. One of the most impressive mysteries of the condition of man on this earth, is his
deprivation of all visible and audible representations of God. We seem to be living in a state of seclusion from the rest of the universe, and from that peculiar presence of God in which angels dwell, and in which departed saints serve Him day and night. We do not see Him in the fire ; we do not hear Him in the wind ; we do not
feel Him in the darkness. But a more awful concealment of God from the unregenerate soul exists by the very law of an unregenerate state. The eye of such a soul is closed even upon the spiritual manifestations of God, in all but their retributive aspects. These are all that it feels. These are all the thoughts of God which it has
faith in. Such a soul does not enjoy God, for it does not see God with an eye of faith —that is, as a living God, living close to itself, and in vital relations to its own destiny — except as a retributive Power.
The only thing that forbids life, in any of its experiences, to be a life of retribution-for an impenitent sinner, is a dead sleep of moral sensibility. And this sleep cannot be disturbed while he remains impenitent, otherwise than by disclosures of God as a consuming fire. His experience, therefore, in the forms of devotion, while he abides in impenitence, can only vibrate between the extremes of weariness and of terror. Quell his fear of God, and prayer becomes irksome ; stimulate his indifference to God, and prayer becomes a torment.
The notes of a flute are sometimes a torture to the ears of idiots, like the blare of a trumpet. The reason has been conjectured to be, that melodious sound unlocks the tomb of idiotic mind by the suggestion of conceptions, dim, but startling, like a revelation of a higher life, with which that mind has certain crushed affinities, but with which it feels no willing sympathy ; so that its own degradation, disclosed to it by the contrast, is seated upon the consciousness of idiocy like a nightmare. Such a stimulant only to suffering, may the form of
prayer be in the experience of sin. Impenitent prayer can only grovel in stagnant sensibility, or agonize in remorseful torture, or oscillate from one to the other.
There is no point of joy between to which it can gravitate, and there rest. It is not wise that even we, who profess to be followers of Christ, should close our eyes to this truth, that the uniform absence of
joy in prayer is one of the threatening signs in respect of our religious state. It is one of the legitimate intimations of that estrangement from God, which sin induces in one who has not experienced God's renewing grace. A searching of ourselves with an honest desire to know the truth, and the whole of it, may disclose to us
other kindred facts, with which this feature of our condition becomes reasonable evidence, which it will be the loss of our souls to neglect, that we are self-deluded in our Christian hope. An apostle might
number us among the ^many,' of whom he would say, ' I now tell you, even weeping,, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.
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Post by Admin on Apr 27, 2024 14:24:40 GMT -5
IF I REGARD INIQUITY IN MY HEART, THE LORD
WILL NOT HEAR ME—Ps. 66: 18. We often affront God by offering prayers which we are not willing to have answered.
Theoretical piety is never more deceptive than in acts of devotion. We pray for blessings which we know to be accordant with God's will, and we persuade ourselves that we desire those blessings. In the abstract, we do desire them. A sane mind must be far gone in sympathy with devils, if it can help desiring all virtue in the abstract. The dialect of prayer established in Christian usage, wins our trust ; we sympathize with its theoretical significance ; we find no fault with its intensity of spiritual life. It commends itself to our conscience and good sense, as being what the phraseology of devout affection should be. Ancient forms of prayer are beautiful exceedingly. Their hallowed associations fascinate us like old songs. In certain imaginative moods, we fall into delicious reverie over them. Yet down deep in our heart of hearts, we may detect more of poetry than of piety in this fashion of joy. We are troubled, therefore, and our countenance is changed.
Many of the prime objects of prayer enchant us only in the distance. Brought near to us, and in concrete forms, and made to grow lifelike in our conceptions, they very sensibly abate the pulse of our longing to possess them, because we cannot but discover that, to realize them in our lives,certain other darling objects must be sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to part with. The paradox is true to the life that a man may even fear an answer to his prayers. A very good devotee may be a very dishonest suppliant. When he leaves the height of meditative abstraction, and, as we very significantly say in our Saxon phrase, comes to himself, he may find that his true character, his real self, is that of no petitioner at all. His devotions have been dramatic. The sublimities of the closet have been but illusions. He has been acting a pantomime. He has not really desired that God would give heed to him, for any other purpose than to give him an hour of pleasurable devotional excitement.
That his objects of prayer should actually be inwrought into his character, and should live in his own consciousness, is by no means the thing he has been thinking of, and is the last thing he is ready just now to wish for. If he has a Christian heart buried up— anywhere beneath this heap of pietism, it is very probable that the discovery of the burlesque of prayer of which he has been guilty, will transform his fit of romance into some sort of hypochondriacal suffering. Despondency is the natural offspring of theatrical devotion.
Let us observe this paradox of Christian life in two or three illustrations. An envious Christian —we must tolerate the contradiction : to be true to the facts of life, we must join strange opposites —an envious Christian prays, with becoming devoutness, that God will impart to him a generous, loving spirit, and a conscience void of offence to all men. His mind is in a solemn state, his heart is not insensible to the beauty of the virtues which he seeks. His posture is lowly, his tones sincere, and self- delusion is one of those processes of weakness which are facilitated by the deception of bodily habitude. His prayer goes on glibly, till conscience grows impatient, and reminds him of certain of his equals, who so prosperity stirs up within him that *envy which is the rottenness of the bones.' What then ? Very probably, he quits that subject of prayer, and passes to another, on which his conscience is not so eagle-eyed.
But after that glimpse of a hidden sin, how do the clouds of estrangement from God seem to shut him in, dark and damp and chill, and his prayer become like a dismal pattering of rain!
An ambitious Christian prays that God will bestow upon him a humble spirit. He volunteers to take a low place, because of his unworthiness. He asks that he may be delivered from pride and self-seeking. He repeats the prayer of the publican, and the benediction upon the poor in spirit. The whole group of the virtues kindred to humility, seems to him as radiant as the Graces with loveliness. He is sensible of-^ in the fluency of his emotions, till his conscience, too, becomes angry, and dashes the little eddy of goodness which is just now covering up the undertow of selfishness that imperils his soul. If then he is not melted into tears at the disclosure of his heartlessness, that prayer probably ends in a clouded brow, and a feverish, querulous self-conflict.
A revengeful Christian prays that he may have a meek spirit ; that he may be harmless as doves ; that the synonymous graces of forbearance, long-suffering, patience, may adorn his life ; that he may put away bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, with all malice; that that mind may be found in him which was also in Christ. At the moment of this devotional episode in his experience, he feels, as Rousseau did, the abstract grandeur of a magnanimity like that of Jesus. There is no doubt about the fervor of his theoretic love of such an ideal of character ; and he is about to take courage from his rapture, when his conscience becomes impertinent,
and mocks him, by thrusting upon his lips the words which are death to his conceit —
'Forgive me as I forgive.' If then he is not shocked into self-abhorrence at the ghastliness of his guilt, he probably exhausts that hour of prayer in palliations and compromises, or in reckless impositions upon the forbearance of God. A luxurious Christian prays, in the good set phrases of devotion, for a spirit of self-denial : that he may endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ ; that he may take up the cross and follow Christ ; that he may be ready to forsake all that he hath, and be Christ's disciple ; that he may not live unto himself; that he may imitate Him who went about doing good, —who became poor that we might be rich, and who wept over lost souls. In such a prayer" but a pleasurable sympathy, rather, with the grand thoughts and the grander feeling which the language portrays. The heart is buoyant with its gaseous distension to the bounds of its great swelling words.
This lover of the pride of life does not discover his self-inflation, till conscience pricks him with such goads as these : * Are you living for the things you are praying for ? What one thing are you doing for Christ which costs you self-denial Are you seeking for opportunities to deny yourself, to save souls ? Are you willing to be like Him who had not where to lay his head ? ' — ' Can ye be baptized with the baptism that He is baptized with ? If then this effeminate one is not roused to a more Christ-like life by the uncovering of his hypocrisy, what a sickly murmuring of self-reproach fills his heart at the collapse of that prayer !
Such is human nature ; such, but by the grace of God, are we all. We must be dull inspectors of our own hearts, if we have never discerned there, lurking beneath the level at which sin breaks out into overt crime, some single offence —an offence of feeling, an offence of habit in thought, which for a time has spread its infection over the whole character of our devotions.
We have been self-convicted of falsehood in prayer ; for, though praying in the full dress of sound words, we did not desire that our supplications should be heard at the expense of that one idol. Perhaps that single sin has woven itself like a web over large spaces of our life. It may have run like a shuttle to and fro in the texture of some plan of life, on which our conscience has not glared fiercely as upon a crime, because the usage of the world has blindfolded conscience by the respectability of such sin. Yet it has been all the while tightening its folds around US
repressing our liberty in prayer, stopping the life-blood and stiffening the fiber of our moral being, till we are like kneeling corpses in our worship.
That is a deceptive notion which attributes the want of unction in prayer to an arbitrary, or even inexplicable, withdrawment of God from the soul. Aside from the operation of physical causes, where is the warrant, in reason or revelation, for ascribing joylessness in prayer to any other cause than some wrong in the soul itself?
What says an old prophet ?' Behold, the Lord's ear is not heavy that it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God. Your sins have hid his face from you. Therefore^ we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope, as if we had no eyes ; we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places, as dead men.' Could words describe more truthfully, or explain more philosophically, that phenomenon of religious experience which we call the ' hiding of God's countenance ?
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It does not require what the world pronounces a great sin, to break up the serenity of the soul in its devotional hours. The experience of prayer has delicate complications. A little thing, secreted there, may dislocate its mechanism and arrest its movement. The spirit of prayer is to the soul what the eye is to the body, —the eye, so limpid in its nature, of such fine finish and such intricate convolution in its structure,
and of so sensitive nerve, that the point of a needle may excruciate it, and make it weep itself away.
Even a doubtful principle of life, harbored in the heart, is perilous to the peacefulness of devotion. May not many of us find the cause of our joylessness in prayer, in the fact that we are living upon some unsettled principles of conduct? We are assuming the rectitude of courses of life,
with which we are not ourselves honestly satisfied. I apprehend that there is very much of suspense of conscience among Christians upon subjects of practical life, on which there is no suspense of action.
Is there not a pretty large cloud-land covered by the usages of Christian society ? And may not some of us find there the sin which infects our devotions with nauseous incense ? Possibly our hearts are shockingly deceitful in such iniquity. Are we strangers to an experience like this — that when we mourn over our cold prayers as a misfortune, we evade a search of that disputed territory for the cause of them, through fear that we shall find it there, and we struggle to satisfy ourselves with an increase of spiritual duties which shall cost us no sacrifice ?
Are we never sensible of resisting the hints which the Holy Spirit gives us in parables, by refusing to look that way for the secret of
our deadness —saying, * Not that! Oh no, not that ! But let us pray more? Many a doubtful principle in a Christian mind, if once set in the focus of a con- science illumined by the Holy Spirit, would resolve itself into a sin, for which that Christian would turn and look up guiltily to the Master, and then go out and weep bitterly.
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Post by Admin on Apr 28, 2024 12:48:48 GMT -5
IV. WHAT PROFIT SHOULD WE HAVE IF WE PRAY UNTO HIM ? Job 21:15.
The great majority of us have faith in prayer. This is one of those causes which may produce a habit of mind in devotion, resembling that of impenitent prayer, and yet distinguishable from it, and coexistent, often, with some degree of genuine piety. Christians often have little faith in prayer as a power in real life. They do not embrace cordially, in feeling as well as in theory, the truth which underlies the entire scriptural conception and illustration of prayer, that it is literally, actually, positively, effectually, a means of power. Singular as it may appear, the fact is indisputable, that Christian practice is often at a discount by the side of heathen habits of devotion. Heathen prayer, whatever else it is or is not, is a reality in the heathen idea. A pagan suppliant has faith in prayer, as he understands it. Groveling as his notion of it is, such as it is he means it. He trusts it as an instrument of power.
He expects to accomplish something by praying.
When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Northumberland, invaded Wales, and was about to give battle to the Britons, he observed near the enemy a host of unarmed men. He inquired who they were, and what they were doing. He was told that they were monks of Bangor, praying for the success of their countrymen. 'Then,' said the heathen prince, ' they have begun the fight against us; attack them,'
So any unperverted mind will conceive of the scriptural idea of prayer, as that of one of the most downright, sturdy realities in the universe. Right in the heart of God's plan of government it is lodged as a power. Amidst the conflicts which are going on in the evolution of that plan, it stands as a power. Into all the intricacies of Divine working and the mysteries of Divine decree, it reaches out silently as a power. 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 purposed that it should be, a link of connection between human mind and 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, and as uniform, as the power of gravitation, or of light, or of electricity. A man may use it, as trustingly and as soberly firm he would use either of these. It is as truly the dictate of good sense, that a man should expect to achieve something by praying, as it is that he should expect to achieve some- thing by a telescope, or the mariner's compass, or the electric telegraph.
This intense practicableness characterizes the scriptural ideal of prayer. The Scriptures make it a reality, and not a reverie.
They never bury it in the notion of a poetic or philosophic contemplation of God. They do not merge it in the mental fiction of
prayer by action in any other or all other duties of life. They have not concealed the fact of prayer beneath the mystery of prayer.
The scriptural utterances on the subject of prayer admit of no such reduction of tone, and confusion of sense, as men often put
forth in imitating them. Up, on the level of inspired thought, prayer is prayer —a distinct, unique, elemental power in the
Spiritual universe, as pervasive and as constant as the great occult powers of Nature.
The want of trust in this scriptural ideal of prayer, often neutralizes it, even in the experience of a Christian. The result can- not be otherwise. It lies in the nature of mind.
Observe, for a moment, the philosophy of this. Mind is so made, that it needs the hope of gaining an object, as an inducement
to effort. Even so simple an effort as that involved in the utterance of desire, no man will make persistently, with no hope of
gaining an object. Despair of an object is speechless. So, if you wish to enjoy prayer, you must first form to yourself such a theory of prayer, —or, if you do not consciously form it, you must have it, —and then you must cherish such trust in it, as a reality, that you shall feel the force of an object in prayer. No mind can feel that it has an object in praying, except in such degree as it appreciates the scriptural yield
of prayer as a genuine thing.
Our conviction on this point must he as definite and as fixed as our trust in the evidence of our senses. It must become
as natural to us to obey one as the other.
If we suffer our faith to drop down from the lofty conception of prayer as having a lodgment in the very counsels of God, by
which the universe is swayed, the plain practicalness of prayer as the Scriptures teach it, and as prophets and apostles and
our Lord himself performed it, drops proportionately ; and in that proportion, our motive to prayer dwindles. Of necessity,
then, our devotions become spiritless. We cannot obey such faith in prayer, with any more heart than a man who is afflicted with
double vision can feel in obeying the evidence of his eyes. Our supplications cannot, under the impulse of such a faith, go^
as one has expressed it, Mn a right line to God.' They become circuitous, timid, heartless. They may so degenerate as to be offensive, ' like the reekings of the Dead Sea.
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