But no explanation, however reasonable, can do justice to the experience of vicarious praying. To feel that, we must turn to life. When a mother prays for her wayward son, no words can make clear the vivid reality of her supplications. Her love pours itself out in insistent demand that her boy must not be lost. She is sure of his value, with which no outward thing is worthy to be compared, and of his possibilities which no sin of his can ever make her doubt. She will not give him up. She follows him through his abandonment down to the gates of death; and if she loses him through death into the mystery beyond, she still prays on in secret, with intercessions which she may not dare to utter, that wherever in the moral universe he may be, God will reclaim him. As one considers such an experience of vicarious praying, he sees that it is not merely resignation to the will of God; it is urgent assertion of a great desire. She does not really think that she is persuading God to be good to her son, for the courage in her prayer is due to her certain faith that God also must wish that boy to be recovered from his sin. She rather is taking on her heart the same burden that God has on his; is joining her demand with the divine desire. In this system of personal life which makes up the moral universe, she is taking her place alongside God in an urgent, creative outpouring of sacrificial love. Now, this mother does not know and cannot know just what she is accomplishing by her prayers. But we know that such mothers save their sons when all others fail. The mystery of prayer's projectile force is great, but the certainty of such prayer's influence, one way or another, in working redemption for needy lives, is greater still. It may be, as we have said, that God has so ordained the laws of human interrelationship that we can help one another not alone by our deeds but also directly by our thoughts, and that earnest prayer may be the exercise of this power in its highest terms. But whether that mother has ever argued out the theory or not, she still prays on. Her intercession is the utterance of her life; it is love on its knees. VI Let any man of prayerless life, or of a life in which prayer, an untrained tendency, is nothing more than an occasional ... cry of selfish need, consider himself in the light of this ideal of unselfish praying. To pray for himself for the sake of others, and to pray in vicarious entreaty for his friends, his enemies, and all mankind-this ministry he has denied. Let him not hide his real and inward lack of the intercessory spirit behind any confusion of mind about the theory. If a man honestly seeks the reason why a prayer like that of Moses is not easily conceivable upon his own lips, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin-and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written" (Ex. 32:31, 32), he sees that the difference between Moses and himself is mainly one of moral passion. We have no such high and commanding desires as Moses had; our wishes are lame and weak and petty compared with his; if every mental perplexity were overcome, we still should lack the spirit out of which such prayers spontaneously pour. Supposing that we knew exactly and held completely the Master's theory of prayer; is there any man for whom we care enough to pray as Jesus did for Peter? Is there any cause that could call from us his cry: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" The chief obstacles to intercession are moral. We live for what we can get; our dominant desires are selfish. The main current of us runs in the channel of our mean ambitions, and our thoughts of other people and of great causes are but occasional eddies on the surface of the stream. Even when we do succeed in praying for our friends, our country, or the Kingdom, we are often giving lip-service to conventionality; we are not expressing our urgent and continual demand on life. Our prayers are hypocrites. If the cause we pray for should suddenly take form and ask of us our share in the achievement of our own entreaty, we would dodge and run. All such intercession is clanging brass. "Our prayers must mean something to us," said Maltbie Babcock, "if they are to mean anything to God." Before a man therefore blames his lack of intercession on intellectual perplexities, he well may ask whether, if all his questions were fully answered, he has the spirit that would pour itself out in vicarious praying. Is his heart really surcharged with pent devotion waiting to find vent in prayer as soon as the logic of intercession is made evident? Rather, it is highly probable that if his last interrogation point were laid low by a strong answer, he would intercede not one whit more than he does now. Intercession is the result of generous devotion, not of logical analysis. When such devotion comes into the life of any man who vitally believes in God, like a rising stream in a dry river bed it lifts the obstacles at whose removal he had tugged in vain, and floats them off. The unselfish prayer of dominant desire clears its own channel. We put our lives into other people and into great causes; and our prayers follow after, voicing our love, with theory or without it. We lay hold on God's alliance for the sake of the folk we care for and the aims we serve. We do it because love makes us, and we continue it because the validity of our praying is proved in our experience. St. Anthony spoke to the point, "We pray as much as we desire, and we desire as much as we love." Of such intercession it is true, "More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice For what are men better than sheep or goats Both for themselves and those who call them friend? SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION How far can a man say: “It is nobody else's concern, what I do"? Is there a person so far away that no act of mine can touch him? Is there anything which a person can ask for in prayer which concerns nobody but himself? When can a person really pray the Lord's Prayer? When is a prayer for personal needs an unselfish prayer? What are the results of unselfish prayer? What does prayer accomplish for the man who prays? Why does the knowledge that others are praying for him help a man? How far is this a sufficient reason for unselfish prayer? "Can prayer accomplish anything apart from the man who prays?" What kind of answers have we a right to expect? Why is it necessary to intercede with a loving God for human needs? What is really accomplished by intercessory prayer? What place has reason and what place experiment in determining the results of prayer? Why do men fail to practice intercession? SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY I. DISCUSSIONS OF VARIOUS ASPECTS OF PRAYER . "PRAYER. WHAT IT IS and What it Does," by Samuel McComb. A brief but worthy treatment of the personal effects of habitual prayer. "CONQUERING PRAYER," by L. Swetenham. A valuable essay on the relationships between prayer and character. "THE POWER OF PRAYER," by Forsythe and Greenwell. Two brief essays of real insight from a deeply religious point of view. "THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PRAYER," by Anna Louise Strong. A Ph. D. thesis on the psychological aspects of prayer. “THE PRAYERS OF THE BIBLE," by John Edgar McFadyen. A stimulating treatment of the subject, with a topical catalogue of Scriptural prayers. "THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER," by James Freeman Clarke. Somewhat out of date in many of its positions but still suggestive. "THE DOUBLE SEARCH," by Rufus M. Jones. Two vital essays on Atonement and Prayer-God's search for man and man's search for God. “PRAYER, ITS NATURE AND SCOPE," by H. Clay Trumbull. Written in a popular vein but with more than ordinary good sense. "THE PLACE OF PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION," by James M. Campbell. One of the best studies of the New Testament passages on prayer. "COMMUNION WITH GOD," by Wilhelm Herrman. Solid theological reading after the German style and very rewarding. |