Part 4

"MEDITATION is all very well for people of leisure," says some one, "but I am busy from morning till night. I have no time."

To this I answer: "Are you quite sure you have no time? Let me ask you to look back upon your day, and tell yourself honestly how much time has been spent in melancholy musing, in useless regret, or worse than useless foreboding; perhaps, in brooding over some real or fancied injury or affront. Surely these hours would have been more pleasantly and profitably spent in the way I have suggested. Just because you have so much to do, you need the refreshment of the hidden spring—of the pure water which flows from the Fountain of Life."

"I am engaged in a great deal of Church and charitable work," says another; "has it not been said that labor is prayer? And may it not take the place of meditation as well?"

Just as well, and no better. You might as well say that labor is eating. It is a pretty and plausible saying, but it is not true. Labor is not prayer, any more than it is food or sleep. No one needs more the refreshment of the hidden spring than the person who is engaged in mission or charitable work. There is so much to discourage and dishearten, there are so many failures and disappointments and mistakes, that the worker needs all the aid and comfort procurable not to grow morbid and discouraged.

"Yes, it is all very well for healthy people," says another, "but I am an invalid."

Just because you are an invalid do you need to learn the art of governing your thoughts. No one is tempted more than an invalid to the indulgence of those useless and harmful musings of which I have spoken. Sharp and severe illness is an occupation in itself. But to the chronic patient; able to be about a little, perhaps to do a little light work, how long are the hours of the day! How much longer those of the night! How fancy pictures to us the pleasures of the world which we cannot enjoy! How often do Satan and our own corrupt hearts conspire to suggest hard and unkind thoughts of friends and attendants, yea, even of God Himself. How are our uneasy pillows haunted with the ghosts of dead joys and hopes and plans, and still more dread phantoms of sins and failures and fears for the future! I have been a bad sleeper all my life, and in many an hour of wakefulness have I blessed the old-fashioned Sunday-school method of "seven verses and a hymn," which stored my mind with whole chapters of the Bible, and with the best devotional poetry. I wish this old fashion could become a new fashion again. I have never seen a better.

"But there is such an abundance of good books!"

True, but all the books in the world are worth very little to the person who is content with merely reading them. We can think, moreover, when we cannot read, and half an hour's earnest and prayerful consideration of a chapter or verse of God's word will be of more value than a dozen commentaries without such consideration.

It is good always to begin and end our meditations with prayer. It is good, too, at times, to turn our meditation into contemplation; in simply making real to ourselves His presence who has said, "Lo, I am with you alway." (St. Matt. xxviii. 20.) "If any man ... open the door, I will come in ... and ... sup with him, and he with Me." (Rev. iii. 20.)

Let me beg of all who read this chapter and who have never done so, to make trial of its recommendations through the Lenten season. Do not be discouraged, though you fail many times, though again and again you find your thoughts wandering to the ends of the earth. Drive them back to their appointed work every time. By and by you will find them less inclined to stray. The hard task will become a pleasure, and you will be amply rewarded for your pains when you find Divine truth growing more and more clear and precious, when you find yourself better and better able to turn away from painful and unprofitable thoughts, to take refuge in the Lord's presence from the provoking of all men, and to rest under the shadow of the Great Rock in the weary land. Then your heart shall not be "like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh," but rather "as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river; and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." (Jer. xvii. 6, 8.)

Jer. xvii. Rev. iii.

_THIRD THURSDAY IN LENT._

_PRAYER._

THE Christian is to pray without ceasing; that is, he is always to be in the spirit of prayer. He is, by God's help, to strive to keep himself in such a state that he can at any moment lift up his heart and mind to his Heavenly Father, and that as much in the round of his daily business as in his closet. He is to strive to carry about with him an habitual sense of the presence of God, and of dependence upon Him for all things.

"Use lessens marvel," says the old proverb, and the saying is true. The most surprising discoveries in science, the most wonderful applications of these discoveries to the arts, cease to astonish us in a very short time. There is nothing in the Arabian Nights which sounds more incredible than that the movement of a wheel turned by a waterfall should light up a great city. Yet every child has become used to the electric light, and thinks no more marvel of it than his grandfather did of a candle.

So it is with prayer. Every child of a Christian mother is taught to pray as soon as it can speak, and accepts without question the instruction that prayer is talking to his Father in Heaven. He prays God to bless his father, who is sailing on the sea, and his brother in a distant city, and it seems no more wonderful to him than that the street light should make a pretty picture on the wall of his nursery. And yet what a wonder is prayer, when we come to consider it! All the marvels of man's discovery and invention shrink into nothing before it. I was once telling some little girls about the telephone and saying how strange it seemed to talk with a friend twenty miles away. "Yes," said one, "but we can talk to God without a wire."

The great God who upholds the Universe in His hand, and orders all things by His omnipotent power and wisdom, has his ear always open to the appeal of his feeblest child. Not a sigh from a sick-bed, not a prayer lisped at the mother's knee, not a cry from the deepest dungeon, but is heard and marked by Him. From every place on earth, the way is open to His throne. The mother who has a son in China can send him help by this road. The poor widow in the almshouse can lighten the trials of her lot; yea, though she have not a penny to give to the cause, she can help the missionary in the farthest distant field by her prayers. When we can do no more for our friends, we can commend them to the prayers of the Church. Alas! We too often wait till we can do no more.

I close this chapter with an extract from Professor Phelps's admirable book, "The Still Hour."

"In the vestibule of St. Peter's at Rome is a doorway which is walled up, and marked with a cross. It is opened but four times in a century. On Christmas eve, once in twenty-five years, the Pope approaches it in princely state, with a retinue of cardinals in attendance, and begins the demolition of the door by striking it three times with a silver hammer. When the passage is opened, the multitude pass into the nave of the cathedral and up to the altar by an avenue which the majority of them never entered before, and never will enter thus again.

"Imagine that the way to the Throne of Grace were like the Porta Santa, inaccessible save once in a quarter of a century, on the twenty-fifth of December, and then only with august solemnities, conducted by great dignitaries in a distant city. Conceive that it were now ten years since you or I, or any other sinner, had been 'permitted' to pray; and that fifteen long years must drag themselves away before we could venture to approach God; and that, at the most, we could not hope to pray more than two or three times in a lifetime—with what solicitude should we wait for the coming of that holy day!

"We should lay our plans of life, select our homes, build our houses, choose our professions, with reference to a pilgrimage in that twenty-fifth year. We should reckon time by the opening of that sacred door as by epochs. No other one thought would engross so much of our lives, or kindle our sensibilities so exquisitely, as the thought of prayer. It would be of more significance to us than the thought of death is now. Fear would grow to horror at the thought of dying before that Jubilee.

"Yet on that great day, amidst an innumerable throng, within sight and hearing of stately rites, what would prayer be to us? Who would value it in the comparison of those still moments, that—

"'Sacred silence of the mind,'

"in which we can now find God every day and everywhere? That day would be more like the day of Judgment to us than like the sweet minutes of converse with our Father, which we may now have every hour. We should appreciate this privilege of hourly prayer if it were once taken from us."

Ps. lxxvii. St. Luke xi. 1-14.

_THIRD FRIDAY IN LENT._

_PRAYER._

WHAT is prayer?

Prayer, in its primary sense, means simply asking. We find the word constantly used in this sense in Scripture and elsewhere; as when Elijah says to the widow woman of Zarephath, "Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water." But prayer, as the word has come to be used in the whole Church, has a much higher signification. It means speaking to God. It means pouring out our hearts to Him—telling Him all our wants, our wishes, our hindrances and temptations, our trials from without and from within. It means asking not only for ourselves, but for others; our families, our fellow church-members, our pupils, our country and its rulers, yea, even our enemies. (S. Matt. v. 44.)

There is no matter too great for it, and none too small. There is no man so holy as not to need it to keep him good, and none so wicked that he may not use it to make him better. The way of prayer is open to every one. It is the open door set before every child of God, which no man can shut. The Christian may be a slave, or a prisoner watched by soldiers, beset by spies, loaded with fetters in the deepest dungeon on earth. In the prisons of the Inquisition, the captive was condemned to a perpetual silence. Not a word, not a groan, must escape his lips, on pain of the gag. But his cruel and relentless jailers could not prevent him from speaking to his God, nor could they prevent the unspoken words from entering the ear for which they were intended. That was beyond their power.

The courts of earthly kings are places of resort for great people, for the noble, the rich and beautiful of their subjects. The poor and lowly have no room there. But the courts of the King of kings are as free to the poorest laboring man and woman as to those to whose luxury they minister; nay, it may well be that the slave will find entrance and kind entertainment when his master is shut out. Nor is ignorance or weakness of intellect a bar to acceptance. The broken language of the poor negro, the lisping accents of the little child, are as musical to the great Father of all as the hymns of the poet, or the highest flights of the philosopher. He sees the heart, and it is the heart which prays.

What is requisite to acceptable prayer?

First of all, faith. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." (Heb. xi. 6.) A moment's consideration makes this perfectly plain. We shall not ask of any person a boon, unless we believe that the person exists, and that we shall gain something by the application. We must ask in faith; that is, in the belief that we are speaking to a kind Father, whose heart is warm toward us, and who loves to do us good.

Some good people believe that God will give us just what we ask for. They will even tell us that, if we do not so receive, it is because we do not ask in faith. I believe this to be a mischievous mistake. God knows our necessities before we ask, and He also knows our ignorance in asking. We do not always know whether the thing we ask is the best thing. Our Father sees our lives "in the whole of our duration, whether now or ever so many ages hence," as a distinguished author has it, and—

"The All-wise is the All-loving too!"

All things are in his power, and it costs Him no more to give one than another. Every prayer reaches His ear and heart, and every one is answered, but not always in the way we expect. Sometimes He gives us something else than the thing we desire, as a tender mother gives her child wholesome food at the same time that she withholds the coveted but unwholesome dainty. Sometimes, too, like the same wise mother, He answers, gently but firmly, "No!" But even when He says No, He does not leave His child uncomforted.

"I have learned by experience," says an aged saint of God, "that when He refuses me anything, by and by He comforts me in Himself without it."

We must pray with faith, and with resignation to God's will, but we must also ask with perseverance. Our Lord gives us the warrant for this in the parables of the importunate friend (St. Luke xi), and of the unjust judge (St. Luke xviii). We are to "pray always, and not to faint." (St. Luke xviii. 1.) We are to: "praying always with all prayer and supplication." (Eph. vi. 18.) We are to "pray without ceasing." (1 Thess. v. 17.) We must not be content with asking once or twice, but we must keep asking again and again. Some blessing will come in answer to persevering prayer, though it may not always be the one we seek.

There is one blessing, and that the greatest, which we may always ask in full confidence of receiving, and that is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord tells us that earthly parents are not so ready to give good gifts to their children, as His father and ours is to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. (St. Luke xi. 13.) And this very gift helps us to pray acceptably, for "the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities," interceding for us with "groanings which cannot be uttered." "And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom. viii. 26, 27.)

Ps. xxv. St. Luke xi. 1-14.

_THIRD SATURDAY IN LENT._

_INTERCESSION._

WE are not to be selfish in our prayers. Our Lord teaches us this lesson in the very first words of the form of prayer which He Himself has given us: "When ye pray, say, Our Father."

Of course, if God is "our" Father, He is "your" Father and "mine" as well. Nay, we must lay hold of this truth of God's individual care and love for His children, before we can pray as we ought. But our Lord would bring home to our minds that, as we are members of Christ, so we are members one of another. We are sons and daughters of the great King, and so brothers and sisters; and thence it follows that, as members of one family, we have duties to perform toward each other. It is the very definition of a member that it is part of an organism fitted to perform certain offices for the good of the whole. We see, in the human body, that the hand has one office, the eye another, and so on. So it is in the body of Christ, which is His Church—each member has his place and his duties. One of these duties is intercessory prayer.

We have the commands of God in Holy Scripture for this matter, which should of itself be enough for us: "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;... for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour." (1 Tim. ii. 1, 3.) St. Paul again and again asks the prayers of those to whom his letters are addressed. "Brethren, pray for us." (1 Thess. v. 25.) "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; withal praying also for us" (Col. iv. 2, 3); and so in other places. Our Lord Himself, our perfect pattern, sets us the highest example of this kind of prayer, concluding His last discourse to the twelve with that most wonderful intercession contained in the seventeenth chapter of St. John.

Following the example of her Head, the Church teaches us the same lesson. We are taught to pray for our rulers, for the clergy, for all sorts and conditions of men. The Litany is in a great measure made up of intercessions. Also in the most solemn service of all—that of the Holy Communion—we are taught to pray for the whole estate of Christ's church militant.

These reasons ought to be enough, if there were no others, to move us to the duty of intercession. It hardly seems, indeed, as if we ought to need a "command," however glad we may be of the encouragement. Is it not a privilege as well as a duty to carry our friends' dangers and needs and trials to the Mercy Seat? Is it not much to commend to our Father's care our nearest and dearest, and to join our prayers to theirs, thus obtaining the benefit of the promise that when two are agreed on earth as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done for them? (St. Matt. xviii. 19.)

We may help those by our prayers whom we can help in no other way. The most obstinate sinner, the most rampant infidel, the most careless and indifferent person in the world, cannot keep his friends from praying for him. The son may disregard his mother's tears and counsels, but her prayers will follow him in spite of himself. Nay, more, the very consciousness that such prayers were following him has kept more than one such wanderer from an irretrievable fall, and brought him back to his mother's arms. Prayer girdles the earth more quickly than the electric spark, and no one upon that earth is out of its reach.

Those who can help the good works of the Church in no other way can do so by prayer. The invalid in her room or on her bed, who is too weak perhaps to hold a pen or a needle, can help the toiler in China or the far West; can call down blessing from the Divine Treasury, and strength and grace from the Fountain of all good, for the man or woman she has never seen. The poor old black woman in the gallery of the church, without a penny to call her own, can strengthen the hands and cheer the heart of the eloquent missionary bishop who enters the pulpit to make known to the people what God has wrought in a distant land. Surely such a privilege is worth a great deal to the true child of God, who desires with the whole heart the coming of her Lord and His kingdom, but yet can do nothing, humanly speaking, to hasten it on.

It is certain that we cannot honestly pray for people without wishing to help them in other ways. The man whose prayers are a mere decent form, or a sheer pretence and hypocrisy, may pray in general for the cause of Christ in the world without raising his hand or denying himself one indulgence for it, but not the man who prays in earnest, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To him, "Thy kingdom come" means also, "Let me help to bring it," and "Thy will be done" means also, "Let me do it." It is said of St. Chrysostom, that he kept a box on the stool where he was wont to kneel in prayer, and with every petition for the poor he deposited a coin in the treasury.

Finally, praying for others helps us to pray for ourselves. When our hearts seem dull and cold, and so heavy that we cannot raise them up to heaven, an intercession will often lend them wings. We shall go back to our own needs with renewed faith and hope, and find the burden removed that held us down.

Let us, then, be instant in prayer and supplication, not only for ourselves, but for our friends and relatives, our pupils or teachers, for our own parish and all its interests, for the Church at large, for our country, and for all sorts and conditions of men. And let us not be weary in so doing, till "they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Him, from the least of them even unto the greatest of them." (Jer. xxxi. 34.) Yea, "the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." (Hab. ii. 14.)

Is. lxii. 1 Tim. ii.

_THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT._

_OUR ENEMIES._

IN the collect for the day we ask for defense against our enemies. "Stretch out Thy right hand to be our defense against our enemies." The right hand is the symbol both of power and skill. It is especially so among Orientals, with whom it is reserved for all the nobler offices, the left hand performing those which are more humble or unclean. We find in the Psalms and the prophets, that the right hand of God is usually spoken of as the especial seat of His power, as in Ps. cxviii. 16. "The right hand of the Lord hath the pre-eminence; the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass."