454 CONTRITION
times troubled with regrets as to the past and fears as to the future. But as the heart when in the one state, that of uncon- cern, is in a sinful condition, so in the other state, of mere com- punction and fear, it is far from being in a healthy condition. We need the power from on high on the one hand to arouse us from our habitual carelessness, and on the other hand to conduct to genuine faith and true peace. We may seek for repentance, and like Esau seek it carefully with tears ; but we can " find no place for repentance " till He who knows our hearts and has access to them unlocks them and opens up fountains within us. Mere natural reproaches of conscience and alarms of coming judgments may stun the heart for a time, but they cannot break or melt it.
4. When the heart grows sensitive to the touch of God's Spirit, the result is seen in prayer and supplications. Prayer is just the breathing of the Spirit in us ; power in prayer comes from the power of the Spirit in us, waited on and trusted in. Failure in prayer comes from feebleness of the Spirit's work in us. Our prayer is the index of the measure of the Spirit's work in us. To pray aright, the life of the Spirit must be right in us. For praying the effectual, much-availing prayer of the righteous man everything depends on being full of the Spirit. God in heaven gives His Spirit in our hearts to be there the Divine power praying in us, and drawing us upward to our God. God is a Spirit, and nothing but a like life and Spirit within us can hold communion with Him. It was for this that man was created, that God might dwell and work in him, and be the Life of his life. It was this Divine indwelling that sin lost. It was this that Christ came to exhibit in His life, to win back for us in His death, and then to impart to us by coming again from heaven in the Spirit to live in His disciples. It is this, the indwelling of God through the Spirit, that alone can explain and enable us to appro- priate the wonderful promises given to prayer. God gives the Spirit as a spirit of supplication, too, to maintain His Divine life within us as a life out of which prayer ever rises upward.
Tj 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 for the Holy Spirit of God. It is He who prepares the
ZECHARIAH xn. 10 455
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 certain of the impulse of the Holy Spirit. We " 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.1
Tj We always receive three gifts from God when we pray humbly and earnestly. The first, St. Xilus says, is the gift of prayer itself. " God wishes to bless thee for a longer time while thou art persevering in thy prayer ; for what more blessed than to be detained in colloquy with God ? " We pretend for a while not to hear the petitions of those we love, because we so love to hear them asking. So Joseph feigned with his brethren. " You say," observes St. John Climacus, " ' I have received nothing from God,' when all the while you have received one of His greatest gifts, perseverance in prayer." " He delays to hear His saints," says St. Gregory, " that He may increase their merits. By this per- severance we prepare ourselves to receive the Grace with much greater fruit than if it were given us at once." St. Isidore says, " God delays to hear your prayer either because you are not in good dispositions to receive what you ask, or that you may be able to receive more excellent gifts which He is desirous of conferring upon you." So, says Gerson, " it happens to us as it does some- times to a beggar, to whom men give a more liberal alms because they have kept him waiting at their door so long." 2
5. Supplication melts into contrition as we direct our eyes to the cross, which our sins erected. " They shall look unto me whom they have pierced: and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son." Calvin and other commentators interpret the "piercing" of the text metaphorically for the continual provocation of their God. In the Septuagint the reading is, " They shall gaze upon me because they insulted." But St John, who, if he did not translate for himself from the Hebrew, used another version than the Septuagint, has, " They shall look on him whom they pierced" The Fourth Evangelist, at any rate, has