the Christian life becomes the stern struggle to subdue the will of natural inclination and to bring it a captive to our Lord. This is the sacrifice we have to offer Him, a feeble counterpart in our small way, of the heroic self-sacrifice He offered that day in Gethsemane.^
I know, 0 Jesus, in the bitter hour
Of human pain, that Thou hast felt the power
Of deeper anguish, and my lips are still, Because in silence Thou hast borne God's wilL^
Chkist in Prayer.
"What is prayer ? It is to connect every thought with the thought of God. To look on everything as His work and His appointment. To submit every thought, wish, and resolve to Him. To feel His presence, so that it shall restrain us even in our wildest joy. That is prayer. And what we are now, surely we are by prayer. If we have attained any measure of goodness, if we have resisted temptations, if we have any self-command, or if we live with aspirations and desires beyond the common, we shall not hesitate to ascribe all to prayer.
1. Christ is an Example in prayer. There is many a case in life, where to act seems useless — many a truth which at times appears incredible. Then we throw ourselves on Him — He did it, He believed it, that is enough. He was wise, where I am foolish. He was holy, where I am evil. He must know. He must be right. I rely on Him. Bring what arguments you may ; say that prayer cannot change God's will. I know it. Say that prayer ten thousand times comes back like a stone. Yes, but Christ prayed, therefore I may and I will pray. Not only so, but I must pray ; the wish felt and not uttered before God, is a prayer. Speak, if your heart prompts, in articulate words, but there is an un syllabled wish which is also prayer. You cannot help praying, if God's spirit is in yours.
2. Christ's Prayer is an Example of what prayer is. A common popular conception of prayer is, that it is the means by which the wish of man determines the Will of God. This con- ception finds an exact parallel in those anecdotes with which Oriental history abounds, wherein a sovereign gives to his
» A. Ritchie. * E. H. Divall, The Ways of God, 22.
430 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
favourite some token, on the presentation of which every request must be granted. As when Ahasuerus promised Queen Esther that her petition should be granted, even to the half of his kingdom. As when Herod swore to Herodias' daughter that he would do whatever she should require. (1) Try this conception by four tests :
(a) Try it by its incompatibility with the fact that this universe is a system of laws. Things are thus, rather than thus. Such an event is invariably followed by such a consequence. This we call a law. All is one vast chain, from which if you strike a single link you break the whole. It has been truly said that to heave a pebble on the seashore one yard higher up would change all antecedents from the creation, and all consequents to the end of time. For it would have required a greater force in the wave that threw it there — and that would have required a different degree of strength in the storm — that again, a change of temperature all over the globe — and that again, a corre- sponding difference in the temperaments and characters of the men inhabiting the different countries. So that when a child wishes a jBne day for his morrow's excursion, and hopes to have it by an alteration of what would have been without his wish, he desires nothing less than a whole new imiverse.
(b) Try it next by fact. Ask those of spiritual experience. We do not ask whether prayer has been efficacious — of course it has. It is God's ordinance. Without prayer the soul dies. But what we ask is, whether the good derived has been exactly this, that prayer brought them the very thing they wished for ? For instance, did the plague come and go according to the laws of prayer or the laws of health ? Did it come because men neglected prayer, or because they disobeyed those rules which His wisdom has revealed as the conditions of salubrity ? And when it departed was it because a nation lay prostrate in sack- cloth and ashes, or because it arose and girded up its loins and removed those causes and those obstructions which, by everlasting Law, are causes and obstructions ? Did the catarrh or the con- sumption go from him who prayed, sooner than from him who humbly bore it in silence ? Try it by the case of Christ — Christ's prayer did not succeed. He prayed that the cup might pass from Him. It did not so pass.
ST. MARK 431
(c) Try it by its assumptions. To think that prayer changes God's will, gives unworthy ideas of God. It supposes our will to be better than His, the Unchangeable, the Unsearchable, the All- Wise. Can you see the All of things — the consequences and secret connections of the event you wish ? And if not, would you really desire the terrible power of infallibly securing it ?