^ Never did I feel more strongly that in this habit Jesus had laid bare one of the great secrets of life than one day when I climbed all alone a hill above Inverary and lay on the summit of it, musing through a summer forenoon. On every hand there stretched a solitary world of mountain and moorland ; the loch below was gleaming in the sun like a shield of silver ; the town was visible at the foot of the hill, and the passengers could be seen moving in the streets, but no sound of its bustle reached so high. The great sky was over all ; and God seemed just at hand, waiting to hear every word. It was in spots like this that Jesus prayed.^
3. The prayer of Jesus was a sustained effort. " He continued all night in prayer to God." All night He prayed, when the great task of choosing the twelve apostles lay close before Him. And this, although the Father had said, " Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased " ; and although He Himself could say, " I know that thou hearest me always." And this, also, although He had forbidden long prayers and frequent repetitions, and over-anxiety about the morrow. Was He then anxious for the morrow ? Assuredly He was. But was He doing that which He deprecates in the Sermon on the Mount ? Assuredly not. The conduct of Christ rather illustrates than contradicts His teaching there.
When we read that Jesus prayed all night, we cannot think of Him as uttering words all night. He who upbraided men for using vain repetitions, and told them that they were not heard for their much speaking, and taught them the shortest and most comprehensive form of prayer, would not be likely to construe the
^ J. Stalker, Imago Christi, 133.
I70 PRAYER AND CHOICE
act of prayer into a continuous verbal appeal in His own case. We may conceive of this all-night prayer as a conscious laying open of His soul before God, a devout lifting up of His heart to the tender out-reaching of God, a grateful appropriation of the sweet rich gifts and influences of Nature, which are themselves true emanations of God. We seem to see that gracious, solitary figure of the Lord, dimly outlined under the dewy canopy of the night, with the clear eastern stars pouring down their lustre ; sometimes the figure would be kneeling on the mountain side in the attitude of prayer, sometimes He would be seated on some grey crag lost in deepest thought, sometimes He would be simply resting in the ample solitude, drinking in the quiet peace of the holy time, abandoning Himself to the enfolding beauty of the midnight scene — alone with Nature, with His own brooding thoughts, and with His Father. It was not a time of idle dreaming or a mood of empty reverie; it was a time of real, earnest, conscious self- recovery and self-preparation for the arduous work before Him.^
^ Nothing was more easy to me now than to practise prayer. Hours passed away like moments, while I could hardly do any- thing else but pray. The fervency of my love allowed me no intermission. It was a prayer of rejoicing and of possession, wherein the taste of God was so great, so pure, unblended and uninterrupted, that it drew and absorbed the powers of the soul into a profound recollection, a state of confiding and affectionate rest in God, existing without intellectual effort. For I had now no sight but of Jesus Christ alone. All else was excluded, in order to love with greater purity and energy, without any motives or reasons for loving which were of a selfish nature.^
4. Christ's prayerfulness was balanced by incessant activities. Paint His devotional life in never so vivid colours, His working life keeps in harmony with every tint and outline. In fact, what gives this picture in the text — Christ praying alone on the mountain-top through the long night-watches — its great power and glory is that He went to that mountain-top after one day of toil, and would come down from it to engage in another exactly like it ; so that, if a disciple could say of His unrecorded works that the world itself could not contain the books that might be
* W. A. Mursell, Sermoiis on Special Occasions, 64. - Madame Guyon, in TAfe by T. C. Upharn, 38.
ST. LUKE VI. 12, 13 171
written to record them, it might also be said that those works of Jesus, so incessant, so numberless, so gracious, are only the out- growth of an answering prayerfulness.
^ When Luther had a specially busy and exciting day, he allowed himself longer time than usual for prayer beforehand. A wise man once said that he was too busy to be in a hurry : he meant that, if he allowed himself to become hurried, he could not do all that he had to do. There is nothing like prayer for produc- ing this calm self-possession. When the dust of business so fills your room that it threatens to choke you, sprinkle it with the water of prayer, and then you can cleanse it out with comfort and expedition.^
^ Sister Dora spoke unreservedly to her household upon the absolute necessity of constant private prayer, and expressed openly her own strong conviction that no blessing could attend the hospital unless those who worked in it fulfilled their duty in this respect. It was literally true that she never touched a wound without lifting up her heart to the Giver of all virtue, and asking that healing might be conveyed by her means ; that she never set a fracture without a prayer that, through her instru- mentality, the limb might unite. As she attended upon the surgeons during an operation, the most absorbing and anxious of a nurse's duties, where the patient's life must often, humanly speaking, depend on readiness of eye and instantaneous compre- hension of the slightest sign on the part of the operating surgeon, and on intelligent obedience to his orders, she seemed able to separate her bodily and intellectual from her spiritual powers, which were engaged in holding communion with that Being in whose Hand are the issues of life and death.^