* Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jcntes.
174 PRAYER AND CHOICE
inspiration in this early morning scene. The organization of the college of Apostles was followed by the greatest sermon that was ever preached, and that sermon was followed by the healing of the leper and the sick, and by other events that were proper and appropriate at the beginning of a movement that is to go on blessing the world until the day of time shall close, and an eternal morning shall break on a world redeemed and a church eternally established without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
III.
The Answer to the Prayer.
1. Jesus received on the mountain-top a reinforcement of vigour and vision. There is a mysterious power in Nature to un- seal the eyes of the soul, and Jesus, the Divine Poet, received many a rich gift of vision from the lessons He learned in her school. He received that wondrous healing from Nature which we are slowly coming to understand better and to rejoice in to-day ; and it may well be that some of that mystic healing virtue which flowed from Jesus like a tide was partly due to His profound understanding of some of Nature's deepest secrets. And these reinforcements are close at hand, and may be ours if we will but seize and use them. Nature is in very truth a symbol of Divine things, a treasury of holy thoughts, a storehouse of God's own secrets ; and to meditate and pray in the midst of Nature's wonder and beauty as Jesus did — to ask, seek, and knock earnestly at the door of her vast treasury — is to become gladder in heart, fresher in mind, more powerful in spiritual understanding and discernment. Tennyson had this in view when he wrote : —
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand.
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
If The balance of thought is a delicate thing, and it is often dislocated by the frets and shocks and burdens of life, and there
ST. LUKE VI. 12, 13 175
is no such restorer of the mind's poise and peace as Nature. Often have I found myself unable to see my way clear through s process of thought, and have thrown down my pen in a bewilder- ment almost akin to panic or despair, and I have gone out and found the solution of my problem or the thread of my sermon on the open moor or the green hill-side.^
^ When a friend once said to Browning : " You have not a great love for nature, have you ? " he had replied : " Yes, I have, but I love men and women better;" and the admission, which conveyed more than it literally expressed, would have been true I believe, at any, up to the present, period of his history. Even now he did not cease to love men and women best ; but he found increasing enjoyment in the beauties of nature, above all as they opened upon him on the southern slopes of the Alps; and the delight of the sesthetic sense merged gradually in the satisfied craving for pure air and brilliant sunshine which marked his final struggle for physical life. A ring of enthusiasm comes into his letters from the mountains, and deepens as the years advance; doubtless enhanced by the great — perhaps too great — exhilaration which the Alpine atmosphere produced, but also in large measure independent of it. Each new place into which the summer carries him he declares more beautiful than the last. It possibly was S0.2
No man may live unto himself, and yet How poor are they that scorn their Olivet! — Who, in their turmoil, seek not day or night The sanctuary of the mountain height, Fulfilled with whose indomitable breath Long time ago the Lord of Nazareth Eaised up the fallen and subdued the strong, And woke the stars to universal song.^
2. The special answer to Jesus' prayer is seen in the selection of the Twelve. In the great high-priestly prayer, recorded by St. John, the Saviour three times over speaks of the disciples as the gift of God. They are known in the Church as "the glorious company of the apostles." They merit the praise they have received and will continue to receive from the believers in Christ through all ages, but their glory was not of this world. The
» W. A. Mursell.
* Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of E. Browning, 302.
' G. Thomas, Birds of Passage, 44,
176 PRAYER AND CHOICE
world looked upon them, in their day, as a very insignificant company. They were regarded as a band of poor, illiterate Gali- leans. They had no social prestige, no influence, with the great and powerful of earth. All of them, except Judas the traitor, were from Gahlee, a section that was looked down on by the Jews, and had no special influence among any other people.
^ Consider how large a part of the New Testament is occupied with the story of the lives and labours, the spoken and written words, of the men who belonged to this first apostolate. By their life-work Christ's Kingdom was made known in all parts of the Roman Empire within forty years of His ascension. How well they did His work ; how faithfully they carried out His great commission ; how nobly they bore witness to the facts and doctrines of the Gospel, and, above all, to the spirit and power of His life, the first pages of Church history, and their own Epistles, tell. We must not overlook the fact that the life of every one of these Apostles, with its far-reaching results, was an answer to His prayer — a gift of God. Every such life was a " fruit-tree bearing fruit, wherein is the seed thereof " ; and that seed is growing to-day in every soil and in every climate over the whole earth. The answers to Christ's prayer multiply and increase for ever. We speak of " the conservation of force." There is a force in activity around us continually, a force which science takes no account of, and cannot explain. It is a force which is not only conserved but increased, whenever and wher- ever it is exercised. Christ used it and taught us to use it — " the force of prayer." ^