It is this principle that the man of faith carries with him into his spiritual life. What others have tried and tested in the daily play of human intercourse he has found good also in that larger world in which the soul holds communion with the Eternal. Too often has he proved its prevailing efficacy to mistake the silence of God for a rebuke to his persistent petitions, or for an evidence of an ear that hears not, of an arm that cannot save. It is not presumption, it is trust that prays.
^ Is it said that only the prayer of faith is heard ? True ; but every real prayer is a prayer of faith.^
^ It is a great law that God's blessings must be sought. If we want them, we must ask Him for them. It is no hard condition. The instinct of prayer has been firmly planted within us. We have but to exercise it. There are times when we could not repress it if we tried. It is true that when we argue about it we can find difficulties, and perhaps make them. We can, of course, imagine that God might have made His giving to be independent of our desiring. We can see also that, by permitting us to ask,
^ Thomas Erskine, Unconditional Freen-ess of the Gospel,
250 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
He has allowed us an intimacy of intercourse with Himself which could not otherwise have been ours.
The condition is part of the law of labour under which we live. Nothing can be done without effort — somebody's effort. Nothing can be done for us permanently without our own effort. Prayer is the noblest kind of effort. Truly, to pray needs the fullest exercise of all our highest powers.
The condition is part, too, of the law of liberty under which we are placed. The best things are not forced upon us. In one of His lessons on the subject of prayer, our Lord points to a differ- ence between the action of the forces of good and of evil. The evil spirit is rude and inconsiderate. It intrudes unbidden. When it has been expelled, it insists upon returning with violence the moment it sees a chance. The Heavenly Father cannot act thus. He is most willing to " give the Holy Spirit," but it must be " to them that ask him." ^
^ Above the beautiful waters of Eydalmere there is one of the most enchanting spots in the English Lakes. An old grey wall fences in a road which runs beside the slopes below, shaded by varied trees and rich with wild flowers. In an opening in the wall stands an aged and venerable gate, much inscribed by names and initials of many generations. It is the Wishing Gate ; and there for centuries, young and old, happy lovers and saddened mourners, men and women in every phase of life, have leant, and looked with admiration at the exquisite landscape, and formed a wish which is not to be whispered to a friend or companion. Beyond the outline of the hills opposite, shines the glory of the southern sky, suggesting thoughts of the infinite and the eternal. That is an emblem of what our Lord wants to see in the daily life and thoughts of each one of us. We are not to walk through life in solitary pride and scornful self-sufficiency ; for each of us, in the secret of our souls, there is to be a Wishing Gate ; we are to call for everything that we need upon the illimitable love of our Divine Father.^
2. The Father is free to answer the prayers of His children. He is not a prisoner held fast by the forces He has made. The world is not, as some suppose, a vast machine, which its Maker cannot control. Science cannot explain what force is, or how its changes of form are brought about ; and is there any reason against our supposing that God may employ the forces of Nature
* A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 79.
* W. M. Sinclair, Difficulties of our Day, 143.
ST. LUKE XI. 13 251
to meet the changing requirements of His moral government? May the Divine Mind not have other purposes to fulfil than those that are expressed in the works we see ? May there not be laws higher than the laws which we have discovered, and may not the will of God, which is before and beyond all things, make these, by processes we cannot imagine, serve the great ends of His provi- dence ? He is a living God, and Nature is ever evolving, and we may surely believe that His relation to the thing He has made is close and operative and constant. For aught that we know to the contrary, God may employ the forces of Nature to carry forward and complete the purposes He has in view in His moral government of His children. We know so little of them that we dare not say He does not so use them, and we are so sure of His goodness and power that we shall hesitate to disbelieve that He can do all things.
^ At sixty years of age Dr. Pierson was not too old to learn, and, with humility and an eager thirst after knowledge, he listened as Mr. George Mtiller of Bristol gave detailed testimony to show God as a hearer and answerer of prayer. In one of these interviews he asked Mr. Mllller if he had ever petitioned God for anything that had not been granted.