" Sixty-two years, three months, five days and two hours have passed," replied Mr. Mtiller with his characteristic exactness, " since I began to pray that two men might be converted. I have prayed daily for them ever since and as yet neither of them shows any signs of turning to God."
" Do you expect God to convert them ? "
"Certainly," was the confident reply. "Do you think God would lay on His child such a burden for sixty-two years if He had no purpose for their conversion ? "
Not long after Mr. Mliller's death. Dr. Pierson was again in Bristol, preaching in Bethesda Chapel — the meeting-place of the Brethren. In the course of his sermon, he told of this conversation, and as he was going out at the close of the service a lady stopped him and said : " One of those two men, to whom Mr. Mtiller referred, was my uncle. He was converted and died a few weeks ago. The other man was brought to Christ in Dublin." ^
3. Prayer becomes potent, when it represents the attitude of the soul. It is only as prayer becomes a habit, a kind of second nature with us, that it is really effectual. The giving of the
1 lAfe of A. T. Pierson, 277.
252 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Spirit is not like the opening and the shutting of a door. It is not like a parcel flung into our hand, of the reality of which we have ocular and tangible proof. There are some people who shoot up their prayers like a rocket, and they expect the answer to come to them like the falling of the stick after the powder has exploded. But all this is grossly to misconceive the character of prayer. The Heavenly Father gives the inspiration of the Spirit as He gives the summer — not in one sudden burst of magnificence, and in an instantaneous ripening, but by a gradual growth, and by slow processes, and by many subtle and silent operations, ex- tending over a period of several weeks : " first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." So God gives His Spirit in answer to prayer, gradually, persistently, silently, and for the most part without realization of the fact by the recipient, yet effectually energizing the powers of the mind and heart. Indi- vidual acts of prayer may or may not avail to ensure what we pray for, but the habit of prayer never fails.
^ Prayer, in so far as it implies that the mind has been uplifted towards an ideal of all goodness, a going out into the infinite, is invaluable to man, and marks the great distinction between him and the lower animals. It is answered so far as it is high and holy aspiration, being an exercise of mind which thereby creates the condition it prays for. After all, we do not know that mind-power has not a material existence somewhere, just as much as electricity has. If will-power could be brought together as a concentrated force, it might have very astonishing results. At present it is too broken up.^
4. The Father's answer to our prayer will be evident in our life and bearing. The gift of the Holy Spirit will mean a holy and resplendent life. With every true prayer God has more to do than the person who prays, and therefore every true prayer carries part of its own answer. " God," as the old mystics loved to say, " is an unutterable sigh in the innermost depth of the soul." What God prompts within us He knows how to meet. We learn slowly to put away childish things from our mind when we pray, and our main desire is that He will, in ways that He Himself deems best, give us that which will more deeply and visibly impress on our character the strength and calm of Christ,
^ George Frederic Watts, in ii/c, ii. 223.
ST. LUKE XI. 13 253
and arm us for the battle and make us more than conquerors in it.
H Where the Spirit of the Incarnate is indwelling, He is present neither as a distinct or extraneous gift, nor as an over- ruling force in which the self is merged and lost, but at the con- summation of the self. . . . He is not a mere presence in me, overruling, controlling, displacing. What He in me does, I do. What He in me wills, I will. What He in me loves, I love. Nay, never is my will so really free ; never is my power so worthy of being called power; never is my rational wisdom so rational or so wise ; never is my love so really love ; never more- over is any one of these things so royally my own ; never am I, as I, so capable, so personal, so real ; never am I, in a word, as really what the real " I " always tried to mean ; as when by the true indwelling of the Spirit of God, I enter into the realization of myself ; as when I at last correspond to, and fulfil, and expand in fulfilling, all the unexplored possibilities of my personal being, by a perfect mirroring of the Spirit of Christ ; as when in Him and by Him I am, at last, a true, willing, personal response to the very Being of God.^