* Dean F, Pigou, Faith and Practice, 246.
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give it a prominent place in the system of Christianity. He confirms His promise by an oath, that by these two immutable things which cannot be broken, His promise and His oath, we might have the strong consolation that our prayers penetrate through the clouds into the ears of the Lord of hosts. We are to pray, building our heart's trust on the word and oath of the Lord, and not doubting that our prayers are heard. To doubt Christ's words, spoken with so much solemnity, as the culminating word of admonition before He returned to the Father, is to plunge into a miserable unbelief from which nothing can extricate us.
^ There was that about Christ's " Verily, verily I say unto you" which seemed to carry conviction and allay the spirit of controversy. The way in which the early Church used to " re- member the words of the Lord Jesus" speaks volumes for the vividness of the impression which those words made on those who first heard them. We cannot now reproduce that impression or even imagine it with any great success ; but if we wish to do full justice to the situation, we must allow for the result produced, and give to it the weight which it deserves.^
2. The comprehensiveness of the promise. — Christ's words are : " If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name."
(1) God is not only able but willing to give all that is asked of Him. It is nothing for Him to give. He delights to give. It is the joy of the Divine life to be giving all the while.
^ The most delightsome day in the life of the Empress Josephine, as she wrote in one of her letters, was when, coming through the Alps with her husband, she was left for a little while to rest in a humble cottage. She saw that the eyes of the lonely woman there were stained with tears and asked her trouble. The woman said it was poverty. " How much," asked Josephine, " would relieve it ? " " Oh," she said, " there is no relieving it ; it would require four hundred francs to save our little vineyard and our goats." Josephine counted out of her purse the four hundred francs into the woman's lap, who gathered them together, and fell down and kissed her feet.^
(2) The promise to prayer is not limited to any special class of subjects. It includes all things, both temporal and eternal,
* W. B. Selbie, Aspects of Christ, 163.
' D. J. Burrell, The Verilies of Jesus, 141.
254 DAY OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER
material and spiritual. The objects of the outer creation are not unworthy to be the gifts of God, for they are the creatures of God. He created them for us. He created us and them for His only begotten Son. No created object has any end short of the glory of Christ. Consequently there is nothing that is beyond the circle of legitimate prayer. We are too apt to doubt whether we may pray for temporal mercies. The real reason is that we doubt whether all created things are really worthy of God as their Creator. He who created them with a purpose can use them for the highest of all purposes. The universe is one, but manifold. It has unity of purpose, /rom God in Christ. It has unity of purpose, for God in Christ. We must be careful to remember that we cannot take anything out of its place in creation. It will work for the glory of Christ; and if we will use it for Christ's glory, we shall share in its blessing. If, how- ever, we suppose that these meaner things are just created for our indulgence, and use them for the purposes of our sin, then we set them apart from the dispensation of God's love, and must get them how and whence we can ; and instead of finding a blessing if we do acquire them, we shall find that they have turned to be to us a curse. If only the necessities of earth drove us to live more conscientiously for the glory of God, we should find that the weariness of earth, instead of dragging us down, would urge us to efforts more worthy of heaven.
^ A prayer of the Athenians : " Eain, rain, 0 dear Zeus, down on the ploughed fields of the Athenians, and on the plains." In truth we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion.^
^ Prayer can obtain everything ; it can open the windows of heaven, and shut the gates of hell ; it can put a holy constraint upon God, and detain an angel till he leave a blessing ; it can open the treasures of rain, and soften the iron ribs of rocks, till they melt into tears and a flowing river : prayer can unclasp the girdles of the North, saying to a mountain of ice, " Be thou re- moved thence, and cast into the bottom of the sea " ; it can arrest the sun in the midst of his course, and send the swift-winged winds upon our errand ; and all those strange things, and secret decrees, and unrevealed transactions which are above the clouds