1 Marcus Aurelius.
ST. JOHN XVI. 23 255
and far beyond the regions of the stars, shall combine in ministry and advantages for the praying man.i
3. The conditions of the promise. — There are no absolute con- ditions laid down in the text, but there are two conditions implied.
(1) It is by the next word in His promise that Christ brings us to the full meaning and the very heart of prayer. God will give those things which we really ask of Him as God : " What- soever things ye ask the Father." If prayer be, as the Intercessor of our race always teaches, nothing but the going of the children to the Father to ask of Him what they need, it is an action of faith and self-sacrifice. " Our Father " must be the beginning of it. " Thy will be done" must be its centre. In the Divine rela- tionship of the members of a family to one another we have the standing parable of prayer.
Could there be any character attributed to God in which we would rather approach Him ? What attribute would so well imply His love and regard for our interests as His paternal relation to us ? Earthly fathers give not their sons stones when they ask for bread, or a serpent instead of a fish ; if, then, they " being evil know how to give good gifts unto their children, how much more shall our heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask him?"
^ From Him all Fatherhood in heaven and earth gets its name. And fatherhood at its best, as we know it, is but a faint adumbration of what it means in its perfection in God of love and solicitude, will and power to help the children who are His own. And that is what men and women are, not mere intricate inventions, mechanical toys playing their little part in this great machine, the world, but God's children with points of affinity in their nature with His own, and capable of fellowship with Him. And so to understand the relations of God to man and man to God, you have not to go to the models in the pattern shop, or to the factory with its operatives, or to the court-house with its laws, or even to the palace with its rooms of state and subjects in obeisance before their monarch. But go to the home, go to the nursery ; see a father with his children, ay, better still, a mother with her prattling little ones with a thousand requests a day, and learn there what God is.2
* Jeremy Taylor. ^ £^. J. Drummond, Faith's Peiylexities, 183.
256 DAY OF KNOWLEDGE AND POWER
^ Our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures — that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may fully know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help stand in spiritual beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpassing, inestimable love that Almighty God hath to us of His goodness. And therefore we may ask of our Lover with reverence all that we will.^
(2) Our petitions are answered " in the name of Christ." The reading, " He will give it you in my name," is preferable to the reading of the Authorized Version, " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name."
We could make no claim to the smallest gift of God if Christ had not died, if Christ had not risen again — died for our sins, risen again for our justification ; if Christ had not ascende'd to the right hand of the Father ; if He were not there even now, our Mediator, our Intercessor, our Advocate, our High Priest. We must recognize that in Christ, and only in Christ, God is perfectly well pleased ; and in us only so far as we are found in Him ; that all our acceptance with God, all our right to be heard by God, rests solely and exclusively on the work for sinners which Christ once accomplished on Calvary, and is evermore pleading in heaven.
But the fact that the Father gives in the name of Christ, by whom He made, sustains, and governs the world, and through whom all His redeeming love is manifested to His earthly children, presupposes that they present their requests through Him as their Mediator — that is, in His name. Our prayer goes up through the same channel through which God's gifts come down. He who would receive from God in Christ's name must pray Christ's prayer, " Not my will, but thine be done." And then, though many wishes may be unanswered, and many weak petitions unfulfilled, and many desires unsatisfied, the essential spirit of the prayer will be answered, and. His will being done in us and on us, our wishes will acquiesce in it and desire nothing besides. To him who can thus pray in Christ's name in the deepest sense, and after Christ's pattern, every door in God's treasure-house flies open, and he may take as much of the treasure as he desires. The Master bends lovingly over such a soul, and with outstretched hand says, ^ Julian the Anclioress.