^ A. Maclaren. ^ C. H. Spurgeon.
26 CEASELESS PRAYER
^ Every morning he renewed bis touch with Christ so that he would not lose it through the busy hours. It was his habit to close every day by reporting to his Friend. Of this habit he said : " The disciples returned at evening and made a report to Christ of their work. Thus I tell Him of my life during the day, my dealings with persons who have come into it, and whatever has been attempted — in short, the whole day's work : its efforts, failures, mistakes, sins and joys. That is my evening prayer." ^
^ It will, I suppose, be admitted that there is no greater proof of complete religious sincerity than fervour in private prayer. If an individual, alone by the side of his bed, prolongs his interces- sions, lingers wrestling with his Divine Companion, and will not leave off until he has w^iat he believes to be evidence of a reply to his entreaties — then, no matter what the character of his public protestations, or what the frailty of his actions, it is absolutely certain that he believes in what he professes. My Father prayed in private in what I may almost call a spirit of violence. He entreated for spiritual guidance with nothing less than importunity. It might be said that he stormed the citadels of God's grace, refusing to be baffled, urging his intercessions without mercy upon a Deity who sometimes struck me as in- attentive to his prayers or wearied by them. My Father's acts of supplication, as I used to witness them at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, were accompanied by stretchings out of the hands, by crackings of the joints of the fingers, by deep breath- ings, by numerous sounds which seemed just breaking out of silence, like Virgil's bees out of the hive, " magnis clamoribus." My Father fortified his religious life by prayer as an athlete does his physical life by lung-gymnastics and vigorous rubbings.^
"[{ One of the surprises of my childhood was my father's locked study. It is true that when his children knocked he would come to the door, and open to us, but there was first a little shuffling of feet, and then in a few moments he stood before us. Sometimes I thought there must be some one else in the room — for I heard my father's voice ; but on entering I saw him only. It was all mysterious to a child, but as the years passed on I learnt what it meant. For the locked study was the secret of the Open Heart. Because he dwelt every day in the kingdom of penitence and tears and submission, he found his city of mirth and laughter and sunshine.^
1 J. T. Faris, The Life of Dr. J. R. Miller, 223.
^ Edmund Gosse, Father and Son, 229.
' Love and Life : The Story of J. Denholm Brash, 65.
I THESSALONIANS v. 17 27
3. Public prayer, too, is a necessary corrective to private prayer, which, if that were all, would tend to spiritual selfishness, would isolate the individual believer from the great company of his fellow-Christians, would limit his conception of his Christian duties by rendering him liable to think only of some and forget others, would, in fact, leave him one-sided in his religion, just as solitude makes a man one-sided in his social character.
^ We know how hard it is for most men, how hard, it may be, we ourselves continually find it, to keep the act of worship truly, purely spiritual ; to be always lifting up our hearts to the Unseen, the Eternal, the Incomprehensible ; always striving beyond the thoughts, the scenes of sense and time ; always remembering that the ultimate reality of worship is in the light that no man can approach unto, and that our highest acts are but as hands stretched out, as avenues of access, towards the everlasting adoration and intercession that is on high, where Christ " ever liveth to make intercession for us " : where St. John saw " in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing as though It had been slain." We know how our hearts are ever faltering away from the effort of faitli, and wanting to stay at some resting-place amidst the things that are seen, amid the ways of that lower level which we think we can understand. That appeal to come up higher, to raise the venture of our hearts above all that is on earth, is made to us all ; and to answer it rightly is the soul's great task. It is a task from which men swerve in diverse ways ; proffering in lieu of the uplifted venture, sometimes a moral life or activity in good works, sometimes a zeal for the cause of religion, sometimes the acceptance of a creed, sometimes the conviction that they are saved, and sometimes a worship that lingers unduly at the counterpart on earth of the supreme reality, the fount of all reality, in heaven. Out of the knowledge of our own weakness, let us learn the care we need to take lest others be weakened, lest others be allowed to halt where they should find the very spring and power for that cease- less ascent to which God beckons all.^