Need we wonder that such an one should cry mightily to God? Yea, the wonder would be if he could do aught else. How, then, should we treat him? Should we teach him not to pray? God forbid. This would be to do the work of Satan, who, assuredly, hates prayer most cordially. To drop a syllable which could even be understood as making little of an exercise so entirely divine, would be to fly in the face of the entire book of God, to deny the very example of Christ, and hinder the utterance of the Holy Ghost in the new-born soul. The Old and New Testament Scriptures literally teem with exhortations and encouragements to pray. To quote the passages would fill a volume. The blessed Master Himself has left His people an example as to the unceasing exercise of a spirit of prayer. He both prayed Himself and taught His disciples to pray. The same is true of the Holy Ghost in the apostles. (See the following passages; Luke iii. 21; vi. 12; ix. 28, 29; xi. I-13; xviii. I-8; Acts i. 14; iv. 31; Rom. xii. 12; xv. 30; Eph. vi. 18; Phil. iv. 6; Col. iv. 2-4; I Thess. v. 17; 2 Thess. iii. I, 2; I Tim. ii. I-3; Heb. xiii. 18; James v. 14, 15.)
If my reader will look out and ponder the foregoing passages, he will have a just view of the place which prayer occupies in the Christian economy. He will see that disciples are exhorted to pray; and that it is only disciples who are so exhorted. He will see that prayer is a grand prominent exercise of the household of God, and that he must be of that household to engage in it. He will see that prayer is the undoubted utterance of the new life; and that the life therefore must be there to utter itself. He will see that prayer is an important part of the Christian's privilege; and that it enters in no wise in the foundation of the Christian's peace.
Thus, he will be able to put prayer in its proper place; and how important it is that it should be so put! How important it is that the anxious inquirer should see that the deep and solid foundations of his present and everlasting peace were laid in the work of the Cross, nineteen centuries ago! How important that the blood of Jesus should stand out before the soul in clear and bold relief, in its solitary grandeur, as the alone foundation of the sinner's rest! A soul may be earnestly seeking and crying for salvation, and all the while be ignorant of the great fact that it is ready to his hand--that he is actually commanded to accept a free, full, present, personal, and eternal salvation--that Christ has done all--that a brimming cup of salvation is set before him, which faith has only to take and drink for its everlasting satisfaction. The gospel of God's free grace points to the rent vail--the empty tomb--the occupied throne above. (Matt. xxviii; Heb. i. and x.) What do these things declare? What do they utter in the anxious sinner's ear? Salvation! salvation! The rent vail, the empty tomb, the occupied throne, all cry out, salvation!
Reader, do you really want salvation? Then why not take it, as God's free gift? Are you looking to your own heart or to Christ's finished work for salvation? Is it needful, think you, to wait that God should do something more for your salvation? If so, then Christ's work were not finished; the ransom were not paid. But Christ said "_It is finished_," and God says, "I have found a ransom" (Job xxxiii. John xix.). And if _you_ have to do, say, or think aught, to complete the work of salvation, then Christ would not be a whole, a perfect Saviour. And, further, it would be a plain denial of Rom. iv. 5, which says, "To him that _worketh not_, but believeth on Him that _justifieth the ungodly_, his faith is counted for righteousness." Take heed that you are not mixing up your poor prayers with the glorious work of redemption, completed by the Lamb of God on the cross. Prayer is most precious; but, remember, "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb. xi. 6); and if you have faith, you have Christ; and having Christ, you have ALL. If you say you are crying for mercy, the word of God points you to mercy's copious stream flowing from the finished sacrifice. You have all your anxious heart can want in Jesus, and He is God's free gift to you just as you are, where you are, _now_. If you had _to be_ aught else but what you are, or _to go_ anywhere else from where you are, then salvation would not be "by grace, through faith" (Eph. ii. 8). If you are anxious to get salvation, and God desires you should have it, why need you be another moment without it? It is all ready. Christ died and rose again. The Holy Ghost testifies. The word is plain. "_Only believe._"