Praying at Others
There is a familiar story of two boys at bedtime, which represents Tom as having said his prayers and clambered into bed, while Bill remains upon his knees at the bedside. Bill prays aloud: “O Lord, forgive Tom for being so unkind to me.” “Bill! you stop that,” cries out Tom from the bed. Bill continues to pray: “O Lord, make Tom a better boy.” Tom says: “Bill, if you don’t stop that kind o’ praying, I’ll punch your head for you.” One more like petition from Bill brings Tom to the floor, and the boys’ evening prayers end in a rough-and-tumble.
Now, whether this story is true or not in fact, it certainly is true in principle. It illustrates a truth which has its practical bearings in many a sphere of religious life. A great many persons pray after Bill’s
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fashion; and a great many others feel as Tom felt, on being prayed for, or on being prayed at, in this style. Prayer is often aimed at one’s fellows instead of being offered up to the Hearer and Answerer of prayer; and the immediate effect of such prayer is not soothing or helpful to the minds of those prayed for.
As an illustration of this truth it may be said, that an advertisement was actually sent around, more or less widely, to the religious papers of the United States, asking the prayers of God’s people in behalf of the pastor and other officials of a young church in a certain city who were persistently addicted to the habit of tobaccousing, much to the grief of the church-members who were now making this fact public. About the same time a faith-teaching religious periodical made, in its editorial columns, a specific charge of unfair dealing against a well-known religious publisher in another city, and wound up its series of denunciatory criticisms with a Praying at Otbers
request that the readers of the periodical would pray for the unworthy and wickedly dealing publisher.
Every once in a while we hear of some minister of a divided church praying in his pulpit for the forgiveness of his slanderers or persecutors, with more or less of particularity in explanation of the slanders and persecutions referred to. Those who are most familiar with church and social prayer-meetings know that it is by no means an unprecedented thing to hear prayers offered with an evident reference to some personal grievance in the petitioner’s relations with his pastor or fellow-members.
Occasionally, indeed, when one brother has spoken on some mooted question in fact or doctrine, another brother, on the other side of the question, will rise, and “throw his remarks into the form of a prayer” in frank exhibit of the sad error of the one who has preceded him at the throne of grace. “O Lord, we know that thy feeling is very different from the feel-Prayer
ing of some of us on this subject. Thou knowest that those who are denounced here so positively this evening are thy faithful servants, approved of thee.” This was the style in which one brother opened his prayer after another brother had spoken slightingly of a prominent Christian denomination.
A chaplain in a legislative body sometimes misuses his office by praying at those in the assembly who take a different view of pending political or social questions from himself. This is thought by some to be a legitimate and desirable practice on a chaplain’s part. On one occasion while a stringent prohibition measure was pending before a state legislature, a zealous advocate of it went to the chaplain just before he was to make the opening prayer for the day’s session, and said in substance: “Put in your best licks at those other fellows in your prayer this morning. It will help to carry this thing through.” He seemed to think that the chaplain’s duty was to pray Praying at Otbers
at the opponents of prohibitory legislation, instead of praying to God that a right spirit might prevail among all the members.
It may be, indeed, that some Christians will say that they find in the Bible-teachings concerning prayer a warrant for this calling on God in their personal behalf against their enemies. They will, perhaps, refer to the imprecatory psalms as illustrations of this kind of praying. They will recall the injunction to “pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”
Possibly there are those who would be irreverent or unthinking enough to cite the fact that the dying Jesus prayed openly for the forgiveness of his murderers; as if our innocency, our sufferings, and our spirit, were to be held in comparison with his. But the difference in position between even David, the civil and religious head of Jehovah’s peculiar people, in opposition to the avowed enemies of Jehovah as such, and an ordinary Christian minister or church-member in opposition to his Brayer
brethren or fellow-men, is a difference that would seem to require no illumination of spiritual vision for its discerning.
Old Thomas Fuller covered this point when he said: “Lord! when in my daily service I read David’s psalms, give me to alter the accent of my soul, according to their several subjects. In such psalms wherein he confesseth his sins, or requesteth thy pardon, or praiseth for former or prayeth for future favors, in all these give me to raise my soul to as high a pitch as may be. But when I come to such psalms wherein he curseth his enemies, oh, there let me bring my soul down to a lower note; for those words were made only to fit David’s mouth. Nor let me flatter myself, that it is lawful for me, with David, to curse thine enemies; lest my deceitful heart entitle all mine enemies to be thine, and so what was religion in David prove malice in me, whilst I act revenge under the pretense of piety.”
As to praying for our enemies in the Praying at Otbers
closet, that is very different from praying at our enemies in public — in pulpit, or prayer-meeting, in the newspaper, or even aloud at the bedside of the one prayed for. The root of the trouble with such prayers is the selfish element which predominates in them. They evidence a wrong conception of the relation of the petitioner and his God, and of the use of prayer as an agency of communication with God. It is quite too common for Christians to think chiefly of what God can doy for them, instead of thinking of what they can do for God. They are readier to ask, God’s help against their enemies, than to proffer their help against God’s enemies. Absorbed in the thought of themselves, and of their enemies, and of their apparent needs, they ask God’s help against those who oppose them, without stopping to consider whether they may not be in the wrong, and their enemies in the right; while all the while their prayer ought to be, that God would bring success to the 151
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through God’s success. They ask and they receive not, because they ask amiss,
that they may consume it upon their lusts — that it may minister to their personal pleasure or advantage.
To assume to speak as if in God’s name
against one’s mere personal opposers, is to —
assume a grave and fearful responsibility. To pray at another, to use prayer as a means of personal abuse or criticism, is to misuse one’s position as a child of God, and so to misuse the name of God which that child has been privileged to bear. Against such a misuse of God’s name, the commandment of God stands out in terrible explicitness: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” 3: