Universality of the Prayer-Cry

“Oq thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.” This is the declaration of the inspired Psalmist, and the widest acquaintance with human nature and with human experiences confirms the truth of the declaration. Man prays because man is man, and needs help from One who is above man and outside of man. The universality of the human prayer-cry is a result and a proof of the need and the fitness of prayer by man to God.

Those who profess to be able to show, by a study of the form and the powers of living organisms, the process by which man has arrived at his present state, tell us that an existing need tends to produce a corresponding effort and an ultimate capacity to meet that need. Light calls for sight. If there were no light, there would be no eee

Prayer

‘eye to perceive the light. But wherever

there is light, life seeks and secures the power to perceive and utilize light. It is in accordance with the principle here suggested that the existence of a Hearer of prayer is in itself an invitation and an incitement to the universal prayer-cry of humanity.

Prayer is not a consequence of any specific command to pray. The duty of prayer is not even included in the scope of the Ten Commandments — or the Ten Words of God’s loving covenant with his people. There is no primitive injunction to prayer in the earlier pages of the Bible history of the race. The fact, like the fitness and the necessity, of prayer, seems to be taken for granted in Bible teachings, as truly as the existence of God and the dependence of man on God. A cry to God for help in some crisis hour of need or sorrow is instinctive in the human heart,

and must be so while man is man and God is God.

Universality of the Praver=Cry

Men may repress their impulse to pray in ordinary times, or may neglect and ignore the duty and privilege of prayer, while they are free from any sense of peril, or are’ thoughtless as to their utter dependence on supernatural aid and guidance; but the time will come when they realize that they are not sufficient unto themselves, and then, in spite of themselves, the prayer-cry is forced out of their heart of hearts. “He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea,” says George Herbert pithily, out of the wisdom of the ages; and many a man has uttered his first conscious prayer-cry in some hour of extremity in an ocean storm, or as he faced death on a battle-field.

“Do you ever pray, my friend?” asked an army chaplain of a wounded soldier in the prison hospital in Charleston, in our Civil War, just after the fierce and fruitless assault on Fort Wagner. “Sometimes, chaplain,’ was the answer; “I prayed last Saturday night, when we were in that fight Prayer

at Wagner, I guess everybody prayed ) then.” Yes, everybody prays at one time (or another, in faith or in fear, in hope or ‘in despair, ‘“‘« There is no God,” the foolish saith ; — But none, ‘There is no sorrow!’ And nature oft the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow. Eyes which the preacher could not school By wayside graves are raised, And lips say, ‘God be pitiful!’ Who ne’er said, ‘God be praised!’ Be pitiful, O God!”’

In the presence of the dread realities of the unknown future, the soul’s cry for spiritual help is instinctive and universal. At its least, it is like the unconscious cry of the new-born babe for the food of nature provided of God in the mother-life; or like the unspoken cry of the parched lips, in the delirium of fever, for the cool water which the wandering intellect cannot give words to ask for. Because their human needs require superhuman help, and superhuman

help is divinely provided for them, there-Io

Universality of the PrayersCry

fore their souls cry for such assistance. The God-given supply prompts the manfelt longing. - Those who are outside of the influence of Bible teachings or of Christian associations give utterance to cries for superhuman aid in their hour of need. They call on the gods to help them, or they cry to the demons to spare them from harm. The prayer-cry of the human heart is universal. He who refuses to pray, sins against the light of revelation and of nature. He wrongs his own soul as surely as if he were to refuse to smile in the hour of joy, or to shed a tear when he is in sorrow. “He who goes to bed and doth not pray, Maketh two nights of ev’ry day.”

Whatever one may think of the reasons for prayer, or of the reasonableness of the universal heart-cry for supernatural help, he must admit that this cry is natural to man, and that therefore there is some good reason for it. If he represses his impulse at times to share in it, he bears himself Prayer

unnaturally, and he is less than a man if he lives a prayerless life. It is a shame to man to lead a prayerless life.

‘‘For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”