“After This Manner”

**My inmost soul, 0 Lord, to thee

Leans Uke a ffrotoinff Jlmoer
Unto the light, I do not know

The day nor blessed hour
When that deepooted, daring growth

We call the hearts desire
Shall burst and blossom to a prayer

Within the sacred fire
Of thy greai patience; grow so pure.

So still, so sweet a thing
As perfect prayer must surely 6«.”

“after tW ^annet”

AY we pray? The question is a very important one. There are some who tell us that we may not, that there is no ear to hear, no one anywhere who cares for us and who could do anjrthing for us if he did care. A great Force at the centre of things cannot hear the cries of human distress on the earth or answer them. If that is the only God there is, prayer is vain and nothing comes from it but mocking echoes.

If, however, we accept the teaching of Jesus Christ concerning God, there is no doubt that we may pray. There is one to hear, and that one is our Father. This is the truest answer to all the perplexities about prayer, to all the questions that arise concerning it. God is our Ct)e ^oinen att of IPtapet

Father, and we axe his children. If we accept this name as a definition of God and as indicating the relation God bears to us and we bear to him, there need be no further question whatever concerning the privilege or the benefit of prayer.

Jesus gave many teachings regarding prayer. The Lords Prayer gathers these teachings together into an example in a few great sentences. This prayer seems to us very simple and easy, but like all of our Lords words its petitions are wide and deep, each one carrying an ocean of meaning.

For one thing, the Lords Prayer teaches us that we all need to pray. Not to pray is to cut ourself off altogether from God, the source of all good, of all blessing, of all life. No doubt there are men who do not pray and who yet seem to live on and to receive mercies and blessings from God. He does not cut them off fix)m his love though they pay him no honor, recognize him not as their Father. This tells us how gracious [2] after tibtsi fanner God is. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.*” He continues to love even when his love is slighted and rejected. He never shuts the door on his child — it stands open day and night to the last.

Nevertheless he is an infinite loser who does not pray. He is leaving out of his life all the best things. He is gathering the weeds and pebbles that lie at his feet and missing the crowns which hang above him, ready to be taken and worn. He is missing the love, the companionship and the help of God, without which life in the end can be only a poor shrivelled thing, to be cast out to perish. The first thing one begins to do when one comes to ones self, when one has been born from above, is to pray. The Lord said of Saul, an hour ago a fierce persecutor, now a Christian, “Behold, he prayeth.*” That was evidence enough that Saul was no longer a dangerous enemy, that he was now a Christian man. Christs teaching makes prayer very easy. We [3]

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do not have to journey far off to some temple of marble and gold to talk with our Father. We do not have to learn a system of theology in order to be able to pray acceptably. It is not necessary for us to approach God in some august way, with elaborate ceremonial, in order to be heard by him. We are to come in the simplest way.

“After this manner*” does not mean saying always even the few words of the form of prayer which our Lord gave to us, but refers rather to the spirit of our praying. We are to pray as children. This makes it easy. It is not hard for a child to tell a loving parent its wants, to open its heart and reveal its inner feelings and desires. The most timid child, who shrinks from strangers, feels no embarrassment in the mother’*s presence. Glorious as God is, overwhelming as is the majesty which bums about his throne, his children should never dread drawing near to him. We may come boldly to his throne, for it is a throne of grace and love. [4] znttemnet’

“To stretch my hand and touch him.
Though he be Jar amay;
To raise nuf eyes aind see him

Through darkness as through day;
To lift my voice and call him — This is to pray!

To feel a hand extended

By One who standeth near;
To view the love that shineth

In eyes serene and clear;
To know that he is calling — This is to hear r

The Lords Prayer tells us what we should pray for. It is very brief, but its petitions are most comprehensive. We should study them in order to learn what we may bring to God in our prayer. We do not know what to pray for as we ought. In nothing else do we need the help of Christ more than in making our requests of Grod. Ofttimes the things we think we need most sorely are not by any means our deepest, most real needs. A man was brought to Jesus €bt (Z^oIDen (tate of Ptapet

to have his paralysis cured. That was the prayer which he and his friends made in coming; it was for this that the four men who carried their helpless burden manifested such earnestness, overcoming so many obstacles and hindrances; they thought that this was the man’s most pressing need. Jesus looked into the mans life and saw that he had another need greater than this, and first forgave his sins, afterwards cming his paralysis. Forgiveness is always a sorer need than the healing of any sickness. We come to God continually with cries for the taking away of some trial or the supplying of some want. Grod looks at us and says, My child, that is not what you need most to have done.“” He then gives us, not what we have asked, but what he sees we ought to have asked. We are apt, in our praying, to give more thought to the things that concern our physical life than to those which concern our higher, spiritual interests. We tell God of our sicknesses, and ask him to heal them. We pray to [6] ‘’after tl)t»90annet’

him for our friends who are ill, and implore him to restore them. We bring to him the matter of our daily bread, especially if our food-supply is short or precarious. It is well that we should take everything to Grod. Nothing that concerns us is too small to be put into a prayer. God hears even the sparrows when they cry for food. But these temporal things should not have the first place in our asking. Whatever use our Lord meant us to make of the Lord’s Prayer as a form of prayer, the order of its petitions is certainly intended U) guide us in our approaches to our Father, telling us what to put first. Thus we are taught what are the most important things. The first three requests are for things that concern the honor of God — the hallowing of his name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will. We are half-way to the end before there is a word about ourself and our personal wants. Then only one of the three petitions which refer to our own needs applies to bodily wants, the other two be- [7]

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ing for forgiveness of sins and deliverance in temptation. We are taught thus that the things of God should come first in our prajdng, not our own wants; and that among our personal needs the most serious are not things for our body but the taking away of our sins and our delivering from evil.

The same truth is taught in that wonderful siunmary of duty, in which our Lord says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”*^ Our prayers are ever to be for the things of God, and then God himself will look after our earthly

needs.

“We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; sojind we profit By losing of our prayers,**

The Lord’s Prayer calls us to reality and sincerity when we appear before God. Perhaps there is more imreality in our praying than we think there is. How many of us go over the

“9ftettftl$a0annet”

same petitions every time we pray? Probably we have used the s€une forms for years, with almost the identical words. Is it possible that our wants never vary from day to day? Can it be that we never have any new needs arising from our new conditions and experiences? Then do we really desire all the things we put into our daily prayers? Or how much of what we say is mere rote, a sort of memoriter and almost unconscious prajdng? It is worth our while to think seriously of this matter. Words without desires are not prayers.

It would be well if we should sit down always before beginning to pray, and think carefully over our wants. What are our deepest needs, the things we should ask God to give us or do for us just now, to-day? What are our hearts actual desires for others, for oiu* close friends, for our neighbors, for the unsaved, the tempted, the suffering? If we could get a clear and definite answer to these questions before we begin our supplications and intercessions, it would make [9]

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our prayers more real. It would make them shorter than their wont, no doubt, but one sentence burdened with a heart’s cry is dearer to God than an home’s memoriter rehearsing of words and phrases, with no deep yearnings and longings in them.

Indeed we have but a narrow and imworthy conception of prayer if our only thought of it is, making requests of God. In human friendship it would be very strange if there were never fellowship save when there were favors to ask, the one of the other. Love’s sweetest hours are those in which two hearts commime on themes dear to both, but in which neither has any request to make. The truest, loftiest prayer is one of communion, when we speak to God and he speaks to us. The deepest answer we can have to our praying is not God’s gifts, however precious these may be, but Grod himself, his love, his grace. The prayer that rises highest and is divinest is that in which we lose ourself in God, when God himself is all about us, filling [10] “aaet tfti0 90annet’

us, inspiring our dull life with his own infinite

“Close-presefU God! to me
It seems I could not have a wish

That was not shared by thee;
It seems I cannot be afraid

To speak my longings out.
So tenderly thy gathering love

Enfolds me round about”

The Lords Prayer has its earnest warning against putting selfish and earthly desires first. We must confess that even into our praying self is apt to creep — not self only, but the lower self. Especially in our secret prayers the tendency is to speak to our Father in the first person singular, our thoughts absorbed altogether in our own wants to the exclusion of the needs of all others. This tendency is rebuked in the phrasing of this form of prayer, where we are taught to approach God as Our Father,^ not My Father,^ and to plead, “Give ils our daily bread,’’ “Forgive its our debts,’’ “Deliver ils Ctie (Solum (Satt of ltapet

from evil.*” We may not forget others even when we bow alone before God. The last place in the world where we should carry our selfishness is into God’’s presence when we pray to him.

No doubt, however, there is a sense in which we should pray much for ourself, for the time shutting out every other person. Our fellowship with God must be individual. Yet in this personal part of our prajing there is need also of great watchfulness, lest we do not seek for ourself the things that axe really best. Our desires are apt to gravitate earthward, and the danger is that we choose lower rather than higher things; that we plead to be saved from costly self-denials rather than to receive the spiritual blessings which are folded up in self-denials; that we ask for worldly prosperity rather than for likeness to Christ.

Perhaps it were better if we should pray less than we do — that is, if ofttimes we should decline to choose at all for ourself, or to make [12]

Z(m this Q^mntt any definite requests, simply pleading with God to bless us, and referring especially all that concerns earthly things to his wisdom and love. A minister sat with a father and mother by the bed of a child, who was hovering between life and death. He was about to pray for the little sufferer, and turning to the parents he asked, “What shall we ask God to do.?’’ After some moments the father answered, with deep emotion:” I would not dare to choose. Leave it to him.’’

Would it not be better always in things of earthly interest to leave to God the decision, letting him choose what it is best to do for us or to give to us? We are not in this world to have ease and pleasure, to succeed in business, to do certain things — we are here to grow into strength and beauty of life and character, to accomplish the will of God and to have that will wrought out in our own life. Ofttimes the present must be sacrificed for the future, the earthly given up to gain the heavenly, pain endured [13]

Ct)e (Solum iditt of Ptapet

for the sake of spiritual refining and enriching. If we are willing to let God choose for us and to accept what he gives, we shall never fail to receive the best — perhaps not what earth would call the best, but always God’s best. We know not what to pray for as we ought, and we would better leave it to God.

The truest prayer is ofttimes that in which we creep into the bosom of God and rest there in silence. We do not know what to ask, and we dare not say even a word, lest it might be the wrong word, hence we simply wait before God in quietness and confidence. We know that what is best our Father will do, and we trust him to do what he will.

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