The Hearer of Prayer

“0 thou that hear est prayer!”

The only proper object of worship is God — the living and true God — Triune Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the nature of the blessings implored or the mercies acknowledged, Ave have instances of prayer addressed to all the Persons of the blessed Godhead; but the tenor of Scripture shows that in the economy of grace, prayer is usually addressed to the Father through the Son, and by the Holy Ghost. God in Christ is the object of Christian worship, and the author of that worship is the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ.

I. God is the hearer of prayer.

There is no need to speculate as to the efficacy of prayer. It is a subject on which we have conclusive information; for we have the

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assurance of God Himself. “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers,” “Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.” “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will answer thee.” And lest we should desire more definite information, we have it. “No man hath seen God at any time, — the only -begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” There was once amongst us one who knew precisely the reception which prayers are wont to meet with in the Court of Heaven. There was once on earth one who could testify, on this matter, what he had seen, and who could tell distinctly whether the prayers of earth are audible in the upper sanctuary, and how far the High and Holy One is disposed to regard and answer them; and nothing can be more encouraging than the language of this Faithful Witness. “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” “I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth, as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall fc„ done for them of nay Father who is in heaven.” “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

So conclusive are these and similar declarations, that no further warrant should be needful to give precision and hopeful earnestness to our petitions. We have the living God himself assuring us that he is prepared to accept, and consider, and answer them; and we have the Son of God himself come down from the bosom of the Father, the appointed medium of communication betwixt heaven and earth — we have the Intercessor himself declaring, that no petition passes through his hand but it brings back its blessing; and further assurances than these should scarcely be needful to make the man who is conscious

F of sincerity in prayer, secure of an answer. But further assurance is given. We know of instances almost unnumbered where prayer has obtained an actual answer. In the lives of Abraham and Abraham’s servant, of Lot, of Jacob, of Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah and Samson, of Hannah and of Samuel, of David the king and Solomon his son, Hezekiah and Manasseh, of the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel; then, again, in the history of the apostles and the early Church, we have abundant evidence that, whatever may have become of our own, others have directed prevailing supplications to the Heavenly Majesty, and that singular mercies have been from time to time bestowed in answer to believing prayer.

And here you would not wonder though we should close the case. Having God’s promise and the Saviour’s assurance of the prevalency of prayer, and having, both in the sacred narrative and later histories, so many cases recorded of accepted and answered supplications, there is enough to justify the conclusion, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. But there is an evidence, to most minds more satisfactory than the most harmonious testimony — I mean, the evidence of personal consciousness — the proof they have from their own experience. There have been persons who possessed this proof; and I believe almost every Christian could make, at some stage of his progress, the same entry as John Newton wrote in his journal,* “About this time I began to know that there is a God who hears and answers prayer.” We believe that, to most real Christians here present, the discussion of the question will be superfluous, and, so far as they are personally concerned, uninteresting; for their short argument in favour of the practice, and conclusive answer to all objections, is the Psalmist’s own: — “But verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer.” The efficacy of prayer is with them no longer a matter of probability or a subject for reasoning. It is now a matter of fact — an ascertained and positive truth — a truth not even of others’ testimony, but a fact of their own consciousness. And so, brethren, if you wish to have

* Quoted in M’Gill on “Closet Prayer.” F 2 your minds set conclusively at rest on the subject, like the Psalmist, pray — pray till, like the Psalmist, you can sing — “I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.”

And now, having put on its proper footing, as a matter of fact, the truth that God is the hearer of prayer, the speculative difficulties with which some have perplexed the subject need give us no pain. If the truth be ascertained, and the mind of the man who has discovered it be sound and vigorous, no difficulties will disturb his faith. To use the words of a clear thinker, * — “Before a confessed and unconquerable difficulty, the mind, if in a healthy state, reposes as quietly as when in possession of a discovered truth — as quietly and contentedly as we are accustomed to bear that law of our nature which denies us the power of seeing through all space, or of being exempt from sickness and decay.” Allow that

* Arnold’s “Sermons on Interpretation of Scripture,” p. 34?.

some serious objections could be started against the efficacy of prayer, these objections do not touch the evidence on which we believe that God has promised to hear prayer, nor that other evidence on which we believe that he has actually heard and answered it. The greatness of creation and the littleness of man, the decrees of God and the immutability of natural laws, would not stop his prayer, nor startle from his knees the man who could say — “Verily, God hath heard me: he hath attended to the voice of my petition;” but, superior to all speculative difficulties, because secure in his experimental knowledge, that wise and happy man would still pray on. And, to see the wisdom of this course, you have only to put a parallel case. In the infinite variety of this universe, there may be a world where the processes of growth, and decay, and reproduction, so familiar to us, are utterly unknown. Suppose that the inhabitant of such a world were transported to our own, and that he witnessed the husbandman’s operations in spring. He might marvel what he meant. He might wonder why he cast these grains of corn into the ground; and, when

f 3 told that it wv.s with a view to reproduce them a hundred-fold, the mysterious process might at once assume the aspect of infatuation, and he might begin to remonstrate with the labourer on this crazy waste of useful corn; and, if this visitor from Jupiter or Saturn were as acute a metaphysician as many in our own world are, he might adduce many subtile arguments — too subtile, perhaps, for a farmer to refute. “Is not this a mad notion of yours? Do you really mean to affirm, that this particle of corn will grow into a hundred more? Nay, do you pretend to say that you will put into that hole this hard and husky atom, and come back in three months and find it changed into the glossy stems, the waving leaves, and rustling ears, of the tall wheat stalk? What resemblance, or what adequacy, is there between that seed and a sheaf of corn? Besides, if a buried grain is to grow up a hundred-fold, why don’t you bury diamonds and guineas, and get them multiplied after the same proportion? Besides, O simpleton! do you not know that all these matters have been fixed and settled from everlasting? It has been foreordained, either that you are to have a crop next autumn, or that you are to have none. In the former case, your present pains are needless, for you will get your harvest without all this ado. If the latter, your pains are useless, for nothing will procure you a crop where it is not the purpose of Omnipotence that you should have one.” Did the ploughman listen to all this remonstrance, he might be much perplexed with it. He might not be able to show the precise way in which seeds exert an efficacy on the future crop; and he might not see at once the reason why corn-grains should be reproductive, whilst diamonds and guineas are not; and, least of all, might he be able to dispose of the fatalist objection. But he would deem it enough to refute all this mystification to say — that he had never known a harvest without a seed-time, and that he had never sown sufficiently without reaping something. And so, when a man comes in from the prayerless world, and starts his objections, a praying man may not be able to discuss them one by one — he may not even understand them — “But this I know, God is the hearer of prayer, and, verily, he hath heard myself.” And, like the farmer, who scatters his seed heedless of all that has ever been said on necessity, and causation, and general laws, a wise believer will, in the face of hypothetic difficulties, proceed on ascertained facts, and, amidst objections and cavils, will persist to pray, and continue to enjoy the blessings which prayer procures.

Though hitherto I have not touched these theoretic difficulties, I may now, in conclusion, mention three simple truths, in whose successive light every doubt and difficulty should melt away. God is the hearer of prayer, —

1. Because he is the Living God.

2. Because he is Almighty.

3. And because he is the God of Love.

1. Jehovah is the Living God. “The tendency of many minds is to regard the Deity as a principle rather than as a person.”* They look vipon him as a power — a presence — a principle — the most general of general laws — not as the great I am, the Living God. No wonder that they have little heart to pray. If Elijah had known no other deity than the little cloud, or the sea from which it ascended,

* Chalmers’s “Natural Theology,” vol. il. p. 815.

or the sky in which it floated, or the electric action which condensed more and more dark vapour round it, he would scarcely have renewed his supplication seven times. But he addressed himself not to clouds, hut to the Living God of Israel. When I go to my friend’s house to procure some favour from him, I do not speak to his books or his furniture — I do not invoke his genius or guardian spirit; I do not apostrophise the abstract idea of benevolence, or virtue, or friendship; but I speak direct to himself, a lowly friend, it may be, or an unworthy suppliant — but still a living man, I address a living person. Prayer is not an appeal to dead matter or to general laws. It is not a request to the rain to fall, or to the sun to stand still. It is not imploring the principle of gravitation to relax its rule on my behalf, and disengage my feet from the earth, or beseeching the fire to forbear and not burn me. It is not to supplicate such virtues as meekness and patience and fortitude to come down and take up their abode in my bosom. But when I pray, I address myself to that Living God who has the elements of nature at his control, and, what is to me, as an immortal and accountable being, far more important, who has at his disposal infinite resources for making his creatures holy. He is the Living God; and if, in asking mercies from him, I may not be as sanguine as a friend when he entreats a friend, or a child when he importunes a father, I may at least be as earnest and urgent as a subject is when he has opportunity to ply his suit with his living sovereign.

2. But some who restrain prayer do err from not knowing the power of God. They feel as if it were impossible even for Omniscience to attend to every suppliant, and beyond the power even of Omnipotence to bestow a separate boon in answer to each petition. Or they feel as if they were only the more important requests of the more eminent suitors that are likely to be noticed and conceded. But what is Omnipotence? Is it not the power of attending to all things undistracted, as well as of doing the mightiest things unexhausted? The Almighty — is he not able to attend to all the wants of all his creatures? Is there in creation aught that would lead us to suppose that to his comprehensive eye any grandeur is imposing, or any minuteness despicable? Did he only create the suns and larger planets, and leave it to moons and little worlds to create themselves? Or, cominodown to this lower world, did he bestow a higher finish on the bulkier existences, and show little care for the lesser and lower? Was he rejoicing in the greatness of his strength when he formed the oak and the lion, and had his arm grown weary when it reached the lily and the nightingale? Though there were no Bible to proclaim it, there is evidence enough — whether we look up into the heavens with their circling worlds, or down into a drop of water with its myriads of gay darting monads — proof enough that he who made the whole of such a universe is able to attend to it all. There is proof enough that no multitude of suppliants can distract him, and no magnitude of their requests exhaust Him. There is proof enough that if any prayer be unanswered, it is not because the suitor is insignificant, nor because he has asked too great a blessing

3. And others err, forgetting God’s goodness. True, Jehovah may be the Living God, and a God of boundless power; but what if he be a hard master or an angry king? What if we ourselves have put him in an attitude of estrangement, and the same breath which addresses him in the language of entreaty, what if it has previously assailed the High and Holy One in tones of hostility? Here does come in a difficulty on which conjecture could only throw a more perplexing light. The hearer of prayer, is he not also the hater of sin? And coming into his presence, instead of procuring blessings, may I not be provoking a more swift displeasure? Here is indeed a difficulty — the gloomier alternative of which our own guilty consciences too severely favour, and from which we should have found no sure escape, had not the heavenly High Priest, reposing in the Father’s love, and holding out to his guilty brethren his hand of mediation, said, “After this manner pray ye, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’” “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”