The Christian's Prayers

“They continued steadfastly .... in prayers.” — Acts ii. 42.

The water is purest at its fountain among the moun« tains, where it gushes cold from the rock, or bubbles up at the mossy spring; the nearer to the source the clearer is the stream. By every mile it rolls, it grows in volume; till the streamlet which a child could leap, fed by many tributaries, has swollen into a broad river, on whose bosom, as it nears the sea, fishermen shoot their nets, and the ships of nations ride. But what the water has acquired in depth and breadth, it has lost in purity; growing the muddier, the further it goes. How like to what happens in Churches; — which as they become larger, usually become more loose in doctrine and more lax in discipline. With an increase of numbers, they often present such an increase of corruptions, that to find the purest days of many a sect, we must turn our steps backward to the period of its rise.

In some respects this is true even of the Christian Church. When young in years and small in numbers, and poor in point of wealth, what love, unity, purity, and peace, dwelt within her walls! Since then how have these walls been shaken by the violence, and filled

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with the din of controversies! Here one sect carrying on fierce war against another; and there intestine wars — two parties contending within the same body, and more like wolves than sheep, worrying, “biting, ond devouring” one another. Suppose an inhabitant of another sphere to alight on this one! He sees the Church of Christ rent into jealous, envious, angry, hostile factions; and finds them, instead of presenting one bold front to the common enemy, burying their swords in each other’s bosoms. How difficult it were for him to believe that they were subjects of one King; had a common faith, a common cross, a common Bible, a common hope, a common heaven; and that the choicest title of their Sovereign was not the god of war, but the Prince of Peace. Once the heathens said. See how these Christians love one another! They say it no more. And we cannot contrast what the Church is now, and has been for bygone ages, with the purity and peace of her early days, without being ready to cry. How are the mighty fallen; the weapons of war how are they perished! — How is the gold become dim, how is the most fine cold changed!

What a picture of Christian unity, love, self-denial, mutual affection, devotedness to each other’s welfare, and to the great interests of Messiah’s kingdom, is offered to our admiration in the verses that follow the text — in that community of goods which sanguine politicians have often dreamed of, but Christians only have ever attained to! In those days the Church of Christ was like one large, loving family, to whose common treasury each member brought his wealth and wages.

Nobody was immensely rich; and none were miserably poor. Riches and rags, splendour and squalidness, did not stand in incongruous conjunction; and worship, as I have seen them, under the same roof, or sit side by side at the same communion-table. As all the rivers of the earth pour their waters into one sea, and all the roots of a tree convey their nourishment to one stem, and all the veins of the body empty themselves into one heart, from which the tide of blood, borne along the bounding arteries, is sent forth again to be distributed to every member according to its needs — so was it in primitive times with the wealth of those who constituted the Church, the body of Christ. What states have been in name, it was in fact — a commonwealth; and the only one the world ever saw. The people lived for Christ; regarding their possessions as his, not their own. They judged that as a man who buys land, buys all belonging to it — the trees that grow on its surface, and the minerals that lie in its bowels — so, when Christ bought them with his blood, with them he bought all that was theirs. They felt that if Christ gave his life for the poorest saints, they could not do less than share their “means and substance” with them; and so, as we are told — They who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and. parted them to all men, as every man had need.

There was no command laid on them to do so; nor does any command lie on us to imitate their example in this matter. Such a practice would now be as undesirable, as it is impract’cable. Still, though their circumstances were so peculiar as to lead them to adopt a peculiar line of conduct, how ought their con duct — the spirit of their example, and, to adduce a still higher authority, how ought the example of Christ, who, with his disciples, had a common purse, to call forth our charity to God’s poor saints; teaching us to fill their scanty cups with the overflowings of our own.

There is, however, one marked feature of that early Church recorded in these verses, which we may safely copy, and are indeed called to copy. In their steadfastness in prayer, they set us an example that we should follow their steps. Who does not know that to grow the same fruit as others — crops as fine in quality and abundant in quantity, we must apply the same culture to ground or tree? I have seen, for example, two plants growing under the glass of the same conservatory; and while the one showed a mass of flowers that dazzled the eye with their beauty, and filled the whole house with their perfume, the others, fruitless and flowerless, hung its drooping leaves, and seemed pining to death, under a deep decline. Both stood in the same soil; enjoyed an equal temperature; and had been taken from one, common parent stem. Whence the difference? The cause of that was neither obscure nor remote — this had been often, but that, neglected, had been seldom watered. Now, what water is to thirsty plants, prayer is to the graces of a man, or a Church. Do we admire, wonder, and sometimes indeed, stand astonished at the love which animated and the fruitfulness which distinguished these first Christians? The riddle is read, the mystery solved, in these words, “They continued steadfast in prayers.”

I. Their employment — prayer.

A refuge in trouble, our strength in weakness, our armour in battle, our comfort in sorrow, the wings by which we rise to God, a ladder for our feet in climbing the skies, prayer is the first sign of conversion. It is the birth-cry of a soul — like that cry in the natal chamber, by which the mother knows her new-bom child is alive. The penitent thief was converted on the cross; and the first intimation the world had that he who but an hour ago was mocking our dying Lord had become another man, was to see him turning round on the nails to cry, Lord, remember me when thou comest to thy kingdom. The jailer, nor he the only man born again in such a place — was converted in the prison; and the first intimation Paul and Silas had of his change was when he cast away the sword, and, calling for a light, sprang into the dungeon, to fall on his knees, and cry, Sirs, what shall I do to be saved? Paul himself, like a vagrant’s child, was born on the public road, struck down, converted on his way to Damascus; and the change was announced to Ananias in these words, Behold, he prayeth. Prayeth! and it is of such prayers I speak, of true prayers — not those of the lip, but of the heart; for no arrows reach yonder sky but those that are shot from heart-strings, when the soul is strongly bent like an elastic bow. A man may say his prayers — say them from lisping infancy to toothless, mumbling age, from his cradle to his coffin, yet never once have prayed.

The first, true sign of spiritual life, prayer is also the means of maintaining it. Man can as well live physically without breathing, as spiritually without praying. There is a class of animals — the cetaceous, neither fish nor sea-fowl, that inhabit the deep. It is their home; they never leave it for the shore; yet, though swimming beneath its waves and sounding its darkest depths, they have ever and anon to rise to the surface that they may breathe the air. Without that these monarchs of the deep could not exist in the dense element in which they live, and move, and have their being. And something like what is imposed on them by a physical necessity, the Christian has to do by a spiritual one. It is by ever and anon ascending up to God, by rising through prayer into a loftier, purer region for supplies of divine grace, that he maintains his spiritual life. Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath; prevent him from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer. “Give me children,” cried Rachel,” or else I die f Let me breathe, said a man gasping, or else I die; Let me pray, says the Christian, or else Idle?

“Now,” wiites Paul, “abideth faith, hope, charity, but the greatest of these is charity;” and the fair crown he puts on charity, we may place on the bended head of prayer. Among all the means of grace — sermons, sacraments. Sabbaths, providences, God’s word, either read or preached — the greatest in some re-Bpects is prayer. Nor men nor devils can shut its gates. When every other avenue to God is closed, these stand open — day and night continually. The storm of persecution may drive us from the house of God; the voice of preachers may be silenced in prisons; the Church may excommunicate and debar us from the communion table; the Bible plucked from our hands, may be burned to ashes in Popish flames; all this has happened, and may happen again. These are avenues which man may close; not this, the door of prayer. The martyr found it standing open in his dungeon; Daniel in the den of lions; the three children in the fiery furnace; Jonah in the belly of the whale; Paul and Silas in the prison, where their feet were in the stocks, but their spirits were free; and when his brow is clammy cold, and his eyes are glazed and dim, and his ear has lost its hearing, and his tongue its powers of speech, the moving lips, and uplifted hands tell the by-standers at a Christian’s death-bed that the gates of prayer stand open. Prayer and a good man part only at the door of heaven; there being a breath, a groan, a sigh, between earth’s prayers and its eternal praise. He rises from the footstool of mercy to receive the crown, and ascend a throne.

II. Their perseverance in this exercise — they continued steadfastly in prayers.

Prayers which are not answered at once, nor, perhaps, for a long time afterwards, may nevertheless be accepted. Were he to speak, Christ’s reply to a mother, earnest and urgent for a son’s conversion, might be such OS he gave his own mother at the marriage in Cana. Woman, mine hour is not yet come. Now, God’s people are apt to forget this; and that it is with prayer, to borrow an illustration from commercial transactions, as with a bill, which, though accepted, is often not paid till months or years elapse. Our heavenly Father knows best what to give; and also how, and where, and when to give. Were its answer always to follow prayer, as the peal roars upon the flash, I suspect that we would be as ready in spiritual as we are in earthly matters to look only to secondary causes, and forget God’s hand — coming to look on our prayers as being the cause of the answer, as much as we are in the habit of regarding the flash of lightning, without any reference to God, as the cause of the peal of thunder.

Besides, if the answer were always to follow on the prayer, the grand ends of God’s providence would often be defeated. Let me illustrate this by the case of the prodigal. It so happened that this profligate youth was deeply impressed with a sense of bad, unfilial conduct. How touchingly is that brought out in this soliloquy, “I will arise and go to my father, and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am not worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.” But suppose it had been otherwise, and that by report, or by his bold bearing and sullen look, his father knew it to be otherwise, would he have run to meet him? Would he have kissed his cheek? Would he, anticipating his wishes, have granted forgiveness before it was asked?

Would he, in the fulness of a father’s joy, the gush of long pent up feelings, as counting nothing too good for him, have cried for the fairest robe; bidden music wake up, and wine flow, and floors shake to the dancers’ feet? Would he, taking him to his bosom and restoring him to the place of a son both in his heart and home, have done exceeding abundantly above all that he could ask or think? Certainly not. If the prodigal, though somewhat, had not been fully, sensible of his sin, the father would have pursued a different course. God cures souls as we cure bodies, and often wounds to heal. And, in the case supposed, this father, in whose portrait Jesus drew an attractive picture of his own, would have turned his back on his son at the very time his heart was turning to him. Restraining feelings that struggled to get forth, he would have received him coldly, that he might humble his pride, and fit him to receive future favours. See how David dealt with Absalom! To say nothing of those that heard it, who ever read that doleful cry, “0 my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son, my son,” without feeling that David was as tender in heart, as he was true to friendship, and brave in battle, and pious toward God. Yet when his heart was breaking for the love of his first-born, see how he allowed him to stay for two whole years in Jerusalem — sternly refusing to see his face. Or look at Joseph’s conduct to his brethren! He yearned to make himself known to them; and had forgiven all their crimes so soon as he saw their faces. Yet he dealt harshly with them; spoke roughly to them; called them spies; cast them into prison. Nor till conscience, long asleep, but now woke by this I’ough hand, reproached them and taught them to reproach themselves, saying, “We are very guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us, and we would not hear; therefore is this distress come upon us — not till then did he drop the mask, and cry with a look that proclaimed their pardon, I am Joseph! Even so, to deepen the humility of those that seek him, to try their patience, to quicken their patience, to call forth their faith, to fire their ardoui’, and blow the smoking flax into a burning flame, Jesus, when his heart is overflowing with tenderness, may for a while refuse prayer her answer — hide himself, nor say, I am Jesus.

And when we pray, but receive no answer, and putting our ear to the door, where we have been knocking, as if the house were untenanted, we catch no approaching footstep, nor sound, nor sign of any one being within, what are we to do? To cease praying? Cease praying! By no means. No more than I would cease swimming for dear life when the cruel wave had plucked my hands from the rock, or, after my feet had touched the blessed sands, bore me back again and out to sea. I am to knock and listen; to stand and wait; and, importunate as the widow, take no rest and give God none, till the door is opened. Do this for what his word teaches you is agreeable to his will, and if the answer does not come when you are living, you shall get it when you are dead. In prayers, or curses, men sow what afterwards grow above their graves.

It is eiglit(3en hundred years since Jesus prayed, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am; and that prayer is answered in every chamber from which a dying saint takes his flight to glory. It is eighteen hundred years since they cried, His blood be on us and on our children; and God is answering that curse now in a people scattered, and peeled; a hissing; a byword; and a proverb in all the earth.

Let faith and hope hold up the arms of prayer, till, paralyzed by death, they drop powerless at your side. Many a pious parent has wrestled with God for an ungodly son; nor got his answer until he had left the earth and been years in heaven. One day its door is thrown open. He looks round to see who comes in — there is his son! The father leaves his throne to rush into his arms; they embrace; and Jesus, seeing of the travail of his soul, and rejoicing over this trophy of his cross, hears in heaven that outburst of paternal joy, “My son that was dead is alive again, that was lost is found.”

III. The fruit of prayer.

The preacher stands up before his audience to proclaim salvation, and offer pardon to the guilty — to the guiltiest, by the blood of Jesus. By all that is sacred and holy, by all that is tender and terrible, by love to God and regard to themselves, he urges on them its cordial and immediate acceptance. Yet how often do the vacant eyes, and unmoved demeanour of hearers — so unlike persons under sentence of death getting tidings of a pardon — remind him of the question, Shall horses run upon the rock, shall a man plough tliero with oxen? A very profitless field! Time, besides shedding snows on our head, draws furrows on our brow; but it is not over bald mountain brows that the husbandman guides his plough. Cultivating the soil of the valley, he leaves the rocky summits to the eagle, to mists and clouds and roaring tempests.

Bolder than he, the preacher of the gospel casts the «eed of the word on stony hearts. Why not? Has not God encouraged him; saying. Is not my word a fire and hammer to break the stone in pieces? Yet, alas! how often does the result of his most solemn, most startling, most searching appeals but shew that he has run his horse on a rock, and ploughed there with oxen! — the only feeling elicited, temporary — like the the spark which the horse’s hoof strikes from the rock; dying the instant of its birth.

It is one thing, however, to address our speech to men, and another and much more hopeful thing to speak to God. In other words, it is one thing to preach, and an entirely difi’erent thing to pray. For who prays, never runs his horses on a rock, nor ploughs there with oxen. When the season has been cold and backward, when rains fell and prices rose, and farmers desponded and the poor despaired, I have heard old people, whose hopes, resting on God’s promise, did not rise and fall with the barometer, nor shift with shifting winds, say. We shall have harvest after all; and this you can safely say of the labours and fruits of prayer. The answer may be long in coming — -years may elapse before the bread we have cast on the waters (jomes back; but if the vision tarry, wait for it! Why not? We know that some seeds spring so soon almost as they are committed to the ground; but others lie buried for months; nor, in some cases, it is till years elapse that they germinate and rise, to teach us that what is dormant is not dead. Such it may be with prayer. Ere that immortal seed has sprung, the hand that planted it may be mouldering in the dust — the seal of death on the lips that prayed. But though you are not spared to reap the harvest, your prayers are not lost. They bide their time, God’s “set time.” For in one form or another, in this world or in the next, who sows in tears shall reap in joy. The God who puts his people’s tears into his bottle, will certainly never forget their prayers.

Consider what honour has God put on prayer! The question is not, What can it do? but. What has it not done? Has it not divided the sea; quenched the violence of fire; shut the mouths of lions; and opened the gates of Paradise? As your finger would do to that clock, did it touch the pendulum, prayer has gone up to heaven and stopped the sun. It has gone down into the tomb, and brought up the dead. It has bound up the clouds; and loosed them again. See the prophet’s servant yonder, looking seaward, on the top of Carmel. He descries a speck like a white sail on the rim of the deep. It rises; no bigger at first than a man’s hand, it grows, gathers, spreads, till it covers the whole dark vault of heaven; and now, with thunders roaring, lightning flashing, rain pouring from the skies, and foaming cascades leaping down the hills, the king laslies on his startled horses — flying before the tempest. Who or what wrought this welcome, sudden change? The prayers of that man who, with shaggy robe and girt-up loins, runs by the chariot, did it — shattered with thunder-bolts the bottles of the sky. “Elias,” says the apostle, “was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.”

Are we to expect such answers now? Well, we err more, perhaps, by expecting them too little than too much. When the State or Church appoints days of prayer for rain in dry, or for drought in wet seasons, how few go to church with the faith of that child who was observed going there prepared for rain. Though there was no cloud in the heaven, God was there; and would to God we prayed with more of the faith that replied to those that taunted her, and expressed surprise to see her prepared for a change of weather: “We are going to pray for rain, and I expect God will hear us, and send it.” Certain it is that if we expected more, we should get more. Who honours God with their faith, he will honour with his favours; and this is especially true of prayers that, seeking better harvests than sickles reap, plead such promises as these,” I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on thy seed, and my blessing upon thy offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, and as willows by the water

Prayer is the key that unlocks the door of
heaven — it is opened by men on their knees.

The Spirit yields to prayer. Look at our Lord’s baptism. Side by side John and he stand in Jordan’s stream. He who afterwards bowed his head to death, now bows it to a servant’s hand. Baptised by John — the greater by the less — he leaves the water; and it is when on the bank, where, Luke tells us, he engaged in prayer, that the eyes of the spectators catch a dove-like object, dropping with expanded wings till it rests upon his head; praying, he receives the Spirit. And how were the disciples engaged at Pentecost? That day of days found them all in one place; and in prayer. Suddenly, though no breath stirred the leaves of the aspen, or bent the reeds that stood in the shallows of the sleeping lake, there came a sound, as when the wind roars through the winter forests. Every man has started and raised his head in sudden alarm to cry, What is that? but is struck dumb; on every head is a tongue of fire — sign of the Spirit’s presence, and the power of prayer. Once more the disciples are met — met like a crew on deck when their vessel, at the mercy of the storm, is driving on the reef. The church is in imminent danger. The preaching of the gospel is forbidden. Hanging over destruction, his people cry to the Lord. The kings of the earth have set themselves, and the rulers taken counsel together against the Lord and his anointed; but he that sits in heaven laughs, the Lord has them in derision. Suddenly when the Church in her distress is (asting herself on God, for there is no help for her in man, the house where she is met is struck as by a reeling earthr quake — feels such shock as when a ship takes the sand. It rocks to its foundations; and now they who feared that they and the hopes of a lost world were to be buried in a common ruin, find themselves filled with the Holy Ghost. Who would be so filled, or would have others filled, let him pray. “To your tents, 0 Israel!” was an old cry; now, whether they seek their own or others’ salvation, let it be. To your knees, 0 men! The Spirit comes to the call of prayer.

Now is the time for it — the day; the hour. There is nothing too great you may not get in this world for asking; nor anything too little you shall not be refused in the next. Here, God gives pardon to the greatest sins, his saving mercy to the greatest sinners; but there, the man that now rejects the cross of Christ and the crown of glory, shall lift up his eyes in torment — nor get a drop of water to cool his tongue. Seek the Lord, therefore, while he is to be found; and continue steadfastly in prayer.