admitted that the idea of honour, though in itself an essential part of
Christian ethics, is much stronger outside the Churches than within
them." How far facts justify the criticism I will not stay to inquire;
but the very fact that a charge like this can be made should prove a
sharp reminder to us of the stringency of the demands which Jesus Christ
makes upon us. There is no kind of sound moral fruit which is to be
found anywhere in the wide fields of the world which He does not look
for in richer and riper abundance within the garden of His Church.

A great Christian preacher has given an admirable illustration of one
way in which we may examine ourselves in this matter. He has grouped
together a number of precepts from the writings of some of the great
heathen moralists, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then has
urged the question how far we who profess to be the disciples of a
loftier faith are true even to these ancient heathen ideals.[38]
Perhaps, however, this is not a method of self-examination which is open
to us all. But this, at least, we can do: we can test ourselves by that
moral law, which God gave to the Jews by Moses, and which Christ
reinterpreted in the Sermon on the Mount. "Thou shalt not kill, thou
shalt not commit adultery"--all these commandments in their literal
meaning we must observe; yet this is not enough; "do not even the
publicans the same?" and Christ's demand is, "What do ye more than
others?" The murderous thought, Christ says, that is murder; the lustful
look, that is adultery. "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your
enemies, and pray for them that persecute you." As we listen to words
like these must not we also confess, "Either these sayings are not
Christ's, or we are not Christians"?

(2) Christ's idea of righteousness is further defined by contrast with
that of the Pharisees: "Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven." What was the Pharisees' idea of religion?
Let us take the words which Christ Himself put into the lips of a
representative of his class: "God, I thank Thee, that I am not as the
rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get." This is a
full-length portrait of the finished Pharisee. Religion to him was a
round of prescribed ritual, a barren externalism, a subjection to the
dominion of the letter, which never touched the heart, nor bowed the
spirit down in penitence and humility before God. The Pharisee's whole
concern was with externals; but Christ declared that he who is only
right outwardly is not right at all. There is no such thing, He said, as
goodness which is not from within. The alms-deeds, the prayer, the
fasting of the Pharisee were all done before men, to be seen of them;
and so long as that which men saw was right and seemly, he was
satisfied. But Christ went back behind the outward act to the heart. A
man is really, He said, what he is there. You may hang grapes on a
thorn-bush, that will not make it a vine; you may put a sheep's fleece
on a wolf's back, but that will not change its wolfish heart. And men
are what they are within. Just as to get good fruit you must first of
all make the tree good, so to secure good deeds you must first make good
men. This was the truth which Pharisaism ignored; with what results all
the world knows. In the long history of man, it remains, perhaps, the
supreme illustration of the fatal facility with which religion and
morality are divorced when once the emphasis is laid upon the outward
and ceremonial instead of the inward and spiritual. All experience helps
us to understand how the system works. There is no deliberate intention
of setting ritual above righteousness, but it is so much easier to count
one's beads than to curb one's temper, so much easier to fast in Lent
than to be unswervingly just, that if once the easier thing gets
attached to it an exaggerated importance, fidelity in it is allowed to
atone for laxity in greater things, and the last result is Pharisaism,
where we see conscience concerned about the tithing of garden herbs, but
with no power over the life, and religion not merely tolerating but
actually ministering to moral evil. It was in the name of religion that
the Pharisees suffered a man to violate even the sanctities of the Fifth
Commandment, and to do dishonour to his father and mother. The righteous
man in their eyes was not he who loved mercy, and did justly, and walked
humbly with his God, but he who observed the traditions of the elders.
So that, as Professor Bruce says,[39] it was possible for a man to
comply with all the requirements of the Rabbis and yet remain in heart
and life an utter miscreant. "Outwardly," said Christ, "ye appear
righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity."
Is it any wonder that He should call down fire from heaven to consume a
system which had yielded such bitter, poisonous fruits as these?

But let us remember, as Mozley well says,[40] there are no extinct
species in the world of evil. The value for us of Christ's condemnation
lies in this, that it is a permanent tendency of human nature which He
is condemning. Pharisaism is not dead. Have I not seen the Pharisee
dressed in good broad-cloth and going to church with his Bible under his
arm? And have I not seen him sitting in church and reading the
twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and thinking to himself what
shockingly wicked people these men must have been of whom Christ spoke
such terrible words, and never once supposing that there is anything in
the chapter that concerns him? No, Pharisaism is not dead; and when we
read of those who devoured widows' houses and for a pretence made long
prayers, using their religion as a cloak for their villainy, let us
remember that Christ says to His disciples to-day, even as He said to
them centuries ago, "Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter
into the kingdom of heaven."


II


Thus far we have considered Christ's idea of righteousness only in
contrast with other ideas. When we seek to define it in itself we fall
back naturally on the words of the two great commandments which have
already been quoted: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;" and "Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself." Righteousness, Christ says, is love,
love to God and love to man.

But to them of old time it was said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour."
Where, then, is the difference between the old commandment and the new?
It lies in the new definition of "neighbour." The old law which said,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour," said also, "and hate thine enemy";
which meant that some are and some are not our neighbours, and that
toward those who are not love has no obligations. But Christ broke down
for ever the middle wall of partition, and declared the old distinction
null and void. In His parable of the Good Samaritan He taught that every
man is our neighbour who has need of us, and to whom it is possible for
us to prove ourselves a friend. As we have opportunity we are to do good
unto all men. The same lesson with, if possible, still greater emphasis,
Christ taught in the Upper Room: "A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another." A love that goes all the way with human need, that gives
not itself by measure, that is not chilled by indifference, nor thwarted
by ingratitude, that fights against evil until it overcomes it--such was
the love He gave, and such is the love He asks. And in that command all
other commands are comprehended. Christ might have made His own the
daring word of St. Augustine, "Love, and do what you like."

When first men heard this law of the heavenly righteousness how wondrous
simple it must have seemed in contrast with the elaborate scribe-made
law which their Rabbis laid upon them. Pharisaism had reduced religion
to a branch of mechanics, a vast network of rules which closed in the
life of man on every side, a burden grievous and heavy to be borne,
which crushed the soul under its weary load. This was the yoke of which
Peter said that neither they nor their fathers were able to bear it. Was
it any marvel that from such a system men should turn to Him who cried,
"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for My yoke is easy, and My
burden is light"? But if Christ's law of love is simpler it is also far
more exacting than the old law which it superseded. It has meshes far
finer than any that Pharisaic ingenuity could weave. Rabbinical law can
secure the tithing of mint and anise and cumin, the washing of cups and
pots, and many such like things; it can regulate the life of ritual and
outward observance; and after that it has no more that it can do. But
Christ's law of love is a mentor that searches out the deep things of
man. The inside of the cup and platter, the things that are within, the
hidden man of the heart--it is on these its eyes are fixed. It gives
heed both to the words of the mouth and the meditations of the heart.
And, sometimes, when the lips are speaking fair, suddenly it will fling
open the heart's door and show us where, in some secret chamber, Greed
and Pride and Envy and Hate sit side by side in unblest fellowship.
Verily this law of love is living and active, sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints
and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.

There is no room to do more than mention the fact which crowns the
revelation of this new law of righteousness. Christ's words about
goodness do not come to us alone; they come united with a life which is
their best exposition. Christ is all His followers are to be; in Him the
righteousness of the kingdom is incarnate. From henceforth the righteous
man is the Christ-like man. The standard of human life is no longer a
code but a character; for the gospel does not put us into subjection to
fresh laws; it calls us to "the study of a living Person, and the
following of a living Mind."[41] And when to Jesus we bring the old
question, "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal
life?" He does not now repeat the commandments, but He says, "If thou
wouldest be perfect, follow Me, learn of Me, do as I have done to you,
love as I have loved you."


III


Such, then, is the good life which Christ reveals, and to which He calls
us. To say that to Him we owe our highest ideal of righteousness, is
only to affirm what no one now seriously denies. John Stuart Mill has,
it is true, alleged certain defects against Christianity as an ethical
system, yet Mill himself has frankly admitted that "it would not be easy
now, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of
virtue from the abstract to the concrete, than to endeavour so to live
that Christ would approve our life." If Christ be not our one Master in
the moral world, it will at least be soon enough to discuss a rival's
claims when he appears; as yet there is no sign of him. But the point I
am most anxious to emphasize just now is not simply that Jesus has put
before us an ideal, the highest of its kind in the world, but that there
is nothing of any kind to be desired before it. To be good as Christ was
good, here in very truth is the _summum bonum_ of life, the greatest
thing in the world, that which, before all other things, a man should
seek to make his own, There are times, perhaps, in the lives of all of
us when we are tempted to doubt it--times when the kingdoms of this
world, the kingdoms of wealth and power and knowledge lie stretched at
our feet, and the whispering fiend at our elbow bids us bow and enter
in. But once again, if we be true men, the moment comes,

"When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,"

when the sacred, saving faith in righteousness returns, and we know that
Christ was right, that for ever and for ever it is true that better than
to be rich, or to be clever, or to be famous, is it to be true, to be
pure, to be good.

Yes, goodness is the principal thing; therefore get goodness, and with
all thy getting--at the price of all that thou hast gotten (such is the
true meaning of the words)[42]--get righteousness. Is this what we are
doing? Goodness is the first thing; are we putting it first? Day by day
are we saying to it, "Sit thou on my right hand," while we put all other
things under our feet? "Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if
I remember thee not; if I prefer not thee above my chief joy"--is this
the kind of honour that we are paying to it? "We make it our ambition,"
said St Paul, "to be well pleasing unto Him."[43] Where this is the
master ambition, all other lawful ambitions may be safely cherished and
given their place. But if some lesser power rule, whose right it is not
to reign over us, the end is chaos and night. "Seek ye first His
righteousness;" we subvert Christ's order at our peril. And this
righteousness must be sought. As men seek wealth, as men seek knowledge,
as men seek power, so must we seek goodness. "Wherefore giving all
diligence"--in no other way can the pearl of great price be secured; it
does not lie by the roadside for any lounger to pick up. "With toil of
heart and knees and hands," so only can the "path upward" and the prize
be won. "Blessed," said Jesus, "are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness." Blessed, He meant, are they who long more than anything
else to be good; for all such longing shall be abundantly satisfied.
Exalt righteousness, and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to
honour when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head a
chaplet of grace; a crown of beauty shall she deliver to thee.

It is fitting that a chapter on righteousness should follow one on sin,
for this may find some to whom the other made no appeal. At a meeting of
Christian workers held some years ago in Glasgow, the chairman invited
the late Professor Henry Drummond, who was present, though his name was
not on the programme, to say a few words. He accepted the invitation,
but said he would do no more than state a fact and ask a question. The
fact was this, that in recent revival movements, in which he had had
large experience, there were few indications of that deep and
overwhelming conviction of sin which had been so characteristic a
feature of similar revivals in past days. And this was the question, Did
it mean that the Holy Spirit was in any way modifying the method of His
operation? What answer the wise men of the meeting gave to the
Professor's question I do not know. But fact and question alike deserve
to be carefully pondered. The Spirit, when He is come, Christ said,
"will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of
judgment." "Will convict the world of righteousness"--have we not
sometimes forgotten this? Have we not put the full stop at "sin," as
though the Holy Spirit's convicting work ended there? Nevertheless,
there are many to-day whose religious life begins, not so much in a
sense of their own sin and guilt and need, as rather in the
consciousness of the glory and honour of Christ. It is what they find
within themselves which brings some men to Christ; it is what they find
in Him which brings others. Some are driven by the strong hands of stern
necessity; some are wooed by the sweet constraint of the sinless Son of
God. Some are crushed and broken and humbled to the dust, and their
first cry is "God be merciful to me a sinner"; some when they hear the
call of Christ leap up to greet Him with a new light in their eyes and
the glad confession on their lips, "Lord I will follow Thee
whithersoever Thou goest."

What, then, shall we say to these things? What but this, "There are
diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in
all." Travellers to the same country do not always journey by the same
route; and for some of the heavenly pilgrims the Slough of Despond lies
on the other side of the Wicket Gate. After all, it is of small moment
what brings a man forth from the City of Destruction; enough if he have
come out and if now his face is set toward the city which hath the
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

*       *       *       *       *




CONCERNING PRAYER


"Who seeketh finds: what shall be his relief
Who hath no power to seek, no heart to pray,
No sense of God, but bears as best he may,
A lonely incommunicable grief?
What shall he do? One only thing he knows,
That his life flits a frail uneasy spark
In the great vast of universal dark,
And that the grave may not be all repose.
Be still, sad soul! lift thou no passionate cry,
But spread the desert of thy being bare
To the full searching of the All-seeing eye:
Wait--and through dark misgiving, blank despair,
God will come down in pity, and fill the dry
Dead plain with light, and life, and vernal air."
J.C. SHAIRP.

*       *       *       *       *



X

CONCERNING PRAYER

"_What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for
a loaf, will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish,
will give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask
Him_?"--MATT. vii. 9-11.


There has been in our day much painful disputation concerning prayer and
the laws of nature. Whole volumes have been written to prove that it is
possible, or that it is impossible, for God to answer prayer. I am not
going to thresh out again this dry straw just now. Discussions of this
kind have, undoubtedly, their place; indeed, whether we will or no, they
are often forced upon us by the conditions of the hour; but they had no
place in the teaching of Jesus, and I do not propose to say anything
about them now. I wish rather, imitating as far as may be the gracious
simplicity and directness of the argument of Jesus which we have just
read, to gather up some of the practical suggestions touching this great
matter which are strewn throughout the Gospels alike in the precepts and
practice of our Lord.


I


First of all, then, let us get fixed in our minds the saying of Jesus
that "men ought always to pray and not to faint." The very form of the
saying suggests that Christ knew how easy it is for us to faint and grow
weary in our prayers. Men cease from prayer on many grounds. Some there
are in whom the questioning, doubting spirit has grown so strong that
for a time it has silenced even the cry of the heart for God. Some there
are who are so busy, they tell us, that they have no time for prayer;
and after all, they ask, Is not honest work the highest kind of prayer?
And some there are who have ceased to pray, because they have been
disappointed, because nothing seemed to come of their prayers. They
asked but they did not receive, they sought but they did not find, they
knocked but no door was opened to them; there was neither voice, nor any
to answer, nor any that regarded; and now they ask, they seek, they
knock no more. And some of us there are who do not pray because, as one
of the psalmists says, our soul "cleaveth unto the dust." The things of
God, the things of the soul, the things of eternity--what Paul calls
"the things that are above"--are of no concern to us; we have sold
ourselves to work, to think, to live, for the things of the earth and
the dust.

Nevertheless, be the cause of our prayerlessness what it may, Christ's
word remains true. Man made in the image of God ought always to pray and
not to faint. And even more than by His words does Christ by His example
prompt us to prayer. Turn, _e.g._, to the third Gospel. All the
Evangelists show us Jesus at prayer; but it is to Luke that we owe
almost all our pictures of the kneeling Christ. Let us glance at them as
they pass in quick succession before our eyes:

"Jesus having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened" (iii.
21).

"He withdrew Himself in the deserts, and prayed" (v. 16).

"It came to pass in these days, that He went out into the mountain to
pray; and He continued all night in prayer to God". (vi. 12).

"It came to pass, as He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him"
(ix. 18).

"It came to pass about eight days after these sayings, He took with Him
Peter and John and James and went up into the mountain to pray. And as
He was praying the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His
raiment became white and dazzling" (ix. 28, 29).

"It came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, that when He
ceased, one of the disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray, even
as John also taught his disciples" (xi. 1).

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you
as wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not"
(xxii. 32).

"And He kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if Thou be willing,
remove this cup from Me: nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done....
And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became as
it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground" (xxii. 41,
44).

"And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"
(xxiii. 34).

And if thus He, the Redeemer, prayed, how much greater need have we, the
redeemed, always to pray and not to faint?

"But we are so busy, we have no time." Then let us look at another
picture. This time it is Mark who is the painter. He has chosen as his
subject our Lord's first Sabbath in Capernaum. The day begins with
teaching: "He entered into the synagogue and taught." After teaching
comes healing: "There was in their synagogue a man with an unclean
spirit;" him, straightway, Jesus healed. Then, "straightway, when they
were come out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon and
Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a
fever, and straightway they tell Him of her; and He came and took her by
the hand, and raised her up." So the day wore on toward evening and
sunset, when "they brought unto Him all that were sick, and them that
were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at
the door. And He healed many that were sick with divers diseases and
cast out many devils." So closed at last the long day's busy toil. "_And
in the morning, a great while before day, He rose up and went out and
departed into a desert place, and there prayed_;" as if just because He
was so much with men the more did He need to be with God. _Laborare est
orare_, we say, "work is prayer." And, undoubtedly, "work may be
prayer"; but we are deceiving ourselves and hurting our own souls, if we
think that work can take the place of prayer. And if there is one lesson
that these earthly years of the Son of Man--busy as they were prayerful,
prayerful as they were busy--can teach us, it is surely this, that just
because our activities are so abounding, the more need have we to make a
space around the soul wherein it may be able to think, and pray, and
aspire.

One of the best-known pictures of the last half century is Millet's
"Angelus." The scene is a potato-field, in the midst of which, and
occupying the foreground of the picture, are two figures, a young man
and a young woman. Against the distant sky-line is the steeple of a
church. It is the evening hour, and as the bell rings which calls the
villagers to worship, the workers in the field lay aside the implements
of their toil, and with folded hands and bowed heads, stand for a moment
in silent prayer. It is a picture of what every life should be, of what
every life must be, which has taken as its pattern the Perfect Life in
which work and prayer are blent like bells of sweet accord.


II


Another saying of Christ's concerning prayer, not less fundamental is
this: "When ye pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven." How
essential to prayer is a right thought of God it can hardly be necessary
to point out. "When ye pray say----" what? All depends on how we fill
in the blank. Our thought of God determines the character of all our
intercourse with Him. If "God" is only the name which we give to the
vast, unknown Power which lies behind the visible phenomena of the
universe, if He is only a dim shadow projected by our own minds, or a
collection of attributes whose names we have learned from the Catechism,
our prayers will soon come to an end. When Jesus prayed He said always
"Father"; and the Father to whom He prayed, and whom He revealed, He it
is to whom our prayers should be offered.

This is a matter the practical importance of which it would be hard to
exaggerate. Think, _e.g._, of the questions concerning prayer which
would be answered straightway, had we but made our own Christ's thought
of God. We are all familiar with the little problems about prayer with
which some good people are wont to tease themselves and their friends
and their ministers: Is it right to pray for rain, for fine weather for
the recovery of health, for the success of some temporal enterprize, and
so forth? How shall we meet questions of this sort? Shall we draw a line
and say, all things on this side of the line we may pray about, all
things on that side of the line we may not pray about? This will not
help us. Rather we must keep Christ's great word before us: "When ye
pray, say, Father." There or nowhere is the answer to be found. Just as
every wise father seeks to train his child to make of him his confidant,
to have no secrets from him, to trust him utterly, and in everything, so
would God have us feel towards Him; as free, as frank, as unfettered,
should our fellowship with Him be. To put it under constraint, to fence
it about with rules, would be to rob it of all that gives it worth, And,
therefore, I cannot tell any man, and I do not want any man to tell me,
what we may pray for, or what we may not pray for. "When ye pray, say,
Father;" and for the rest let your own heart teach you. But if we are
left thus free shall we not ask many things which we have no right to
ask, which God cannot grant? Undoubtedly we shall, just as a boy of five
will ask many things that his father, because he loves him, must refuse.
Nevertheless, no wise father would wish to check the childish prattle.
There is nothing that he values more than just these frank,
uncalculating confidences, for he knows that it is by means of them that
the shaping hands of love can do their perfect work. And the remedy for
our mistakes in prayer is not a set of little man-made rules, telling us
what to pray for and what not to pray for, but rather a deeper insight
into, and a fuller understanding of, the glory and blessedness of the
Divine Fatherhood.


III


Passing now from these preliminary counsels concerning prayer, let us
note how great is the importance which, both by His precepts and His
example, Christ attaches to the duty of intercessory prayer. I have been
much struck of late in reading several books on this subject, to note
how one writer after another judges it needful to warn his readers
against the idea that prayer is no more than petition. What they say is,
of course, true; prayer is much more than petition. But, unless I
misread the signs of the times, this is not the warning which just now
we most need to hear. Rather do we need to be told that prayer is more
than communion, that petition, simple asking that we may obtain, is a
part, and a very large part of prayer. "Who rises from prayer a better
man," says George Meredith, "his prayer is answered." This is true, but
it is far from being the whole truth. The duty of intercession, of
prayer for others, is writ large on every page of the New Testament; but
intercession has simply no meaning at all unless we believe that God
will grant our requests as may be most expedient for us and for them for
whom we pray. Let me illustrate the wealth of Christ's teaching on this
matter by two or three examples.

(1) We have all read Tennyson's question--

"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 friends?"

For themselves and those who call them friends--but Christ will not
suffer us to stop there. "Bless them that curse you," He said; "pray for
them that despitefully use you." So He spoke, and on the Cross He made
the great word luminous for ever by His own prayer for His murderers:
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

(2) Christ prayed for His disciples and for His Church: "I pray for them
... neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on
Me through their word." "I will pray the Father and He shall give you
----." Only once are the actual words recorded, but they cover, we are
sure, great stretches of Christ's intercourse with God. And when once in
their work for Him they had failed, He puts His finger on the secret of
their failure thus: "This kind can come out by nothing save by prayer."
Do we pray for our Church? We find fault with it; but do we pray for it?
We blame its office--bearers and criticize its ministers; but do we pray
for them? We go to the house of God on the Sabbath day; but no fire is
burning on the altar, the minister has no message for us, we come away
no whit better than we went. Whose is the blame? Let the man in the
pulpit take his share; but is it all his? Must not some of it be laid at
the door of his people? How many of them during the week had prayed for
him, that his eyes might be opened and his heart touched, that as he sat
and worked in his study he might get from God to give to them? Dr. Dale
used to say that if ever he preached a good sermon, a sermon that really
helped men, it was due to the prayers of his people as much as to
anything he had done himself. If in all our churches we would but
proclaim a truce to our bickerings and fault-findings, and try what
prayer can do!

(3) Christ prayed for the children: "Then were there brought unto Him
little children that He should lay His hands on them, and pray.... And
He took them in His arms, and blessed them, laying His hands upon them."
It is surely needless to dwell on this. What man is there who, if he
have a child, will not speak to God in his behalf? "And all the people
said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God that we
die not.... And Samuel said unto the people, God forbid that I should
sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." God have mercy on him
who has little children who bear his name, but who never cries to heaven
in their behalf! "He blessed them," _i.e._ He invoked a blessing, God's
blessing, upon them. And we are sure the prayer was heard, and the
little ones were blessed. And will not God hear our prayers for our
children? When Monica, the saintly mother of Augustine, besought an
African bishop once and again to help her with her wilful, profligate
son, the good man answered her, "Woman, go in peace; it cannot be that
the child of such tears should be lost." "God's seed," wrote Samuel
Rutherford to Marion M'Naught about her daughter Grizel, "shall come to
God's harvest." It shall, for the promise holds, and what we have sown
we shall also reap.

(4) And, lastly, Christ prayed for individuals: "Simon, Simon, behold,
Satan asked to have you,--all of you," that is; the pronoun is plural--
"that he might sift you as wheat; but I made supplication for thee"--
"thee, Peter"; now the singular pronoun is used--"that thy faith fail
not." The words point to a definite crisis in the experience of Peter,
when the onset of the Tempter was met by the intercession of the
Saviour. To me Gethsemane itself is not more wonderful than this picture
of Christ on His knees before God, naming His loved disciple by name,
and praying that, in this supreme hour of his life, his faith should not
utterly break down. "Making mention of thee in my prayers"--does this
not bring us near to the secret of prevailing prayer? We are afraid to
be individual and particular; we lose ourselves in large generalities,
until our prayers die of very vagueness. There is surely a more
excellent way. "My God," Paul wrote to the Philippians, "shall
fulfil"--not merely "all your need," as the Authorized Version has it,
but--"every need of yours." There is a fine discrimination in the Divine
love which sifts and sorts men's needs, and applies itself to them one
by one, just as the need may be. And when in prayer we speak to God, let
it be not only of "all our need," flung in one great, careless heap
before Him, but of "every need of ours," each one named by its name, and
all spread out in order before Him.


IV


And as Christ teaches us to pray for others, so also does He teach us to
pray for ourselves. Two points only in this connection can be noted.

(1) Let us pray when we enter into our Gethsemane; for every life has
its Gethsemane. Some there are who have not yet entered it; they are
young, and their way thus far has teen among the roses and lilies of
life. But for them, too, the path leads to Gethsemane, and some day they
also will lie prostrate in an agony, under the darkening olive trees.
And some there are to whom life seems but one long Gethsemane. In that
dread agony God help us to pray! Nay, what else then can a man do but,
as Browning says, catch at God's skirts and pray? But that he can do.
Death may build its dividing walls great and high, such as our feet can
never scale; it cannot roof them over and shut us out from God. We
remember how it was with Enoch Arden, stranded on an isle, "the
loneliest in a lonely sea":--

"Had not his poor heart
Spoken with That, which being everywhere
Lets none, who speaks with Him, seem all alone,
Surely the man had died of solitude."

Were it not for the doors opened in heaven what should man that is born
of a woman do? But when in our Gethsemane we offer up "prayers and
supplications, with strong crying and tears," it is after Christ's
manner that we must pray. I said just now that there are some to whom
life seems one long Gethsemane. Can it be because hitherto they have
only prayed, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away
from me"? Not until with Christ we bow our heads and say, "Nevertheless,
not as I will, but as Thou wilt," will the iron gates unfold and the
shadows of the Garden lie behind us.

(2) "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." And if there be
some to whom my last word had little or no meaning, here, at least,
Christ speaks to all. And this time I have nothing of my own to add by
way of comment; but I copy out this passage from Charles Kingsley's
_Yeast_, for every young man who reads these words to lay to heart: "I
am no saint," says Colonel Bracebridge, "and God only knows how much
less of one I may become; but mark my words--if you are ever tempted by
passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels
call them, snares, and nets and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep you
down through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and hating
the chain to which you cling--in that hour pray--pray as if the devil
had you by the throat--to Almighty God, to help you out of that cursed
slough! There is nothing else for it!--pray, I tell you!"

*       *       *       *       *




CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES


"She, who kept a tender Christian hope,
Haunting a holy text, and still to that
Returning, as the bird returns, at night,
'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,'
Said, 'Love, forgive him:' but he did not speak;
And silenced by that silence lay the wife,
Remembering her dear Lord who died for all,
And musing on the little lives of men,
And how they mar this little by their feuds."
TENNYSON.

*       *       *       *       *




XI

CONCERNING THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES

"_Then came Peter, and said to Him, Lord, how oft shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times;
but, until seventy times seven._"--MATT, xviii. 21, 22.


This would seem to be plain enough, even though we had nothing more from
the lips of Jesus concerning the duty of forgiveness. In point of fact,
however, the lesson of these words is repeated a full half-dozen times
throughout the Gospels. It may be well, therefore, to begin by bringing
together our Lord's sayings on the subject.


I


We turn first to the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it was
said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say
unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you."
Then, in the Lord's Prayer we have the familiar petition, "Forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us." And it is
surely a fact full of significance that at the close of the prayer our
Lord should single out this one petition from the rest with this
emphatic comment: "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." The words
quoted thus far are taken from the first Gospel. Similar teaching is
found in the second and third. Thus, in Mark, we read: "And whensoever
ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that your
Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses;" and in
Luke: "If thy brother sin, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him.
And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, and seven times turn
again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him." Again, we have
the teaching recorded by Matthew, out of which Peter's question
sprang--"If thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between
thee and him alone; if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy
brother"--followed by the parable of the Unforgiving Servant, with its
solemn warning of inimitable doom: "So shall also My heavenly Father do
unto you, if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts."
And, finally, all these words are made fast for ever in the minds and
consciences of men, by the great act on the Cross when the dying
Redeemer prayed for the men who slew Him: "Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do."

The meaning of all this is unmistakable. No child could miss the point
of the solemn parable to which I have referred. At the same time, it may
not be out of place to point out that there are not a few instances in
which people may feel themselves wronged, which, nevertheless, do not
come within the scope of Christ's teaching about forgiveness. An
illustration will best explain my meaning. It sometimes happens, both in
business life and in the Church, that two men, equally honourable and
true, but with almost nothing else in common, are often thrown into each
other's company. They have to deal with the same facts, but they look
upon them with wholly different eyes, they approach them from wholly
different points of view. The results are obvious. There are not only
widely differing opinions, but occasional misunderstandings, and
sometimes sharper words than ought ever to pass between Christian men.
Now, to say broadly that one is right and the other wrong, that the one