Front matter (continued 2)

The materials sustaining that conclusion were abundant in the early years of my ministry; notably in one case I can never forget. On the first Sabbath evening of my ministry I was preaching on the words "Be ye reconciled to God." Amongst the listeners was one who had entered the house of prayer without any sense of alienation from God or hunger for His revelation, and, as she afterwards confessed, merely to please her sister. But "the Lord opened her heart to give heed to the things that were spoken," so that she forthwith sought and found peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nor did she only obtain peace. With Wordsworth she could say:

"I bent before Thy gracious throne And asked for peace with suppliant knee, And peace was given, nor peace alone, But faith and hope and ecstasy."

Faith and hope, ecstasy and prayer, were the outstanding features of her new life. She had little time for special acts of Christian service, and scant means wherewith to enrich the Church; but, according to the witness of those who had known her longest, her character was clad in entirely new charms, and her spirit was fired and filled with new energies. She grew in experience of the grace and love of God, and became at home with God in the deepest sense, and seemed rarely, if ever, absent from her chosen dwelling-place. Her strongest feeling was for God, all investing, all encircling; and with reverent freedom and sweet security she lived and moved and had her being in communion with the eternal Father. Prayer was not a task for specific occasions; it was the breath of her life. It was not a wrestle or a struggle; it was an uplifting of her being into a fellowship with God. It did not shrivel into a litany of petitions; it was sustained aspiration; and aspiration is a large part of achievement; it was deepest satisfaction with God, and His will and His work: and such satisfaction is itself a source of patient strength and a preparation for victory.

Nor was the effect limited. Her nature received a refinement, an elevation, a beauty that triumphed over the physical features, and shone out with a glory that is not seen on sea or shore. The expression of her face seemed to be from God. A transfiguring radiance came from within as she thought on the wonders and delighted in the treasures of the gospel of God. Hers was a noble life. Like Martha, she was engaged in "much serving;" but yet was never cumbered and worn with it, because, like Mary, she sat daily at the Master's feet, and listened to His words, and received His sustaining strength. She was as sweetly unselfish as the flowers, and gave herself and her "all" to Christ, like the widow of the gospels. Meekness and humility clothed her with their loveliest robes. I never knew a purer spirit. She always breathed the softness and gentleness of the Saviour, and yet I have seen her weak body quiver and throb with its anguish of desire for the salvation of the lost. Faithful unto death, she realised the support and joy of the Christian's hope, and gently as leaves are shed by the flower that has finished its course, she fell into the arms of Jesus; and as Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, was buried under the "oak of weeping" amid affectionate regrets and sweet memories, so this Christian servant was laid in the grave with tears of real sorrow from those whom she had served so faithfully and long, as well as from friends who had been gladdened and fortified in the faith of Christ by her sweet, earnest, and beautiful Christian life. That day is now far off, but the influence of her prayer-filled life still feeds faith in God as the Hearer and the Answerer of Prayer.

About the same time and in the same spiritual laboratory I was called to observe the following processes. A woman, the wife of a blacksmith, was led by the gospel of Christ into the joy of salvation. Her experience of the grace of God in Christ was vivid and full. She knew little of doubt concerning herself, but she was full of solicitude for her husband and children; for she had a very heavy burden to carry, and her heart was sore stricken. Her husband was a drunkard. When sober he was true, devoted, and loving; but when he fell into intemperance he became hard, harsh, and even violent. But never did the brave and trustful wife cease to hope or cease to pray. In the darkest hours she begged for the conversion of her husband, and felt sure that God would respond to her supplications. That was her habitual mood, her supreme desire, her living prayer; and I could see that this very disposition developed her saintliness, deepened her affection for her husband, and gave increased beauty to her family life, as well as added to her usefulness in the Church.

One day, in the course of my pastoral visits, I called at the blacksmith's home. Scarcely was the threshold crossed when the husband rushed in, wild, angry, and violent, the prey of intoxicants. But before he had proceeded far the wife approached him, flung her arms around him, called him by name, and said: "Ah, God will give you to me yet." Saint Ambrose told Monica, when she went to him, sad and desponding about her son, "God would not forget the prayers of such a mother," and Augustine came, though late in his young manhood, into the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. So I felt the earnest pleadings of this true wife and mother would not be forgotten of God, but that, according to her own beautiful saying, God would "give her husband to her;" for she did not think he was completely hers whilst he was under the dominion of intoxicants,—give him to her freed from that depraving and desolating slavery. And it was so. For he, too, became a Christian, and they together effectively served their generation according to the will of God, "turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God."

There recurs to me the image of a visitor who called one Sunday evening in 1862, and who wished to know what he was to do in order to control and suppress an ungovernable temper. For years it had tortured him past all bearing, and, what was worse, for years it had been a source of pain and discomfort in his home. When his anger was kindled he was by his own confession a terror to wife and children, and, seeing that he had recently become a Christian, he felt acutely the stain such actions fixed on garments that should have been unspotted by the world. "What must I do? I can't go on in this way, and yet though I feel it is wrong I can't help myself."

The first suggestion I ventured was based on the regard he had expressed for his pastor. "What would be the effect," said I, "on you, if I were to appear at the moment the storm was about to burst? Think!"

He thought, and then said, "It wouldn't burst I should stop it."

"Well, then, try this plan. Force yourself at the moment of peril into the conscious presence of God, and say, as you feel the uprising passion, 'O God, make me master of myself.' Pray that prayer; and pray, morning by morning, that you may so pray in your time of need; and in due season you will obtain the perfect mastery of yourself you seek." He promised. I watched. He prayed. He conquered; once, twice, thrice, and then failed; but he renewed the attempt, and triumphed again, and years afterwards I knew him as one of the most serene of men; and when he died, no phase of his character stood out more distinctively than his perfect self-control, and no fact in his life was remembered with deeper gratitude by his bereaved wife than that memorable victory won by prayer in the early days of his discipleship to the Lord Jesus.

From the beginning of my ministry I have made it my business to offer advice and aid to young men and maidens assailed with doubts and fears concerning the revelation of God in Christ, hindered at the outset by misconceptions of the "way of salvation," and perplexed by confused and contradictory teaching. Hundreds of young men (and within the last ten years especially, many young women) have described to me their difficulties as they have reached the stage described by Roscoe in the words, "There are times when faith is weak and the heart yearns for knowledge."

Here is a "case" chosen from a large number of similar facts. A young man came to tell me the somewhat familiar story, that the first fervours of his religious life had cooled down, his early raptures were gone, and the sense of peace and bounding freedom, and of all-sufficing strength in God, had departed with them. The certainties of the opening months or years of the Christian pilgrimage had given place to torturing questions, such as, "Am I not deceived? After all, is Christianity true? What are its real contents? What is inspiration? Did miracles happen?" etc., etc. Week after week we reasoned and argued, and months passed in a struggle whose usefulness no one could register, and whose issue no one could forecast.

But it "happened," as these conversations were going on, that he was "drawn" into what I may call a "prayer circle," privately carried on by a small group of young men who were not unacquainted with such conflicts as those which then engaged his powers. He joined it, and by-and-by felt its influence. He was lifted into another atmosphere, and breathed a clearer, sunnier air. His misgivings were slowly displaced by missionary enthusiasm, and his fears by a stronger faith; and yet he had not solved the problems suggested by the person of Christ, or found the secret of the Incarnation, or explained the mystery of the Atonement. But he had been led to set the full force of his nature on communion with God; and prayer had quickened the sense for spiritual realities, for the recognition of the infinite value of the human soul, and for the wonder and splendour of God's salvation. In that realm of prayer, character was altered, the aim of life was altered, the will had a new goal, and so the questions of the intellect fell into their true place in reference to the whole of the questions of life. Emerson writes, "When all is said and done, the rapt saint is found the only logician." It is he who thinks the most sanely and dwells nearest the central truths of life and being. It is he who becomes serenely acquiescent in the agnosticism of the Bible, and realises that revelation must contain many things past finding out, whilst the Spirit, who is the revealer, gives us the best assurances of the certitude and clearness of what it is most important for us to know.

So often have I seen this rest-giving effect on the intellect, of the lifting of the life into communion with God, that I cannot hesitate to regard it as a law of the life of man, and yet I must add that I do not think it wise to meet those who ask our aid in the treatment of their mental perplexities merely, or at first, with the counsel to pray. Most likely they will misunderstand it, and it will become to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. We had better, if we are able, meet them first on their own ground, that of the intellect, and meet them with frankness and sympathy, with knowledge and tact; and yet seek by the spirit we breathe, and the associations into which we introduce them, to raise them where the Saviour's beatitude shall become an experience: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Prayer has often proved itself an infallible recipe for dejection. A man of culture and wealth was for a long time pursued by what seemed to him an intolerable and invariable melancholy. He sought relief near and far, and sought in vain. He became a source of anxiety to his friends. He went away to Bellagio, goaded by the same restlessness, but its lovely surroundings did not heal, its soft airs did not soothe. No! All was dark and repellent. Even prayer seemed of no use. God had forgotten him. He was cast off as reprobate. His soul was disquieted within him. The burden of his misery was more than he could carry. He threatened to take away his life. But in his despair he still clung to his God; and at last, as in this desperate, and yet not altogether hopeless or prayerless mood, he read a sermon on "Elijah as a brave prophet tired of life;" hope was reborn and joy restored, and as Bunyan's pilgrim lost his burden at the cross, so this Elijah escaped from his tormentors, and came forth and dwelt in the light of God's countenance. It was the prayer of a weak and struggling faith; but God did not turn it away, nor reject the voice of his supplication.

What abundant witness that

"More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of"

could be supplied by pastors and elders who have visited the widow and the fatherless, the sick and suffering in their afflictions. One picture comes to me from the crowded past, of a strong and victorious, though much enduring saint. Crippled by disease, she did not rise from her bed unaided for more than seven years. She was always in pain, sometimes heavy and dull, but not infrequently keen and sharp. Yet through all these years, she not only did not complain, but she had such an overflow of quiet cheerfulness and of deep interest in life that she distributed her gladness to others and made them partakers of her serenity. You could not detain her in talk about herself, her ailments, her broken plans, her manifold disappointments. No! she would compel you to talk of the Church, its schools, its missions, its various activities; of societies and movements for getting rid of social evils, such as intemperance and impurity. Sometimes the theme was last Sunday's sermons, or those in preparation for the next; but rarely herself. There she lay with a patience that was never ruffled, a serenity rarely if ever disturbed, a forgetfulness of self bright and fresh, a solicitude for others deep and full, and a fellowship with God not only unbroken, but so inspiring as to make the sick-room a sanctuary radiant with His presence. Prayer led her to the fountains of divine joy, daily she drank and was refreshed.

So I set down a few tested, verified facts from the early part of a ministry of over thirty-eight years; facts chosen from amongst many, and in substance repeated again and again during recent, but not yet reportable years.

X

By the Very Rev. G. D. BOYLE, M.A. Dean of Salisbury

"WHAT was it that struck you most in that sermon on the character of St. Paul?" said Bishop Patteson to a friend at Oxford, who had been with him listening to a sermon preached before the University by a very remarkable man, who has now passed away. "Those two sentences," said his friend, "in which he said there were two great powers in the world, the power of personal religion, and the power of prayer." When I told this many years afterwards to one of the best parish priests I have ever known, he gave me, from his own experience, some instances of answers to prayer which are certainly worth reading.

Shortly after he had entered Holy Orders, he joined a clerical society. He was greatly pleased with three of the younger members, but thought from their conversation after the meeting that they were too fond of amusements. As he walked home he spoke of this to an elderly clergyman, who said, "Let you and me make for them special prayer, that they may take a more serious view of their calling." Some time afterwards my friend happened to see one of these three brother clergymen at a time of great sorrow. He told him that he had resolved to give up certain amusements, which he thought at one time harmless. Some time afterwards the other two openly declared that they had taken a similar course, and my friend did not scruple to avow his belief that the after lives of these three men, all of high family, and all remarkable for their zeal as clergymen, was a direct answer to special intercession.

He told me of a still more striking instance. Two men, who had been friends at college, met after many years abroad. The one said to the other, "When you were at Oxford, you told me you were very indifferent as to religion, so I suppose you will not go with me this morning to the English service." "But I certainly will," said his friend. "I have given up all that sort of thing; I left off praying for years, in the belief that as God knows everything it was needless to pray, but an impulse came upon me after hearing Baron Parke's account of a sermon he heard Shergold Boone preach, and I am now a communicant." "Then, dear——," said his friend, "I think my prayer is answered, for I have never ceased since Oxford days to ask that you might have the happiness I enjoy."

These two are surely remarkable instances of answers to special prayer for spiritual benefit.

What shall be said of the faithful man who, through his own effort, maintained a small but efficient orphanage? From no fault of his own his supplies ceased. There came into his mind some words of Edward Irving's about the Fatherhood of God. He made a special petition for the relief of his poor children. On his return home he found a letter containing a request that the future welfare of his home should be ensured by a permanent endowment.

"How could you keep your temper through all the vexatious dispute of to-night's debate?" was the question asked of Lord Althorpe by his most intimate friend, after a fierce discussion on the Reform Bill. "I always ask for strength before going to the House," was the answer; "and to-day I asked for special strength, for I knew that party spirit ran high."

Many years ago I worked as a curate in the district which had seen the first labours of the excellent Bishop of Wakefield, whose sudden removal from active work will long be deeply mourned by the Church of England. When he left Kidderminster for a country parish, he gave a New Testament to a young man who had at one time promised well, but who fell into bad company. "I shall make you the subject of special prayer," said the Bishop, on wishing him good-bye. Some years afterwards I told the Bishop that his advice had not been thrown away, and his words were, "I humbly hope my prayer was heard."

Bishop Mackenzie told a friend of mine that he had asked for some change in the life of two favourite pupils at Cambridge. They were not in the habit of going to University sermons, but they went to hear one of Bishop Selwyn's famous series in 1854. One of them became an eminent clergyman, and the other died a missionary in India.

One more instance will suffice. An attack upon the divinity of Christ was published some years ago by one who had been trained in a very different way. His former tutor, who had a very great love for him, asked a few friends not to forget him. As the tutor was dying, he had the satisfaction of hearing that the man he had known and loved from childhood had returned to the faith of a child.

I believe that all who have had considerable experience in parochial work could give many instances of special answers to prayer. In recent years many have come forward to offer themselves for labor at home and abroad. The present occupation of many minds with the difficulties of belief, the revelations made by earnest thinkers like Romanes, the questions raised in such lives as the late Master of Balliol's, the earnest longings for some reconciliation between the men of science and the men of faith, may all surely be accepted as in some degree answers to the prayers and aspirations of all who hope that in the Church of the future there may be found a simple faith, an enduring charity, and a belief in the unchangeable strength of an unchangeable Saviour.

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Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows: Page 86: liliputian changed to lilliputian

Errors in punctuation have been corrected without note.