"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity."--Is. lvii. 15.
I HAVE had no little difficulty in finding a fit text,
and a fit title, for my present discourse. The
subject of my present discourse has been running in
my mind, and has been occupying and exercising
my heart, for many years; or all my life indeed.
And even yet, I feel quite unable to put the truth
that is in my mind at all properly before you. My
subject this morning is what I may call, in one
word,--but a most inadequate and unsatisfactory
word,--the Geometry of Prayer. That is to say,
the directions and the distances, the dimensions
and the measurements that, of necessity, enter into
all the conceptions of our devotional life. "Man
never knows how anthropomorphic he is," says
Goethe. That is to say, we do not enough reflect
how much we measure everything by ourselves.
We do not enough reflect how much we measure
God Himself by ourselves. Nor can we help ourselves
in that respect. If we are to measure God
Nor are we to take blame to ourselves on that
account. For that is our very nature. That is
how we have been made by our Maker. That is
the law of our creation, and we cannot set that law
aside; far less can we rise above it. God Himself
speaks to us in the language of men, and not in the
language of the Godhead. In our reason, and in
our conscience, and in His Word, and in His Son,
God speaks to us in the language of men. He
anthropomorphises Himself to us, in order that we
may see and believe all that, concerning Himself,
which He intends-us to receive and believe. And
we must go to Him in the same way in which He
comes to us. All our approaches to God, in prayer
and in praise, must be made in those forms of
thought and of speech, in those ideas and conceptions,
that are possible to us as His creatures. All
the same, it is well for us to keep this warning well
in mind, that we never know how anthropomorphic
we are, in all our approaches to Him Whom
The moral and spiritual world is essentially and
fundamentally different from the physical and
material world. The geographical and astronomical
dimensions and distances of the material
world bear no manner of relation at all to the
dimensions and the distances--so to call them--of
the spiritual world. We speak of Roman miles
and of German miles and of English miles, we speak
of geographical or of nautical, when we take
our measurements of the material world. But
the distances and the directions of the moral
and spiritual world cannot be laid down and limited
in such miles as these. When Holy Scripture
speaks of the "highest heaven," it does not speak
mathematically and astronomically, but intellectually,
morally and spiritually. The highest heaven
is not so called because it is away up above and
beyond all the stars that we see. It is called the
highest heaven, because it is immeasurably and
inconceivably above and beyond us in its blessedness
and in its glory; in its truth, in its love, in its
peace, and in its joy in God. And on the other
hand, the deepest hell, that the Bible so often
warns us against, is not some dark pit sunk away
down out of sight in the bowels of the earth. The
true bottomless pit is in every one of us. That
horrible pit, with its miry clay, is sunk away down
Now to expound and illustrate some outstanding
Scriptures on prayer,--in the light of this great
principle,--take, first, this fundamental Scripture--"Our
Father which art in Heaven." Now Heaven,
here, is not the sky. It is not the heaven of sun
and moon and stars. Heaven here is the experienced
and enjoyed presence of God,--wherever
that is. Heaven here is our Father's house,--wherever
that is: Heaven is high up above the
earth,--yes; but let it be always remembered and
realised that it is high up, as Almighty God is high
up, in His Divine Nature, above mortal man in his
human nature. It is high up as goodness is high
And then, to take an illustration of all this from
the opposite pole of things: "And not many days
after, the younger son gathered all together, and
took his journey into a far country, and there wasted
his substance with riotous living." Every intelligent
child, who is paying attention, knows that
the far country into which that prodigal son went,
was not far away from his home, as China and
India, Africa and America are far away from Edinburgh.
He did not travel to that far country by
any caravan of camels, or by any ship with sails.
Then again, take this for another illustration of
my morally geometrical and spiritually topographical
argument. "Out of the depths have I
cried unto Thee, O Lord. Out of the belly of hell
cried I. Out of an horrible pit, out of the miry
clay." Now just what depths were these, do you
suppose? Where were those depths dug? And
how deep were they? Were they like the dungeon
of Malchiah, the son of Hammelech, that was in
the court of the prison? Oh no! When Jeremiah
sank in that deep mire he was in a clean and a sweet
bed compared with that which every sinner digs
Then again,"Come unto Me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden." Now, just how do we come
to Christ? We come in this way. Not on our
feet, but on our knees. "Not on our feet," says
Augustine, "but on our affections." When we are
burdened in our minds; when we are oppressed
with manifold cares and sorrows; when we are
ill-used, humiliated, despised, trampled upon;
when we are weary of the world and of ourselves;
and then, when, instead of rebelling and raging
and repining, we accept our lot as laid on us by
God, and according to His invitation take all our
burden to Christ in prayer,--that is the way to
come to Him. That is to say, we come from
pride to humility; and from a heart tossed with
tempest to a harbour of rest and peace; and from
rebellion to resignation; and from a life of unbelief
to a life of faith and love. Come unto Me, says
Christ to us, for I have all that rest, and all that
And it is in this same spiritual and emotional,
and not in any astronomical or topographical sense,
that the sorrowful prophets and psalmists cry
continually, "Bow down Thine ear, O Lord, and
hear me." When you are lying, quite prostrate,
on your sick bed; and when you can only whisper
your wants, and scarcely that; then your doctor
and your nurse bow down their ear to hear your
whispered prayer. And so it is with your sick soul.
"Bow down Thine ear, O God," you sigh and
say. "Bow down Thine ear, and hear me; for I
am brought very low. I am full of pain and sores;
I am full of sin and death." "No poor creature,"
you say,"was ever so fallen and so broken, and so
far beyond all help of man as I am." And you
continue to sigh and cry, night and day; till at
last you burst out with this song, "I waited
patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me
And it is in the same moral and spiritual, and
neither local nor topographical sense, that it is so
often said that God is nigh to such-and-such men,
and is far off, and turned away, from such-and-such
other men. As in the text: "
And again; in the same moral and spiritual and
not locomotive sense, David has this: "
Now, my brethren, much and long as I have
thought on this subject, and with care and labour
as I have composed this discourse, I am keenly
sensible of how immature and unfinished my treatment
of this great topic has been. And then,
such subjects can only be set before a specially
intelligent and a specially interested and a
specially devotional audience. I entirely believe
that I have such an audience, to a great extent,
and therefore, I hope that you will take away
with you these imperfect reasonings and illustrations
of mine this morning; and will faithfully
and thoughtfully and perseveringly apply
them to your own reading of the devotional parts
of Holy Scripture, as well as to your own public
and private exercises of prayer and praise. The
subject demands and deserves all my might and
all your might too--both as preacher and hearers;