XX
IMAGINATION IN PRAYER
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. i.
"Full of eyes."--
Rev. iv. 8.
I NEVER see, or hear, or speak, or write the word
"imagination" without being arrested and recalled
to what Pascal and Butler and Edwards have all
said, with such power and with such passion, on the
subject of imagination. Pascal--himself all compact
of imagination as he is--Pascal sets forth
again and again a tremendous indictment against
the "deceits" and "deceptions" of the imagination.
Butler also, in few but always weighty words,
stigmatises the imagination as "that forward and
delusive faculty." While Jonathan Edwards, in
his own masterful way, would almost seem to have
given the death-blow to the use of the imagination
in all matters of personal and experimental religion.
But as to Butler,--that great author's latest and
best editor, in two paragraphs of really fine criticism,
has clearly brought out that what Butler calls
"the errors of the imagination" are not errors of
the imagination at all, but are the errors of
unbridled fancy and caprice, and of an unbalanced
and ill-regulated judgment. "It seems probable,"
so sums up Butler's venerable editor, "that this
is one of the rare instances in which Butler, relaxing
the firmness of his hold, forgets himself, and assumes
a licence in the use of words." And then, the editor
turns the tables on his admired author by going
on to say that, in felicity of imaginative illustration,
Butler is the equal of Macaulay himself; while,
in some other of the exercises of the imagination,
Butler is even above Burke.
What, then, you will ask,--with all that,--what
exactly, and in itself, and at its best, is the imagination?
Well, come back for a moment to the very
beginning of all things, if you would have the best
answer to that question. And, then, I will answer
that question by asking and answering another
question. "How did God create man?"--"God
created man," I am answered, "male and female,
after His own image, in knowledge, righteousness,
and holiness, with dominion over the creatures."
Our understanding, then, our mind and our memory,
are both so many images to us of the Divine Mind.
Our conscience, again, is an inward voice to us,
impressing upon us an imprint of the Divine
Righteousness, and the Divine Law. Our will, also,
and the Divine Will, are of the same Divine Substance.
And as for our heart--it is "a copy, Lord,
of Thine." And then, in his imagination, man
possesses, and exercises in himself, a certain, and
that a not very far-off likeness of the Divine Omnipresence,
and the Divine Omniscience. For, by his
imagination, a man can look behind, and before,
and around, and within, and above. By his
imagination a man can go back to the beginning ere
ever the earth was. One man has done it. Moses
has done it. And what Moses has done to this
earth, that one day will not be remembered nor come
into mind,--all
that John, Moses' fellow in imagination,
has done to the new heaven and the new earth.
The imagination, then, whatever else it is, is not
that "forward, ever-intruding and delusive faculty":
it is not that "author of all error," as Butler, so
unlike himself, so confuses and miscalls it. Nor is
it what Pascal so lashes to death with his splendid
invective. Nor is it imagination at all, as we have
to do with it to-day, that Edwards so denounces
in his
Religious Affections.
Imagination, as God in His goodness gave it at
first to man,--imagination is nothing less than the
noblest intellectual attribute of the human mind.
And his imagination is far more to every spiritually-minded
man than a merely intellectual attribute
of his mind. I shall not need to go beyond Pascal
himself,--so splendidly endowed with this splendid
gift. "Imagination," says Pascal, "creates all
the beauty, and all the justice, and all the happiness
that is in the heart of man." The imagination,
then, must not be made to bear the blame that
really belongs to those men who have prostituted
it, and have filled its great inward eyes full of
visions of folly and sin: when they should have set
the Lord always before their inward eyes, with all
His works in nature, and in grace, and in glory.
Because there is only one of a city, and two of a
family, who ever employ their inward eyes aright,
--are the inward eyes of those men to be plucked
out who have on their inward eyes an unction from
the Holy One? No. A thousand times, No!
"Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous
things out of Thy law. I am a stranger in
the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me."
If, then, you would learn to pray to perfection,--
that is to say, to pray with all that is within you,--
never fail, never neglect, to do this. Never once
shut your bodily eyes and bow your knees to begin
to pray, without, at the same moment, opening
the eyes of your imagination. It is but a bodily
service to shut our outward eyes, and not at the
same moment open the eyes of our inner man.
Do things like this, then, when you would be in the
full spirit of prayer. Things, more or less, like this.
"I speak as a child." Let your imagination
sweep up through the whole visible heavens, up to
the heaven of heavens. Let her sweep and soar
on her shining wing, up past sun, moon, and stars.
Let her leave Orion and the Pleiades far behind
her. And let her heart swell and beat as she says
such things as these to herself: "He made all
these things.
He, Whom I now seek. That is
His Sun. My Father made them all. My Mediator
made them all to the glory of His Father.
And He is the heir of all things. Oh, to be at
peace with the Almighty! Oh, never again for one
moment to forget or disobey, or displease Him!
Oh, to be an heir of God, and a joint heir with
Jesus Christ! Oh, to be found among the sons and
the daughters of God Almighty!"
At another time, as you kneel down, flash, in a
moment,--I still speak as a child,--the eyes of your
heart back to Adam in his garden, and with the
image of God still in all its glory upon him: and
to Abraham over Sodom; and to Moses in the
cleft of the rock; and to David in the nightwatches;
and to Jesus Christ all night on the
mountain top--and your time will not be lost.
For, by such a flash of your imagination, at such
a moment, the spirit of grace and supplications will
be put in complete possession of your whole soul.
Never open your eyes any morning without, that
moment, seeing God and saying, "I laid me down
and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me."
And never lie down without saying, "I will both lay
me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only
makest me to dwell in safety." Never set out on
a journey till you have said to God and to your
own soul, "The Lord shall preserve thy going
out and thy coming in from this time forth, and
even for evermore." And never so much as say
grace at table, however short time you have to say
it in, without seeing Him: in the twinkling of an
eye, be for one moment, if no more, with Him who
spreads your table, and makes your cup to run over.
In short, be sure to get a true sight and a true hold
of God, in some way or other, before you begin either
prayer or praise. There is nothing in this world so
difficult. The time it takes, sometimes, and the
toil, and the devices, and the instrumentalities--you
would not believe: because no word in all the Bible
better describes us when we are at prayer, and at
praise, and at table than this: "Without God"; and
this: "Their hearts are far from Me." Be sure,
then--with all the help that heaven and earth,
that God and man can give you--be sure you get
your eyes and your hands on God in your prayer.
You may begin and end your prayer without that--if
you are in a hurry; and if you have no time or
taste to give to Him Who will be honoured, and
waited on, and well pleased with you. But, if so,
you need not begin. It is not prayer at all. In
your audience of an earthly sovereign, you would
not grudge or count up the time and the pains and
the schooling beforehand. You would not begin
to speak to him while yet you were in the street,
or on the stair, and out among the common crowd.
You would keep your cause in your heart till you
were in his presence: and then, when you saw
him sitting on his throne high up above you, you
would then fall down before him, and would fill
your mouth with arguments.
Never say any of your idle words to Almighty
God. Say your idle words to your equals. Say
them to your sovereigns. But, never, as you shall
answer for it,--never, all your days,--to God. Set
the Lord always before you. Direct your prayer
to Him, and look up. Better be somewhat too
bold and somewhat unseemly than altogether to
neglect and forget Almighty God. Better say that
so bold saying,--"I will not let Thee go," than
pray with such laziness and sleepiness and stupidity
as we now pray. Look for God, and look at God:
till you can honestly say to Him, with Dr. Newman,
a great genius and a great saint, that there are now,
to you, two and two only supreme and luminously
self-evident beings in the whole universe, yourself
and your Creator. And, when once you begin to
pray in that way, you will know it. Every prayer
of yours like that will, ever after, leave its lasting
mark upon you. You will not long remain the
same man. Praying, with the imagination all
awake, and all employed--such praying will soon
drink up your whole soul into itself. You will
then "pray always." It will be to you by far the
noblest and the most blessed of all your employments
in this present world. You will pray
"without ceasing." We shall have to drag you out of
your closet by main force. You will then be
prayerful "over much." "Whether in the body
I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I
cannot tell: God knoweth." Such will you all
become when you accustom your inward eyes to
see and to brood continually on the power, and on
the greatness, and on the goodness, and on the
grace and on the glory of God.
Yes, but all the time, what about this?--you
will ask: what about this--that "no man hath
seen God at any time"? Well,--that is true, and
well remembered, and opportunely and appropriately
brought forward. Whatever else is true or
false, that is true. That, all the time, abides the
deepest and the surest of truths. And thus it was
that the Invisible Father sent His Son to take our
"opaque and palpable" flesh, and, in it, to reveal
the Father. "And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." And it
is this being "made flesh" of the Son of God that
has enabled us to see God. It is the birth and the
whole life, and the words, and the works, and the
death, and the resurrection, and the ascension, and
the revelation from heaven again of Jesus Christ--it
is all this that has for ever opened up such new
and boundless worlds which the Christian imagination
may visit, and in which she may expatiate and
regale herself continually.
The absolute and pure Godhead is utterly and
absolutely out of all reach even of the highest
flights of the imagination of man. The pure and
unincarnated Godhead dwells in light which no
man's imagination has ever seen even afar off, or
ever can see. But then, hear this. "He that hath
seen Me hath seen the Father." Well, if that is
true, come now! Awake up, O my baffled and
beaten-back imagination! Awake, and look at
last upon thy God! Awake, and feast thyself for
ever on thy God! Bathe, and sun, and satiate thyself
to all eternity, in the sweetness and in the
beauty and in the light, and in the glory of thy God!
There is nothing, in earth or in heaven, to our
imagination now like the Word made flesh. We
cannot waste any more, so much as one beat of
her wing, or one glance of her eye, or one heave
of her heart on any one else, in heaven or earth, but
the Word made flesh. "Whom have I in heaven
but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I
desire beside Thee." There is a cold and heartless
proverb among men to this effect: "Out of sight,
out of mind." And this cold and heartless proverb
would be wholly true--even of believing men--if
it were not for the divine offices and the splendid
services of the Christian imagination. But the
truly Christian imagination never lets Jesus Christ
out of her sight. And she keeps Him in her sight
and ever before her inward eyes in this way. You
open your New Testament--which is her peculiar
and most delightful field,--you open that Book of
books, say, at the beginning of the Sermon on the
Mount. And, by your imagination, that moment
you are one of Christ's disciples on the spot, and are
at His feet. And all that Sermon you never once
lift your eyes off the Great Preacher. You hear
nothing else, and you see nothing else, till He shuts
the Book and says: "Great was the fall of the
house,"--and so ends His sermon. All through
His sermon you have seen the working of His face.
In every word of His sermon, you have felt the
beating of His heart. Your eye has met His eye,
again and again, till you are in chains of grace and
truth to Him ever after. And then, no sooner has
He risen up, and come down the hill, than a leper,
who dared not go up the hill, falls down at His feet,
and says, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make
me clean!" And all your days, ever since that
Sermon, you are that leper. All that day you have
been more and more like that leper, till now, as that
day closes, you are like him nigh unto death. You
worship Christ like the leper. He is beside you.
He stands over you. You feel, as never before,
the leprosy of sin. It fills full your polluted heart.
The diseased flesh of that poor leper is the flesh
of a little child compared with you and with your
heart. Till in a more than leper-like loathing at
yourself, and a more than leper-like despair of
yourself, you bury your face before His feet, and
cry to Him: "But, Lord, if Thou only wilt, Thou
canst make me clean!"
And so on--as often as, with your imagination
anointed with holy oil, you again open your New
Testament. At one time, you are the publican: at
another time, you are the prodigal: at another
time, you are Lazarus, in his grave, beside whose
dead body it was not safe or fit for a living man to
come: at another time, you are Mary Magdalene:
at another time, Peter in the porch: and then at
another time, Judas with the money of the chief
priest in his hand, and afterwards with his halter
round his neck. Till your whole New Testament
is all over autobiographic of you. And till you can
say to Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and to John
himself: Now I believe; and not for your sayings
so much; for I have seen Him myself, and have
myself been healed of Him, and know that this is
indeed the Christ of God, and the Saviour of the
World. Never, then, I implore you, I demand of
you--never, now, all the days and nights that are
left to you--never open your New Testament till
you have offered this prayer to God the Holy
Ghost: "Open Thou mine eyes!" And then, as
you read, stop and ponder: stop and open your
eyes: stop and imagine: stop till you actually see
Jesus Christ in the same room with you. "Lo!
I am with you alway!" Ask Him, if He hides
Himself from you, ask Him aloud,--yes, aloud,--
whether these are, indeed, His words to you, or no.
Expect Him. Rise up, and open to Him. Salute
Him. Put down your book. Put down your light,
and then say such things as these--say: "Jesus
Christ! Son of David! Son of Mary! Carpenter's
Son! Son of God! Saviour of Sinners,
of whom I am chief!" Speak it out. Do not be
afraid that both men and devils hear thee speaking
to thy Saviour. What about them all when thou
art alone with the Son of God? And, besides, all
men are asleep. "Art thou, in very truth, here,
O Christ? Dost
Thou see
me? Dost
Thou hear
me? Yes! Thou art
here! I am
sure of it. I
feel
it. O blessed One! O Son of the Highest! I am
not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my
roof. But Thou art here!
Here, of all the houses
in the whole city! And, here, with
me--O my
Saviour:
with me of all men in the whole city!"
Fall at His feet, kiss His feet. Kiss His feet till thy
lips come upon an iron nail in them: and, after
that, thou wilt know, of a truth, Who He is, that
is with thee in the night-watches!
But your absolutely highest, and absolutely
best, and absolutely boldest use of your imagination
has yet to be told, if you are able to bear it, and
are willing to receive it. It is a very high and a very
fruitful employment of your imagination to go back
and to put yourself by means of it into the place of
Adam, and Abraham, and Moses, and Job, and
Peter, and Judas, and the Magdalene, and the thief
on the cross. But, to put out this magnificent
talent to its very best usury, you musttake the
highest boldness in all the world, and put yourself
in the place of CHRIST HIMSELF. Put yourself and
all thatis within you into the Hand of the Holy
Ghost, and He will help you, most willingly and
most successfully, to imagine yourself to be Jesus
Christ. Imagine yourself, then, to be back in
Nazareth, where He was brought up. Imagine
yourself,--and show to your son and your Sunday
school scholar the way to imagine himself,--sitting
beside Joseph and Mary every Sabbath day in that
little synagogue. Imagine yourself to be the
carpenter's son, as He was. Imagine yourself at
Jordan at John's great awakening of the dry bones,
and then at John's Baptism. Imagine yourself
fighting the devil in the wilderness with nothing
but fasting and praying and the Word of God for
weapons. Imagine yourself without where to lay
your head. Imagine all your disciples turning
against you and forsaking you. Imagine the upper
room, and the garden, and the arrest and the
Cross, and the darkness, and "My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Did you ever
imagine yourself to be crucified? Paul did.
And the imagination made him the matchless
apostle of the Cross that he was. And then, imagine
yourself Christ risen, and in glory, and looking down
on
your heart, and on
your life, and on
your closet,
and on
your bed. Imagine Him seeing
you,--your
mind, your heart, your inspiration, your motives,
your intentions, your thoughts:--all you think,
and all you say, and all you do. And then,--I
challenge you to imagine what HE must be thinking
and feeling, and making up His mind to-day as to
what He is to say, and to do, to you; and when!
What would you say about yourself, if you were in His
place,--if you had died on the tree for such sins as
yours, and then saw yourself what, all this time,
you are, having no wish and no intention ever to
be otherwise? I think you would throw down
your office. I feel sure you would wash your hands
of yourself. You would say, "Let him alone!"
You would say "Cut it down! Why cumbereth
it the ground?" I will tell you literally and
exactly what you would say. From God's word
I will tell you what any honest and earnest and
wearied-out and insulted man would say, and
what may this moment, for anything you know, be
said over you from the great white throne of God.
"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have
stretched out My hand, and no man regarded....
I will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when
your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation,
and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind....For
that they hated knowledge, and did not
choose the fear of the Lord." Imagine the Lamb
in His wrath saying
that! And imagine yourself
dying, and not knowing at threescore and ten how
to pray! Imagine yourself at the river, and no one
there to meet you--and no one to say to you, "I
will be with thee"! Imagine the Judge in His hot
anger saying it;--and shutting the door--"I
never knew you"! And then, imagine with all
your might of imagination--imagine that, by an
unparalleled act of God's grace, you are sent back
again to this world, just for one more year, just
for one more week, just for one more Sabbath day
or Sabbath night! O prayer-neglecting sinner!
O equally prayer-neglecting child of God! One
more Sabbath day of the Mercy-seat, and the
Mediator at God's right hand, and the Blood of
Christ that speaketh peace!
"I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear:
but now, mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor
myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
