XXI
THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any."--Mark xi. 25.
PRAYER is a world by itself, a whole world, and a
great world too. There is a science of prayer, and
there is an art of prayer. There are more arts
than one that rise out of a life of prayer, and that
go to make up a life of prayer. Prayer is an education
and a discipline: it is a great undertaking
and a great achievement. And, like every other
art, education, discipline, attainment and achievement,
prayer has its own means and its own methods,
its own instruments, and its own aids and appliances
whereby to attain, and whereby to secure its ends.
There is a whole literature of prayer also. There
are some, not small, libraries into which there is
nothing else collected but the classics of prayer.
There is even a bibliography of prayer. And there
are bookworms who can direct you to all that has
ever been written or printed about prayer; but
who never come to any eminence, or success, in
prayer themselves. While, on the other hand,
there are men who are recognised adepts and experts
in prayer, proficient and past masters in prayer.
There is nothing in which we need to take so many
lessons as in prayer. There is nothing of which we
are so utterly ignorant when we first begin; there
is nothing in which we are so helpless. And there
is nothing else that we are so bad at all our days.
We have an inborn, a constitutional, a habitual,
and, indeed, an hereditary dislike of prayer, and of
everything of the nature of prayer. We are not
only ignorant here, and incapable: we are
incorrigibly and unconquerably unwilling to learn. And
when we begin to learn we need a lesson every day,
almost every hour. A lesson to-day, and a lesson
to-morrow; a lesson in the morning, and a lesson
at night. We need to have old lessons gone over
again, revised and repeated incessantly. We need,
as the schoolboys say, to go over the rudiments
again and again, till we have all the axioms, and
elementary rules and paradigms, and first principles
of prayer made part and parcel of ourselves. Such
axioms and such first principles as these: "He
that cometh to God must believe that He is."
"Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast
out." "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit."
"When ye stand praying, forgive"--these axioms
and elements, and such-like.
We have had some lessons in prayer given us of
late in this house; and here is another. And,
like all our Lord's lessons, it is impossible to
misunderstand it, or to forget it. No,--I must not
say that, for such is the depravity and the deceitfulness
of our hearts that there is nothing that we will
not misunderstand and despise and cast behind
our back. Only, prayer--prayer sufficiently
persevered in--will at last overmaster even our
deep depravity; and, O my brethren, what a
blessed overmastery that will be! Speak, then,
Lord! Speak once again to us what Thou wilt
have us to hear about prayer, and we will attend
this time and will obey!
1. I do not think that there is anything that our
Lord returns on so often as the forgiveness of
injuries. And the reason of that may very will be
because our lives are so full of injuries, both real
and supposed, and both given and received. As
also because the thoughts and the feelings, the
words and the deeds, that injury awakens towards
one another in our hearts, are so opposed to His
mind and His spirit. It is remarkable, and we
cannot forget it, that the only petition in the
prayer that our Lord taught His disciples,--the
only petition that He repeats and underscores, as
we say,--is the fifth petition: "Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us." No sooner has He said Amen than He takes
His disciples back again to their "trespasses," and
warns them in these solemnising and arresting
words: "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." As much as
to say that the forgiveness of injuries will be the very
hardest of all the holy tempers that I shall ever have
to ask of you. The motions of spite and ill-will are
the most difficult of all its sinful motions to subdue
in the human heart. At the same time, He adds,
as long as those so wicked and detestable tempers
hold possession of your hearts, your prayers and
everything else will be an abomination before God.
2. It is not told us in so many words, but I think
I see how it came to pass that we have the text.
Our Lord saw His disciples every day employing
the prayer He had taught them: He heard them
saying night and morning, "Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors," with all their bad
passions all the time in a blaze at one another.
They were disputing every day who was to be the
greatest. The ten "had indignation" at the two
brethren because their foolish mother had asked of
Christ the two chief seats in His Kingdom for her
two sons. They were all trespassing every day
against one another, just like ourselves, till their
Master stopped them one day in the very middle
of their Lord's Prayer, and said, Stand still!
stop! say no more till you have forgiven your
offending brother: and then, go on, and finish
your prayer with assurance, and with a good
conscience. He laid His hand on Peter's mouth
that day, and would not let Peter finish till he had,
from his heart, forgiven the two ambitious brethren.
And it was that arrest and interdict that his Master
put upon Peter's prayer that made Peter expostulate,
and say, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin
against me, and I forgive him?" And his Master
said to Peter, "I say not unto thee, Until seven
times: but, Until seventy times seven." Yes,
Peter, said his Master to Peter that day,--once
your conscience is fully awake, and once your
heart is fully broken, you will never once be able
to say, Forgive me my debts, till you have already
forgiven some great debtor of yours. You will
always do on the spot what you ask God to do to
you. And it will be by so doing that you will be
a child of your Father which is in Heaven; Who
maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and the good,
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.
Do you ever feel that same hand stopping your
mouth, my brethren? Is your prayer ever cut in
two and suspended, till your heart is searched out,
and made quiet, and clean, and sweet to some of
these, your offending brethren? Or, better still:
has Jesus Christ so penetrated and inspired your
heart, and your conscience, and your imagination
with His grace and His truth that you never,--either
in the church or at home, either among
your children or alone on your own knees,--never
once say the Lord's Prayer, without naming in the
middle of it, and at the fifth petition of it, some of
us who vex you, or offend you, or trespass in some
way against you? some one of us towards whom
you have an antipathy, or a distaste, or a secret
grudge, or some inveterate ill-will? Standing, or
sitting, or kneeling, or lying on your face in prayer--
is God your Witness, and your Hearer, and your
Judge, that you forgive us, as often as you remember
that you have ought against us? Do you do that?
Well, I am sure if we, not to speak of God, knew
that, and could believe it about you, you would
not soon have occasion to forgive us again! God
bless you, all the same, and hear your prayer!
3. You would, as I think, find this to be helpful
when you "stand praying," and are as yet unable
to forgive. Try this the next time. Say this to
yourself. Say something like this. "What, exactly,
is it that I have against that man?" Put it
in words. Put it to yourself as you would put it to
a third person. Calm reflection, and a little frank and
honest self-examination, is a kind of third person,
and will suffice you for his office. And so stated,
so looked at, that mortal offence turns out to be not
half so bad as it has up till now been felt to be.
Our pride, and our self-importance, often blow
up a small matter into a mortal injury. Many of
our insults and injuries are far more imaginary
than real: though our sin and our misery on
account of them are real enough. Look at the
offender. Look closely at him. Do not avoid
him. Do not refuse to have a talk with him. If
possible, eat a meal now and then with him. Make
a great and noble effort, and put yourself in his
place in all this unhappy business. For once
be honest, and just, and generous. See yourself
as he has seen you. Allow and admit his side of it
for a moment. Allow and admit that yon differ from
him, as Butler has it, quite as much as he differs
from you. Let a little daylight, as Bacon has it,
fall on this case that is between him and you. Let
a little of the light of love, and humility, and goodwill
fall on him, and on yourself--and, already,
your prayer is heard! You may go on and finish your
prayer now. Your trespasses are already as good
as forgiven. They are: since you are all but ready
to admit that a great part of your hurt and pain
and anger and resentment is due to yourself, and
not to your neighbour at all. And once your
neighbour has come to your assistance in that way
in your prayer, he will come again, and will come
often, till you and he, meeting so often in amity
before God, will only wait for God's promised opportunity
to be the closest and the best of friends
again, not only before God, but before men also.
For, "He is our peace; Who hath abolished the enmity, so making peace."
4. You will find this to be helpful also in some
extreme cases. When there is some one who is
trespassing against you "seven times a day";
some one whose tongue works continually against
you like a sharp razor; some one whose words are
as a sword in your bones; some one who despitefully
uses you, and persecutes you; some one who
returns you only evil for all the good you have done
to him and his,--and so on. There have been
such extreme cases. Your own case, in short.
Well. What do you wish to have done to him?
There are prayers for all kinds of cases in the Bible.
And here is one for you. "Let his days be few;
and let another take his office. Let his children
be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children
be continually vagabonds, and beg .... Let his
posterity be cut off; and in the generation following
let their name be blotted out ... As he loved
cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted
not in blessing, so let it be far from him." When
you stand praying, put up that prayer. Say that:
and then say, "For Christ's sake, Amen!" And,
then, out of the same psalm, add this for your so
suffering soul: "But do Thou for me, O God the
Lord, for Thy name's sake: because Thy mercy is
good, deliver Thou me." I have known men to be
cured of malice and ill-will by offering that prayer
morning and night, and at the Lord's Table. I
have known groanings, that could not be uttered
before, find utterance in the words of that devoting
psalm. Try it on your enemy in the extremity of
your injury and ill-will. And it will, by God's
blessing, do for you and for your heart what it
has done by God's blessing for far worse hearts than yours.
How horrible, and how hell-like, is a revengeful
heart! While how beautiful, and how like
heaven itself, is a humble, a meek, a patient,
and a Christ-like heart! I have been refreshing
and enlarging and ennobling my heart among
Plutarch's noble Grecians and Romans in my spare
hours this past winter,--when you give Plutarch
in a present let it be in Thomas North's Bible
English,--and at this point Plutarch's Pericles
comes to my mind. "For he grew not only to
have a great mind and an eloquent tongue, without
any affectation, or gross country terms; but to a
certain modest countenance that scantly smiled:
very sober in his gait: having a kind of sound in
his voice that he never lost nor altered: and was of
very honest behaviour: never troubled in his talk
for anything that crossed him: and, many such like
things, as all that saw them in him, and considered
him, could but wonder at him. But for proof
hereof, the report goeth, there was a naughty busy
fellow on a time, that a whole day together did
nothing but rail upon Pericles in the market-place,
and revile him to his face, with all the villainous
words he could use. But Pericles put all up quietly,
and gave him not a word again, dispatching in the
meantime matters of importance he had in hand,
till night came, that he went softly to his home,
showing no alteration nor semblance of trouble at
all, though this lewd varlet followed at his heels
with all the villainous words he could use. But
Pericles put all up quietly and gave him not a word
again. And as he was at his own door, being dark
night, he commanded one of his men to take a
torch and take that man back to his own house."
An apple of gold in a picture of silver!
But, both in patience and in forgiveness of injuries,
as in all else, behold, a Greater than Pericles
is here! He Who gave Pericles that noble heart
is here teaching us and training us by doctrine, and
by example, and by opportunity, to a nobler heart
than any of Plutarch's noblest Greeks or Romans.
I know nothing outside of the New Testament
nobler in this noble matter than the Ethics, and
the Morals, and the Parallel Lives: but I read
neither in Aristotle, nor in Plato, nor in Plutarch
anything like this: "Blessed are ye, when men
shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say
all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad: for great is your
reward in heaven." Our Master, you see, actually
congratulates us on our enemies, and backbiters,
and false friends. He lifts us out of all our bitterness
and gloom, and despondency, and resentment,
up into the sunshine of His own humble, loving,
forgiving heart. And as if His heavenly teaching
was not enough, He leaves us His example so that
we may follow in His steps. And He leaves it--it
is beautiful to see--first to Peter, who hands it
down, after he is done with it, to us. Hold up,
then, your hurt and proud and revengeful hearts,
O all ye disciples of Christ, and let Peter, by the
Holy Ghost, write this on the hard and cruel tables
of your hearts. This: "Christ also suffered for
us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow
His steps. Who, when He was reviled, reviled
not again; when He suffered, He threatened not.
. . . Who, His own self, bare our sins on His own
body on the tree: . . . by whose stripes ye were
healed." Come, then, my brethren, with all your
wrongs and all your injuries, real and supposed,
great and small; greatly exaggerated, and impossible
to be exaggerated. And when you stand
praying, spread them all out before God. Name
them, and describe them to Him. And He will
hear you, and He will help you till you are able,
under the last and the greatest of them, to say,
"Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do."
