"Thus saith
the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the
house of Israel to do it for them; I will increase them
with men like a flock."—Ezekiel 36:37.
N
reading the chapter we have seen the great and exceeding
precious promises which God had made to the favored nation
of Israel. God in this verse declares, that though the
promise was made, and though he would fulfill it, yet he
would not fulfill it until his people asked him so to do. He
would give them a spirit of prayer, by which they should cry
earnestly for the blessing, and then when they should have
cried aloud unto the living God, he would be pleased to
answer them from heaven, his dwelling-place. The word used
here to express the idea of prayer is a suggestive one. "I
will yet for this be enquired of by the house of
Israel." Prayer, then, is an enquiry. No man can pray
aright, unless he views prayer in that light. First, I
enquire what the promise is. I turn to my Bible and I seek
to find the promise whereby the thing which I desire to seek
is certified to me as being a thing which God is willing to
give. Having enquired so far as that, I take that promise,
and on my bended knees I enquire of God whether he will
fulfill his own promise. I take to him his own word of
covenant, and I say to him, "O Lord, wilt thou not fulfill
it, and wilt thou not fulfill it now?" So that there,
again, prayer is enquiry. After prayer I look out for the
answer; I expect to be heard, and if I am not answered I
pray again, and my repeated prayers are but fresh enquiries.
I expect the blessing to arrive; I go and enquire whether
there is any tidings of its coming. I ask; and thus I say
"Wilt thou answer me, O Lord? Wilt thou keep thy promise? Or
wilt thou shut up thine ear, because I misunderstand my own
wants and mistake thy promise." Brethren, we must use
enquiry in prayer, and regard prayer as being, first, an
enquiry for the promise, and shell on the strength of
that promise an enquiry for the fulfillment. We
expect something to come as a present from a friend: we
first have the note, whereby we are informed it is upon the
road. We enquire as to what the present is by the reading of
the note, and then, if it arrive not, we call at the
accustomed place where the parcel ought to have been left,
and we ask or enquire for such and such a thing. We have
enquired about the promise, and then we go and enquire
again, until we get an answer that the promised gift has
arrived and is ours. So with prayer. We get the promise by
enquiry, and we get the fulfillment of it by again enquiring
at God's hands.
Now, this morning I shall try, as God shall help me,
first to speak of prayer as the prelude of blessing:
next I shall try to show why prayer is thus constituted by
God the forerunner of his mercies, and then I shall
close by an exhortation, as earnest as I can make it,
exhorting you to pray, if you would obtain blessings.
I. Prayer is the FORERUNNER OF MERCIES. Many despise
prayer: they despise it, because they do not understand it.
He who knoweth how to use that sacred art of prayer will
obtain so much thereby, that from its very profitableness
he will be led to speak of it with the highest reverence.
Prayer, we assert, is the prelude of all mercies. We
bid you turn back to sacred history, and you will find that
never did a great mercy come to this world, unheralded by
prayer. The promise comes alone, with no preventing merit to
precede it, but the blessing promised always follows its
herald, prayer. You shall note that all the wonders that God
did in the old times were first of all sought at his hands
by the earnest prayers of his believing people. But the
other Sabbath we beheld Pharaoh cast into the depths of the
Red Sea, and all his hosts "still as a stone" in the depths
of the waters. Was there a prayer that preceded that
magnificent overthrow of the Lord's enemies? Turn ye to the
Book of Exodus, and ye will read, "The children of Israel
sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their
cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage." And mark ye
not, that just before the sea parted and made a highway for
the Lord's people through its bosom, Moses had prayed unto
the Lord, and cried earnestly unto him, so that Jehovah
said, "Why criest thou unto me?" A few Sabbaths ago, when we
preached on the subject of the rain which came down from
heaven in the days of Elijah, you will remember how we
pictured the land of Judea as an arid wilderness, a mass of
dust, destitute of all vegetation. Rain had not fallen for
three years; the pastures were dried up; the brooks had
ceased to flow; poverty and distress stared the nation in
the face. At an appointed season a sound was heard of
abundance of rain, and the torrents poured from the skies,
until the earth was deluged with the happy floods. Do you
ask me, whether prayer was the prelude to that? I point you
to the top of Carmel. Behold a man kneeling before his God,
crying, "O my God! send the rain;" lo! the majesty of his
faith—he sends his servant Gehazi to look seven times for
the clouds, because he believes that they will come, in
answer to his prayer. And mark the fact, the torrents of
rain were the offspring of Elijah's faith and prayer.
Wherever in Holy Writ you shall find the blessing you shall
find the prayer that went before it. Our Lord Jesus Christ
was the greatest blessing that men ever had. He was God's
best boon to a sorrowing world. And did prayer precede
Christ's advent? Was there any prayer which went before the
coming of the Lord, when he appeared in the temple? Oh yes,
the prayers of saints for many ages had followed each other.
Abraham saw his day, and when he died Isaac took up the
note, and when Isaac slept with his fathers, Jacob and the
patriarchs still continued to prey; yea, and in the very
days of Christ, prayer was still made for him continually:
Anna the prophetess, and the venerable Simeon, still looked
for the coming of Christ; and day by day they prayed and
interceded with God, that he would suddenly come to his
temple.
Ay, and mark you, as it has been in Sacred Writ, so it
shall be with regard to greater things that are yet to
happen in the fulfillment of promise. I believe that the
Lord Jesus Christ will one day come in the clouds of heaven.
It is my firm belief, in common with all who read the Sacred
Scriptures aright, that the day is approaching when the Lord
Jesus shall stand a second time upon the earth, when he
shall reign with illimitable sway over all the habitable
parts of the globe, when kings shall bow before him, and
queens shall be nursing mothers of his Church, But when
shall that time come? We shall know its coming by its
prelude when prayer shall become more loud and strong, when
supplication shall become more universal and more incessant,
then even as when the tree putteth forth her first green
leaves we expect that the spring approacheth, even so when
prayer shall become more hearty and earnest, we may open our
eyes, for the day of our redemption draweth nigh. Great
prayer is the preface of great mercy, and in proportion to
our prayer is the blessing that we may expect.
It has been so in the history of the modern Church.
Whenever she has been roused to pray, it is then that God
has awaked to her help. Jerusalem, when thou hast shaken
thyself from the dust, thy Lord hath taken his sword from
the scabbard. When thou hast suffered thy hands to hang
down, and thy knees to become feeble, he has left thee to
become scattered by thine enemies; thou hast become barren
and thy children have been cut off, but when thou hast
learned to cry, when thou hast begun to pray, God hath
restored unto thee the joy of his salvation, he hath
gladdened thine heart, and multiplied thy children. The
history of the Church up to this age has been a series of
waves, a succession of ebbs and flows. A strong wave of
religious prosperity has washed over the sands of sin, again
it has receded, and immorality has reigned. Ye shall read in
English history: it has been the same. Did the righteous
prosper in the days of Edward VI? They shall again be
tormented under a bloody Mary. Did Puritanism become
omnipotent over the land, did the glorious Cromwell reign,
and did the saints triumph? Charles the second's
debaucheries and wickedness became the black receding wave.
Again, Whitfield and Wesley poured throughout the nation a
mighty wave of religion, which like a torrent drove
everything before it. Again it receded, and there came the
days of Payne, and of men full of infidelity and wickedness.
Again there came a strong impulse, and again God glorified
himself. And up to this date, again, there has been a
decline. Religion, though more fashionable than it once was,
has lost much of its vitality and power, much of the zeal
and earnestness of the ancient preachers has departed, and
the wave has receded again. But, blessed be God, flood tide
has again set in: once more God hath aroused his Church. We
have seen in these days what our fathers never hoped to see:
we have seen the great men of a Church, not too noted for
its activity, at last coming forth—and God be with them in
their coming forth! They have come forth to preach unto the
people the unsearchable riches of God. I do hope we may have
another great wave of religion rolling in upon us. Shall I
tell you what I conceive to be the moon that influences
these waves? My brethren, even as the moon influences the
tides of the sea, even so doth prayer, (which is the
reflection of the sunlight of heaven, and is God's moon in
the sky,) influence the tides of godliness; for when our
prayers become like the crescent moon, and when we stand not
in conjunction with the sun, then there is but a shallow
tide of godliness, but when the full orb shines upon the
earth, and when God Almighty makes the prayers of his people
full of joy and gladness, it is then that the sea of grace
returneth to its strength. In proportion to the
prayerfulness of the Church shall be its present success,
though its ultimate success is beyond the reach of hazard.
And now again, to come nearer home: this truth is true
of each of you my dearly beloved in the Lord in your own
personal experience. God has given you many an
unsolicited favor, but still great prayer has always been
the great prelude of great mercy with you. When you first
found peace through the blood of the cross you had been
praying much beforehand, and earnestly interceding with God
that he would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your
distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. And
when at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you
have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your
prayers, when you have had great deliverances out of sore
troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been
able to say, "I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me, and
delivered me out of all my fears." Prayer, we say, in your
case, as well as in the case of the Church at large, is
always the preface to blessing.
And now some will say to me, "In what way do you regard
prayer, then, as affecting the blessing? God, the Holy Ghost
vouchsafes prayer before the blessing; but in what way is
prayer connected with the blessing?" I reply, prayer goes
before the blessing in several senses. It goes before the
blessing, as the blessing's shadow. When the sunlight
of God's mercy rises upon our necessities, it casts the
shadow of prayer far down upon the plain, or, to use another
illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, he
himself shines behind them, and he casts on our spirits the
shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are in
prayer, our prayers are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is the
rustling of the wings of the angels that are on their way
bringing us the boons of heaven. Have you heard prayer in
your heart? You shall see the angel in your house. When the
chariots that bring us blessings do rumble, their wheels do
sound with prayer. We hear the prayer in our own spirits,
and that prayer becomes the token of the coming blessings.
Even as the cloud foreshadoweth rain, so prayer
foreshadoweth the blessing; even as the green blade is the
beginning of the harvest, so is prayer the prophecy of the
blessing that is about to come.
Again: prayer goes before mercy, as the
representative of it. Often times the king, in his
progress through his realms, sends one before him, who blows
a trumpet; and when the people see him they know that the
king cometh, because the trumpeter is there. But, perhaps,
there is before him a more important personage, who says, "I
am sent before the king to prepare for his reception, and I
am this day to receive aught that you have to send the king,
for I am his representative." So prayer is the
representative of the blessing before the blessing comes.
The prayer comes, and when I see the prayer, I say, "Prayer,
thou art the vice-regent of the blessing, if the blessing he
the king, thou art the regent. I know and look upon thee as
being the representative of the blessing I am about to
receive."
But I do think also that sometimes, and generally,
prayer goes before the blessing, even as the cause goes
before the effect. Some people say, when they get
anything, that they get it because they prayed for it, but
if they are people who are not spiritually minded, and who
have no faith, let them know, that whatever they may get it
is not in answer to prayer, for we know that God heareth not
sinners, and the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination
to the Lord." "Well," says one, "I asked God for
such-and-such a thing the other day. I know I am no
Christian, but I got it. Don't you consider that I had it
through my prayers?" No, sir, no more than I believe the
reasoning of the old man who affirmed that the Goodwin Sands
had been caused by the building of Tenterden steeple, for
the sands had not been there before, and the sea did not
come up till it was built, and therefore, said he, the
steeple must have caused the flood. Now, your prayers have
no more connection with your blessing than the sea with the
steeple, in the Christian's case it is far different.
Oft-times the blessing is actually brought down from heaven
by the prayer. An objector may reply, "I believe that prayer
may have much influence on yourself, sir, but I do not
believe that it has any effect on the Divine Being." Well,
sir, I shall not try to convince you; because it is useless
for me to try to convince you of that, unless you believe
the testimonies I bring, as it would be to convince you of
any historical fact by simply reasoning about it. I could
bring out of this congregation not one, nor twenty, but many
hundreds, who are rational, intelligent persons, and who
would, each of them, most positively declare, that some
hundreds of times in their lives they have been led to seek
most earnestly deliverance out of trouble, or help in
adversity, and they have received the answers to their
prayers in so marvellous a manner that they themselves did
no more doubt their being answers to their cries than they
could doubt the existence of a God. They felt sure that he
heard them; they were certain of it. Oh! the testimonies to
the power of prayer are so numberless, that the man who
rejects them flies in the face of good testimonies. We are
not all enthusiasts; some of us are cool blooded enough, we
are not all fanatics; we are not all quite wild in our
piety, some of us in other things, we reckon, act in a
tolerably common sense way. But yet we all agree in this,
that our prayers have been heard; and we could tell many
stories of our prayers, still fresh upon our memories, where
we have cried unto God, and he has heard us. But the man,
who says he does not believe God hears prayer, knows he
does. I have no respect to his scepticism, any more than I
have any respect to a man's doubt about the existence of a
God. The man does not doubt it; he has to choke his own
conscience before he dares to say he does. It is
complimenting him too much to argue with him. Will you argue
with a liar? He affirms a lie, and knows it is so. Will you
condescend to argue with him, to prove that he is untrue!
The man is incapable of reasoning; he is beyond the pale of
those who ought to be treated as respectable persons. If a
man rejects the existence of a God, he does it desperately
against his own conscience, and if he is bad enough to
stifle his own conscience so much as to believe that, or
pretend that he believes it, we think we shall demean
ourselves if we argue with so loose a character. He must be
solemnly warned, for reason is thrown away upon deliberate
liars. But you know, sir, God hears prayer; because if you
do not, either way you must be a fool. You are a fool for
not believing so, and a worse fool for praying yourself;
when you do not believe he hears you. "But I do not pray
sir." Do not pray? Did I not hear a whisper from your nurse
when you were sick? She said you were a wonderful saint when
you had the fever. You do not pray! No, but when things lo
not go quite well in business you would to God that they
would go better, and you do sometimes cry out to him a kind
of prayer which he cannot accept, but which is still enough
to show that there is an instinct in man that teaches him to
pray, I believe that even as birds build their nests without
any teaching, so men use prayer in the form of it (I do not
mean spiritual prayer): I say, men use prayer from the very
instinct of nature. There is something in man which makes
him a praying animal. He cannot help it; he is obliged to do
it. He laughs at himself when he is on the dry land; but he
prays when he is on the sea and in a storm, he seeks at
prayer when he is well, but when he is sick he prays as fast
as anybody. He—he would not pray when he is rich; but when
he is poor, he prays then strongly enough. He knows God
hears prayer, and he knows that men should pray. There is no
disputing with him. If he dares to deny his own conscience
he is incapable of reasoning, he is beyond the pale of
morality, and therefore we dare not try to influence him by
reasoning. Other means we may and hope we shall use with
him, but not that which compliments him by allowing him to
answer. O saints of God! whatever ye can give up, ye can
never give up this truth, that God heareth prayer; for if ye
did disbelieve it to-day, ye would have to believe it again
to-morrow; for ye would have such another proof of it
through some other trouble that would roll over your head
that ye would be obliged to feel, if ye were not obliged to
say, "Verily, God heareth and answereth prayer."
Prayer, then, is the prelude of mercy, for very often
it is the cause of the blessing; that is to say, it is a
part cause; the mercy of God being the great first cause,
prayer is often the secondary agency whereby the blessing is
brought down.
II. And now I am going to try to show you, in the
second place, WHY IT IS THAT GOD IS PLEASED TO MAKE PRAYER
THE TRUMPETER OF MERCY, OR THE FORERUNNER OF IT.
1. I think it is, in the first place, because God
loves that man should have some reason for having a
connexion with him. Saith God, "My creatures will shun
me, even my own people will too little seek me—they will
flee from me, instead of coming to me. What shall I do? I
intend to bless them: shall I lay the blessings at their
doors so that when they open them in the morning they may
find them there, unasked and unsought?" "Yes," saith God,
"many mercies I will so do with; I will give them much that
they need, without their seeking for it, but in order that
they may not wholly forget me, there are some mercies that I
will not put at their doors but I will make them come to my
house after them. I love my children to visit me," says the
heavenly Father; "I love to see them in my courts, I delight
to hear their voices and to see their faces; they will not
come to see me if I give them all they want; I will keep
them sometimes without, and then they will come to me and
ask, and I shall have the pleasure of seeing them, and they
will have the profit of entering into fellowship with me."
It is as if some father should say to his son who is
entirely dependent upon him, "I might give you a fortune at
once, so that you might never have to come upon me again;
but, my son, it delights me, it affords me pleasure to
supply your wants. I like to know what it is you require,
that I may oftentimes have to give you, and so may
frequently see your face. Now I shall give you only enough
to serve you for such a time, and if you want to have
anything you must come to my house for it. O, my son, I do
this because I desire to see thee often; I desire often to
have opportunities of showing how much I love thee." So doth
God say to his children, "I do not give you all at once; I
give all to you in the promise, but if you want to have it
in the detail, you must come to me to ask me for it: so
shall you see my face, and so shall you have a reason for
often coming to my feet."
2. But there is another reason. God would make prayer
the preface to mercy, because often prayer itself gives
the mercy. You are full of fear and sorrow, you want
comfort, God says, pray, and you shall get it; and the
reason is because prayer is of itself a comforting exercise.
We are all aware, that when we have any heavy news upon our
minds, it often relieves us if we can tell a friend about
it. Now there are some troubles we would not tell to others,
for perhaps many minds could not sympathize with us: God has
therefore provided prayer, as a channel for the flow of
grief. "Come," saith he, "thy troubles may find vent here;
come, put them into my ear; pour out thine heart before me,
and so wilt thou prevent its bursting. If thou must weep,
come and weep at my mercy-seat; if thou must cry come and
cry in the closet, and I will hear thee." And how often have
you and I tried that! We have been on our knees overwhelmed
with sorrow, and we have risen up, and said, "Ah! I can meet
it all now!"
"Now I can say
my God is mine
Now I can all my joys resign,
Can tread the world beneath my feet,
And all that earth calls good or great."
Prayer itself sometimes gives the mercy.
Take another case. You are in difficulty, you don't
know which way to go, nor how to act. God has said that he
will direct his people. You go forth in prayer and
pray to God to direct you. Are you aware that your very
prayer will frequently of itself furnish you with the
answer? For while the mind is absorbed in thinking over the
matter, and in praying concerning the matter, it is just in
the likeliest state to suggest to itself the course which is
proper, for whilst in prayer I am spreading all the
circumstances before God, I am like a warrior surveying the
battle-field, and when I rise I know the state of affairs,
and know how to act. Often, thus, you see, prayer gives the
very thing we ask for in itself. Often when I have had a
passage of Scripture that I cannot understand, am I in the
habit of spreading the Bible before me, and if I have looked
at all the commentators, and they do not seem to agree, I
have spread the Bible on my chair, kneeled down, put my
finger upon the passage, and sought of God instruction. I
have thought that when I have risen from my knees I
understood it far better than before; I believe that the
very exercise of prayer did of itself bring the answer, to a
great degree, for the mind being occupied upon it, and the
heart being exercised with it, the whole man was in the most
excellent position for truly understanding it. John Bunyan
says, "The truths that I know best I have learned on my
knees;" and says he again, "I never know a thing well till
it is burned into my heart by prayer." Now that is in a
great measure through the agency of God's Holy Spirit; but I
think that it may in some measure also be accounted for by
the fact that prayer exercises the mind upon the thing, and
then the mind is led by an insensible process to lay hold
upon the right result. Prayer, then is a suitable prelude to
the blessing, because often it carrieth the blessing in
itself.
3. But again it seemeth but right, and just, and
appropriate, that prayer should go before the blessing,
because in prayer there is a sense of need. I cannot as
a man distribute assistance to those who do not represent
their case to me as being destitute and sick. I cannot
suppose that the physician will trouble himself to leave his
own house to go into the house of one that is ill, unless
the need has been specified to him, and unless he has been
informed that the case requires his assistance; nor can we
expect of God, that he will wait upon his own people, unless
his own people should first state their need to him, shall
feel their need, and come before him crying for a blessing.
A sense of need is a divine gift; prayer fosters it, and is
therefore highly beneficial.
4. And yet again, prayer before the blessing serves
to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings
without asking for them, we should think them common things;
but prayer makes the common pebbles of God's temporal
bounties more precious then diamonds; and in spiritual
prayer, cuts the diamond, and makes it glisten more. The
thing was precious, but I did not know its preciousness till
I had sought for it, and sought it long. After a long chase
the hunter prizes the animal because he has set his heart
upon it and is determined to have it; and yet more truly,
after a long hunger he that eateth findeth more relish in
his food. So prayer doth sweeten the mercy. Prayer teaches
us its preciousness. It is the reading over of the bill, the
schedule, the account, before the estate and the properties
are themselves transferred. We know the value of the
purchase by reading over the will of it in prayer, and when
we have groaned out our own expression of its peerless
price, then it is that God bestows the benediction upon us.
Prayer, therefore, goes before the blessing, because it
shows us the value of it.
But doubtless even reason itself suggests that it is
but natural that God, the all-good, should give his favors
to those that ask. It seemeth but right that he should
expect of us, that we should first ask at his hands, and
then he will bestow. It is goodness great enough that his
hand is ready to open: surely it is but little that he
should say to his people, "For this thing will I be enquired
of by the house of Israel to do it for them."
III. Let me close BY STIRRING YOU UP TO USE THE HOLY
ART OF PRAYER AS A MEANS OF OBTAINING THE BLESSING. Do you
demand of me, and for what shall we pray? The answer is upon
my tongue. Pray for yourselves, pray for your
families, pray for the Churches, pray for the
one great kingdom of our Lord on earth.
Pray for yourselves. Sure you will never lack
some subject for intercession. So broad are your wants, so
deep are your necessities, that until you are in heaven you
will always find room for prayer. Dost thou need nothing?
Then I fear thou dost not know thyself. Hast thou no mercy
to ask of God? Then I fear thou hast never had mercies of
him, and art yet "in the gall of bitterness and in the bond
of inquity." If thou be a child of God, thy wants will be as
numerous as thy moments and thou wilt need to have as many
prayers as there are hours. Pray that thou mayest be holy,
humble, zealous, and patient; pray that thou mayest have
communion with Christ, and enter into the banqueting-house
of his love. Pray for thyself, that thou mayest be an
example unto others, that thou mayest honor God here, and
inherit his kingdom hereafter.
In the next place, pray for your families; for
your children. If they be pious, you can still pray for them
that their piety may be real, that they may be upheld in
their profession. And if they be ungodly, you have a whole
fountain of arguments for prayer. So long as thou hast a
child unpardoned, pray for it; so long as thou hast a child
alive that is saved, pray for him, that he may be kept. Thou
hast enough reason to pray for those that have proceeded
from thine own loins. But if thou hast no cause to do that,
pray for thy servants. Wilt thou not stoop to that? Then
surely thou hast not stooped to be saved; for he that is
saved knoweth how to pray for all. Pray for thy servants,
that they may serve God, that their life in thine house may
be of use to them. That is an ill house where the servants
are unprayed for. I should not like to be waited upon by one
for whom I could not pray, Perhaps the day when this world
shall perish will be the day unbrightened by a prayer; and
perhaps the day when a great misdeed was done by some man,
was the day when his friends left off praying for him. Pray
for your households.
And then pray for the Church. Let the minister
have a place in your heart. Mention his name at your family
altar, and in your closet. You expect him to come before you
day after day, to teach you the things of the kingdom, and
exhort and stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. If
he be a true minister, there will be work to be done in this
matter. He cannot write his sermon and read it to you; he
does not believe Christ said, "Go and read the gospel
to every creature." Dost thou know the cares of a minister?
Dost thou know the trouble he has with his own church—how
the erring ones do grieve him, how even the right ones do
vex his spirit by their infirmities—how, when the church is
large, there will always be some great trouble in the hearts
of some of his people? And he is the reservoir of all: they
come to him with all their grief; he is to "weep with them
that weep." And in the pulpit what is his work? God is my
witness, I scarcely ever prepare for my pulpit with
pleasure: study for the pulpit is to me the most irksome
work in the world I have never come into this house that I
know of with a smile upon mine heart; I may have sometimes
gone out with one; but never have I had one when I entered.
Preach, preach, twice a day I can and will do, but still
there is a travailing in preparation for it, and even the
utterance is not always accompanied with joy and gladness,
and God knoweth that if it were not for the good that we
trust is to be accomplished by the preaching of the Word, it
is no happiness to a man's life to be well known. It robs
him of all comfort to be from morning to night heated for
labor, to have no rest for the sole of his foot or for his
brain—to be a great religious hack—to bear every burden—to
have people asking, as they do in the country, when they
want to get into a cart, "Will it hold it?"—never thinking
whether the horse can drag it; to have them asking, "Will
you preach at such a place? you are preaching twice,
couldn't you manage to get to such a place, and preach
again?" Every one else has a constitution; the minister has
none, until he kills himself and is condemned as imprudent.
If you are determined to do your duty in that place to which
God has called you, you need the prayers of your people,
that you may be able to do the work, and you will need their
abundant prayers that you may be sustained in it. I bless
God that I have a valiant corps of men, who day without
night besiege God's throne on my behalf. I would speak to
you, my brethren and sisters, again, and beseech you, by our
loving days that are past, by all the hard fighting that we
have had side by side with each other, not to cease to pray
now. The time was when in hours of trouble, you and I have
bended our knees together in God's house and we have prayed
to God that he would give us a blessing. You remember how
great and sore troubles did roll over our head—how men did
ride over us. We went through fire and through water, and
now God has brought us into a large place, and so multiplied
us, let us not cease to pray. Let us still cry out unto the
living God, that he may give us a blesssing. Oh! may God
help me, if you cease to pray for me! Let me know the day,
and I must cease to preach. Let me know when you intend to
cease your prayers, and I shall cry, "O my God, give me this
day my tomb, and let me slumber in the dust."
And lastly, let me bid you pray for the church at
large. This is a happy time we live in. A certain race
of croaking souls, who are never pleased with anything, are
always crying out about the badness of the times. They cry,
"Oh! for the good old times!" Why, these are the good old
times, time never was so old as it is now. These are the
best times. I do think that many an old puritan would jump
out of his grave if he knew what was doing now. If they
could have been told of the great movement at Exeter Hall,
there is many a man among them who once fought against the
Church of England, who would lift his hand to heaven, and
cry, "My God, I bless thee that I see such a day as this!"
In these times there is a breaking down of many of the
barriers. The bigots are afraid; they are crying out most
desperately, because they think God's people will soon love
each other too well. They are afraid that the trade of
persecution will soon be done with, if we begin to be more
and more united. So they are making an outcry, and saying,
"These are not good times." But true lovers of God will say
they have not lived in better days than these; and they all
hopefully look for greater things still. Unless you
professors of religion are eminently in earnest in prayer,
you will disgrace yourselves by neglecting the finest
opportunity that ever men had. I do think that your fathers
who lived in days when great men were upon earth, who
preached with much power—I do think, if they had not prayed,
they would have been as unfaithful as you will be. For now
the good ship floats upon a flood tide: sleep now, and you
will not cross the bar at the harbour's mouth. Never did the
sun of prosperity seem to shine much more fully on the
church during the last hundred years than now. Now is your
time, neglect now to sow your seed in this good time of
seed-sowing; neglect now to reap your harvest in these good
days when it is ripe, and darker days may come, and those of
peril, when God shall say, "Because they would not cry to
me, when I stretched out my hands to bless them, therefore
will I put away my hand, and will no more bless them, until
again they shall seek me."
And now to close. I have a young man here who has been
lately converted. His parents cannot bear him; they
entertain the strongest opposition to him, and they threaten
him that if he does not leave off praying they will turn him
out of doors. Young man! I have a little story to tell you.
There was once a young man in your position: he had begun to
pray, and his father knew it. He said to him, "John, you
know I am an enemy to religion, and prayer is a thing that
never shall be offered in my house." Still the young man
continued earnest in supplication. "Well," said the father
one day, in a hot passion, "you must give up either God or
me. I solemnly swear that you shall never darken the
threshold of my door again, unless you decide that you will
give up praying. I give you till to-morrow morning to
choose. The night was spent in prayer by the young disciple.
He rose in the morning, sad to be cast away by his friends,
but resolute in spirit, that come what might he would serve
his God. The father abruptly accosted him—"Well, what is the
answer?" "Father," he said, "I cannot violate my conscience,
I cannot forsake my God." "Leave immediately," said he. And
the mother stood there; the father's hard spirit had made
hers hard too and though she might have wept she concealed
her tears. "Leave immediately" said he. Stepping outside the
threshold the young man said, "I wish you would grant me one
request before I go; and if you grant me that, I will never
trouble you again." "Well," said the father, "you shall have
anything you like, but mark me, you go after you have had
that; you shall never have anything again." "It is," said
the son, "that you and my mother would kneel down, and let
me pray for you before I go." Well, they could hardly object
to it; the young man was on his knees in a moment, and began
to pray with such unction and power, with such evident love
to their souls, with such true and divine earnestness, that
they both fell flat on the ground, and when the son rose
there they were; and the father said, "You need not go,
John; come and stop, come and stop;" and it was not long
before not only he, but the whole of them began to pray and
they were united to a Christian Church. So do not give way.
Persevere kindly but firmly. It may be that God shall enable
you not only to have your own souls saved, but to be the
means of bringing your persecuting parents to the foot of
the cross. That such may be the case is our earnest prayer.
