treated as respectable people. 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 do not go quite well in business you wish that they would go better, and you do sometimes cry out to God 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 scoffs at prayer when he is well, but when he is sick he prays as fast as anyone. 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 what compliments him by allowing him to answer. Oh saints of God! whatever you can give up, you can never give up this truth, that God hears prayer; for if you did not believe it today, you would have to believe it again tomorrow; for you would have another proof of it through some other trouble that would roll over your head that you would be obliged to feel, if you were not obliged to say, “Truly, God hears and answers prayer.”
12. 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 by which the blessing is brought down.
13. 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.
14. 1. I think it is, in the first place, because God loves that man would have some reason for having a connection with him. God says, “My creatures will shun me, even my own people will seek me too little — 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 for?” “Yes,” God says, “I will do that with many mercies; 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 in need, 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 to me again; but, my son, it delights me, it affords me pleasure to supply your needs. I like to know what it is you require, that I may oftentimes have to give something to 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. Oh, my son, I do this because I desire to see you often; I desire often to have opportunities of showing how much I love you.” So does 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 you shall see my face, and so you shall have a reason for often coming to my feet.”
15. 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 need comfort, God says, pray, and you shall receive 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,” he says, “your troubles may find vent here; come, put them into my ear; pour out your heart before me, and so will you prevent its bursting. If you must weep, come and weep at my mercy seat; if you must cry, come and cry in the closet, and I will hear you.” 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.
16. Take another case. You are in difficulty, you do not 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 while in prayer I am spreading all the circumstances before God, I am like a warrior surveying the battlefield, 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, I am 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, knelt down, put my finger upon the passage, and sought instruction from God. 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 he says again, “I never know a thing well until 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 carries the blessing in itself.
17. 3. But again it seems only 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 from 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.
18. 4. And yet again, prayer before the blessing serves to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without
