4. Prayer confers the largest power of doing good to others. “What am I to do with other people's sorrows?” The finest and the gentlest spirits are often the most heavily burdened. Many a one feels that he could pass right easily through the world if he had no griefs to carry but his own. He feels that his sensitive system is just a contrivance for catching up other men's calamities—an apparatus on which everybody fastens his own peculiar vexation—his family theirs—his neighbors theirs—till at last he moves about, the burden-bearer of a groaning world. But after he has got himself thus charged and loaded, he knows not what to do, for he cannot alleviate the twentieth portion of the ills he knows. He cannot heal all the wounds and mitigate all the poverty of which he is the mourning witness. He cannot minister to all the minds diseased, all the aching hearts and wounded spirits whose confidant he is; and in the anguish of his own tortured sympathies, he is sometimes tempted to turn these sympathies outside in, and feel for his fellow-men no more.
“What then shall I do with other people's sorrows?” The Christian feels that he has no right to be his own little all-in-all. He feels that he dares not invert the example of his Master, who was a man of sorrows very much because a man of sympathies. He remembers of whom it is said, “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows"; and this reminds him what to do with the perplexities and disappointments and distresses of his brethren. He takes them to the throne of grace. He deposits them in the ear of the Great High Priest. He urges them on the notice of One who can be touched with a feeling of infirmity, and Who is able to succor them that are tempted.
And in this way a believer who is tender-hearted enough to feel for his brethren, and who is so much a man of prayer as to carry to the mercy-seat those matters that are too hard and those griefs that are too heavy for himself, may be a greater benefactor to his afflicted friends than an Ahithophel who has nothing but sage counsel, or a Joab who has nothing but a stout arm to help them—than a man of fortune who can give nothing but his money, or a man of feeling who has nothing but his tears.
The Christian has his near relations and personal friends. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives—God has bound them very closely together, and made it impossible for the joy of one to be full if another's joy is incomplete. Besides these there are friends not of one's house-kindred spirits whom God in creating, or the Spirit of God in new-creating, has made congenial with your own-those to whom you are drawn by the affinity of identical tastes, or by the discovery of those mental gifts and spiritual graces which cannot be hid, and which cannot be seen without attracting you.
Now one way to sanctify such friendships is to make them the materials and the incentives of prayer. For example, there may be seasons of spiritual languor when you have little heart to pray. The throne of grace seems distant or uninviting. A deep sloth has seized the inner man. You are not inclined to ask any blessing for yourself— You are too carnal to confess any sin, and too sullen to acknowledge any mercy—perhaps so earthly or atheistical that you do not pant-nay, do not breathe after God, the living God..
At such a season of deadness you will sometimes find that you can pray for others when you cannot for yourself. Do even so. Make your solicitude for them a motive for prayer. Begin by laying their wants before the Lord, and you will find out your own. Come in their company, and you may soon find yourself left alone with God. This is not to desecrate prayer, but to consecrate friendship. It exalts and purifies affection, and by making it friendship in the Lord, makes it more lasting now, and more likely to be renewed hereafter.
And lastly, intercession sanctifies the believer's relation to the church. “Our Father” makes all of us who are in Christ one family. But this, too, is oft forgotten. There is little family love amongst us yet—little instinctive affection resulting from our common adoption into the circle of God's dear children—little of that affection towards one another which the Man Christ Jesus feels towards every one—little outgoing sympathy because one Comforter fills us all. If the family relation of the household of faith be ever realized, it is in social or intercessory prayer. “Abba, Father” —my Father truly, because Father of my Lord Jesus Christ; but if so, Father of many more—Father of the whole believing family— “Our Father, which art in heaven.” And so the circle widens, till, starting from the individual, or his own little band of immediate brotherhood, it includes all whom the arms of Immanuel enclose.
One who was much given to intercessory prayer writes thus to a Christian friend: “I beseech you to seek earnestly the communion of saints. This is the only progress I have made in the divine life. I have received as a most precious and unmerited gift, the power of feeling the things of the flock of Christ as if they were my own. You cannot imagine the happiness of this feeling. I dedicate an hour every evening to prayer, and principally to intercession. I generally begin with the thanks due to God for having made Himself known to us as our Father, for all that He has done for every one of His own on that day.
“It is impossible for me to tell you the great delight of thus mixing myself up with the people of Christ, and of considering their benefits as my own. The thought which transports me the most, is that of how many souls have been, perhaps this day, added to the church! How many succored under temptation I how many recovered from their backslidings! how many filled with consolation how many transported by death into the bosom of Christ! I then try to pray for that sweet ‘we,' and to think of the necessities of my Christian friends. Besides, I have a list of unconverted persons, for whom I wish to pray.”
And, if there were more of this spirit, how it would alter the tone of Christians to one another! Instead of being so censorious and uncharitable, it would make us feel, “Am I not my brother's keeper?” Instead of a fault-finding, it would make us a fault-forgiving and a fault-healing community. It would make us suffer with the suffering members, and exult with the rejoicing. It would make us like that high-souled apostle who had “continual heaviness” for his unconverted kindred, and who yet never wanted topics of consolation; remembering without ceasing in his prayers his believing brethren, with their work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope.
(Concluded)
J.H.