It is an important peculiarity of our meetings that the responsibility for their character is felt to be shared by all. I do not mean that all our members are in fact alive to their own share of this responsibility. The service is, no doubt, often far too much left to one or more willing speakers. But I do not believe that it would be possible amongst Friends for anything like the sense of dependence on one individual to arise which seems naturally to result from the idea of a priestly order. And, at any rate, the idea is kept continually before us of a company coming together on one level, each of whom is free and encouraged to bring his individual offering of praise and prayer, whether silent or vocal. It is a familiar thought amongst Friends that no one should expect in a meeting for worship “to eat the bread of idleness.” And the practice which is so frequent amongst us of ministering Friends travelling from meeting to meeting in the exercise of their gift, causes a stirring of the waters, and keeps up the sense of the freedom of all to take their part whenever and wherever a word may be given them.

There is one other result of the absence of pre-arrangement in our meetings which I cannot altogether pass over. It is that no shelter is provided under cover of which one can remain in doubt whether one is or is not actually engaged in worship on one’s own account. A liturgy or a hymn may bear along in its current many a vague half-formed tendency towards worship; and I dare not say that it may not thus sometimes fan the spark into a flame, or save the smoking flax from being altogether quenched. But it does seem to me that it also often prevents our recognizing our own poverty, and stifles many an individual cry for help, which the sense of that poverty would tend to awaken. At any rate, the worst that can very well happen, if a silent meeting fails to help, is that it is nothing. It would scarcely seem possible that it should delude any one into a hollow sense of having been engaged in a religious service. But here I am aware of being near the treacherous ground of idiosyncrasy, and I do not wish to press the point.

Hitherto I have been speaking of our meetings for public worship. But, as Friends love to say, our worship does not begin when we sit down together in our public assemblies, nor end when we leave them. The worship in spirit and in truth is in no way limited by time and place. The same idea of a waiting “in the silence of all flesh” to hear the voice of the Lord speaking within us, characterizes the Friends’ private times of worship; or, as the more cautious expression is, of “religious retirement.” Friends are so possessed with the sense of our inability to offer acceptable prayer in our own time and will, that where others speak of family prayers, and hours of prayer or devotion, Friends prefer the expressions “family reading” and “religious retirement.”

And not only in name, but in method, are these times marked with the same peculiar character as our public meetings. In Friends’ families of the old-fashioned type (which are more numerous still, I fancy, than many people suspect) the family meeting consists simply of the reading of a portion of Scripture, and then a pause of silence, which may or may not be broken by words of prayer or of testimony. Many Friends formerly (and some, I believe, still feel the same) objected on conscientious grounds to their children’s learning to use any form of prayer, even the Lord’s Prayer. The children shared from the first in the united silence of the family, and could not fail to know what it meant; but in some families it was rarely or never broken by vocal prayer. A silent pause before meals is the Friends’ equivalent for “saying grace”—a practice which I own I think has much to recommend it. Here, again, there is, of course, the opportunity for words, should words spontaneously rise to the lips of any of those present.

When we penetrate into the inmost chamber of private worship differences of method can no longer be traced by human eye. It is not possible for any one to judge of the practice of others in this respect; nay, there seems an impropriety in following individuals into this sacred region, even in thought. Sectarian differences must here be left behind. But for that very reason I may here appeal with the greater fulness of confidence to the sympathy of all who pray, in the attempt, from which I feel it impossible to refrain, to explain the way in which a belief in present inspiration is, as I think, inseparable from belief in the reality and the rightness of prayer.

I trust that I shall not be thought presumptuous for entering upon this subject. There are many qualifications for it which I do not possess. But on matters of common and urgent interest the very absence of distinguishing power or knowledge may give a certain value to the results of actual personal experience, as lessening the distance across which the helping hand has to reach out.

I believe that the permanent effect for good or for evil of the present shaking and upheaval of thought amongst us must be mainly determined by its relation to prayer. No immediate result of the outbreak of free discussion of all things in heaven and earth during the last thirty years has been so agonizing to devout persons, nor so gravely threatens spiritual health, as the paralysis which in many cases it has seemed to bring upon the spirit of prayer. We meet daily with open denials of the reasonableness of prayer—of the possibility of entering into any real communication with the Divine Being. Few amongst us can have altogether escaped the paralyzing influence of the flood of unsolved, and apparently insoluble, moral problems, and at the same time of new and absorbingly interesting views of material things, into which this generation has been plunged. The mere demand on the attention is powerful enough to drain away great part of the mental power formerly employed in seeking after God.

says A. H. Clough; and he utters, I am sure, a widely spread feeling. People’s very love of truth seems to themselves to be enlisted in pursuing the streams which lead them away from the Fountain of truth. And the pursuit of scientific truth is assuredly in its place a contribution to our knowledge of God, though made by workers who may but too easily themselves lose sight of Him in their engrossing preoccupation with His works.

But the tendency to put prayer to silence is not merely thus indirect. The one idea which seems at present more forcibly to have grasped the popular imagination, is that of the universal and inexorable dominion of unchanging law. And the inference is not unnatural, “Then it is useless to pray.” The result is an awful silence—not of the flesh, indeed, but of the spirit. Men and women have come to feel themselves alone in a new and fearful sense—alone as in the valley of dry bones, with no expectation of any Divine breath to cause them to stand up upon their feet, a united host of living servants of the living God.

I trust that I shall not be suspected of any intention of grappling with the problem of free-will and necessity. I know, at least, enough to be aware that there is at the end of every avenue of human thought an impenetrable mystery. But I also know that the region in which philosophers join issue upon the question of necessity lies far beyond the range of any such practical questions as I am engaged with. I know that the controversy is not decided, and, so far as we can see, does not visibly approach towards a decision; I know also that no conceivable agreement of philosophers as to the most accurate way of stating facts can alter the facts themselves with which we have to do. I do not hope to express myself with philosophical accuracy; but I can, and will, speak plainly and truly of my own experience in this matter of prayer.

There was a time when I myself was silenced by the paralyzing influences of which I have spoken—when the heavens seemed as brass, and to ask for anything seemed like flying in the face of one vast foregone conclusion; as though a moth should dash itself against an iceberg. But I have come to believe that the truth against which I had thus, so to speak, stumbled in the dark, was not that prayer is unreasonable, but that my ideas of prayer were unworthy.

That the will of God is unchangeable, is assuredly the very foundation of all reasonable trust in Him, and is recognized by saints and philosophers alike. But does not the imagination easily confound unchangeableness with immovableness? Are not the laws of motion as fixed as those of space? What can be more full of movement than the flames of fire? Yet are they less unchangeable in their nature than a bar of iron? Is it not through a reliance upon the unchangeable properties of material things that we are able to change the whole face of the earth? And should we not remember that the unchangeable order which all things, visible and invisible, obey, includes the mystery of perpetual “variation,” and even of life itself?

It seems to me that when our imagination smites everything with rigidity, it is really playing us a trick. Those who are at all competent to expound the theory of necessity are earnest to show that it in no way contradicts the efficacy of effort in any possible direction. They have need to be earnest about it, for the imagination is but too ready for a pretext to hoist the flag of despair, and the will to throw up the game of life, and to sink into the sleep of apathy.

If we are right in thinking of God as the Fountain of life and thought, the Father of spirits—and to those who deny this it is idle for me to address myself—it can surely not be unreasonable for the spirits He has made to seek to hold communion with Him. What is often unreasonable is the nature of our requests, and our idea of the possibility of their being granted. Here it is that I have had to recognize the unworthiness of many of my own thoughts and expressions about prayer, and that I continually meet with what seems to me unfit and inadequate in the language of others. It cannot be an unimportant thing that we should endeavour to sift out what is untenable and unbecoming from our thoughts and words on this subject.

Two things have, as I believe, mainly tended to lower our idea of prayer, until, in minds where it is but a theory, it has been shattered against the hard facts of science. We have narrowed it to the idea of asking for things, and we have thought of it chiefly as a means of getting them.

This is surely a degradation of the idea of prayer, even though the things asked for be what are called “spiritual blessings.” The word “prayer” may, it is true, be used in the restricted sense of making requests; but in that case let it be distinctly understood and kept in mind that it is but a part—the lowest and least essential part—of worship or communion with God. It is of prayer in the larger sense—not request, but communion—that we may rightly and wisely speak as the very breath of our spiritual life; as the power by which life is transfigured; as that to which all things are possible. But this distinction between request and communion is not habitually kept in mind by those who write and speak of prayer, nor even by all those who practise it. It seems to me as if many even deeply experienced Christians were using all their energy to encourage and stimulate above all that part of prayer which has surely the most of the merely human and carnal in it, rather than to show forth that nobler part to which this should be but the innocent and natural prelude. If we fall back, as we must perpetually do, upon our Lord’s own leading principle of using the human relation of parent and child as the highest and most instructive type of the relation between God and the human spirit, we shall surely feel that the child, in learning to speak to its father and to understand his voice, has far other and larger hopes and purposes than that of getting things from him. The human parent may use the child’s innocent and natural wishes as one means of attracting its attention, but would surely be grievously disappointed if the child never looked beyond the advantages to be reaped by the power of speaking to its father—never rose to the perception that intercourse with him was in itself the greatest of human joys, not a mere means to an end.

And in the same sort of sense I feel that, when people insist upon “the efficacy of prayer,” they are insisting upon its very lowest use; and that the concentration of attention upon this lowest use creates a serious stumbling-block, which hinders faith in two ways.

1. It suggests a test which is not and cannot be uniformly favourable. Whatever the power of prayer may be—and words, I believe, must wholly fail to express it—particular requests are certainly not always granted. Our Lord explicitly prepares us for the refusal of blind requests, and our own good sense and our daily experience combine to make it abundantly clear that many requests are, and must always be, refused.

2. And more than this, there is, I believe, nobility enough in every heart capable of real prayer to cause a recoil from the idea of using it only for the purpose of obtaining advantages, be they of what kind they may. I believe, that is, that the modern perplexity about prayer arises not only from a difficulty in imagining God as One who can be influenced by our desires, but largely also from a latent sense that, even if true in fact, that is a very inadequate conception of Him to whom our worship should be addressed, and who must assuredly know better than we do what things we have need of—from a recoil, in short, against the low and coarse and unworthy tone of much that is urged on the other side.

Therefore I think that in the long-run an immeasurable gain will result to faith from modern outspokenness in recognizing the difficulties of this subject. Prayer, if regarded as an attempt to wrest favours from our heavenly Father by dint of mere importunity, is doomed to many disappointments, and stands sorely in need of their purifying discipline. Prayer is not really prayer—that is, it is not true communion with God—till it rises above the region in which wilfulness is possible, to the height of “Not my will, but Thine, be done.”

Importunity may, indeed, prevail to win attention from a reluctant or drowsy human ear. Our Lord Himself reminds us of this fact to reprove the faint-heartedness which would allow itself to be discouraged by delay. But the ear of the Father is ever open to our prayers. We cannot think that importunity is needed to rouse His attention. The hindrance when He refuses, or delays to grant, our requests must be of a very different kind. If once we recognize that He hears us always, and that in everything that happens we may hear His voice answering us, we are forced also to recognize that severe discipline is as truly a part of His answer as tender indulgence. Both are welcomed by the childlike heart; both are part of the language we have patiently to learn to interpret.

But then comes the question, What is there to convince us that we are listened to at all, if the answer is everything equally? If it is in the whole course of events that we are to look for the answer, and that course is as often as not contrary to our prayer, how are we justified in saying that prayer is ever answered?

It is the answer to this question, What is it that does, in fact, produce a reasonable conviction that we are listened to? which, I think, involves that theory of inspiration which Friends, more markedly than any other body of Christians, have always avowed and acted upon. But, in trying to reply to it, I wish it to be distinctly borne in mind that I am giving, for what it is worth, the result of my own personal exercises of mind, not undertaking to state recognized Quaker doctrine.[12] Difficulties, though probably in essence the same from generation to generation, come before each generation in a fresh form, and need to be freshly met by individual experience.

That which produces a reasonable conviction that prayer is answered must, surely, be the sense of Divine guidance of which I have already spoken in the last chapter. The general grounds for our common belief in God as the Father of spirits are too deep and too wide for me to set forth. As I have already said, I assume such a belief as the groundwork of all that I am attempting to unfold. That which enables each one of us who believe in Him to discern His voice is, as already suggested, a touch as of a hand upon our arm—a dealing with our own spirit and life of so personal and individual and significant a nature as that we cannot help feeling that “the finger of God is come unto us.”

If this be, indeed, the right direction in which to look for answers to prayer, then the whole subject is withdrawn from the region in which positive proof or disproof are possible. Our interpretation of such individual experiences is that upon which the whole controversy turns, and this must of necessity result from the nature of our previous belief respecting much more general truths. It will always be open to those who disbelieve in God to call His signs “mere coincidences.” It is surely not therefore the less reasonable for those who do believe in Him to be on the watch for every possible faintest indication of His pleasure. There must be in this, as in all other matters, a preparation of heart and mind before any sign, however eloquent, can take effect upon us. In point of fact, we know that the sense of receiving a personal communication from above is not always excited by the granting of a petition. After we have asked and received, no less than when we have asked and not received, we are sometimes inclined to say, “After all, does my prayer make any difference? would not things have happened just in the same way if I had not prayed?” This is a question to which, in truth, I believe that we must be content (so far, at least, as regards any particular instance) to remain without an answer. We can never really know what would have happened if we had not prayed.

To say this is, of course, by no means to deny that our prayer has made a real though unknown difference. It is, on the contrary, almost positively to assert the action of unmeasured and unfathomable influences. We cannot measure the whole results of any action, however insignificant; but the whole tendency of modern “scientific” thought, and of belief in “necessity,” at any rate, goes to show that all things are so interdependent that an action without results is almost inconceivable. Necessitarians, of all people, are bound to admit this. The action of prayer cannot, however, be traced by human eyes, and the longing to know precisely what difference our prayer makes to the course of events is, I believe, a longing which can never be gratified in this world.

Yet a power which we cannot precisely measure may make itself continually felt, and the power of prayer is in some lives a matter of perpetually renewed if incommunicable experience. The testimony of those who can thankfully and reverently say that their prayers are answered in a manner that is wonderful in their own eyes, is too familiar and too sacred to all of us to need insisting upon. Its weight is, I believe, strictly speaking, immeasurable. But it is in a manner naturally veiled from hasty or external observation, and is, therefore, easily disregarded. When fully considered, it will be found to consist mainly in combinations of circumstances by no means incredible in themselves. It is not the accuracy of the facts recorded by those to whom prayer is a reality, but the explanation of their combination, which is generally in question. If I am right in supposing that we can never trace the precise relation of cause and effect between prayer and the answer, this difficulty—the difficulty, I mean, of exhaustively explaining significant combinations of circumstances—is not surprising. It is the natural result of our being out of our depth.

But although the whole region into which we plunge when we begin to speak of the answer to our prayers is of necessity unfathomable by us, we may with advantage remember that there are some special difficulties besetting any attempt to share with others the experiences which have naturally and rightly most weight with ourselves; and that by disregarding these difficulties we convert them into stumbling-blocks.

One main difficulty of this kind lies in the fact that the outward events of which we can speak most freely, which we can, as it were, without impropriety call others to witness, must be more or less public in their nature; such as, e.g., the preservation of lives dear to us, political or national events, favourable changes of weather, and so on—things as to which it is not upon any theory reasonable to suppose that they can be determined with reference only to the wishes or the prayers of any one individual. Even if they went according to my personal wishes and prayers, there would be a manifest impropriety in claiming them as having been thereby brought about. If I pray that the sun may rise to-morrow morning, it does not need much faith to feel sure I shall not be refused, but it would be grossly improper to claim that the event had occurred “in answer to my prayers.” When the Prince of Wales recovered from his fever, there were many who would have thought it impious to doubt that his recovery was actually caused by the many prayers which were undoubtedly offered on his behalf. Other people were and will remain convinced that he would equally have recovered in any case. Who can attempt to decide between these opinions with any show of authority? Indeed, it appears to me that both are presumptuous. Surely it is enough for children to know that their desire is fulfilled, without inquiring into the motives (if, indeed, we should dare to attribute motives to God) by which the parents’ fulfilment of it was prompted.

In the case of many events (such as battles, weather, and so on) which must necessarily be unfavourable to the wishes of one side and favourable to the other, we know that some prayers must be granted while some are refused. Who will attempt to trace the proportion between request and result? or to treat the influence of prayer in such matters as admitting of either proof or disproof?

But when we come to the circumstances of each individual life, the case is very different. We do not get rid of mystery even here. Our knowledge, even of our own lives, is altogether imperfect and fragmentary; but to pretend to know no more about the ordering of them than we do about the universe would be mere dishonesty. We can trace a correspondence between our desires and their accomplishment when it occurs in our own lives, such as it would be mere impertinence to try to trace between, e.g., our desires and the history of a nation. You may call it superstition to say, “I prayed for strength and my request was granted, for strength was given me;” but you cannot accuse me of gross impropriety in thus associating my prayer and the event, as you would if I said, “I prayed that the sun might rise, and my request has been granted.” It is within our own personal experience that we must look for the answer which we can rightly appropriate.

But, then, in proportion as the event is brought within the personal sphere of one individual, it is necessarily removed from that of others. Those parts of our personal and separate experience of which we can speak freely are almost necessarily superficial. I do not doubt that even trifles are a part of the Divine language to individuals, but trifles cannot with propriety be appealed to for the purpose of convincing others. Those personal experiences, on the other hand, which are at once deep enough and individual enough to be the fittest subjects of prayer (in the sense of special request), and to be met by responsive “providences” of a peculiarly impressive kind, are almost always such as, for a very different reason, we are unable to mention with much freedom. The whole cogency of the reasoning which is rightly conclusive to oneself, in short, generally depends upon facts of personal feeling, and upon minute correspondences of events with intricate chains of previous experience, such as human language would fail to transmit, even did a right instinct of modesty not forbid the attempt. We are, therefore, in this matter very much shut up (and I think there is in the fact a beautiful fitness) to the individual and separate teaching of life. I believe that we cannot (if it be true) too clearly and unflinchingly make the assertion that our private experience has convinced us of the reality of the Divine response to prayer; but also, that we cannot be too cautious how we try to utter such experience itself. Simple-minded people, who live much in the practice of prayer, and whose habitual expectation of a Divine response is continually (and to themselves often wonderfully) fulfilled, are often exposed to the snare of making public what should be sacredly kept for themselves alone, or at least shared only with those who “have ears to hear.” Much mischief is, I fear, often done by the too free and ready communication, especially in print, of “remarkable answers to prayer;” of incidents which, overpoweringly eloquent as they may well be to those whom they concern, are but an idle tale to strangers—a tale the telling of which sometimes lends itself but too easily to the mere love of signs and wonders. They also often lay bare the most painful effects of unconscious self-importance—the most glaring tendency to refer everything to oneself as the centre, and to ignore the legitimate share of others in the events referred to. One is almost inclined to say of such stories that, the more wonderful they are, the less edifying they are likely to be.

For it is not in such outward and tangible events as these, not in the things which can be passed from hand to hand like coins, that the real power and soul-subduing influence of a Divine communication is most unmistakably felt. It is the still small voice which overcomes; the gentle combination of perhaps very ordinary circumstances, which, when combined, acquire the significance of a distinct message. Just as when we see letters brought together and placed under our eyes, which together form a word replying to our thought, we infer that they have been so arranged by some one who knew what was in our minds; so, to those of us who habitually not only ask but watch for Divine instruction, there occur again and again combinations of events, adjustments even of the minutest details, which produce a quite irresistible sense that the finger of God is pointing the lesson He would have us learn.

It is idle to ask those who never listen whether and how God answers prayer. The very possibility of discerning the answer implies docility and willingness of heart. The High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity dwells with him who is of an humble and contrite spirit, and such only can learn to know His voice.

To those who in any degree do know His voice, it gradually becomes clear that prayer and its answer are inseparable. The answer is as the answer of the atmosphere to the lungs, of light to the eyes. The humble and contrite heart opens its doors to its Maker, and is filled with His presence. Then, indeed, the light shines within; then the very breath of our life is breathed into us by the Spirit of God. Inspiration—the inbreathing power from above, by which alone all that is heavenly in us is brought about,—this is the other aspect of worship.

True worship, therefore, implies inspiration. It is the inspired prayer which transfigures life—which is mighty with the might of the Fountain from whence it flows. While we separate worship and inspiration we can never think worthily of either. I do indeed believe that the very desire of our heart is often granted to us in reply to our petition. I do not venture to speak confidently as to the precise relation of cause and effect which may exist between any petition and its fulfilment. There must, I believe, be some such real relation; but to my own mind it often seems more probable and more reverent to suppose, where the correspondence is very marked, that the prayer has been in the nature of a prophetic utterance, of a Divine foreshadowing, than that our wish should have been allowed to become the efficient cause of the Divine action. A prayer which has been answered by the perfect fulfilment of its requests shows, I believe, that the offerer of it was so far under Divine influence; that his will was to that extent at least in harmony with the Divine will. This is a word of blessed encouragement for the one to whom it comes, which it is not always wise or right to proclaim from the housetop. “Upliftings unto prayer” (to quote one more of the deep words of A. H. Clough) are surely among the sacred things of which we should not lightly lift the veil. I do not think that those who have any true and deep experience of what it is to hold communion, however faltering and intermittent, with our God will be forward to attempt to divest it of its mystery, while yet they must earnestly desire to set forth to others what they have learnt of its power and its blessedness. For the sake of the many who honestly desire to know the truth upon this deepest and most urgent of all common interests, I think that we who have some such experience are bound to seek to clothe it in fit and worthy language.

Let us, therefore, recognize and avow, when occasion serves, that prayer, worship, or communion with God is a larger, deeper, fuller thing than mere asking and having. Let us acknowledge that the simplest and most inarticulate cry for help—the voice of the “infant crying in the night, and with no language but a cry”—is as sure to enter the ear of the Father of spirits as the deepest prayer ever uttered by saint or martyr. Let us remember that, according to the teaching of our Lord Himself, the one voice which is more sure (if degrees of sureness there can be) than any other of being listened to by the good Shepherd, is the voice of the one who has strayed the furthest from the fold, and is the most deeply conscious of being afar off—the voice of the lost sheep over whose first turning towards home the very angels in heaven rejoice with a special joy. But let us never forget that in the homeward path there are heights beyond heights; that as any spirit is drawn upwards by the Father’s love and care, it becomes more and more filled with the light of His countenance, more interpenetrated by that light which shines clearest in the dark places through which every upward-tending spirit must assuredly pass. Let us not forget that the reward of faithfulness in that which is least is the call to enter into that which is greater—deeper and higher and fuller of Divine significance; that those “influences of the Divine presence” to which it is the essence of true worship to “yield ourselves” must penetrate into the inmost recesses of our being, and bring every thought into subjection to the law of Christ—that law of the Spirit of life, by which all that is of the flesh is gradually purged away as by a consuming fire—and that to live in the spirit of prayer is to live more and more continually and intimately in the presence of Him before whom the angels veil their faces, and who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. So that it may well be, or rather it can only be, in fear and in trembling that this wonderful salvation of entrance into His presence can be worked out. The prayers which are owned by Him are not prayers which can be offered in the will of man, or which can be used as a means of gratifying the desires of the flesh or of the reason; they are the breathings of the spirit struggling to return to Him who gave it, or rejoicing in the light of His countenance. The spirit which is being made free from the law of sin and death cannot look backwards towards the things of earth. Its path is onwards and upwards, ever “into light,” and its breathings are the vibrations communicated to it from the Source and Centre of light; they obey a law as unchangeable as the laws of light itself, and their function is to destroy and to consume away the perishing, worn-out raiment of the spirit, to free it from defilements and hindrances, and to bring it forth in the fulness of time “into the glorious liberty of the children of God,” the rightful “inheritance of the saints in light.” Surely we may with reverence say that, in a true and a deep sense, God Himself is the Answer to prayer.