CHAPTER X.

PRAYER.[294]


What is sometimes called "the modern spirit" is exceedingly antagonistic
to prayer, failing to see any causal nexus between the uttering of a
petition and the happening of an event, whereas the religious spirit is
as strongly attached to it, and finds its very life in prayer. Yet even
the religious man sometimes feels uneasy as to the rationale of prayer;
is he teaching the All-wise, is he urging beneficence on the All-Good,
is he altering the will of Him in "whom is no variableness, neither
shadow of turning?"[295] Yet he finds in his own experience and in that
of others "answers to prayer," a definite sequence of a request and a
fulfilment.

Many of these do not refer to subjective experiences, but to hard facts
of the so-called objective world. A man has prayed for money, and the
post has brought him the required amount; a woman has prayed for food,
and food has been brought to her door. In connection with charitable
undertakings, especially, there is plenty of evidence of help prayed for
in urgent need, and of speedy and liberal response. On the other hand,
there is also plenty of evidence of prayers left unanswered; of the
hungry starving to death, of the child snatched from its mother's arms
by disease, despite the most passionate appeals to God. Any true view of
prayer must take into account all these facts.

Nor is this all. There are many facts in this experience which are
strange and puzzling. A prayer that perhaps is trivial meets with an
answer, while another on an important matter fails; a passing trouble is
relieved, while a prayer poured out to save a passionately beloved life
finds no response. It seems almost impossible for the ordinary student
to discover the law according to which a prayer is or is not
productive.

The first thing necessary in seeking to understand this law is to
analyse prayer itself, for the word is used to cover various activities
of the consciousness, and prayers cannot be dealt with as though they
formed a simple whole. There are prayers which are petitions for
definite worldly advantages, for the supply of physical
necessities--prayers for food, clothing, money, employment, success in
business, recovery from illness, &c. These may be grouped together as
class A. Then we have prayers for help in moral and intellectual
difficulties and for spiritual growth--for the overcoming of
temptations, for strength, for insight, for enlightenment. These may be
grouped as Class B. Lastly, there are the prayers that ask for nothing,
that consist in meditation on and adoration of the divine Perfection, in
intense aspiration for union with God--the ecstasy of the mystic, the
meditation of the sage, the soaring rapture of the saint. This is the
true "communion between the Divine and the human," when the man pours
himself out in love and veneration for THAT which is inherently
attractive, that compels the love of the heart. These we will call Class
C.

In the invisible worlds there exist many kinds of Intelligences, which
come into relationship with man, a veritable Jacob's ladder, on which
the Angels of God ascend and descend, and above which stands the Lord
Himself.[296] Some of these Intelligences are mighty spiritual Powers,
others are exceedingly limited beings, inferior in consciousness to man.
This occult side of Nature--of which more will presently be
said[297]--is a fact, recognised by all religions. All the world is
filled with living things, invisible to fleshly eyes. The invisible
worlds interpenetrate the visible, and crowds of intelligent beings
throng round us on every side. Some of these are accessible to human
requests, and others are amenable to the human will. Christianity
recognises the existence of the higher classes of Intelligences under
the general name of Angels, and teaches that they are "ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister;"[298] but what is their ministry, what
the nature of their work, what their relationship to human beings, all
that was part of the instruction given in the Lesser Mysteries, as the
actual communication with them was enjoyed in the Greater, but in modern
days these truths have sunk into the background, except the little that
is taught in the Greek and Roman communions. For the Protestant, "the
ministry of angels" is little more than a phrase. In addition to all
these, man is himself a constant creator of invisible beings, for the
vibrations of his thoughts and desires create forms of subtle matter the
only life of which is the thought or the desire which ensouls them; he
thus creates an army of invisible servants, who range through the
invisible worlds seeking to do his will. Yet, again, there are in these
worlds human helpers, who work there in their subtle bodies while their
physical bodies are sleeping, whose attentive ear may catch a cry for
help. And to crown all, there is the ever-present, ever-conscious Life
of God Himself, potent and responsive at every point of His realm, of
Him without whose knowledge not a sparrow falleth to the ground,[299]
not a dumb creature thrills in joy or pain, not a child laughs or
sobs--that all-pervading, all-embracing, all-sustaining Life and Love,
in which we live and move.[300] As nought that can give pleasure or pain
can touch the human body without the sensory nerves carrying the message
of its impact to the brain-centres, and as there thrills down from those
centres through the motor nerves the answer that welcomes or repels, so
does every vibration in the universe, which is His body, touch the
consciousness of God, and draw thence responsive action. Nerve-cells,
nerve-threads, and muscular fibres may be the agents of feeling and
moving, but it is the _man_ that feels and acts; so may myriads of
Intelligences be the agents, but it is God who knows and answers.
Nothing can be so small as not to affect that delicate omnipresent
consciousness, nothing so vast as to transcend it. We are so limited
that the very idea of such an all-embracing consciousness staggers and
confounds us; yet perhaps a gnat might be as hard bestead if he tried to
measure the consciousness of Pythagoras. Professor Huxley, in a
remarkable passage, has imagined the possibility of the existence of
beings rising higher and higher in intelligence, the consciousness ever
expanding, and the reaching of a stage as much above the human as the
human is above that of the blackbeetle.[301] That is not a flight of the
scientific imagination, but a description of a fact. There is a Being
whose consciousness is present at every point of His universe, and
therefore can be affected from any point. That consciousness is not only
vast in its field, but inconceivably acute, not diminished in delicate
capacity to respond because it stretches its vast area in every
direction, but is more responsive than a more limited consciousness,
more perfect in understanding than the more restricted. So far from it
being the case that the more exalted the Being the more difficult would
it be to reach His consciousness, the very reverse is true. The more
exalted the Being, the more easily is His consciousness affected.

Now this all-pervading Life is everywhere utilising as channels all the
embodied lives to which He has given birth, and any one of them may be
used as an agent of that all-conscious Will. In order that that Will may
express itself in the outer world, a means of expression must be found,
and these beings, in proportion to their receptivity, offer the
necessary channels, and become the intermediary workers between one
point of the kosmos and another. They act as the motor nerves of His
body, and bring about the required action.

Let us now take the classes into which we have divided prayers, and see
the methods by which they will be answered.

When a man utters a prayer of Class A there are several means by which
his prayer may be answered. Such a man is simple in his nature, with a
conception of God natural, inevitable, at the stage of evolution in
which he is; he regards Him as the supplier of his own needs, in close
and immediate touch with his daily necessities, and he turns to Him for
his daily bread as naturally as a child turns to his father or mother. A
typical instance of this is the case of George Mueller, of Bristol,
before he was known to the world as a philanthropist, when he was
beginning his charitable work, and was without friends or money. He
prayed for food for the children who had no resource save his bounty,
and money always came sufficient for the immediate needs. What had
happened? His prayer was a strong, energetic desire, and that desire
creates a form, of which it is the life and directing energy. That
vibrating, living creature has but one idea, the idea that ensouls
it--help is wanted, food is wanted; and it ranges the subtle world,
seeking. A charitable man desires to give help to the needy, is seeking
opportunity to give. As the magnet to soft iron, so is such a person to
the desire-form, and it is attracted to him. It rouses in his brain
vibrations identical with its own--George Mueller, his orphanage, its
needs--and he sees the outlet for his charitable impulse, draws a
cheque, and sends it. Quite naturally, George Mueller would say that God
put it into the heart of such a one to give the needed help. In the
deepest sense of the words that is true, since there is no life, no
energy, in His universe that does not come from God; but the
intermediate agency, according to the divine laws, is the desire-form
created by the prayer.

The result could be obtained equally well by a deliberate exercise of
the will, without any prayer, by a person who understood the mechanism
concerned, and the way to put it in motion. Such a man would think
clearly of what he needed, would draw to him the kind of subtle matter
best suited to his purpose to clothe the thought, and by a deliberate
exercise of his will would either send it to a definite person to
represent his need, or to range his neighbourhood and be attracted by a
charitably disposed person. There is here no prayer, but a conscious
exercise of will and knowledge.

In the case of most people, however, ignorant of the forces of the
invisible worlds and unaccustomed to exercise their wills, the
concentration of mind and the earnest desire which are necessary for
successful action are far more easily reached by prayer than by a
deliberate mental effort to put forth their own strength. They would
doubt their own power, even if they understood the theory, and doubt is
fatal to the exercise of the will. That the person who prays does not
understand the machinery he sets going in no wise affects the result. A
child who stretches out his hand and grasps an object need not
understand anything of the working of the muscles, nor of the electrical
and chemical changes set up by the movement in muscles and nerves, nor
need he elaborately calculate the distance of the object by measuring
the angle made by the optic axes; he wills to take hold of the thing he
wants, and the apparatus of his body obeys his will though he does not
even know of its existence. So is it with the man who prays, unknowing
of the creative force of his thought, of the living creature he has
sent out to do his bidding. He acts as unconsciously as the child, and
like the child grasps what he wants. In both cases God is equally the
primal Agent, all power being from Him; in both cases the actual work is
done by the apparatus provided by His laws.

But this is not the only way in which prayers of this class are
answered. Some one temporarily out of the physical body and at work in
the invisible worlds, or a passing Angel, may hear the cry for help, and
may then put the thought of sending the required aid into the brain of
some charitable person. "The thought of so-and-so came into my head this
morning," such a person will say. "I daresay a cheque would be useful to
him." Very many prayers are answered in this way, the link between the
need and the supply being some invisible Intelligence. Herein is part of
the ministry of the lower Angels, and they will thus supply personal
necessities, as well as bring aid to charitable undertakings.

The failure of prayers of this class is due to another hidden cause.
Every man has contracted debts which have to be paid; his wrong
thoughts, wrong desires, and wrong actions have built up obstacles in
his way, and sometimes even hem him in as the walls of a prison-house. A
debt of wrong is discharged by a payment of suffering; a man must bear
the consequences of the wrongs he has wrought. A man condemned to die of
starvation by his own wrong-doing in the past, may hurl his prayers
against that destiny in vain. The desire-form he creates will seek but
will not find; it will be met and thrown back by the current of past
wrong. Here, as everywhere, we are living in a realm of law, and forces
may be modified or entirely frustrated by the play of other forces with
which they come into contact. Two exactly similar forces might be
applied to two exactly similar balls; in one case, no other force might
be applied to the ball, and it might strike the mark aimed at; in the
other, a second force might strike the ball and send it entirely out of
its course. And so with two similar prayers; one may go on its way
unopposed and effect its object; the other may be flung aside by the
far stronger force of a past wrong. One prayer is answered, the other
unanswered; but in both cases the result is by law.

Let us consider Class B. Prayers for help in moral and intellectual
difficulties have a double result; they act directly to attract help,
and they react on the person who prays. They draw the attention of the
Angels, of the disciples working outside the body, who are ever seeking
to help the bewildered mind, and counsel, encouragement, illumination,
are thrown into the brain-consciousness, thus giving the answer to
prayer in the most direct way. "And he kneeled down and prayed ... and
there appeared an Angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him."[302]
Ideas are suggested which clear away an intellectual difficulty, or
throw light on an obscure moral problem, or the sweetest comfort is
poured into the distressed heart, soothing its perturbations and calming
its anxieties. And truly if no Angel were passing that way, the cry of
the distressed would reach the "Hidden Heart of Heaven," and a messenger
would be sent to carry comfort, some Angel, ever ready to fly swiftly on
feeling the impulse, bearing the divine will to help.

There is also what is sometimes called a subjective answer to such
prayers, the re-action of the prayer on the utterer. His prayer places
his heart and mind in the receptive attitude, and this stills the lower
nature, and thus allows the strength and illuminative power of the
higher to stream into it unchecked. The currents of energy which
normally flow downwards, or outwards, from the Inner Man, are, as a
rule, directed to the external world, and are utilised in the ordinary
affairs of life by the brain-consciousness, for the carrying on of its
daily activities. But when this brain-consciousness turns away from the
outer world, and shutting its outward-going doors, directs its gaze
inwards; when it deliberately closes itself to the outer and opens
itself to the inner; then it becomes a vessel able to receive and to
hold, instead of a mere conduit-pipe between the interior and exterior
worlds. In the silence obtained by the cessation of the noises of
external activities, the "still small voice" of the Spirit can make
itself heard, and the concentrated attention of the expectant mind
enables it to catch the soft whisper of the Inner Self.

Even more markedly does help come from without and from within, when the
prayer is for spiritual enlightenment, for spiritual growth. Not only do
all helpers, angelic and human, most eagerly seek to forward spiritual
progress, seizing on every opportunity offered by the upward-aspiring
soul; but the longing for such growth liberates energy of a high kind,
the spiritual longing calling forth an answer from the spiritual realm.
Once more the law of sympathetic vibrations asserts itself, and the note
of lofty aspiration is answered by a note of its own order, by a
liberation of energy of its own kind, by a vibration synchronous with
itself. The divine Life is ever pressing from above against the limits
that bind it, and when the upward-rising force strikes against those
limits from below, the separating wall is broken through, and the divine
Life floods the Soul. When a man feels that inflow of spiritual life,
he cries: "My prayer has been answered, and God has sent down His Spirit
into my heart." Truly so; yet he rarely understands that that Spirit is
ever seeking entrance, but that coming to His own, His own receive Him
not.[303] "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my
voice, and open the door, I will come in to him."[304]

The general principle with regard to all prayers of this class is that
just in proportion to the submergence of the personality and the
intensity of the upward aspiration will be the answer from the wider
life within and without us. We separate ourselves. If we cease the
separation and make ourselves one with the greater, we find that light
and life and strength flow into us. When the separate will is turned
away from its own objects and set to serve the divine purpose, then the
strength of the Divine pours into it. As a man swims against the stream,
he makes slow progress; but with it, he is carried on by all the force
of the current. In every department of Nature the divine energies are
working, and everything that a man does he does by means of the energies
that are working in the line along which he desires to do; his greatest
achievements are wrought, not by his own energies, but by the skill with
which he selects and combines the forces that aid him, and neutralises
those that oppose him by those that are favourable. Forces that would
whirl us away as straws in the wind become our most effective servants
when we work with them. Is it then any wonder that in prayer, as in
everything else, the divine energies become associated with the man who,
by his prayer, seeks to work as part of the Divine?

This highest form of prayer in Class B merges almost imperceptibly into
Class C, where prayer loses its petitionary character, and becomes
either a meditation on, or a worship of, God. Meditation is the steady
quiet fixing of the mind on God, whereby the lower mind is stilled and
presently left vacant, so that the Spirit, escaping from it, rises into
contemplation of the divine Perfection, and reflects within himself the
divine Image. "Meditation is silent or _unuttered_ prayer, or as Plato
expressed it: 'the ardent turning of the Soul towards the Divine; not to
ask any particular good (as in the common meaning of prayer), but for
good itself, for the Universal Supreme Good.'"[305]

This is the prayer that, by thus liberating the Spirit, is the means of
union between man and God. By the working of the laws of thought a man
becomes that which he thinks, and when he meditates on the divine
perfections he gradually reproduces in himself that on which his mind is
fixed. Such a mind, shaped to the higher and not the lower, cannot bind
the Spirit, and the freed Spirit leaping upward to his source, prayer is
lost in union and separateness is left behind.

Worship also, the rapt adoration from which all petition is absent, and
which seeks to pour itself forth in sheer love of the Perfect, dimly
sensed, is a means--the easiest means--of union with God. In this the
consciousness, limited by the brain, contemplates in mute exstasy the
Image it creates of Him whom it knows to be beyond imagining, and oft,
rapt by the intensity of his love beyond the limits of the intellect,
the man as a free Spirit soars upwards into realms where these limits
are transcended, and feels and knows far more than on his return he can
tell in words or clothe in form.

Thus the Mystic gazes on the Beatific Vision; thus the Sage rests in the
calm of the Wisdom that is beyond knowledge; thus the Saint reaches the
purity wherein God is seen. Such prayer irradiates the worshipper, and
from the mount of such high communion descending to the plains of earth,
the very face of flesh shines with supernal glory, translucent to the
flame that burns within. Happy they who know the reality which no words
may convey to those who know it not. Those whose eyes have seen "the
King in His beauty"[306] will remember, and they will understand.

When prayer is thus understood, its perennial necessity for all who
believe in religion will be patent, and we see why its practice has
been so much advocated by all who study the higher life. For the student
of the Lesser Mysteries prayer should be of the kinds grouped under
Class B, and he should endeavour to rise to the pure meditation and
worship of the last class, eschewing altogether the lower kinds. For him
the teaching of Iamblichus on this subject is useful. Iamblichus says
that prayers "produce an indissoluble and sacred communion with the
Gods," and then proceeds to give some interesting details on prayer, as
considered by the practical Occultist. "For this is of itself a thing
worthy to be known, and renders more perfect the science concerning the
Gods. I say, therefore, that the first species of prayer is Collective;
and that it is also the leader of contact with, and a knowledge of,
divinity. The second species is the bond of concordant Communion,
calling forth, prior to the energy of speech, the gifts imparted by the
Gods, and perfecting the whole of our operations prior to our
intellectual conceptions. And the third and most perfect species of
prayer is the seal of ineffable Union with the divinities, in whom it
establishes all the power and authority of prayer; and thus causes the
soul to repose in the Gods, as in a never failing port. But from these
three terms, in which all the divine measures are contained, suppliant
adoration not only conciliates to us the friendship of the Gods, but
supernally extends to us three fruits, being as it were three Hesperian
apples of gold. The first of these pertains to illumination; the second
to a communion of operation; but through the energy of the third we
receive a perfect plenitude of divine fire.... No operation, however, in
sacred concerns, can succeed without the intervention of prayer. Lastly,
the continual exercise of prayer nourishes the vigour of our intellect,
and renders the receptacle of the soul far more capacious for the
communications of the Gods. It likewise is the divine key, which opens
to men the penetralia of the Gods; accustoms us to the splendid rivers
of supernal light; in a short time perfects our inmost recesses, and
disposes them for the ineffable embrace and contact of the Gods; and
does not desist till it raises us to the summit of all. It also
gradually and silently draws upward the manners of our soul, by
divesting them of everything foreign to a divine nature, and clothes us
with the perfections of the Gods. Besides this, it produces an
indissoluble communion and friendship with divinity, nourishes a divine
love, and inflames the divine part of the soul. Whatever is of an
opposing and contrary nature in the soul, it expiates and purifies;
expels whatever is prone to generation and retains anything of the dregs
of mortality in its ethereal and splendid spirit; perfects a good hope
and faith concerning the reception of divine light; and in one word,
renders those by whom it is employed the familiars and domestics of the
Gods."[307]

Out of such study and practice one inevitable result arises, as a man
begins to understand, and as the wider range of human life unfolds
before him. He sees that by knowledge his strength is much increased,
that there are forces around him that he can understand and control, and
that in proportion to his knowledge is his power. Then he learns that
Divinity lies hidden within himself, and that nothing that is fleeting
can satisfy that God within; that only union with the One, the Perfect,
can still his cravings. Then there gradually arises within him the will
to set himself at one with the Divine; he ceases to vehemently seek to
change circumstances, and to throw fresh causes into the stream of
effects. He recognises himself as an agent rather than an actor, a
channel rather than a source, a servant rather than a master, and seeks
to discover the divine purposes and to work in harmony therewith.

When a man has reached that point, he has risen above all prayer, save
that which is meditation and worship; he has nothing to ask for, in this
world or in any other; he remains in a steadfast serenity, seeking but
to serve God. That is the state of Sonship, where the will of the Son is
one with the will of the Father, where the one calm surrender is made,
"Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God. I am content to do it; yea, Thy law
is within my heart."[308] Then all prayer is seen to be unnecessary;
all asking is felt as an impertinence; nothing can be longed for that is
not already in the purposes of that Will, and all will be brought into
active manifestation as the agents of that Will perfect themselves in
the work.