The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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СКАЧАТЬ that the spring approaches, even so when prayer shall become more hearty and earnest, we may open our eyes, for the day of our redemption draws near. Great prayer is the preface of great mercy, and in proportion to our prayer is the blessing that we may expect.

      6. 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 you have shaken yourself from the dust, your Lord has taken his sword from the scabbard. When you have allowed your hands to hang down, and your knees to become feeble, he has left you to become scattered by your enemies; you have become barren and your children have been cut off; but when you have learned to cry, when you have begun to pray, God has restored to you the joy of his salvation, he has gladdened your heart, and multiplied your 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. You 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 II’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 has 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 to 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 does 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 do not stand in conjunction with the sun, then there is only 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 returns 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.

      7. 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 favour, 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 severe troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, “I cried to 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.

      8. And now some will say to me, “In what way do you regard prayer, then, as affecting the blessing? God, the Holy Spirit bestows prayer before the blessing; but in what way is prayer connected with the blessing?” I reply, prayer goes before the blessing in several senses.

      9. 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 foreshadows rain, so prayer foreshadows 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.

      10. 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 comes, 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 anything that you have to send to 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, you are the viceregent of the blessing; if the blessing is the king, you are the regent. I know and look upon you as being the representative of the blessing I am about to receive.”

      11. 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 receive anything, that they receive 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 receive it is not in answer to prayer; for we know that God does not hear sinners, and “the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.” “Well,” one says, “I asked God for such-and-such a thing the other day; I know I am not a Christian, but I received it. Do not 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 {a} had been caused by the building of Tenterden steeple, {b} for the sands had not been there before, and the sea did not come up until it was built, and therefore, he said, 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. Often 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 people, 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 to God, and he has heard us. But the man, who he says 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 СКАЧАТЬ