Now one of these excellences in the strictest sense according to the divine word is love for one's neighbor, and this accordingly we are compelled to think of as possessed in a far higher degree by saints already at rest than by those who are in human weakness and wrestle on along with the weaker. It is not only here that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it" in the experience of those who love their brethren, for it beseems the love also of those who are beyond the present life to say "I have anxiety for all the churches:
Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I do not burn?" Especially when Christ avows that according as such one of the saints may be weak, He is weak in like manner, and in prison and naked and a stranger and hungry and athirst. For who that reads the gospel is ignorant that Christ, in taking on himself whatever befalls believers, counts their sufferings His own?
And if angels of God came to Jesus and ministered to Him, and if we are not to think of the ministry of the angels to Jesus as having been limited to the brief space of His bodily sojourn among men while He was still in the midst of believers not as one that reclined at table but as one that ministered, how many angels, I wonder, must now be ministering to Jesus when He would "bring together the Children of Israel one by one" and gather them from the dispersion, saving those who fear God and call upon Him, and must be cooperating more than the apostles in the increase and enlargement of the church! Thus in John certain angels are spoken of in the Apocalypse as actually presiding over the churches.
Not in vain do angels of God ascend and descend unto the Son of Man, beheld of eyes that have been enlightened with the light of knowledge. In the very season of prayer, accordingly, being reminded by the suppliant of his needs, they satisfy them as they have ability by virtue of their general commission. To further the acceptance of our view we may make use of some such image as the following in support of this argument.
Suppose that a righteously minded physician is at the side of a sick man praying for health, with knowledge of the right mode of treatment for the disease about which the man is offering prayer. It is manifest that he will be moved to heal the suppliant, surmising, it may well be not idly, that God has had this very action in mind in answer to the prayer of the suppliant for release from the disease. Or suppose that a man of considerable means, who is generous, hears the prayer of a poor man offering intercession to God for his wants. It is plain that he, too, will fulfil the objects of the poor man's prayer, becoming a minister of the fatherly counsel of Him who at the season of the prayer had brought together him who was to pray and him who was able to supply and by virtue of the rightness of his principles, incapable of overlooking one who has made that particular request.
As therefore we are not to believe that these events are fortuitous, when they take place because He who has numbered all the hairs of the head of saints, has aptly brought together at the season of the prayer the hearer who is to be minister of His benefaction to the suppliant and the man who has made his request in faith; so we may surmise that the presence of the angels who exercise oversight and ministry for God is sometimes brought into conjunction with a particular suppliant in order that they may join in breathing his petitions.
Nay more, beholding ever the face of the Father in heaven and looking on the Godhead of our Creator, the angel of each man, even of "little ones" within the church, both prays with us, and acts with us where possible, for the objects of our prayer.
VII. ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS: THE TRUE PLACE OF PRAYER IN MAN'S LIFE
Again I believe the words of the prayer of the saints to be full of power above all when praying "with the spirit," they pray "also with the understanding," which is like a light rising from the suppliant's mind and proceeding from his lips to gradually weaken by the power of God the mental venom injected by the adverse powers into the intellect of such as neglect prayer and fail to keep that saying of Paul's in accordance with the exhortations of Jesus, "Pray without ceasing." For it is as if a dart from the suppliant's soul, sped by knowledge and reason or by faith, proceeds from the saint and wounds to their destruction and dissolution the spirits adverse to God and desirous of casting round us the bonds of sin.
Now, since the performance of actions enjoined by virtue or by the commandments is also a constituent part of prayer, he prays without ceasing who combines prayer with right actions, and becoming actions with prayer. For the saying "pray without ceasing" can only be accepted by us as a possibility if we may speak of the whole life of a saint as one great continuous prayer.
Of such prayer what is usually termed prayer is indeed a part, and ought to be performed at least three times each day, as is plain from the account of Daniel who, in spite of the grave danger that impended, prayed three times daily. Peter furnishes an instance of the middle prayer of the three when he goes up to the housetop about the sixth hour to pray on that occasion on which he also saw the vessel which descended from heaven let down by four corners. The first is spoken of by David: "In the morning shall you hear my prayer: in the morning will I present myself to you and keep watch."
The last is indicated in the words: "the lifting up of my hands in evening sacrifice." Indeed we shall not rightly speak even the season of night without such prayer as David refers to when he says "at midnight I arose to make acknowledgment to you for your righteous judgments" and as Paul exemplifies when, as it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, along with Silas he offers prayer and praise to God "about midnight" in Phillipi so that the prisoners also heard them.
VIII. ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS: SIGNAL INSTANCES OF PRAYER
If Jesus prays and does not pray in vain, if He obtains His requests through prayer and it may be would not have received them without prayer, who of us is to neglect prayer? Mark tells us that "in the morning long before daybreak he arose and went out and departed to a lonely place and there prayed." Luke says: "And it came to pass, as He was at prayer in a certain place, that one of His disciples said to Him when He ceased, . . . and elsewhere: And He passed the night in prayer to God." John records a prayer of Him in the words:
"These things spoke Jesus, and lifting up His eyes unto heaven He said, 'Father the hour is come; glorify your Son that your Son may also glorify you.'" And the Lord's saying, "I knew that you hear me always," recorded in the same writer shows that it is because He is always praying that He is always heard.
What need is there to tell the tale of those who, through right prayer, have obtained the greatest of things from God, when it is open to everyone to select any number of them for himself from the Scriptures? Hannah did service to the birth of Samuel, who is numbered along with Moses, because though barren she prayed in faith unto the Lord. Hezekiah, who while still childless learned from Isaiah that he was about to die, is included in the Savior's genealogy because he prayed. When the people were already on the point of perishing under a single decree as the result of Haman's conspiracy, it was the heard prayer with fasting of Mordecai and Esther that added to the Mosaic festivals and gave rise to the Mordecaic day of rejoicing for the people.
It was, moreover, after offering holy prayer that Judith with God's help overcame Holophernes, and thus a single woman of the Hebrews wrought shame upon the house of Nebuchadnezzar. It was on being heard that Ananiah and Azariah and Mishael became worthy to receive a hissing rain and wind which kept the flame of the fire from taking effect. Through Daniel's prayers the lions in the Babylonians' pit were muzzled.
Even Jonah, because he did not despair of being heard from the belly of the monster that had swallowed him, was able to quit the monster's belly and complete his interrupted prophet's mission to the Ninevites. And further, how many things could each of us recount should he choose to recall with gratitude the benefits conferred upon him and to offer praise to God for them! Souls that have long been barren but have become conscious of their intellects' sterility and the barrenness of their mind, through persevering prayer have conceived of the Holy Spirit and given birth to thoughts and words of salvation full of contemplated truth.
How many of our foes have been dispersed, when often countless thousands in the adverse host were wearing us down with intent to sweep us away from the divine faith, and we rejoiced, when their appeal was to chariots and horses but ours to the name of the Lord, to see that in truth deceptive is a horse for safety! Many a time indeed does he whose trust is in praise to God—for Judith means praise—cut his way through guileful and persuasive speech, that chief commander of the adversary who brings numbers even of reputed believers to their knees.
What need is there to go on to tell of all who many a time have fallen among temptations hard to overcome, whose burn was sharper than any flame, and have suffered naught under them but emerged from them in every way unscathed, without so much of scathe as the slightest odor of the hostile fire; or again of all the brutes exasperated against us, in the form of wicked spirits or cruel men, that we have encountered and often muzzled by our prayers, so that they were impotent to fasten their fangs in our members which had become those of Christ. Often in each saint's experience has the Lord dashed together the teeth of lions, and they were brought to nothing, as water flowing by.
We know that often fugitives from God's commands who have been swallowed by death, which at the first prevailed against them, have been saved by reason of repentance from so great an evil, because they did not despair of being able to be saved though already overpowered in the belly of death: for death prevailed and swallowed, and again God took away every tear from every face. What I have said after my enumeration of persons who have been benefited through prayer, I consider to have been most necessary to my purpose of turning aspirants after the spiritual life in Christ from prayer for little earthly things, and urging readers of this writing towards the mystical things of which the above mentioned were types.
For it is always and wholly prayer for the spiritual, mystical things which we have instanced, that is practised by him who does not war according to the flesh but with the Spirit mortifies the body's actions, preference being given to the things suggested by analogy and study over the benefaction apparently indicated by the language of scripture as having accrued to those who had prayed.
For in ourselves also we are to strive, hearing the spiritual law with spiritual ears, that barrenness or sterility may not arise, but that we may like Hannah and Hezekiah be heard, being freed from barrenness or sterility, and like Mordecai and Esther and Judith be delivered from plotting enemies—in our case the spiritual powers of evil. Inasmuch as Egypt is an iron furnace and also a symbol of every earthly place, let every one who has escaped from the wickedness of the life of men without having been scorched by sin or having had his heart like an oven full of fire, give thanks no less than the men who experienced rain amid fire.
Let him, too, who has been heard when he has prayed and said "Deliver not to the brutes a soul that makes acknowledgment to you," and who has suffered naught from asp and basilisk because through Christ he has trod on them, and who has trampled lion and snake and enjoyed the good authority bestowed by Jesus to walk over serpents and scorpions and upon the whole power of the enemy, without having been injured by any of them, give thanks more than Daniel as having been delivered from brutes more terrible and harmful.
Let him, moreover, who has learned by experience what manner of monster that which swallowed Jonah typified, perceiving that it is of such that Job has spoken, "May He curse it that curses that day, He that is to worst the great monster," if he should ever come by reason of any disobedience to be in the belly of the monster, pray in penitence, and he shall come out thence; and if, after coming out, he abides in obedience to the commands of God, he shall be able according to the kindness of the Spirit to be a prophet to perishing Ninevites of today and to become a means to their salvation, without discontent with the kindness of God or desire that He should abide in severity towards penitents.