Luke 11:9-10 And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.… Undoubtedly, God's rule of action in nature we have every reason to regard as unalterable; established as an inflexible and faithful basis of expectation, and so far embodying the essential conditions of intellectual and moral life, and, for that reason, not open to perpetual variation on the suggestion of occasional moral contingencies. Petitions, therefore, for purely physical events other than those which are already on their way — e, g., for the arrest of a heavenly body, the diverting of a storm, the omission of a tide — must be condemned, as at variance with the known method of providential rule. But a large proportion of temporal events are not like these, dealt out to us from the mere physical elements; they come to us with a mixed origin, from the natural world indeed, yet through the lines of human life, and as affected by the human will. The diseases from which we suffer visit us in conformity with the order of nature, yet are often self-incurred. The shipwreck that makes desolate five hundred homes is due to forces which may be named and reckoned, yet also, it may be, to the negligence which failed to take account of them in time. Wherever these elements of character enter into the result, so that it will differ according to the moral agent's attitude of mind, it is plainly not beyond the reach of a purely spiritual influence to modify a temporal event. The cry of entreaty from the bedside of fever will not reduce the patient's temperature, or banish his delirium; but if there be human treatment on which the crisis hangs, may so illuminate the mind, and temper the heart, and sweeten the whole scene around, as to alight upon the healing change, and turn the shadow of death aside. The prayer of Cromwell's troopers, kneeling on the field, could not lessen the numbers or blunt the weapons of the cavaliers, but might give such fire of zeal and coolness of thought as to turn each man into an organ of Almighty justice, and carry the victory which he implored. Wherever the living contact between the human spirit and the Divine can set in operation our very considerable control over the combinations and processes of the natural world, there is still left a scope, practically indefinite, for prayer, that the bitter cup of outward suffering may pass away — only never without the trustful relapse, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." (James Martineau, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. |
    |