p. 101 | Constancy in Prayer by Austin Phelps

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1885

Constancy in Prayer.

By Austin Phelps

PRAYER as a state of holy living is abundantly recognized in the Scripture. “Pray without ceasing.” “In everything by prayer ... let your requests be made known.” “Continuing instant in prayer.” “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same.” “Praying always, with all prayer and supplication.” Anna continued in prayer day and night. St. Paul’s ideal of a Christian widow was one who continued in prayer night and day. For St. Peter in prison, prayer was made by the church without ceasing; and far back in the elder dispensation, David said: “Evening and morning and at noon will I pray.” Constancy of devotional desire is inborn in the spirit of holy living.

Such continuity of devotion gives large place in a godly life to ejaculatory prayer. St. Augustine, Madame Guion, John Tauler, President Edwards, Edward Payson, and a host of others, were often overheard in fragmentary colloquy with God. Professor Stuart used to hallow his most learned researches by interspersing chantings of psalms in the original Hebrew. Such moments of holy utterance were the feeders which supplied to such men their spiritual strength. Luther indulged with such freedom of speech in this sort of converse with God that in almost any other man it would have been irreverent. Zinzendorf used to write notes to “the Lord Christ.” So strong was his faith in Christ’s personal friendship, and his own need of that friendship as a daily solace, that once on a journey he sent back his companion that he might converse more freely with the Lord, with whom he talked audibly. Thomas à Kempis says: “He alone is a thousand companions; He alone is a world of friends. That man never knew what it was to be familiar with God, who complains of the want of friends while God is with him.”

We need this state of prayer as a counteraction to the state of temptation in which we are always living. In such a world as this, life itself is one long temptation. The defense needs to be proportionate to the peril. The spirit of our age is skeptical of the reality of Satan. Few have the vivid faith which our fathers had in his personality as the chief of a malignant empire. We have reason to believe his subject angels to be a great multitude. A legion of them once held possession of one soul. They give to temptation a fearful force and perilous ubiquity. We have to contend with principalities and powers. No man is beyond the reach of their malign enchantments. Here, there, and everywhere, now, then, and always, personal and mighty foes are at hand to allure men to ruin. If spiritual attributes give any advantage over minds inclosed in fleshly forms, tempters have that advantage in this world of ours. We do not know that they ever slumber or are ever absent. That saintly woman was a wise one who taught her children to take example from the devil as the most industrious being in the created universe. There is but one refuge for a mortal man living under such conditions of spiritual trial. It is to live in a state of prayer as constant as the peril. God has ordained no other means by which we can summon from unseen worlds spiritual allies to reinforce our conflict with spiritual foes.

Luther may have had an exaggerated estimate of the attributes of Satan, and of his liberty of access to human souls. His imagination realized the presence of the adversary in visible and audible signs. He heard voices threatening or seductive over his left shoulder. “Ha! you are there, are you?” was the salutation he once gave, in response to an evil thought which he believed to be a suggestion from the devil. The spot in Luther’s cell at Erfurt is still exhibited to the curious, where he threw his inkstand at what he thought to be a visible form of a fiend. This may have been a strained and unnatural fancy, but that is not certain. The Reformer lived in an age in which Satan was at large in great liberty. Abnormal manifestations of his presence may have been becoming to the crisis, as they seem to have been in our Saviour’s life-time. At all events, Luther’s extreme, if it was such, was a safer error than the incredulous security from malign enchantments in which men of our times are living. Spiritual perils are the more fatal for being unseen and unheard. Odorless malaria is the most destructive to life. Burglars enter our homes in velvet slippers, and in the dark. Their dark-lanterns do not waken us from our slumber, though held at our bedside. So do invisible tempters creep stealthily upon us, and around us, night and day. Our unbelief in their existence is their safety from detection. Every man has an unseen enemy at his left shoulder. Better is Luther’s credulity than our dead faith. Such a continuous state of peril demands a continuous state of prayer as its offset and counteraction. “Continue in prayer, and watch,” is the password of safety.—Austin Phelps, D. D., in S. S. Times.