p. 69 | NEED OF PRAYER by Alexander McLaren

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1889

NEED OF PRAYER.

By Alexander McLaren

MARK'S Gospel gives special prominence to Christ's toilsome work. It is the gospel of the Son who is the Servant; and, just because of this point of view, it also makes very prominent the seasons of rest and solitude by which Jesus repaired his wearied energy and bathed his spirit in communion with the Father. That long, hard day in Capernaum needed some short, deep sleep, to restore his physical power. But it needed more solitary prayer; and so the first verses of this lesson tell of his stealing from the slumbering town, and seeking the loneliness of the hills behind Capernaum, to hold converse with God. The harder our work, the more we need solitude and prayer, without which work becomes mechanical and insincere. Preachers, revivalists, and all those whose Christian calling requires them to be much in public, and to handle sacred things for the good of others, must live much alone with God, and secure many an hour of still communion, if their words are to be anything better than sounding brass or tinkling cymbals. For want of that, many a man has talked away his religion, and never found out how little his words to others represented his real, indifferent self. Hence come all sorts of unrealities, vehement efforts to pretend to an earnestness which is not genuine. A Christian worker must either pray much or deteriorate into an actor. What Jesus needed, we cannot do without. To him solitude was blessed. He with whom God dwells is never less alone than when alone; for then he enjoys without interruption God in himself, and himself in God. Solitude is the mother country of the strong. The true "deepening of the spiritual life" is better sought in the desert-place than in "conventions."—Alexander McLaren, in S. S. Times.