All around
us Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better.
The amount of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts
of unnumbered thousands of men and women in whom we should never
suspect it; among the wise and thoughtful, among the young and
gay, who seldom assuage and never betray their thirst--this is one
of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. It is not more
heart that is needed, but more light; not more force, but a wiser
direction to be given to very real energies already there.
The usual advice when one asks for counsel on these questions is,
"Pray." But this advice is far from adequate. I shall qualify the
statement presently; but let me urge it here, with what you will
perhaps call daring emphasis, that to pray for these things is not
the way to get them. No one will get them without praying; but
that men do not get them by praying is a simple fact. We have all
prayed, and sincerely prayed, for such experiences as I have named;
prayed, believing that that was the way to get them. And yet have
we got them? The test is experience. I dare not limit prayer;
still less the grace of God. If you have got them in this way,
it is well. I am speaking to those, be they few or many, who have
not got them; to ordinary men in ordinary circumstances.
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