La Rochefoucauld might have as truly set down— No affliction without its stock-jobbers, who all Burn thy book, O La Rochefoucauld !-Fool! one man's wit I ASKING AMISS. ST. JAMES iv. 3. F there is apostolic warrant for the assertion that not tɔ have is due to not having asked, so is there for the corollary that not to have may sometimes be due to having asked amiss. "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss”—ask in an earthly spirit, and with aims and objects of the earth, earthy. Ask amiss, as if anything might be asked for that one fancies, and as if it were of course to be had for the asking-something to pamper the flesh, for instance, to satisfy the desire of the eye. to be enjoyed in exclusively a worldly sense, to be consumed upon one's pleasures : ἵνα ἐν ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ὑμῶν δαπανήσητε. Many men, says Jeremy Taylor, pray in the flesh, when they pretend they pray in the Spirit. Some, he says, think it is enough in all instances if they pray hugely and fervently; and that it is religion impatiently to desire some earthly advantage or convenience, an heir to be born, or a foe to be foiled: "They call it holy, so they desire it in prayer." In Jonson's comedy, Fungoso is positively devout in his aspirations after a new suit, to match that worn by Fastidious Brisk: might he but have his wish, he'd ask no more of Heaven now, but such a suit, doublet and hose and hat included; "Send me good luck, Lord, an't be Thy will, prosper it!" Equally typical is the Scotchman's prayer for a modest competency," And, that ABUSED EXERCISE OF PRAYER. 431 there may be no mistake, let it be seven hundred a year paid quarterly in advance." Lady Castletowers, in the novel, when she joins in the prayer put up at church, towards the end of the service, which implores fulfilment for the desires and petitions of the congregation, "as may be most expedient for them," invariably reverts in the silence of her thoughts to a marquis's coronet on the carriage panels, to the four pearls and the four strawberry leaves: nor ever asks herself if there can be profanity in the prayer. The author of La Religion Naturelle discusses what things may with propriety be asked of Heaven; and among such as may not, he sets down anything of an immoral kind, since it is a direct offence to Heaven to even conceive a desire contre l'honnêteté; also, demands of a frivolous character; supplications such as, Grant that this pear may ripen, or, that this lawsuit may be successful; nor can it be conceded that one may petition the Almighty for things one would blush to ask of an earthly friend. What may be called the logic of prayer in this respect is pithily put in the collect for the tenth Sunday after Trinity; "Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please Thee." Contre l'honnêteté, saving the reverence due to the Holy Father as such, may surely be accounted,-by Protestants at least, and of Teutonic lineage,-the "curious thing," as Mr. Carlyle calls it, done by the Pope in 1729, on occasion of a growing estrangement between England and Prussia. "The Pope, having prayed lately for rain and got it, proceeds now to pray, or even do a Public Mass, or some other . so-called Pontificality, prays, namely, that Heaven would be graciously pleased to foment, and blow up to the proper degree, this quarrel between the two chief Heretic Powers, Heaven's chief enemies, whereby Holy Religion might reap a good benefit, if it pleased Heaven.” * *"But, this time, the miracle did not [as in the case of the rain] go off according to program."-History of Frederick the Great, vol. ii., p. 97. The rapacious and unscrupulous governor, De Hagenbach, in Scott's Anne of Geierstein, is rebuked by his father confessor for desiring his kind prayers and intercession with Our Lady and the saints, "in some transactions which are likely to occur this morning, and in which, as the Lombard says, I do espy roba di guadagno,"-the desiderated prayers being, in fact, simply for the success of pillage and robbery. In The Pirate, Bryce the pedlar, enriched by the ill wind that blows him good in the shape of a wreck, is unfailing in his expression of grateful thanks to Heaven for such mercies, *—not_without hope that the cultivation of this devout spirit may bring a blessing on him and his, and "mair wrecks ere winter."+ Thought worthy of permanent record in Mr. Irving's Annals of our Time, is the case of the convicted swindler who called himself Sir Richard Douglas, and whose diary was put in evidence against him and his two sons at the Central Criminal Court, to prove the extensive scale and methodical system of his cheating transactions; in which diary the first day of the new year opened with a prayer, asking Providence to bless the exertions of the writer and his sons, and make them more prosperous than in the year before. Utterly beyond his apprehension, or comprehension, would have been the too subtle point in Hartley Coleridge's sonnet on Prayer,— "But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away." Brother Prince's Journal some years ago supplied the reviewers with matter for notes of exclamation, where he makes out Heaven as interposing, for instance, in one case to cure him of a toothache, in another to secure him an inside seat in a chaise, in a third to secure him a prize in Euclid. So again, * A costermonger told a city missionary, that if he ever prayed, it was for a hard winter and plenty of wild ducks. Sir Walter has a story of a Zetlander who met a remark of surprise at his having such old sails to his boat, with the reply, in reference to a then recently erected lighthouse on the Isle of Sanda," Had it been His will that light had not been placed yonder, I would have had enough of new sails last winter." PUERILE PETITIONINGS. 433 when reading for a scholarship at Lampeter, not having allowed himself time to make up the whole course, he "besought God to lead him to those branches of study which would be specially required." The result was, that he "got up the series of prophecy respecting the Messiah, which proved to be the very point" in question; and he was, in consequence, successful. A Saturday Reviewer considers "the idea of the Almighty acting as a judicious 'coach' to a lazy student," to be one of those touches of pious blasphemy which are only to be met with out of "the profane world." Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton mentions that he always qualified his petitions by adding, provided that what he asked for was for his real good and according to God's will; but with this qualification he felt at liberty to submit his wants and wishes to God in small things as well as great: "and I am inclined to imagine that there are no ‘little things' with Him. We see that His attention is as much bestowed upon what we call trifles, as upon those things which we consider of mighty importance." But may there not be such a thing as trifling with Him about trifles? Huntingdon, S.S., avowedly used his prayers "as gunners do swivels, turning them every way as the cases required." Now for a new coat, because "my surtout coat was got very thin and bad;" now for a horse; now for a pair of leather breeches. In short, by his own account, he "could not then get anything either to eat or drink, wear or use, without begging it of God," -all, be it observed, in the way of special providences. One recalls what a rather caustic critic and biographer of Madame de Krüdener tells us of one period in her career: "Dès cette époque, elle avait l'habitude de mêler Dieu à toutes choses, à celles même auxquelles sans doute il aime le moins à être mêlé." Or again the entries in the diary of Karl Ludwig Sand, such as this about his pony that had fallen lame: "My God! who orderest small things as well as great, remove this misfortune from me, and heal him as promptly as possible;"followed by next day's memorandum: "The pony is well. God has helped me." Or again, Avicenna going regularly to the mosque to pray that Allah would help him in his very hard studies, and get him middle terms for the syllogisms he required. Or again, the beggars at Mecca, which has been called the paradise of their fraternity, who accost the passenger with cries of, "I ask from God fifty dollars, a suit of clothes, and a copy of the Koran. O faithful, hear me ! I ask of you fifty dollars." "O faithful, hear me! I ask of God twenty dollars to pay my passage home; twenty dollars only. God is all-bountiful, and may give me a hundred dollars; but it is twenty dollars only that I ask," etc. Some of the pages in Southey's Life of the venerable founder of Methodism, are headed "Wesley's Credulity,”—the biographer commenting therein upon the state of mind which made his hero ascribe a supernatural importance to the incidents that befell him, and a special answer to the petitions he rather indiscriminately offered. As when, preaching at Durham in the open air, the sun shone with such force on his head that he was scarcely able to speak: "I paused a little," he said, "and desired God would provide me a covering, if it was for His glory. In a moment it was done; a cloud covered the sun, which troubled me no more. Ought voluntary humility to conceal this palpable proof, that God still heareth the prayer?" By an effort of faith he could rid himself of the toothache; and more than once, when his horse fell lame, and there was no other remedy, the same application was found effectual. Long after the death of his friend and ally, the once celebrated William Grimshaw of Haworth, it was believed that the races had been stopped there by that pastor's prayer for a heavy rain to spoil the sport; which rain came in earnest, and lasted for three days, proving a damper indeed. In a letter from Brighton the late Frederick Robertson called to remembrance his going out, when a very young boy, with his father shooting, and praying, as often as the dogs came to * The story goes, that Allah heard his prayers, and found him the middle terms while he slept; at least they came to him in dreams. Upon which, and in explanation of which, Mr. E. S. Dallas has some shrewd things to say, and shrewdly says them, in his treatise on what he calls the Hidden Soul. |