A Victorian’s Religious Beliefs

PERSONAL PRAYER

The real work of Personal Spiritual Prayer or communion with God should be to promote growth of Godliness in the Individual. It does not change God, but it draws from Him an influence that makes the Individual more spiritual, and more divine. We all know that when in the presence of, and conversing with eminently good men and women we are bound to partake of their spirit. Their Spirit, natures, verity reach and touch our own, and warm us within like “contagious Fire”. It is on this every same and exact principle that God answers prayer and “gives His very Spirit unto them that ask Him”. God does not, visibly, come down through the stars and build up a man’s dwelling-house for him, but He builds up the man’s spirit and then the man’s spirit builds up his Body, and Brain, and then the whole God-made man altogether builds up his own dwelling. Yet God was at the foundation of it, and right at the top of it. And probably the man would never have had the dwelling at all unless he has asked the living God to help him build it.

One Individuals Prayers can also influence others beside himself, and especially so when these others are present this him. His power and spirit in prayer reach into the very centres of their being and move their spirits, and so they soon grow more an more of one mind, and one Spirit, until All throw open their hearts together to God in prayers, for themselves, and for everybody else. And it is a well known fact that thousands have there and then decided, and taken their stand, to live a new life through the searching, and fiery influence of other men’s prayers.

Also, a Godly man’s prayers under certain conditions can influence others who are well know to him, although they may be separated from him by seas, and continents. In every day life, persons of suitable mental and spiritual natures are continually impressing and influencing each other. One speaks his thought, when another at once says, “the very same thought was in my own mind”. Their spirits had met, and blended, before a word was spoken. Another is startled to suddenly remember a friend whom he has not seen for a year, when, in a very short time his friend stands before him. The visitor’s spirit was especially thinking of his friend, as he drew near him, and so verity had actual contact with his friend’s Spirit, which was the cause of the abrupt remembrance.

A Godly Mother sets her heart upon prayer for a careless daughter who is far away. The daughter can verity feel that her Mother is praying for her. It could not be otherwise, the Spirit reaches Spirit, and neither Spirit can rest. At last, the daughter is bound to yield and then she bravely beings the save and happy journey of her “New Life”. And at the tame time the spirit-influence of the daughter speeds swifter than light with the glad tidings to her Mother, when the Mother cries out “Bless the Lord, why Nellie is saved”, which in truth means that Nellie’s conversion has then just begun in real earnest.

So when a capable man sets his mind and heart on beginning and finishing some reasonable work, then that work will be done. And when a wise Godly man sets his Spirit and heart on getting an answer to a reasonable prayer, then that answer he will certainly get, for the laws and processes for cusses in prayer are as sure and exact as those relating to mechanical force, and to electric forces; the wise and right means are bound to secure their natural and the desired ends.

But the prayer that reaches, and blesses, a far distant friend is mentally and spiritually communicated. There must be contact. It may not be visible, but it is real. No one thing makes any impressions on anther, except by some means of contact. We could not know of the odour of Roses because odour is a property of Roses. But the invisible and real currents of the odour reach our sense of smell. And thus, we know of, and enjoy the delightful fragrance of the Rose. But there must be some form of contact, as a Cause, or there can be no Effect. If sweet odours can travel, unseen, and swift, and have direct contact with the human senses, then it is only fair to say that with Godly praying man’s Spirit-influence can, unseen, reach and bless his far off friend, just exactly and as sure as God’s Spirit reaches and domes in direct contact with and blesses the spirit of all the children of men, over all the Face of the Earth.

George Burgess, August 1899