WITH GOD IN THE WORLD

By the Rt. Rev. CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

WITH GOD IN THE WORLD

A Series of Papers

BY

CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D.

BISHOP OF WESTERN NEW YORK

NEW IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1919


Copyright, 1899, by Longmans, Green, & Co.

First Edition, August, 1899
Reprinted January, 1900, January, 1902
October, 1905, February, 1908
August, 1910, February, 1912
October, 1912, November, 1912
January, 1914
February, 1916
January, 1919

TO MY FRIENDS
JOHN W. WOOD, SILAS MCBEE
AND
JAMES L. HOUGHTELING

Preface

Charles Darwin says somewhere that "the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness." Whether it is the only object, may be a question; it is certainly one object. And the poorest book that ever went to press, merits respect, provided that its writer is sincere and speaks from conviction. It is this and the sense that "thought is not our own until we impart it" to others, that has encouraged me to write these pages—originally a series of papers prepared for the Saint Andrew's Cross, the organ of a Society for which I am glad to profess publicly a deep admiration and affection. Often, more frequently far than is noted, I have borrowed the thought and language of others to express my own mind. I send out this little volume with the hope that, before it meets with the fate of the ephemeral literature to which it belongs, it may help a few here and there to take up life's journey with steadier steps and cheerier mien.

C. H. B.

Contents

CHAPTERS

I. THE UNIVERSAL ART Page 1

II. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD—LOOKING 9

III. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD—SPEAKING 20

IV. FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD—THE RESPONSE 29

V. THE TESTING OF FRIENDSHIP 40

VI. KNITTING BROKEN FRIENDSHIP 52

VII. FRIENDSHIP IN GOD 61

VIII. FRIENDSHIP IN GOD—CONTINUED 71

IX. THE CHURCH IN PRAYER 84

X. THE GREAT ACT OF WORSHIP 97

XI. WITNESSES UNTO THE UTTERMOST PART OF THE EARTH 111

XII. THE INSPIRATION OF RESPONSIBILITY 123

APPENDIX—WHERE GOD DWELLS 135

Chapter I

The Universal Art

It is productive of much mischief to try to make people believe that the life of prayer is easy. In reality there is nothing quite so difficult as strong prayer, nothing so worthy of the attention and the exercise of all the fine parts of a great manhood. On the other hand there is no man who is not equal to the task. So splendid has this human nature of ours become through the Incarnation that it can bear any strain and meet any demand that God sees fit to put upon it. Some duties are individual and special, and there is exemption from them for the many, but there is never any absolution from a duty for which a man has a capacity. There is one universal society, the Church, for which all are eligible and with which all are bound to unite; there is one universal book, the Bible, which all can understand and which it is the duty of all to read; there is one universal art, prayer, in which all may become well skilled and to the acquirement of which all must bend their energies.

Active or dormant, the instinct of prayer abides, a faithful tenant, in every soul. The peasants who went to the Incarnate One and said "Lord, teach us to pray," were representative of a whole race, a race which feels stirring within its breast a capacity for prayer, but whose power to pray falls far short of the desire. The instinct to pray may be undeveloped, or paralyzed by violence, or it may lie bed-ridden in the soul through long neglect; but even so, no benumbed faculty is more readily roused to life and nerved to action than that of prayer. The faculty is there; no one is without it. Whether it expands, and how, is only a question of the will of the person concerned.

It is good to be quite honest and frank. Is it not so that the real thing that makes men dumb towards God is, in the first instance, at any rate, not intellectual doubt about the efficacy of prayer but the difficulty of it all—the rebellion of the flesh, the strain upon the attention, the claim