There is running through all
our Lord's doctrinal and homiletical teaching that note of reality and of
certitude that can only come to any teaching out of the long and deep and
intense experience of the teacher. And as the Master was, so are all His
ministers. When I read, for instance, what William Law says about the
heart-searching and heart-cleansing efficacy of intercessory prayer in
the case of him who continues all his life so to pray, and carries such
prayer through all the experiences and all the relationships of life, I
do not need you to tell me where that great man of God made that great
discovery. I know that he made it in his own closet, and on his own
knees, and in his own evil heart. And so, also, when I come nearer home.
Whenever I hear a single unconventional, immediate, penetrating,
overawing petition or confession in a minister's pulpit prayer or in his
family worship, I do not need to be told out of what prayer-book he took
that. I know without his telling me that my minister has been, all
unknown to me till now, at that same school of prayer to which his Master
was put in the days of His flesh, and out of which He brought the
experiences that He afterwards put into the Friend at midnight, and the
Importunate widow, as also into the Egg and the scorpion, the Bread and
the stone, the Knocking and the opening, the Seeking and the finding.
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