YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY
253
GEO. ADAM SMITH AT YALE.
[Continued from 247th page. |
Paul intended by the apparently im-
possible command to pray without
ceasing. Whether the lips be moving
or not, the man who has that attitude
of heart towards God is the man whose
daily life is one of constant and un-
broken prayer.
But I pass from this very obvious
point to the second, which I desire to
present more fully. Besides, defining
prayer as the fatherward attitude of the
heart, Christ made prayer the real bat-
tlefield. of life. Now I shall best pre-
sent this aspect of the subject to you
as it has come to me in studying the
Scriptures, and in this way. If you
were asked what were the quietest mo-
ments of Christ’s life, and, upon the
other hand, what were the moments
which were fullest of struggle, effort and
even agony, I think your first and most
natural reply would be that the quiet-
est moments of our Lord’s life were
the moments that he spent alone in
communion with his Father, and that
the moments of struggle were those
spent in the heavy task of elevating his
dull disciples’ mind, of meeting his ad-
versaries, the Pharisees, in debate, and
in the exhausting work of healing the
sick and caring for the sorrows of men.
This might be the most natural an-
swer, but it would be an answer that
was absolutely the reverse of the truth.
So far from the hours which our Lord
spent in communion with his Father be-
ing the quietest of his life, these hours
were hours of effort, of contest, of
agony. The Gospels have given us
several glimpses into Christ’s hours of
prayer; in these we see him groaning
and heavy-laden—and in one of them
with heart and mind sore, with the pros-
pect of the Cross, dropping at it were,
great drops of blood, and crying, Father,
if it be possible let this cup pass from
me; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine
be done.” And that this was not the oc-
casional attitude of our Lord in prayer,
but his constant habit and temper, is
told us by the words “Though he were
a Son, yet made he supplication to
God with strong crying and tears.”
And it was just because our Lord made
these hours of prayer before God the
real battlefield of life, that before the
eyes of men and through all the rest of
lifes experience and the conflict to
which he had been called, he moved
as one who was already more than Con-
queror and who had only to gather in
the spoils and harvest of His victory.
Christ made prayer the real battlefield
of life.
Take those two scenes towards the
end of his life, the two which came so
closely together; the one in Gethse-
mane in the night time under the trees,
bowed down beneath the intolerable
load, the intolerable prospect of
the Crucifixion that awaited him,
when he uttered the awful words
I have quoted; and that other a few
hours la ter in the morning sunshine,
when he stood before all the authority
of Rome, calm and unmoved, and with
these words on his lips, “Thou couldest
have no power over me except it were
given thee from above.” Only He, who
had conquered in that great conflict of
prayer, could stand there in such
majesty and peace. Christ, then, made
prayer the real battlefield of life! not
the drill for the battle, as our Salva-
tion Army iriends do, not the review
of parade before the battle, but He made
it the battle itself.
GENERAL GORDON’S STRUGGLES.
Now in our age, it seems to me one
man has learned, as I read his letters,
this secret of Christ's more than
others: It may bring the truth home to
us more if I tell you of him. General
Gordon has told the story of his inner
life most fully in his letters to his sis-
ter from abroad, and these letters have
many such expressions as these: “I
had a terrible half hour this morning,
hewing Agag in pieces before the
Lord.” And again, “The foe gave me
a bitter battle this morning.” Again,
“T had a terrible struggle this morning
with Agag,’ etc. And by Agag of
course he meant no poor flesh and
blood with whom he had to contend -
to the end, no Chinaman, Soudanese, or
Turkish Pasha, but just that old and
evil self in struggling with and over-
coming whom consists the warfare and
the victory of every man born into this
world.
Christ’s secret of making prayer the bat-
tlefield of life, and that is why he moved
through the rest of his life so calm
and peaceful, marched up to the can-
non’s mouth without fear, and was
ready at a moment’s notice to go out to
the ends of the earthh Now how many
of us have learned that secret of Christ,
which General Gordon had learned? I
believe that it is just because we haven't
learned that secret of prayer that prayer
to most of us becomes a thing less earn-
est, less practical, less full of duty than
our ordinary studies or business or
work in the world. I do not believe
that men are driven from prayer to-
day by philosophic arguments, or by
various habits, but I believe that
many men are drawn away from
prayer by reasons which look plausi-
ble and honest. We are brought
up to prayer as children, in boy-
hood the heart is still soft and we
continue our habit of prayer. But
we come up to college, or go out into
the world, and our work in the world
and our business, when we awake in
the morning, is the first thing to come
into our mind, and to get to that work
as quickly as possible appears our first
duty, and consequently the morning
prayer is hurried through as a mere
matter of form,. or else is abandoned
altogether. I believe that if you could
see into men’s lives, these are the rea-
sons of very many for giving up prayer.
Now plausible and honest as these rea-
sons may seem, I believe nobody ever
made a greater mistake than when. he
thought a prayer less businesslike, less
dutiful than the day’s work. He who
begins the day without prayer will for
the rest of the day be like the man who
has an enemy upon his rear as well as
in front of him. But, he who summons
up the foes he knows he shall meet be-
fore the day is over, his besetting sins,
his most frequent temptations and then
and there in the presence of God asks
and receives grace to overcome them,
he shall pass through the rest of the
day with something of his Lord’s own
peace and power. .
PRAYER MEANS BUSINESS.
Now, gentlemen, I do not want to
present this subject in a sensational
light. I want to say to you that prayer
means business; that it is a bit of solid
work that will tell all the rest of the
day. And all I ask you to try is this:
Just for a few days in the morning,
summon up whatever temptation is
likely to meet you, let each man take
his besetting sin, and call it by its right
name, and ask grace to overcome it.
I believe that there is more in learning
that secret of Christ than in gaining al-
most any other truth religion has to
offer. Prayer is not the parade, not the
drill, but the real, solid, earnest conflict
itself.
Now I have only two or three min-
utes left for the third point, and it is
this: We are told that our Lord, after
spending a long Sabbath day (and you
remember that our Lord’s works of
healing were largely done in the valley
of the Lake of Galilee, where the tem-
perature is scarcely ever below 8o de-
grees and where fever abounds), our
Lord, instead of spending the whole of
the following night in slumber, was
missed by his disciples, rising long be-
fore morning, and was afterwards found
by them engaged in prayer. That is
to say, Christ not only had the secret
of making prayer the battlefield of life,
but He followed up the battle and He
crowned the victory by renewed prayer
—by a new enlistment and consecration
of Himself to the work before Him.
Now it seems to me that the secret of a
great deal of the broken progress in our
moral growth, of the backsliding and
falling away, is due to the forgetfulness
of this third secret of our Lord’s
prayers. You know what dangerous
citizens disbanded soldiers make, and
[Continued on 254th page.]
Check that Gou
with BROWN’S 5
BRONCHIAL TROGHES-
Fac-Simile on eve
Ee é Lady box. i:
Signature of
General Gordon had followed |
It has been definitely decided by the |
Faculties of Yale and Harvard that
there will be no race this year between
the Dunham Boat Club Crew of Yale
and the Newell and Weld Clubs of Har-
vard. |
LUCAS
OF HAMILTON PLACE
BOSTON. |
-
From the “Hartford Courant,’ Jan. 25, 1899.
THE PHCENIX MUTUAL LIFE.
Its Excellent Statement for the Past Year.
The forty-eighth annual statement of the
Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company is
published elsewhere this morning and gives
gratifying evidence of the wise management
and healthy progress of this large Hartford
concern. The gross assets exceed $11,660,-
000, having increased over $600,000 during
the past year. The surplus is now over
$660,000, and the amount of insurance in
force is $51,170,782, represented by 31,592
policies.
The assets are all figured at conservative
valuations and are worth decidedly more than
they are set in at. The company has dis-
posed of about $50,000 of its real estate dur-
ing the year, and has added over $500,000 to
its stocks and bonds.. Its strength is very
great and it has the confidence of all in the
insurance business as well as the general
public. The drift of new business toward
the Phoenix Mutual is shown by the figures.
During the past three years the new policies
issued were respectively 5506, 6570 and 7757
for respectively $9,871,601, $11,770,989 and
$13,068,715—an increase of over 2000 in
number and $3,200,000 in amount in two
years.
The growth of the company is strikingly
illustrated by looking back a little and com-
paring the figures of say, 1889 with those of
1898. They are as follows :-—
1889. 1808.
Policies in force, 17,101 31,592
Outstanding insur., . $23,955.464$51,170,782
New premiums rec’d, 39,187 368,659
Renewal prem, rec'd, 609,513 1,552,260
The policies in force have almost doubled
in number and more than doubled in amount;
the new premiums have increased tenfold,
and the company has stepped into a large and
honorable place among the life insurance
interests of the cityandcountry. Its manage-
ment, under President Bunce, Vice-President
~ Holcombe and Secretary Lawrence, has proved
a noteworthy success, as the figures amply
demonstrate.
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