The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 670

PRAYER

630

we answer Prayer

the Holy Spirit?

:

the impressed image toward

To be

its

is

the drawing and pressing of

Original,

which

the bearers of that impressed image

is

the Triune God.

is

the marvelous honor

—

bestowed upon men. Altho marred by sin God grant by regeneration restored in you yet the original features of that image are

—

still

the original features of our

we would cease

to

human

being.

Without that image

be men.

And, owing its origin to the impress of that original Image, our inward being draws toward It, naturally, urgently, and persistently. It can not live without it, and the fact that, on the other hand, the original

man

Image

One draws

of the Eternal

to Himself,

is

the impressed image in

the ultimate and constraining power of all

However, to be exalted to the dignity of prayer, this drawing to God must not be like the involuntary suction of water to the deep, or the turning of the opening rose-bud toward the light. For the water knows not whither it is going, and the rosebud is unconscious of the sunshine which governs it. That almost irresistible drawing can be called prayer only when we know that it is prayer, when we perceive it, and, knowing to whom it draws us,

prayer.

make it our own conscious, cooperating act. Hence prayer does not spring from the will. The Triune God is He who rouses the soul to prayer, who draws us, and not we ourWherefore the Psalmist says: "When Thou saidst. Seek selves. )'-e My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." And how does this first impulse from God reach us? Not externally

And knowing

as the wind, but internally in the heart.

not proceed

from me, but

comes

to

me,

it

that

it

does

must be from the Holy

Are not all the internal impulses that Spirit who works in me. proceed from the Eternal One the proper work of the Holy Spirit ? We can have no fellowship with the Son but through the Holy none with the Father but through the Son to whom the Holy Spirit has introduced us. However, we do not speak now of the state of regeneration. In Spirit;

our treatment of prayer thus original state,

far,

and independent

we have

reference to

of the restoration

;

and

man

in his

in that state

we say, prayer is not the cry of an independent being for a God to him unknown, with whom he hopes thus to become acquainted; on the contrary, that all prayer presupposes, on man's part, an inward sense of the Eternal Being of God, and of the fact that, being created after His image, he belongs to Him and consciously draws but,

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