| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 15 |
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On the other hand, there is an impression, especially among Christian people, that trouble always works good. Affliction is sometimes said to be the blessing of the New Testament as prosperity was of the Old. Those who are in sorrow are assured of the comfort of God and have many promises of good and of eternal reward, if they meet their trials patiently and with faith and joy. One of our Master’s beatitudes is for those who mourn. No doubt every affliction has in it possibilities of blessing. But here again there are possibilities also of hurt and harming. Sorrow is full of danger. While those who meet it with faith and love and joy find in it stores of heavenly good and are enriched thereby, many lose their life’s beauty and power in it. When we enter a trial we need also to pray to be kept from its evil.
Thus in every phase of life there is possible harm for us. Whether we shall receive hurt, or shall pass through our experiences without injury, depends upon the way we relate ourself to them. One man moves through life — its joy and sorrow, its pleasure and pain, its prosperity and adversity — and receives no stain, no marring, no wounding. Another passes through similar experiences, and at every point is harmed in his inner life. The secret is within us and we need to pray without ceasing that we may be kept from the evil which is always close to us.
“From the self that stains and stings,
Soils and hurts all holier things,
Weighing down the soul’s white wings,
Set us free, good Lord.
“From the inward foes that reign
O’er unwilling heart and brain,
From the tyranny of pain,
Set us free, good Lord.”
Our request in this petition is that we may be delivered from evil. Our Lord, in his great intercessory prayer for his disciples, just before he left them, asked for them, not that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be kept from the evil. It is not the will of our Master for us that we should flee away from the world of men, or of business, or of pleasure, or of love, to live in solitude. We could not get away from the evil by such a flight, for we would carry with us that which, wherever we may be, is the real secret of our peril — our own evil self.
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