On Public Prayer in Connection with Natural National Calamities
J. Baldwin Brown, B. A. Psalm 56:3-4 What time I am afraid, I will trust in you.… There are two classes of calamities in connection with which men have felt themselves in all ages moved to public confession and supplication; those which come to them from the hand of Providence through the order of the system of Nature around them, and those which have their origin wholly or chiefly in the follies, vices and sins of mankind. But the two stand by no means on the same ground with regard to the question of national humiliation and prayer. In the case of calamities which a nation has brought upon itself by its follies and crimes, there can be no question of the duty of humiliation and prayer. But when we are asked to join in an act of national humiliation on account of a scanty harvest, we seem to be standing on quite different ground. Chastisement which seems to fail on us from the skies brings suffering, but with it much that modifies it, and which may make us see, if we have but the open eye, that it is blessing in disguise. If we were asked to recognize in a late and scanty harvest a signal part of the Divine chastisement, I should feel little disposed to respond. And this not on the ground of doubts about the power of prayer in its legitimate sphere; but rather from a deepening sense of the reality and grandeur Of this power of prayer. We are only just emerging from Jewish levels of thought and belief in the Christian Church. Through all the Christian ages we have been prone to return on the tracks of Judaism, and to conceive of God, in His ways in the providential government of the world, as the ruler, after all, of a little realm, at the centre of which are the interests of our little lives. 1. The principle on which we are less ready than of old to rush to confession under natural national calamities of an ordinary type, is a just and noble one, and is a sign of vital progress in our theological conceptions, and our view of our relation to the world and to God. 2. This progress in the Christian thought of our times runs parallel to the progress in our conceptions of the true nature and the subject-matter of prayer, which is the fruit of growing knowledge and experience in the individual believing soul. As experience widens and deepens prayer becomes, or ought to become, less a cry of pain, and more an act of communion; intercourse with the Father in heaven, whereby His strength, His serenity, His hope flow into and abide in our hearts I should think but little of a Christian experience in which there is not a constant lifting up into the higher regions the subject-matter of prayer. 3. I by no means say, that even in an advanced state of Christian intelligence, there may not be natural national calamities, under which it would be wise and right for a nation to humble itself in confession and supplication before God. We must hot regard our prayer as a sure means of securing the removal of such calamities. Always, behind the prayer, if it is to be worth anything, is the thought, "It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth to Him good." There is in man, deep down in his nature, a sense, not only that the relation between his nature and the world around him, and the God who rules it, have become jangled and out of tune, but also that the responsibility for the discord lies at his door. Everywhere, in all countries, in all ages, at the bottom of man's deepest thoughts is the sense of sin. It is natural for men to rush to humble confession and importunate supplication when they think that the hand of God is upon them in judgment; and it is good and right for them at such seasons to approach Him, if they will but remember that the message of the Gospel is that God is reconciled in Christ to His children, that all His dealings with them, His sharpest and sternest discipline, are moved and ruled by the hand of that love which gave the well-beloved Son to Gethsemane and Calvary, that men might know its measure. (J. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. WEB: When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you.