But this solution of the problem does not go far enough. Prayer is claimed to have a positive effect on the mind other than resignation. Joyful emotions are its fruits, spiritual enlightenment its reward. These are more than cheerful acquiescence, nor can the latter come from objects of sense.
The most eminent teachers agree in banishing material pleasure and prosperity from holy desires. They are of one mind in warning against what the world and the flesh can offer, against the pursuit of riches, power and lust. Many counsel poverty and deliberate renunciation of all such things. Nor is the happiness they talk of that which the pursuit of intellectual truth brings. This, indeed, confers joy, of which whoever has tasted will not hastily return to the fleshpots of the senses, but it is easy to see that it is not religious. Prayer and veneration have not a part in it. Great joy is likewise given by the exercise of the imagination when stirred by art in some of its varied forms, and a joy more nearly allied to religion than is that of scientific investigation. But the esthetic emotions are well defined, and are distinctly apart from those concerned with the religious sentiment. Their most complete satisfaction rather excludes than encourages pious meditations. That which prayer ought to seek outside of itself is different from all of these, its dower must be divine.
We need not look long for it. Though hidden from the wise, it has ever been familiar to the unlearned. Man has never been in doubt as to what it is. He has been only too willing to believe he has received it.
In barbarism and civilization, in the old and new worlds, the final answer to prayer has ever been acknowledged to be inspiration, revelation, the thought of God made clear to the mind of man, the mystical hypostasis through which the ideas of the human coincide with those of universal Intelligence. This is what the Pythian priestess, the Siberian shaman, the Roman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the Indian medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees along with the Hebrew seers and the Mahometan teacher.[137-1]
The TRUTH, the last and absolute truth, is what is everywhere recognized as, if not the only, at least the completest, the highest answer to prayer. “Where I found the truth, there I found my God, himself the truth,” says St. Augustine; and in a prayer by St. Chrysostom, the “Golden Mouth,” unsurpassed in its grand simplicity, it is said: “Almighty Father, * * grant us in this world knowledge of Thy truth, and in the world to come, life everlasting.” Never has the loftiest purpose of prayer been more completely stated. This it was that had been promised them by Him, to whom they looked as an Intercessor for their petitions, who had said: “I will send unto you the Comforter. * * When he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you unto all truth.”
The belief that this answer is at all times attainable has always been recognized by the Christian Church, Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant. Baptism was called by the Greek fathers, “enlightenment” (Φωτισμος), as by it the believer received the spirit of truth. The Romanist, in the dogma of infallibility, proclaims the perpetual inspiration of a living man; the Protestant Churches in many creeds and doctrinal works extend a substantial infallibility to all true believers, at least to the extent that they can be inspired to recognize, if not to receive divine verity.
The Gallican Confession of Faith, adopted in 1561, rests the principal evidence of the truth of the Scriptures on “le témoignage et l’intérieure persuasion du Saint Esprit,” and the Westminster Confession on “the inward work of the holy spirit.” The Society of Friends maintain it as “a leading principle, that the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is not only immediate and direct, but perceptible;” that it imparts truth “without any mixture of error;” and thus is something quite distinct from conscience, which is common to the race, while this “inward light” is given only to the favored of God.[138-1]
The non-juror, William Law, emphatically says: “The Christian that rejects the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole cause of infidelity; he has nothing to prove the goodness of his own Christianity, but that which equally proves to the Deist the goodness of his infidelity.”[139-1] That by prayer the path of duty will be made clear, is a universal doctrine.
The extent to which the gift of inspiration is supposed to be granted is largely a matter of church government. Where authority prevails, it is apt to be confined to those in power. Where religion is regarded as chiefly subjective and individual, it is conceded that any pious votary may become the receptacle of such special light.
Experience, however, has too often shown that inspiration teaches such contradictory doctrines that they are incompatible with any standard. The indefinite splitting of Protestant sects has convinced all clear thinkers that the claim of the early Confessions to a divinely given power of distinguishing the true from the false has been a mistaken supposition. As a proof to an unbeliever, such a gift could avail nothing; and as evidence to one’s own mind, it can only be accepted by those who deliberately shut their eyes to the innumerable contradictions it offers.[140-1]