Bible Commentaries

Solomon's Dedicatory Prayer

Exodus 20:21; Deuteronomy 4:11; Psalm 18:9)] ( 2 Chronicles 6:1).

THAT is the true conception of God at a given point in our spiritual education. Clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne: the light is darkness. Thus we are in the Christian sense agnostics. Our brightest thinking hardly amounts to the beginning of dawn. When we are most reverential we are most humble; when we are most perfectly sure that we have hold on God we are also most perfectly confident that no understanding can search him, no mental capacity can hold him; he loves the darkness because he loves us; he wears the darkness as a robe that he may not blind us with excess of light, as the atmosphere is the darkening of the sun. We are indebted to intermediate agencies and actions always, to a kind of natural priestliness and intercession that will not allow us to come face to face with essential glories and essential sublimities. The light dwells in a tent made for it, and comes to us as we are able to bear it. If we cannot see this darkness-covered Father we can see his Son Jesus Christ. The apostle said so plainly: we cannot see God, but we see Jesus: we see the express image of his Person; we see Godhead atmosphered, so to say, to suit our vision and our capacity. Now and then the incarnate God, the eternal 2 Chronicles 6:32-33).

We need not ask whether such a prayer is inspired. Its humanity is its divinity. Who teaches prayers like this? Who is not limited to his own house, his own nation, his own language? How thrilling when a 2 Chronicles 6:36).

What marvellous moral penetration is revealed in one little sentence in this prayer! "If they sin against thee"—then comes a parenthesis—"(for there is no man which sinneth not)." All that in a parenthesis! A solemn judgment upon the human world in so many—rather, in so few little words. Solomon has become a theologian, without theological narrowness and bitterness. It was a wonderful thing for a man like Solomon to say. It is a comprehensive judgment. "There is no man which sinneth not"—no king, no potentate, no ruler, no father, no child, no heart that has not its wandering, its aberration, its hunger after evil, its thirst for hell. A wondrous tragedy is this human life; for a long time so plain and simple and fluent, and then suddenly more terrible than a volcano, more cruel than any wild beast of the jungle, more difficult than any perplexity that ever afflicted the human mind. A man who prays so begets our confidence, because we feel he knows human nature. It is thus where the preacher must lay his hold upon public attention—by showing that he has read the human heart, that he knows it in all its trickery, and concealment, and genius of hypocrisy; and that he knows it in all its unconfessed infirmity and bitterness and load of grief. There must be something in word or tone or look which means—That man understands me; he has lived a good deal of his life on a battlefield; he has not studied Christianity at a library window, he has wrestled with evil, and flung the monster. It is thus that the Scriptures lay their gracious hold upon all men; they know the human heart in all its outgoing, in all its purpose, in all its mystery of good and evil, and in this garden of the Lord is a herb for healing, is fruit for hunger, is beauty for fancy, is music that can at once lull the soul and thrill it with momentary passion.

Prayer

Almighty God, the vineyard is thine; all souls are thine; thou art the one owner. We have nothing that we have not received; when we look upon our possessions we say, Whose image and superscription is this? and, lo! we find thy name there, and thy claim. So thou hast given, and thou mayest take away—Oh, teach us to say, Blessed be the name of the Lord! Thou hast set us some hard things to do; we cannot do them all at once; we have to suffer much, and suffer long before we can say some words thou hast taught us to say in prayer. We are trying to pray, but yet we cannot pray the one prayer that is never denied; we are struggling towards it, we want to say it; we count the words, and weigh them, and wonder about them, but we cannot say them with the heart; we want to say with the whole soul, Not my will, but thine, be done. If thou wilt teach us to say this we shall know that thou hast done the last of thy miracles, thou mighty Son of God. We bless thee that this is thy prayer, O Christ; thou didst say it, thou didst punctuate it with blood, thou didst utter it in groaning, but in groaning thou didst triumph; in thy sorrow was the beginning of thy joy. Help us to know that the Lord reigneth, that there is but one supreme will, that our business is to discover what that will is and to obey it, simply, lovingly, trustfully: may there be no questioning in our hearts as to its righteousness and goodness and usefulness; may there simply be a desire, burning and pure, to do God's will in Christ's name and in Christ's great strength. Amen.