Studies in the Gospels: Luke the Gospel for the Greeks [pp. 448-475]

472 STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. [July,
tion is to be had with God and the world of invisible realities,
and how man is to reach up after the perfect manhood here,
and the immortal manhood of glory hereafter. The prayer
of faith is the great agency. The Greeks must be taught to
fall down on their knees and pray, and so to reach out after
the invisible but living Father. "Their temples were not
houses of prayer. Their w6rship consisted mainly in sacrifices,
or in religious pomps and processions, or in theatric shows.
But no ritual or liturgy of heathenism has been preserved to
~s." In a word, the Greek mind was to be schooled in the duties of devotion. Hence, Christ appears as the great example
of prayer and its power over the unseen world. He retires to
the wilderness and prays, and is strengthened to overcome the
adversary. He prays and chooses his disciples. He prays on
the Mount of Transfiguration, and the glory of heaven comes
down upon him. He prays alone in his retirement from his
public work, and the disciples, with Peter in the lead, make
their first full confession of his Messiahship. He prays in the
Garden, being in an agony, arid an angel comes down to
strengthen him. Even on the cross he prays for his murderers,
and in his last word commits his spirit into the hands of his
Father. And in harmony with this wonderful example is the
not less wonderful teaching, given in this Gospel only. Twice
is he represented as saying, " Men ought always to pray."
The effects of urgent prayer by man are here exhibited not
only by the promise, "Ask, and it shall be given you," and that
peculiar promise of the Holy Spirit for the asking, but also
in the two parables, of the friend coming for bread at midnight
and the widow before the unjust judge. He teaches how to
pray in that form everywhere known as the Lord's Prayer
(given only here and in Matthew); and by that inimitable incident of the two men who went up to the temple to pray
which has, perhaps, had a more powerful influence in directing
man to the true prayer than any other teaching of the Bible.
But the Greek needed to be taught that prayer is more than
the power which brings heaven down to men; that it is also
the power by which man's soul is to go out in gratitude toward
heaven, and by which it is to mount up toward heaven. "The
duty and blessedness of thanksgiving to God for benefits received from him, supplied another subject on which the Gen