The Prayer of Faith.
I. God is infinite, and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore which correspond to the physical element in us do not exhaustHis agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged faculty beyond. As yet, you have but reached the precinct of His being. Behind and amid all the punctualities of law, abides in infinite remainder, the living and unpledged spirit of God; the traces which he prints on nature are but as the waving water-line with which the breakers meet the beach; but horizon after horizon beyond, the same tide sweeps alone, and there is the play of ten thousand waves with neither reef nor shore to bring them to account; so is it with the deep mind of God, out beyond the limit of contact with nature, its energy is not bound to take any given shape, thrown up and determined by its previous force, but is free to rise and play and lapse into itself again. Here, he has made no rule but the everlasting rule of holiness, and gives no pledge but the pledge of inexhaustible love.
II. In man there are two elements, the physical and the spiritual; in God there are two agencies, also physical and spiritual. It follows of itself that what is physical in us is subjected to what comes physically from Him; while that which is spiritual in us is open to communication from what lives spiritually in Him. We must accommodate ourselves to the stern mechanism of God's natural laws, and then He will succour us, not by alteringthem, but by inspiringus by lifting us to bear their burden by throwing open to us the almightiness of His companionship, and the shelter of His love. Wherever elements of character enter the result, so that it will differ according to the moral agent's attitude of mind, it is plainly not beyond the reach of a purely spiritual influence to modify a temporal event. The prayer of Cromwell's soldiers kneeling on the field could not lessen the numbers, or blunt the weapons of the Cavaliers, but might give such fire of zeal and coolness of thought, as to turn each man into an organ of almighty justice, and carry the victory which he implored. Wherever the living contact between the human spirit and the Divine, can set in operation our very considerable control over the combinations and processes of the natural world, there is still left a scope, practically indefinite, for prayer that the bitter cup of outward suffering may pass away; only never without that trustful relapse, "Not My will, but Thine, be done."
J. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. ii., p. 220.
References: 1 Timothy 2:8. A. Blomfield, Sermons in Town and Country,p. 286. 1 Timothy 2:9-15. Expositor,1st series, vol. ii., p. 317. 1 Timothy 2:13; 1 Timothy 2:14. T. Gasquoine, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 182. 1 Timothy 2:15. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 13. 1 Timothy 3:1-7. Expositor,1st series, vol. ii., p. 396. 1 Timothy 3:8-15. Ibid.,p. 465.