§ 146. The right prevision which it befits the Church to have of what will be salutary for it in its coexistence with the world naturally becomes Prayer.
- The manner in which the Church forms and propagates itself in history necessarily involves that, owing to the influence of worldly factors both within (for something of the world still clings to every member) and without, there will arise within it more or less marked obstructions and fluctuations. The same holds good of its external task of absorbing the world into itself, for here too it fails to attain to a uniform or an easily discernible progress. The common consciousness of this is therefore a consciousness of the imperfection of the Church. As, however, the desire fully to attain the ends of Christ’s coming lives on in the Church unbrokenly, the consciousness of the Church’s imperfection, closely in touch with this impulse, becomes the consciousness of a defective state; and this, being as it is simply the correct selfknowledge of the Church in relation to its love for the Redeemer, must necessarily in the measure of its purity be regarded as an effect of the divine Spirit. Now as the consciousness of the Church thus moves to and fro between the present and the future, it enters in a twofold way into combination with the God-consciousness. In view of the fact that every success attained is due not solely to its own activities but also to the divine government of the world, it becomes thankfulness or resignation for what in the present is the outcome of previous exertions, according as the average result of human effort is surpassed (thankfulness) or unachieved (resignation). But for that which still remains undecided it becomes prayer—i.e. the inner combination with the God-consciousness of a wish for full success.
If we always considered and kept clearly in view the fact that in every case we arrive either at resignation or thankfulness (both of which are inward states in which our share in the perfect blessedness of the Redeemer finds expression, so that in this respect we are perfectly sure of good either way), then the Church, wholly intent on its own activities, would do well to refrain from wishes altogether. And since everything that seems fixed and done with is only a point of transition, so that what at first is accepted with resignation makes itself felt later as a subject for thankfulness and vice versa, both resignation and thankfulness ought to disappear—the Church leaving all such transitional stages behind and holding fast exclusively to the irrefragable certainty of ultimate success, and thus through joy in God attaining to perfect peace. But the mind of man (ever anticipating as it does the temporal development of things) is unable to refrain from painting what is possible in a variety of imaginative pictures and comparing their values for its own projects, or from coming to cling by preference to those from which it expects most advantage; and as long as this mental activity lasts, it is bound to combine with the God-consciousness and become prayer. This is always going on, so that we have no cause to regard the injunction to pray without ceasing1 as hyperbole. If we did not pray, that could only be due to a disappearance either of our interest in the Kingdom of God, which evokes these ideas of an advantageous but uncertain future, or of our God-consciousness, which keeps present to our mind the absolute powers of the divine world-government.
- The injunction of the Apostle just mentioned seems rather to be addressed to the individual, as indeed it is only in this individual mind that the play of fancy over the as yet indeterminate events of the future occurs. In individuals, however, even correctness of prevision in no way leads to prevision turning into prayer; differences here are usually due to the importance of the matters at stake. So that it is only in a minor degree that our paragraph is elucidated by what has so far been said. It will be different if we note carefully the relation of the Church to the individual at this point. The individual here has in view first of all his own sanctification, and next the activity within the whole body made incumbent on him by the gifts he has already received. Each of these is a manifold, the separate parts of which it is impossible to promote equally by each act, and very soon there comes home to everyone the experience that while his purposes and hopes may be veering in one direction, there come to him, from the divine government of the world, demands and challenges which bend him in another. Hence he cannot trust his own presentiment of what is for the moment best for him personally. No more can the individual from his standpoint reach certainty of judgment as to what is advantageous for the whole body in the actual state of its total task. True, individuals will differ in this respect; and only those would rightly be judged fitted to exert a definite influence on the whole body who have developed their capacities on this side into a gift analogous to that of the prophet. Besides, this presentiment as found in the corporate consciousness might be more sure and certain in those times when the individual still formed a large part of the whole2 and was able to apprehend it as a whole. So that from Christ onwards (and He must be conceived as having possessed this faculty, humanly considered, in the highest possible perfection) this gift must be regarded as present approximately, but certainty of insight diminishes in proportion as a personal element enters more and more into the individual’s premonition of the future. What is true of the individual will also be true of every group of people, whether freely associated or constituted by nature, in proportion as they form a smaller or larger part of the whole, and feel for the others a less or more disinterested love. Hence, when matters have reached that point, we must say, on the one hand, of the whole body that, as personal consciousness and common consciousness are here no longer distinct but completely one, it forms the most faithful likeness of Christ, and therefore that it is in the whole body, revealed as a unity, that the most sure and certain prevision will be found. On the other hand, the Church is the common home of all those imperfect presentiments which, in their differing imperfections, are so often controversially opposed to each other. It is first of all incumbent on the Church to compare itself with that perfect reflexion of Christ which in its temporal consciousness it is not yet, and to make it its prayer that those of its members may gain an ever larger influence who are the most fully developed organs of the divine Spirit for rightly discovering and introducing whatever may be necessary for the increase and progress of the Kingdom of God. This is the one presentiment of the Church which it is absolutely right should become prayer, and in which therefore all individuals are at one with the whole body. In the next place, the Church’s duty is first to reconcile the uncertain elements of prevision (so far as they may be discordant) which flow from the imperfect common consciousness of individuals, and then to appease the feeling of uncertainty by turning it into prayer. Both these things are done through the gathering together of individuals for common prayer; for through the very form of common religious action each individual feels himself drawn away from what is more personal in origin to that which could be the same in all, and is guided by the content and meaning of such common action to that which lays hold on all equally. Both results are aided by the fact that when a difference emerges between personal presentiments and wishes, each joins in prayer for the others that, through the facts of the divine world-government, they may be led ever more into pure joy in God, whether in the form of resignation or that of thankfulness. And to this all Church prayers may be reduced.