And how naturally may this thought of mountain-quiet and distance from earth’s noises lead us to the consideration of that most exquisite and precious communion with God which we know by the name of Prayer. In associating the time of prayer with the idea of mountain seclusion, two pictures rise at once before the mind, because in them actually a mountain was the scene, and not only the type, of earnest and retired prayer. We see first the top of Carmel, bare and burnt under the sun of Palestine, and overlooking the intensely blue sea. Upon it the solitary prophet Elijah bends to the ground, prostrate on the earth, with his face between his knees. A watching form stands on a point towards the sea, until, at last, far away over the water, in the sultry horizon, a little dark speck, like a man’s hand, arises, and, on rapid wing, the delicious cool clouds gather and spread their awning between the burnt earth and the pitiless sun. Then the glorious sudden rush of the restoring rain, steady, incessant, abundant, settling in pools on the caked ground, streaming down the sides of the orange hills, sending eddying torrents to brim the parched cracked river-beds. Thus impetuous and profuse came the answer to the prophet’s lonely mountain prayer.
And another dearer picture we never weary of contemplating; another account of One who, after the day’s toil of healing, of teaching, of feeding the multitudes, sends the thronging crowd away, dismisses even His disciples in a ship across the lake, and then, when
“The feast is o’er, the guests are gone, And over all that upland lone, The breeze of eve sweeps wildly as of old,”
retires up into a mountain apart to pray, and continues all night in prayer to God. What a lesson! The crush and press dismissed; even the closest and most intimate companions avoided, and a quiet time secured for we know not what prayers to the co-equal Father.
Ah, that we more entirely followed His example: how, if our prayers had more leisure secured for them, were more strictly protected from intrusion and disturbance, more lonely--how they would aid us to breathe the air of the mountain, to keep ever before us its wider view, even when we had descended to mix again with life’s thronging necessities in the plain. Even in our room, when the door is closed upon us (for I am speaking here of private prayer, not of public worship),--even thus, we are not necessarily upon the mountain, speaking through the stars to God. The larger crowd may have been satisfied and dismissed, but we have taken with us into our retirement some few that were more intimate and close to our heart, and we have not been careful enough to be _alone_. The preparation of dismissing the multitude, and even the disciples, then the ascent of the mountain, by the winding path of meditation, and then the unrestricted view, the sky nearest, indeed touching us, and earth spread out far below, and the soul left to calm, leisure, unharassed communion with God; all these are necessary; all these we learn from the example of that mild yet awful Being who is God manifest in the flesh. Let us arm ourselves with the same mind.