James 5:16

16. In order that the sins may be known and prayed for, confess your faults This not in the public congregation, where the effect would be bad; but individually, one to another, in a most sincere and penitent way. We now have a fuller description of the nature of that prayer of faith that will save.

The effectual The Greek word (taken in the middle voice) is defined effective, which makes it almost a tautology. We prefer, with the old English commentators Hammond, Bull, Benson, and Macknight, to take it in the passive voice, so that it would signify energized, or inwrought, that is, by the divine Spirit. The Greek commentator OEcumenius considers it passive, and makes it mean energized, that is, by the co-operative prayer of the patient himself. And Michaelis (quoted by Huther) defines the phrase, preces agitante Spiritu sancto effusae, prayers poured forth prompted by the Holy Spirit. This last most nearly expresses the true thought. The prayer is a special prayer, wrought by the divine in the human, by which the supernatural result is produced. This accords with the old distinction between the faith of justification and the faith of miracles. Such faith is the special gift of God, and is accompanied often, if not always, with full supernatural assurance that the prayer is to be answered and the work accomplished.

And this furnishes, we apprehend, a fair answer to Mr. Tyndall’s celebrated “prayer test.” He proposed that a certain number of sick in a hospital be set apart for whose recovery prayer should be made, and that comparative statistics should decide whether any effect was produced. The fair answer would seem to be, that the English Church, and most Protestant Churches, do not claim that the gift of healing remains in the Church. If it did, with exact results, of course the medical profession could be mostly spared. Nor does the Church claim by prayer at will to overrule the forces of nature. When such things are done in answer to prayer, not only the result but the prayer is supernatural and extraordinary. Note on Matthew 17:20. Such a “test” the prophet Elijah did (1 Kings 18:17-40) propose with triumphant result; but he did it, evidently, under special divine premonition. And only with such an inspired premonition could any one now, wisely or authoritatively, accept and institute such “test.” The supernatural fulfilment of a prayer is a sovereign act, “reserved by the Father in his own power;” and it would, undoubtedly, be a presumptuous act for any one, unimpelled by divine assurance, to contract with a sceptic or a divine interposition. We said on Matthew 17:20, (written long before the proposal of the “ test,”) “God gives no man faith wherewith to play miraculous pranks;”

and we now add, or to make miraculous contracts. A claim over the forces of nature by prayer at will would be a claim to throw the established course of events out of order, and to take the processes of nature out of the hands of the God of nature. But in the sphere of the Spirit, in the region of mental forces, the case is different. We may say that, according to the laws of the spiritual world, in the kingdom of Christ, prayer is the stated antecedent to spiritual effects, to regeneration, sanctification, and salvation. And, hence, the evangelical Church, whatever Romanism may claim, is chary in praying for secular or mechanical results, and, even when praying for them, leaves them humbly to the divine will. She prays for souls rather than for bodies, and for heavenly rather than for earthly goods.

The word fervent is superfluous, having no correspondent Greek word in the text. And the word effectual produces, apparently, a flat truism, making the sentence say, that an effectual prayer is effectual.

Of a righteous man It is the holy prayer, divinely inwrought, of a holy man.