As in the case of humbling ourselves, the use of this weapon is to be considered in its relation both to God and to Satan. (1) Its relation to God. We know that prayer for help must of necessity bring help, because the divine promise is given and repeated a hundred times in Holy Scripture, that the Lord will hear us in the day of trouble.[6] It is needless to multiply texts. One word of God the Eternal Son suffices, "And shall not God avenge His own elect which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell you He will avenge them speedily."[7] Impossible as it may seem, the prayer of the humble heart can command the very Godhead. {135} Ascending to the throne of grace in union with the intercession of Christ, the cry of the hard-pressed child of God has power to liberate the divine Omnipotence, and set in motion all the infinite energies of the kingdom which come forth in their unconquerable might to wage war on our behalf. This power that the praying soul has over God (we dare use such an expression with entire freedom) is one of the mysteries of our union with Him, and since He has given us so repeated a revelation of it, we can expect nothing of Him if we neglect it. One or two Scripture passages will make this clear to us. When Israel rebelled and Moses prayed for them, God's answer was, "Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them."[8] Why should the Omnipotent One have spoken thus since none is able to hinder Him or bind His hands? The Holy Ghost, speaking by the Psalmist ages after, gives us the meaning when He says: "He said He would have destroyed them had not Moses, His chosen, stood before Him in the gap."[9] The wrath of God was paralysed in the face of the prayer of the Saint. Isaiah, sounding his lament over the lost condition of Israel, says, "There is none that calleth {136} upon Thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee."[10] The Hebrew tongue affords us no stronger expression than that which the Spirit here inspired the prophet to use. The meaning is, to lay, as it were, violent hands upon God, by means of prayer, and with a holy audacity to hold Him back from launching the thunderbolt of His wrath against the apostate nation. The expression "stirreth up himself" indicates by a bold rhetorical stroke the power which the prophet knew such a one would have if he could be found among the sons of Israel. When used in the Old Testament it invariably implies the arousing of some mighty force, which when once awakened would sweep all before it, as when Balaam prophesied concerning Israel, "He couched, he lay down as a lion, as a great lion; who shall stir him up?"[11] Thus in the power of prayer shall we be able to sweep all before us, if in the hour of temptation we pray with a like holy audacity.