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طلال
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عامر "
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THE
STILL HOU R;
OR,
Communion with God.
BÝ
AUSTIN PHELPS,
PROFESSOR IN ANDOVER TUEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
By all means, use sometimes to be alone.
Dare to look in thy chest; for 'tis thine own;
And tumble up and down what thou findst there.
GEORGE HERBERT
BOSTON:
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
59 WAS EINGTON STREET,
NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY.
CINCINNATI : GEORGE S. BLANCHARD.
1 860.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Andover:
Electrotyped ancł Printed by 19. F. Draper.
PREFATORY NOTE.
SOME subjects of religious meditation are
always timely, and standard thoughts upon
them the most timely. Such, it is hoped,
will be found to be the character of the fol-
lowing pages.
A portion of them have been delivered as
a sermon, in the Chapel of the Andover
Theological Seminary, and several times else-
where. Evidences of their usefulness in that
form have been so obvious, that the author
IV
PREFATORY NOTE.
is induced to comply with the repeated
requests which have reached him, that they
should be given to the press.
That they should be much enlarged in
the course of revision for this purpose, is
almost the necessary result of a review of a
subject so prolific, and so vital to Christian
hearts.
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
ANDOVER, MASS., DEC. 1859.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
ABSENCE OF GOD, IN PRAYER,
.
.
.
.
7
II.
-
UNHALLOWED PRAYER,
UNHALLOWED PRAYER,
ΙΙΙ.
ROMANCE IN PRAYER,
IV.
DISTRUST IN PRAYER,
V.
FAITH IN PRAYER,
.
.
.
.
.
.
42
VI.
SPECIFIC AND INTENSE PRAYER, .
.
.
.
49
VI
CONTENTS.
VII.
.
PAGE
TEMPERAMENT OF PRAYER, .
.
.
.
.
58
VIII.
INDOLENCE IN PRAYER, .
IX.
IDOLATRY IN PRAYER,
X.
CONTINUANCE IN PRAYER,
XI.
FRAGMENTARY PRAYER,
XII.
AID OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN · PRAYER,.
XIII.
REALITY OF CHRIST IN PRAYER,
.
.
.
120
· XIV.
MODERN HABITS OF PRAYER
.
.
.
130
THE STILL HOUR.
I.
OF THAT I KNEW WHERE I MIGOT FIND HIM I
JOB 23 : 3.
"If God hąd not said, “ Blessed are
those that hunger," I know not what could
keep weak Christians from sinking in de-
spair. Many times, all I can do is to com-
plain that I want Him, and wish to recover
Him.'
Bisliop Hall, in uttering this lament, two
centuries and a half ago, only echoed the
wail which had come down, through living
hearts, from the patriarch, whose story is
the oldest known literature in any lan-
guage. A consciousness of the absence
THE STILL HOUR.
Olle
of God is one of the standard incidents
of religious life. Even when the forms
of devotion are observed conscientiously,
the sense of the presence of God, as an
invisible Friend, whose society is a joy, is
by no means unintermittent.
The truth of this will not be questioned
by one who is familiar with those phases of
religious experience which are so often the
burden of Christian confession. In no sin-
gle feature of 'inner life,' probably, is the
experience of many minds less satisfactory
to them than in this. They seem to them-
selves, in prayer, to have little, if any,
effluent emotion. They can speak of little
in their devotional life that seems to them
like life; of little that appears like the
communion of a living soul with a living
God. Are there not many closet hours,
in which the chief feeling of the worshipper
is an oppressed consciousness of the absence
of reality from his own exercises ? He has
PAYSON.
no words which are, as George Herbert
says, 'heart deep. He not only experi-
ences no ecstasy, but no joy, no peace, 110
repose. He has no sense of being at home
with God. The stillness of the hour is the
stillness of a dead calm at sea. The heart
rocks monotonously on the surface of the
great thoughts of God, of Christ, of Eter-
nity, of Heaven -
'As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.'
Such experiences in prayer are often
startling in the contrast with those of cer-
tain Christians, whose communion with
God, as the hints of it are recorded in their
biographies, seems to realize, in actual be-
ing, the scriptural conception of a life whichi
is hid with Christ in God.
We read of Payson, that his mind, at
times, almost lost its sense of the external
world, in the ineffable thoughts of God's
10
THE STILL HOUR.
glory, which rolled like a sea of light
around him, at the throne of grace.
We read of Cowper, that, in one of the
few lucid hours of his religious life, such
was the experience of God's presence which
he enjoyed in prayer, that, as he tells us,
he thought he should have died with joy, if
special strength had not been imparted to
him to bear the disclosure.
We read of one of the Tennents, that on
one occasion, when he was engaged in secret
devotion, so overpowering was the revela-
tion of God which opened upon his soul,
and with augmenting intensity of effulgence
as he prayed, that at length he recoiled from
the intolerable joy as from a pain, and be-
sought God to withhold from him further
manifestations of his glory. He said, "Shall
Thy servant see Thee and live ?
We read of the sweet hours' which
Edwards enjoyed “on the banks of Hud-
son's River, in secret converse with God,
EDWARDS.
11
and hear his own description of the inward
sense of Christ which at times came into
his heart, and which he knows not how to
express otherwise than by a calmn, sweet
abstraction of soul from all the concerns
of this world ; and sometimes a kind of
vision * * * * of being alone in the
mountains, or some solitary wilderness,
far from all mankind, sweetly conversing
with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in
God.'
We read of such instances of the fruits
of prayer, in the blessedness of the suppli-
ant, and are we not reminded by them of
the transfiguration of our Lord, of whom
we read, “ As he prayed, the fashion of his
countenance was altered, and his raiment
became white and glistering?' Who of us
is not oppressed by the contrast between
such an experience and his own? Does not
the cry of the patriarch come unbidden to
12
THE STILL HOUR.
our lips, Oh that I knew where I might
find Him'?
Much of even the ordinary language of
Christians, respecting the joy of communion
with God, — language which is stereotyped
in our dialect of prayer,— many cannot
honestly apply to the history of their own
minds. A calm, fearless self-examination
finds no counterpart to it in anything they
have ever known. In the view of an honest
conscience, it is not the vernacular speech
of their experience. As compared with the
joy which such language indicates, prayer
is, in all that they know of it, a dull duty.
Perhaps the characteristic of the feelings of
many about it is expressed in the single fact,
that it is to them a duty as distinct from a
privilege. It is a duty which, they cannot
deny, is often uninviting, even irksome.
If some of us should attempt to define the
advantage we derive from a performance
of the duty, we might be surprised, per-
COWPER.
13
UU
haps shocked, as one after another of the
folds of a deceived heart should be taken
off, at the discovery of the littleness of the
residuum, in an honest judgment of our-
selves. Why did we pray this morning ?
Do we often derive any other profit from
prayer, than that of satisfying convictions
of conscience, of which we could not rid
ourselves if we wished to do so, and which
will not permit us to be at ease with our-
selves, if all forms of prayer are abandoned ?
Perhaps even so slight a thing as the pain
of resistance to the momentum of a habit,
will be found to be the most distinct reason
we can honestly give for having prayed yes-
terday or to-day.
• There may be periods, also, when the
experiences of the closet enable some of us
to understand that maniacal cry of Cowper,
when his friends requested him to prepare
some hymns for the Olney Collection.
“How can you ask of me such a service ?
14
THE STILL HOUR.
I seem to myself to be banished to a re-
moteness from God's presence, in compari-
son with which the distance from East to
West is vicinity, is cohesion.'
If such language is too strong to be truth-
ful to the common experience of the class
of professing Christians to which those
whom it represents belong, many will still
discern in it, as an expression of joylessness
in prayer, a sufficient approximation to their
own experience, to awaken interest in some
thoughts upon the CAUSES OF A WANT OF
ENJOYMENT IN PRAYER.
The evil of such an experience in prayer,
is too obvious to need illustration. If any
light can be thrown upon the causes of it,
there is no man living, whatever may be his
religious state, who lias not an interest in
making it the theme of inquiry. “Never
any more wonder,' says an old writer,' that
men pray so seldom. For there are very
few that feel the relish, and are enticed with
THE STILL HOUR.
15
the deliciousness, and refreshed with the com-
forts, and acquainted with the secrets, of a
holy prayer.' Yet, who is it that has said,
'I will make them joyful in my house of
prayer'?
II.
WHAT IS THE HOPE OF THE HYPOCRITE? WILL GOD FEAR
UIS CRY ? - JOB 27 : 8, 9.
An impenitent sinner never prays. In an
inquiry after the causes of joylessness in the
forms of prayer, the very first which meets
us, in some instances, is the absence of piety.
It is useless to search behind or beneath
such a cause as this for a more recondite
explanation of the evil. This is, doubtless,
often all the interpretation that can be hon-
estly given to a man's experience in address-
ing God. Other reasons for the lifelessness
of his soul in prayer are rooted in this, –
that he is not a Christian.
If the heart is not right with God, enjoy-
ment of communion with God is impossible.
CONCEALMENT OF GOD.
17
That communion itself is impossible. I
repeat, an impenitent sinner never prays.
Impenitence involves not one of the ele-
ments of a spirit of prayer. Holy desire,
holy love, holy fear, holy trust- not one
of these can the sinner find within himself.
He has, therefore, none of that artless spon-
taneity, in calling upon God, which David
exhibited when he said, “Thy servant hath
found in his heart to pray this prayer unto
thee.' An impenitent sinner finds no such
thing in his heart. He finds there no intel-
ligent wish to enjoy God's friendship. The
whole atmosphere of prayer, therefore, is
foreign to his tastes. If he drives himself
into it for a time, by forcing upon his soul
the forms of devotion, he cannot stay there.
He is like one gasping in a vacuum.
One of the most impressive mysteries of
the condition of man on this earth, is his
deprivation of all visible and audible repre-
sentations of God. We seem to be living
18
THE STILL HOUR.
in a state of seclusion from the rest of
the universe, and from that peculiar pres-
ence of God in which angels dwell, and in
which departed saints serve Him day and
night. We do not see Him in the fire; we
do not hear Him in the wind; we do not
feel Him in the darkness. But a more
awful concealment of God from the unre- .
generate soul exists by the very law of an
unregenerate state. The eye of such a soul
is closed even upon the spiritual manifesta-
tions of God, in all but their retributive
aspects. These are all that it feels. These
are all the thoughts of God which it has
faith in. Such a soul does not enjoy God,
for it does not see God with an eye of faith
- that is, as a living God, living close to
itself, and in vital relations to its own des-
tiny — except as a retributive Power.
The only thing that forbids life, in any of
its experiences, to be a life of retribution to
an impenitent sinner, is a dead sleep of
DEAD SLEEP IN SIN.
19
moral sensibility. And this sleep cannot be
disturbed while he remains impenitent, oth-
erwise than by disclosures of God as a con-
suming fire. His experience, therefore, in
the forms of devotion, while he abides in
impenitence, can only vibrate between the
extremes of weariness and of terror. Quell
his fear of God, and prayer becomes irk-
some; stimulate his indifference to God,
and prayer becomes a torment.
The notes of a flute are sometimes a tor-
ture to the ears of idiots, like the blare of a
trumpet. The reason has been conjectured
to be, that melodious sound unlocks the
tomb of idiotic mind by the suggestion of
conceptions, dim, but startling, like a reve-
lation of a higher life, with which that
mind has certain crushed affinities, but with
which it feels no willing sympathy; so that
its own degradation, disclosed to it by the
contrast, is seated upon the consciousness
of idiocy like a nightmare. Such a stimu-
20
THE STILL HOUR.
lant only to suffering, may the form of
prayer be in the experience of sin. Im-
penitent prayer can only grovel in stagnant
sensibility, or agonize in remorseful tor-
ture, or oscillate from one to the other.
There is no point of joy between to which
it can gravitate, and there rest.
It is not wise that even we, who profess to
be followers of Christ, should close our eyes
to this truth, that the uniform absence of
joy in prayer is one of the threatening signs
in respect of our religious state. It is one
of the legitimate intimations of that es-
trangement from God, which sin induces
in one who has not experienced God's re-
newing grace. A searching of ourselves
with an honest desire to know the truth,
and the whole of it, may disclose to us
other kindred facts, with which this feature
of our condition becomes reasonable evi-
dence, which it will be the loss of our
souls to neglect, that we are self-deluded
)
THE STILL HOUR.
21
in our Christian hope. An apostle might
number us among the 'many,' of whom
he would say, 'I now tell you, even weep-
ing, that they are enemies of the cross of
Christ.'
III.
IF I REGARD INIQUITY IN MY HEART, THE LORD WILL NOT
HEAR ME. - Ps. 66 : 18.
LU
We often affront God by offering prayers
which we are not willing to have answered.
Theoretical piety is never more deceptive
than in acts of devotion. We pray for
blessings which we know to be accordant
with God's will, and we persuade ourselves
that we desire those blessings. In the ab-
stract, we do desire them. A sane mind
must be far gone in sympathy with devils,
if it can help desiring all virtue in the
abstract.
The dialect of prayer established in Chris-
tian usage, wins our trust; we sympathize
with its theoretical significance; we find
ROMANCE IN PRAYER.
23
no fault with its intensity of spiritual life.
It commends itself to our conscience and
good sense, as being what the phraseology of
devout affection should be. Ancient forms
of prayer are beautiful exceedingly. Their
hallowed associations fascinate us like old
songs. In certain imaginative moods, we
fall into delicious reverie over them. Yet
down deep in our heart of hearts, we may
detect more of poetry than of piety in this
fashion of joy. We are troubled, therefore,
and our countenance is changed.
Many of the prime objects of prayer
enchant us only in the distance. Brought
near to us, and in concrete forms, and
made to grow lifelike in our conceptions,
they very sensibly abate the pulse of our
longing to possess them, because we cannot
but discover that, to realize them in our
lives, certain other darling objects must be
sacrificed, which we are not yet willing to
part with. The paradox is true to the life,
24
THE STILL HOUR.
1
ICU
that a man may even fear an answer to his
prayers.
A very good devotee may be a very dis-
honest suppliant. When he leaves the
height of meditative abstraction, and, as
we very significantly say in our Saxon
phrase, comes to himself, le may find that
his true character, his real self, is that of no
petitioner at all. His devotions have been
dramatic. The sublimities of the closet
have been but illusions. He has been
acting a pantomime. He has not really
desired that God would give heed to him,
for any other purpose than to give him an
hour of pleasurable devotional excitement.
That his objects of prayer should actually
be inwrought into his character, and should
live in his own consciousness, is by no means
the thing he has been thinking of, and is
the last thing he is ready just now to wish
for. If he has a Christian heart buried up
anywhere beneath this heap of pietism, it
ENVIOUS DEVOTION.
25
is very probable that the discovery of the
burlesque of prayer of which he has been
guilty, will transform his fit of romance
into some sort of hypochondriacal suffer-
ing. Despondency is the natural offspring
of theatrical devotion.
Let us observe this paradox of Christian
life in two or three illustrations.
An envious Christian — we must tolerate
the contradiction : to be true to the facts of
life, we must join strange opposites — an
envious Christian prays, with becoming de-
voutness, that God will impart to him a gen-
erous, loving spirit, and a conscience void
of offence to all men. His mind is in a sol-
emn state, his heart is not insensible to the
beauty of the virtues which he seeks. His
posture is lowly, his tones sincere, and self-
delusion is one of those processes of weak-
ness which are facilitated by the deception
of bodily habitude. His prayer goes ou
glibly, till conscience grows impatient, and
2
26
... THE STILL HOUR.
reminds him of certain of his equals, whose
prosperity stirs up within him that “envy
which is the rottenness of the bones.'
What then? Very probably, he quits that
subject of prayer, and passes to another, on
which his conscience is not so eagle-eyed.
But after that glimpse of a hidden sin, how
do the clouds of estrangement from God
seem to shut him in, dark and damp and
chill, and his prayer become like a dismal
pattering of rain!
An ambitious Christian prays that God
will bestow upon him a humble spirit. He
volunteers to take a low place, because of
his unworthiness. He asks that he may be
delivered from pride and self-seeking. He
repeats the prayer of the publican, and the
benediction upon the poor in spirit. The
whole group of the virtues kindred to hu-
mility, seems to him as radiant as the
Graces with loveliness. He is sensible of
no check in the fluency of his emotions, till
UNFORGIVING PRAYER.
:
27
his conscience, too, becomes angry, and
dashes the little eddy of goodness which
is just now covering up the undertow of
selfishness that imperils his soul. If then
he is not melted into tears at the disclosure
of his heartlessness, that prayer probably
ends in a clouded brow, and a feverish,
querulous self-conflict.
A revengeful Christian prays that he may
have a meek spirit; that he may be harm-
less as doves; that the synonymous graces
of forbearance, long-suffering, patience, may
adorn his life; that he may put away bitter-
ness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, :
and evil-speaking, with all malice; that
that mind may be found in him which was
also in Christ. At the moment of this de-
votional episode in his experience, he feels,
as Rousseau did, the abstract grandeur of a
magnanimity. like that of Jesus. There is
no doubt about the fervor of his theoretic
love of such an ideal of character; and he
28
THE STILL HOUR.
is about to take courage from his rapture,
when his conscience becomes impertinent,
and mocks him, by thrusting upon his lips
the words which are death to his conceit -
Forgive me as I forgive. If then he is
not shocked into self-abhorrence at the
ghastliness of his guilt, he probably ex-
hausts that hour of prayer in palliations
and compromises, or in reckless impositions
upon the forbearance of God.
A luxurious Christian prays, in the good
set phrases of devotion, for a spirit of self-
denial : that he may endure hardness as a
good soldier of Christ ; that he may take
up the cross and follow Christ; that he
may be ready to forsake all that he hath,
and be Christ's disciple; that he may not
live unto himself; that he may imitate
Him who went about doing good, - who
became poor that we might be rich, and
who wept over lost souls. In such a prayer
there may be, consciously, no insincerity,
EFFEMINATE PRAYER.
29
but a pleasurable sympathy, rather, with the
grand thoughts and the grander feeling
which the language portrays. The heart
is buoyant with its gaseous distension to
the bounds of its great swelling words.
This lover of the pride of life does not
discover his self-inflation, till conscience
pricks him with such goads as these : Are
you living for the things you are praying
for ?'“What one thing are you doing for
Christ which costs you self-denial ?' —- Are
you seeking for opportunities to deny your-
self, to save souls ?' --'Are you willing to
be like Him who had not where to lay his
head ?' - "Can ye be baptized with the bap-
tism that He is baptized with ?' If then this
effeminate one is not roused to a more
Christ-like life by the uncovering of his
hypocrisy, what a sickly murmuring of
self-reproach fills his heart at the collapse
of that prayer!
Such is human nature; such, but by the
30
THE STILL HOUR.
grace of God, are we all. We must be dull
inspectors of our own hearts, if we have
never discerned there, lurking beneath the
level at which sin breaks out into overt
crime, some single offence --- an offence
of feeling, an offence of habit in thought,
which for a time has spread its infection
over the whole character of our devotions.
We have been self-convicted of falsehood in
prayer; for, though praying in the full
dress of sound words, we did not desire
that our supplications should be heard at
the expense of that one idol.
Perhaps that single sin has woven itself
like a web over large spaces of our life.
It may have run like a shuttle to and fro in
the texture of some plan of life, on which
our conscience has not glared fiercely as
upon a crime, because the usage of the
world has blindfolded conscience by the
respectability of such sin. Yet it has been
all the while tightening its folds around us,
DEJECTION NO MYSTERY.
TO
IIIVI
repressing our liberty in prayer, stopping
the life-blood and stiffening the fibre of
our moral being, till we are like kneeling
corpses in our worship.
That is a deceptive notion which attrib-
utes the want of unction in prayer to an
arbitrary, or even inexplicable, withdraw-
ment of God from the soul. Aside from
the operation of physical causes, where is
the warrant, in reason or revelation, for
ascribing joylessness in prayer to any other
cause than some wrong in the soul itself ?
What says an old prophet? “Behold, the
Lord's ear is not heavy that it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated between
you and your God. Your sins have hid his
face from you. Therefore, we wait for light,
but behold obscurity; for brightness, but
we walk in darkness. We grope for the
wall like the blind; we grope, as if we
liad no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in
the night; we are in desolate places, as
32
THE STILL HOUR.
dead men. Could words describe more
truthfully, or explain more philosophically,
that phenomenon of religious experience
which we call the ‘hiding of God's counte-
nance ?'.
It does not require what the world pro-
nounces a great sin, to break up the seren-
ity of the soul in its devotional hours. The
experience of prayer has delicate complica-
tions. A little thing, secreted there, may
dislocate its mechanism and arrest its move-
ment. The spirit of prayer is to the soul
what the eye is to the body,-- the eye, so
limpid in its nature, of such fine finish and
such intricate convolution in its structure,
and of so sensitive nerve, that the point of
a needle may excruciate it, and make it
weep itself away.
Even a doubtful principle of life, har-
bored in the heart, is perilous to the peace-
fulness of devotion. May not many of us
find the cause of our joylessness in prayer,
SUSPENSE OF CONSCIENCE.
33
O
in the fact that we are living upon some
unsettled principles of conduct? We are
assuming the rectitude of courses of life,
with which we are not ourselves honestly
satisfied. I apprehend that there is very
much of suspense of conscience among
Christians upon subjects of practical life,
on which there is no suspense of action.
Is there not a pretty large cloud-land cov-
ered by the usages of Christian society ?
And may not some of us find there the sin
which infects our devotions with nauseous
incense?
Possibly our hearts are shockingly de-
ceitful in such iniquity. Are we strangers
to an experience like this -- that when we
mourn over our cold prayers as a misfor-
tune, we evade a search of that disputed
territory for the cause of them, through fear
that we shall find it there, and we struggle
to satisfy ourselves with an increase of spir-
itual duties which shall cost us no sacrifice ?
C
34
THE STILL HOUR.
Are we never sensible of resisting the hints
which the Holy Spirit gives us in parables,
by refusing to look that way for the secret of
our deadness --- saying, "Not that! Oh no,
not that! But let us pray more??
Many a doubtful principle in a Christian
mind, if once set in the focus of a con-
science illumined by the Holy Spirit, would
resolve itself into a sin, for which that
Christian would turn and look up guiltily
to the Master, and then go out and weep
bitterly.
IV.
WHAT PROFIT SHOULD WE HAVE IF WE PRAY UNTO HIM ?
JOB 21 :15.
The great majority of us have little faith
in prayer. This is one of those causes which
may produce a habit of mind in devotion,
resembling that of impenitent prayer, and
yet distinguishable from it, and coëxistent,
often, with some degree of genuine piety.
Christians often have little faith in prayer
as a power in real life. They do not em-
brace cordially, in feeling as well as in the-
ory, the truth which underlies the entire
scriptural conception and illustration of
prayer, that it is literally, actually, posi-
tively, effectually, a means of power.
Singular as it may appear, the fact is
indisputable, that Christian practice is often
36
THE STILL HOUR.
at a discount by the side of heathen habits.
of devotion. Heathen prayer, whatever
else it is or is not, is a reality in the
heathen idea. A pagan suppliant has faitli
in prayer, as he understands it. Grovelling
as his notion of it is, such as it is he means
it. He trusts it as an instrument of power.
He expects to accomplish something by
praying
When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Nor-
thumberland, invaded Wales, and was about
to give battle to the Britons, he observed
near the enemy a host of unarmed men.
He inquired who they were, and what they
were doing. He was told that they were
monks of Bangor, praying for the success
of their countrymen. "Then,' said the
heathen prince, they have begun the fight
against us; attack them first.'
So any unperverted mind will conceive
of the scriptural idea of prayer, as that of
one of the most downright, sturdy realities
PRAYER A POWER.
37
SO
CUVU
in the universe. Right in the heart of
God's plan of government it is lodged as
a power. Amidst the conflicts which are
going on in the evolution of that plan, it
stands as a power. Into all the intricacies
of Divine working and the mysteries of
Divine decree, it reaches out silently as a
power. In the mind of God, we may be
assured, the conception of prayer is no
fiction, whatever man may think of it.
It has, and God has determined that it
should have, a positive and an appreciable
influence in directing the course of a hu-
man life. It is, and God has purposed that
it should be, a link of connection between
human mind and Divine mind, by which,
through His infinite condescension, we may
actually move His will. It is, and God
has decreed that it should be, a power in
the universe, as distinct, as real, as natu-
ral, and as uniform, as the power of gravi-
tation, or of light, or of electricity. A man
38
THE STILL HOUR.
may use it, as trustingly and as soberly as
he would use either of these. It is as truly
the dictate of good sense, that a man should
expect to achieve something by praying, as
it is that he should expect to achieve some-
thing by a telescope, or the mariner's com-
pass, or the electric telegraph.
This intense practicalness characterizes
the scriptural ideal of prayer. The Scrip-
tures make it a reality, and not a reverie.
They never bury it in the notion of a poetic
or philosophic contemplation of God. They
do not merge it in the mental fiction of
prayer by action in any other or all other
duties of life. They have not concealed the
fact of prayer beneath the mystery of prayer.
The scriptural utterances on the subject of
prayer admit of no such reduction of tone,
and confusion of sense, as men often put
forth in imitating them. Up, on the level
of inspired thought, prayer is PRAYER — a
distinct, unique, elemental power in the
HOPE IN PRAYER.
39
spiritual universe, as pervasive and as con-
stant as the great occult powers of Nature.
The want of trust in this scriptural ideal
of prayer, often neutralizes it, even in the
experience of a Christian. The result can-
not be otherwise. It lies in the nature of
mind.
Observe, for a moment, the philosophy of
this. Mind is so made, that it needs the
hope of gaining an object, as an inducement
to effort. Even so simple an effort as that
involved in the utterance of desire, no man
will make persistently, with no hope of
gaining an object. Despair of an object is
speechless. So, if you wish to enjoy prayer,
you must first form to yourself such a the-
ory of prayer, - or, if you do not con-
sciously form it, you must have it, - and
then you must cherish such trust in it, as
a reality, that you shall feel the force of an
object in prayer. No mind can feel that it
has an object in praying, except in such
40
THE STILL HOUR.
degree as it appreciates the scriptural view
of prayer as a genuine thing.
Our conviction on this point must be as
definite and as fixed as our trust in the
evidence of our senses. It must become
as natural to us to obey one as the other.
If we suffer our faith to drop down from
the lofty conception of prayer as having a
lodgment in the very counsels of God, by
which the universe is swayed, the plain
practicalness of prayer as the Scriptures
teach it, and as prophets and apostles and
our Lord himself performed it, drops pro-
portionately ; and in that proportion, our
motive to prayer dwindles. Of necessity,
then, our devotions become spiritless. We
cannot obey such faith in prayer, with any
more heart than a man who is afflicted with
double vision can feel in obeying the evi-
dence of his eyes. Our supplications can-
not, under the impulse of such a faith, go,
as one has expressed it, “in a right line
THE STILL HOUR.
41
to God.' They become circuitous, timid,
heartless. They may so degenerate as to
be offensive, 'like the reekings of the Dead
Sea.'
AS A PRINCE BLAST THOU POWER WITI GOD.
Gex. 32 : 28.
An intrepid faith in prayer will always
give it unction. Let the faith of apostles in
the reality of prayer as a power with God
take possession of a regenerate heart, and it
is inconceivable that prayer should be to
that heart a lifeless — duty. The joy of
hope, at least, will vitalize the duty. The
prospect of gaining an object, will always
affect thus the expression of intense desire.
The feeling which will become spontane-
ous with a Christian, under the influence
of such a trust, is this: 'I come to my
devotions this morning, on an errand of
real life. This is no romance and no farce.
PRAYER A BUSINESS.
43
I do not come here to go through a form
of words. I have no hopeless desires to
express. I have an object to gain. I have
an end to accomplish. This is a business
in which I am about to engage. An astron-
omer does not turn his telescope to the
skies with a more reasonable hope of pene-
trating those distant heavens, than I have
of reaching the mind of God, by lifting up
my heart at the throne of Grace. This is
the privilege of my calling of God in Christ
Jesus. Even my faltering voice is now to
be heard in heaven, and it is to put forth a
power there, the results of which only God
can know, and only eternity can develop.
Therefore, O Lord! thy servant findeth it in
his heart to pray this prayer unto Thee.'
"Good prayers,' says an old English di-
vine, “never come weeping home. I am
sure I shall receive either what I ask or
what I should ask.' Such a habit of feeling
as this will give to prayer that quality
1
44
THE STILL HOUR.
which Dr. Chalmers observed as being the
characteristic of the prayers of Doddridge,
- that they had an intensely business-like'
spirit.
Observe how thoroughly this spirit is
infused into the scriptural representation
of the interior working of prayer in the
counsels of God, respecting the prophet
Daniel. The narrative is intelligible to a
child; yet scarcely another passage in the
Bible is so remarkable, in its bearing upon
the difficulties which our minds often gen-
erate out of the mystery of prayer. Almost
the very mechanism of the plan of God, by
which this invisible power enters into the
execution of His decrees, is here laid open.
While I was speaking,' the prophet says,
"Gabriel, being caused to fly swiftly, touched
me, and said, “O Daniel, at the beginning
of thy supplication, the commandment came
forth, and I am come to show thee; for
thou art greatly beloved.” What greater
PRAYER OF DANIEL.
:
45
vividness could be given to the reality of
prayer, even to its occult operation upon
the Divine decrees? No sooner do the
words of supplication pass out from the lips,
than the command is given to one of the
presence-angels, “Go thou;' and he flies
swiftly to the prostrate suppliant, and
touches him bodily, and talks with him
audibly, and assures him that his desire is
given to him. 'I am come to thee, O man
greatly beloved; I am commissioned to
instruct and to strengthen thee. I was
delayed in my journey to thee, else I had
come more speedily to thy relief; for one
and twenty days the prince of Persia with-
stood me; but Michael came to help me;
the archangel is leagued with me to execute
the response to thy cry. I must return to
fight that prince of Persia who would have
restrained me from thee; unto thee am I
sent. From the first day that thou didst
set thy heart to chasten thyself before thy
THE STILL HOUR.
God, thy words were heard; and I am come
because of thy words. Again I say, O man
greatly beloved ! fear not; peace be unto
thee; be strong, yea, be strong. Could any
diagram of the working of prayer amidst
the purposes of God, give to it a more vivid
reality in our conceptions, than it receives
from this little passage of dramatic narra-
tive, which you will find, in substance, in
the ninth and tenth chapters of the prophecy
of Daniel?
I have sometimes tried to conceive a pan-
orama of the history of one prayer. I have
endeavored to follow it from its inception
in a human mind, through its utterance by
human lips; and in its flight up to the ear
of Him who is its Hearer because He has
been also its Inspirer; and on its journey
around to the unnumbered points in the
organism of His decrees which this feeble
human voice reaches, and from which it
entices a responsive vibration, because this
D
.
MYSTERY OF PRAYER. :
also is a decree of as venerable antiquity as
theirs; and in its return from those alti-
tudes, with its golden train of blessings to
which eternal counsels have paid tribute, at
His bidding. I have endeavored to form
some conception thus, of the methods by
which this omnipotence of poor human
speech gains its end, without a shock to the
system of the universe, with not so much as
a whit of change to the course of a leaf
falling in the air. But how futile is the
strain upon these puny faculties! How
shadowy are the thoughts we get from any
such attempt to master prayer! Do we not
fall back with glad relief upon the magni-
tude of this fact of prayer,' beyond the stars
heard,' and answered through these minis-
tries of angels ?
Human art has not yet succeeded in ex-
tending the electric telegraph around one
globe. The combined science and skill and
wealth of the nations have failed thus to
48
THE STILL HOUR.
connect the two continents. But yonder is
a child, whose lisping tongue is every day
doing more than that. In God's admin-
istration of things, that child's morning
prayer is a mightier reality than that. It
sets in motion agencies more secret, and
more impalpable, and yet conscious agen-
cies, whose chief vocation, so far as we
know it, is to minister at that child's bid-
ding. Verily I say unto you, that in
heaven their angels do always behold the -
face of my Father who is in heaven.' Could
we appreciate prayer, think you, as such a
reality, such a power, so genuine, so vital a
thing in the working of the Divine plan, so
free from trammel in its mystery, so much
resembling the power of God because of its
mystery, and yet could we find it to be in
our own experience an insipid — duty ?
VI.
AS THE EART PANTETE AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS.
Ps. 42:1.
WE lose many prayers for the want of
two things which support each other, -
specificness of object, and intensity of desire.
One’s interest in such an exercise as this, is
necessarily dependent on the coësistence of
these qualities.
In the diary of Dr. Chalmers, we find
recorded this petition : "Make me sensible
of real answers to actual requests, as evi-
dences of an interchange between myself on
earth and my Saviour in heaven. Under
the sway of intense desires, our minds natu-
rally long to individualize thus the parties,
50
THE STILL HOUR.
the petitions, the objects, and the results of
prayer.
Sir Fowell Buxton writes as follows:
When I am out of heart, I follow David's
example, and fly for refuge to prayer, and
he furnishes me with a store of prayer.
* * * I am bound to acknowledge that
I have always found that my prayers have
been heard and answered; * * * * in
almost every instance I have received what
I have asked for. * * * Hence, I feel
permitted to offer up my prayers for every:
thing that concerns me. * * * I am
inclined to imagine that there are no little
things with God. His hand is as manifest
in the feathers of a butterfly's wing, in the
eye of an insect, in the folding and packing
of a blossom, in the curious aqueducts by
which a leaf is nourished, as in the crea-
tion of a world, and in the laws by which
planets move. I understand literally the
injunction :“In everything make your re-
SIR FOWELL BUXTON. :
51
quests known unto God;" and I cannot but
notice how amply these prayers have been
met.'
Again, writing to his daughter on the
subject of a division' in the House of
Commons, in the conflict for West Indian
Emancipation, he says: "What led to that
division ? If ever there was a subject which
occupied our prayers, it was this. Do you
remember how we desired that God would
give me His Spirit in that emergency : how
we quoted the promise, “He that lacketh
wisdom, let him ask it of the Lord, and it
shall be given him”: and how I kept open
that passage in tlie Old Testament, in which
it is said, “We have no might against this
great company that cometh against us,
neither know we what to do, but our eyes
are upon Thee” — the Spirit of the Lord
replying, "Be not afraid nor dismayed by
reason of this great multitude, for the battle
is not yours, but God's.”? If you want to
1
52
THE STILL HOUR.
see the passage, open my Bible ; it will turn
of itself to the place. I sincerely believe
that prayer was the cause of that division ;
and I am confirmed in this, by knowing
that we by no means calculated on the
effect. The course we took appeared to be
right, and we followed it blindly.'
In these examples is illustrated, in real
life, the working of these two forces in a
spirit of prayer, which must naturally exist
or die together, -intensity of desire, and
specificness of object.
Let a man define to his own mind an
object of prayer, and then let him be moved
by desires for that object which impel him
to pray, because he cannot otherwise satisfy
the irrepressible longings of his soul ; let
him have such desires as shall lead him to
search out, and dwell upon, and treasure
in his heart, and return to again, and ap-
propriate to himself anew, the encourage-
ments to prayer, till his Bible opens of itself
LANGUID DESIRES.
53
to the right places — and think you that
such a man will have occasion to go to his
closet, or come from it, with the sickly cry,
• Why, oh! why is my intercourse with God
so irksome to me?' Such a man must ex-
perience, at least, the joy of uttering hope-
fully emotions which become painful by.
repression.
- On the contrary, let a man's objects of
thought at the throne of Grace be vague,
and let his desires be languid, and from the
nature of the case, his prayers must be both
languid and vague. Says Jeremy Taylor :
'Easiness of desire is a great enemy to the
success of a good man's prayer. It must be
an intent, zealous, busy, operative prayer.
For, consider what a huge indecency it is,
that a man should speak to God for a thing
that he values not. Our prayers upbraid our
spirits, when we beg tamely for those things
for which we ought to die; which are more
precious than imperial sceptres, richer than
54
THE STILL HOUR.
the spoils of the sea, or the treasures of
Indian hills.
The scriptural examples of prayer have,
most of them, an unutterable intensity.
They are pictures of struggles, in which
more of suppressed desire is hinted than
that which is expressed. Recall the wrest-
ling of Jacob, -- "I will not let thee go till
thou hast blest me;' and the panting' and
pouring out of soul' of David, -- "I cried
day and night; my throat is dry with call-
ing upon my God;' and the importunity of
the Syro-Phenician woman, with her “ Yes,
Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat the
children's crumbs ;' and the persistency of
Bartimeus, crying out the more a great
deal,”\'Have mercy on me ;' and the strong
crying and tears of our Lord, 'If it be
easiness of desire' here.
The scriptural examples of prayer, also,
are clear as light in their objects of thought.
VAGUENESS OF THOUGHT.
55
Even those which are calm and sweet, like
the Lord's prayer, have few and sharply
defined subjects of devotion. They are not
discursive and voluminous, like many unin-
spired forms of supplication. They do not
range over everything at once. They have
no vague expressions; they are crystalline;
a child need not read them a second time
to understand them. As uttered by their
authors, they were in no antiquated phrase-
ology; they were in the fresh forms of a
living speech. They were, and were meant
to be, the channels of living thoughts and
living hearts.
Let a man, then, be negligent of both
scriptural example and the nature of his
own mind ; let him approach God with both
vagueness of thought and languor of emo-
tion; and what else can his prayer be, but
a weariness to himself and an abomination
to God? It would be a miracle, if such
a suppliant .should enjoy success in prayer.
56
THE STILL HOUR.
He cannot succeed, he cannot have joy,
because he has no object that elicits intense
desire, and no desire that sharpens his ob-
ject. He has no great, holy, penetrative
thought in him, which stirs up his sensibili-
ties; and no deep, swelling sensibility, there-
fore, to relieve by prayer. His soul is not
reached by anything he is thinking about,
and, therefore, he has no soul to pour out
before God. Such a man prays because he
thinks he must pray; not because he is
grateful to God that he may pray. There is
an unspeakable difference between “must?
and "may.' It is his conscience that prays ;
it is not his heart. His language is the
language of his conscience. He prays in
words which ought to express his heart, not
in those which do express it. Hence arises
that experience, so distressful to an ingenu-
ous mind, in which devotion is prompted by
no vividness of conception, rolling up a
force of sensibility to the level of the lips,
CONSCIENCE IN PRAYER.
57
so that it can flow forth in childlike, hon-
est speech.
Such an experience, so far from render-
ing prayer a joy either sweet and placid, or
ecstatic, can only cause the time spent in
the closet to be the season of periodical tor-
ture to a sensitive conscience, like that of a
victim daily stretched on a rack. For it is
in such prayer, that such a conscience is
most vehement in its reproaches, and guilt
seems to be heaped up most rapidly. Oh,
wretched man that he is! Who shall de- .
liver him?
VII.
THAT DISCIPLL WHOJI JESUS LOVED.
JOIN 21:7.
SOME Christians do not cultivate the tem-
perament of prayer. Devout joy is more
facile to some temperaments than to others;
yet, in all, it is susceptible of culture. Es-
pecially is it true, that prayer is in its
nature emotive. It is an expression of feel-
ing: uot necessarily of tumultuous feeling,
but naturally of profound and fluent feel-
ing, and, in its most perfect type, of habitual
feeling. To enjoy prayer, we must be used
to it. Therefore, we must be used to the
sensibility of which it is the expression.
Devotion should spring up spontaneously
from an emotive state, rather than be forced
TEMPERAMENT OF PRAYER.
11
L
out in jets of sensibility, on great occa-
sions.
The necessity of this is often overlooked
by Christians, whose lives, in other respects,
are not risibly defective. They do not
possess desires which may very naturally
be expressed in prayer. They have no deep
subsoil of feeling from which prayer would
be a natural growth. The religion of some
of us — whatever may be true of our oppo-
sites in temperament — is not sufficiently a
religion of emotion. We have not suffi-
ciently cherished our Christian sensibilities.
We have not cultivated habits of religious .
desire, which are buoyant in their working.
We have not so trained our hearts, that a
certain emotive current is always ebullient,
welling up from the depths of the soul, like
the springs of the deepest sea. We think
more than we believe. We believe more
than we have faith in. Our faith is too
calm, too cool, too sluggish. Our theory
60
· THE STILL HOUR.
of the Christian life is that of a clear, erect,
inflexible head, not of a great heart in
which deep calleth unto deep.
This clear-headed type of piety has invalu-
able uses, if it be tempered with meekness,
with gentleness, with bowels of mercies.?
But we must confess, that it does not always
bear well the drill which the world gives it
in selfish usage. It too often grows hard,
solid, icy. It reminds one of the man with
a cold heart, whose blood never ran warm,
whose eye was always glassy, whose touch
was always clammy, and whose breath was
always like an east wind. Such a religious
temperament as this, will never do for the
foundation of a life of joy in communion
with God. We must have more of the ear-
nest nature of the loved disciple, more of
the spirit of the visions of Patmos.
Our Northern and Occidental constitution
often needs to be restrained from an excess
of phlegmatic wisdom. I must think, that
YY1
ORIENTAL DEVOTION.
67
we have something to learn from the more
impulsive working of the Southern and the
Oriental mind. I must believe, that it was
not without a wise forecast of the world's
necessities, and an insight into human na-
ture all around, that God ordained that the
Bible, which should contain our best models
of sanctified culture, should be constructed
in the East, and by the inspiration of minds
of an Eastern stock and discipline; whose
imaginative faculty could conceive such a
poem as the Song of Solomon; and whose
emotive nature could be broken up like the
fountains of a great deep. I must anticipate,
that an improved symmetry of character
will be imparted to the experience of the
church, and more of the beauty of holiness
will adorn her courts, when the Oriental
world shall be converted to Christ, and
Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto
God. Our unimpassioned, taciturn, and
often cloudy temperament in religion, does
62
THE STILL HOUR.
need an infusion of the piety which will
grow up in those lands of the sun.
Such an infusion of the Oriental life-blood
into the stock of our Christian experience,
would bring us into closer sympathy with
the types of sanctification represented in the
Scriptures. It would be like streams from
Lebanon to our culture. We need it, to
render the Psalms of David, for instance, a
natural expression of our devotions. We
need a culture of sensibility which shall de-
mand these Psalms as a medium of utterance.
We need habits of feeling, disciplined
indeed, not effervescent, not mystic, but, on
the other hand, not crushed, not fearful of
outflow, not bereaved of speech. We need
a sensitiveness to the objects of our faith,
which shall create desire for the objects of
prayer, not passionate, not devoid of self-
its earnestness, so that it shall have more
of the grace of a child in its outgoings.
THE STILL HOUR.
63
Of such an experience, intercourse with
God in prayer would be the necessary ex-
pression. It could find no other so fit.
Joy in that intercourse would be like the
swellings of Jordan.
VIII.
YE SADD ALSO, BEHOLD WHAT A WEARINESS IS IT!
MAL: 1:13.
We offer many dead prayers, through
mental indolence. This fact is often forgot-
ten, that prayer is one of the most spiritual
of the duties of religion, spiritual as distinct
from corporeal. It is the communion of a
spiritual soul with a spiritual God. God
calls himself the Former, only, of our bodies,
but the Father of our spirits. So prayer,
to be a filial intercourse with Him, must be
abstract from sensation. Do we not natu-
rally seek darkness in our devotions ? Why
is it, that to pray with open eyes seems
either heartless or ghastly? So, too, do we
seek stillness and solitude. Only a Pharisee
INTELLECT IN PRAYER.
65
can pray at the corner of a street. A truly
devout spirit learns to sing from its own
experience —
‘Blest is the tranquil hour of morn,
And blest that hour of solemn eve,
When, on the wings of prayer upborne,
The world I leave.
Physical enjoyment is as much a drag
upon the spirit of worship as physical pain.
We want nothing to remind us of our cor-
poreal being, in these hours of communion
with Him who seeth in secret. We worship
One who is a Spirit. A soul caught up to
the third heaven in devout ecstasy, cannot
tell whether it be in the body or out of the
body.
These, well-known phenomena of prayer
U
involve, also, the need of mental exertion.
“We may pray with the intellect without
praying with the heart; but we cannot pray
66
THE STILL HOUR.
with the heart without praying with the
intellect.
True, there is, as we shall have occasion
to observe, a state of devotional culture
which may render prayer habitually sponta-
neous, so that the mind shall be uncon-
scious of toil in it, but shall spring to it
rather as to its native and wonted atmos-
phere of joy. This is the reward of prac-
ticed effort in all things. But who can num-
ber the struggles with a wayward spirit,
which must create that high deportment in
devotion ?
True, there may be hours when the
mind is alert, from other causes ; when
the fountains of the soul are unsealed by
a great sorrow, or a great deliverance ;
when before we called, God has heard us,
and the Spirit now helps our infirmities, so
that thought is nimble, sensibility is fluent,
and the mouth speaketlı out of the abun-
dance of the heart. Yet such unforseen
SIMPLICITY OF PRAYER.
and gratuitous aids to mental elasticity,
are not the law of devotional life. In
this, as in other things, no great blessing
is given thoughtlessly, and none can be
received thus. The law of blessing, allies
it in some sort with struggles of our own.
True, God's condescension is nowhere
more conspicuous than in His hearing of
prayer. No ponderous intellectual machin-
ery is needful to its dignity; no loftiness of
reasoning, no magnificence of imagery, no
polish of diction ; no learning, no art, no
genius. In its very conception, prayer im-
plies a descent of the Divine Mind to the
homes of men ; and with no design to liſt
men up out of the sphere of their lowliness,
intellectually. Bruised reeds, smoking flax,
broken hearts, dumb sufferers, the slow of
speech, timid believers, tempted spirits, -
weakness in all its varieties,- find a refuge
in that thought of God, which nothing else
reveals so affectingly as the gift of prayer,
111 LD
68
THE STILL FOUR.
0
that He is a very present help in every
time of trouble. He whom the heaven of
heavens cannot contain, 'has come down
and placed Himself in the centre of the
little circle of human ideas and affections,
as if for the purpose of making our relig-
ion always the homestead of common feel-
ings. It has been debated by philoso-
phers, whether prayer be not of the nature
of poetry. Yet poetry has seldom attempted
to describe prayer; and, when it has done
so, wliat is the phraseology in which it has
spoken to our hearts most convincingly ?
· Is it that of magnificent and transcendental
speech ? No; it portrays prayer to us as
only
"The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast,' -
as the mere burden of a sigh,' the fall-
ing of a tear, the upward glancing of
an eye,' the simplest form of speech' on
'infant lips.
COLERIDGE.
69
All this is true, and no idea of the intel-
lectuality of prayer should be entertained
which conflicts with this. But we degrade
the dignity of God's condescension, if we
abuse His indulgence of our weakness to
C
(D
we not wince under the rebuke of the
preacher at Golden Grove: Can we ex-
pect that our sins can be washed by a lazy
prayer ? We should not dare to throw
away our prayers so, like fools' ?
Coleridge, in liis later manhood, expressed
his sorrow at having written so shallow a
sentiment on the subject of prayer, as that
contained in one of his youthful poems, in
which, speaking of God, he had said —
Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind.'
This sentiment he so severely condemned,
that he said he thought the act of praying
to be, in its most perfect form, the very
70
THE STILL HOUR.
highest energy of which the human heart
was capable. The large majority of worldly
men, and of learned men, he pronounced
incapable of executing his ideal of prayer.
Many scriptural representations of the
idea of devotion come up fully to this
mark. The prayer of a righteous man,
that availeth much, which our English
Bible so infelicitously describes as “effec-
tual, fervent,' is in the original an "ener-
getic' prayer, a “workiny' prayer. Some
conception of the inspired thought in the
epithet may be derived from the fact, that
the same word is elsewhere used, to in-
tensify the description of the power of the
Holy Spirit in a renewed heart. Thus:
• According to the power that worketh in
us,'— the power that energizes us in a holy
life :— such is the inspired idea of a good
man's prayer.
What else is the force of the frequent
conjunction of watching' and praying,'
ENERGY IN PRAYER.
in the scriptural style of exhortation to
the duties of the closet? Thus: - Watch
and pray, 'watch unto prayer,' praying
always and watching,' continue in prayer
and vatch :' there is no mental lassitude,
no self-indulgence here. It was a lament
of the prophet over the degeneracy of
God's people : «None stirreth himself up
to take hold on Thee. Paul exhorts the
Romans to strive together with him in
their prayers,' and commends an ancient
preacher to the confidence of the Colos-
sians, as one who •labored fervently in
prayers. There is no droning or drawling
effort here.
Indeed, what need have we of more sig-
nificant teaching on this point than our
own experience? Setting aside as excep-
tional, emergencies in which God con-
descends to our incapacity of great mental
exertion, do we not habitually feel the need
of such exertion in our devotions? Is not
72
THE STILL HOUR.
even a painful effort of intellect often need-
ful to recall our minds from secular en-
gagements, and to give us vivid thoughts
of God and of eternity ? I do not assume
that this ought to be so, or need be; I speak
of what is, in the ordinary life of Chris-
tians.
Prayer can have no intelligent fervor,
unless the objects of our faith are repre-
sented with some degree of vividness, in our
conceptions of them. But this is a pro-
cess of intellect. As we must have clear
thought before we can have intelligent feel-
ing, so must we have fivid thought before
we can have profound feeling. But this, I
repeat, is a process of intellect.
Yet, do we not often come to the hour
and place of prayer, burdened by an ex-
hausted body; with intellect stupefied by
the absorption of its forces in the plans, the
toils, the perplexities, the disappointments,
the irritations of the day? How wearily.
JEREMY TAYLOR.
73
0
do we often drag this great earthen world
behind us, into the presence of God! Is
not our first petition, often, an ejaculation
for the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit? But, in such a state of body and
of mind, to acquire impressive conceptions
of God and of eternity, is an intellectual
change. I do not affirm that a state of
intellect is all that is involved here; but
intellectual change is indispensable ; and
it requires exertion.
On this topic, what can the man do
that cometh after the King ? Let us hear
Jeremy Taylor once more. His description
of a good man's prayer, though well known,
one can never outgrow.
Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the
stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of
our recollection, the seat of our meditation,
the rest of our cares, and the calm of our
tempest. Prayer is the issue of a quiet
mind, of untroubled thoughts ; it is the
74
THE STILL HOUR.
daughter of charity and the sister of meek-
ness. He that prays to God with * *
a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like
him that retires into a battle to meditate,
and sets up his closet in the out-quarters
of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison
to be wise in.
For so have I seen a lark rising from
his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, sing-
ing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven,
and climb above the clouds; but the poor
bird was beaten back by the loud sighings
of an eastern wind, and his motion made
irregular and inconstant, descending more
at every breath of the tempest than it could
recover by the libration and frequent weigh-
ing of his wings, till the little creature was
forced to sit down and pant, and stay till
the storm was over; and then it made a
prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as
if it had learned music and motion from
SERENITY OF PRAYER.
75
an angel, as he passed sometime through
the air, about his ministries here below.
"So is the prayer of a good man. When
his affairs have required business, * *
his duty met with infirmities of a man,
* * and the instrument became stronger
than the prime agent, and raised a tem-
pest, and overruled the man; and then his
prayer was broken, and his thoughts were
troubled, and his words went up towards a
cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back
again, and made them without intention ;
and the good man sighs for his infirmity,
but must be content to lose his prayer ;
and he must recover it when * * his
spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow
of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God:
and then it ascends to heaven upon the
wings of a holy dove, and dwells with God,
till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden
with a blessing and the dew of heaven.'
I X.
YE HAVE BROUGHT THAT WHICH WAS TORN, AND TAL
LAME, AND THE SICK. SHOULD I ACCEPT THIS OF YOUR
IIAND ?- MAL. 1: 13.
Our mental indolence may poison the
very fountain of prayer. Are we not often
reminded of our need of an effort of intel-
lect, to enable us to realize to ourselves the
personality of God, and to address to Him
the language of supplication, as if to a
friend who is invisibly with us? What is
left of prayer, if these two things are
abstracted from it - a sense of the personal
presence and of the personal friendship of
God? He that cometh unto God, must be-
lieve that He is, and that He is a rewarder.
IDOLATRY IN PRAYER.
77
Subtract these from our ideal in prayer,
and all that remains the Polish peasant
a windmill, and counted so many to the
credit side of his conscience, with every
turn of the wheel.
A plain man once said : 'Before my con-
version, when I prayed in the presence of
others, I prayed to them ; when I prayed
in secret, I prayed to myself ; but now I
pray to God. But your experience has
doubtless taught you, long before this time,
that one of the most difficult things in-
volved in an act of devotion, is to secure to
it this reality of intercourse between the
soul and a present friend.
Does it cost us no effort to feel, in the
silence and solitude of the closet, the truth-
fulness of language like this ? —perhaps we
are sometimes assisted by uttering it audi-
bly,_ God is here, within these walls ;
before me, behind me, on my right hand,
78
THE STILL HOUR.
on my left hand. He who fills immensity
has come down to me here. I am now
about to bow at His feet, and speak to Him.
He will hear the very words I utter. I
may pour forth my desires before Him, and
not one syllable from my lips shall escape
His ear. I may speak to Him as I would
to the dearest friend I have on earth,
whose hand I should grasp, and whose eye
I should watch, and in the changes of
whose speaking countenance I should read
the interest which he felt in my story.
Yes; I am about to speak to God, though
I do not see Him; no image of Him aids
my vision or my faith : though I do not
hear His footfall around me; He is not
in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor
in the fire. Yet He is here as truly as if
clothed in a refulgent body, and these eyes
could look upon Him, and these ears could
hear the sound of His tread.'
DIFFICULTY OF PRAYER.
79,
'Jesus, these eyes have never seen
That radiant form of thine!
The veil of sense hangs dark between
Thy blesséd face and mine!
'I see Thee not, I hear Thee not,
Yet art Thou oft with me;
And earth hath ne'er so dear a spot
As where I meet with Thee.'
In this manner, to feel the reality of
God's spiritual presence, and then to speak
the language of adoration, confession, peti-
tion, thanksgiving, with a continuous sense
of its being, as Chalmers longed to feel it,
an actual interchange between ourselves
and God, a real conference of friends, –
this, surely, is not at all times, in all states
of the body, in all moods of sensibility,
under all varieties of circumstance, natural
to fallen minds like ours. It is not a state
of mind to which, without culture, without
discipline in Christian life, we spring spon-
taneously, involuntarily, as we spring to
Ulu
1
80
THE STILL HOUR.
conscious thinking when we wake from
sleep. A process of intellect is involved in
it which demands exertion.
The difficulty is that which idolatry was
invented to meet, by furnishing an image
of God to aid the mind ; that is, by giving
it an object of sense, to relieve it from the
labor of forming the conception of a spirit-
ual Deity.
Is it not evident, then, what effect must
be produced upon our devotional hours, if
we squander them, through a habit of in-
tellectual indolence? It has been said that
we are all born idolaters. We truly are
very like idolaters in indolent prayer. Pur-
sue this thought, for a moment, into the
details of individual experience, and let us
lave courage to look the evil in the face,
and call it by its right name; for this is
a matter which, to be felt as it deserves,
needs to be permitted to pierce to the most
secret habits of the closet.
INDOLENCE IN PRAYER.
81
CV
. Imagine, then, that you go to your place
of retirement reluctantly, listlessly. Your
mind, perhaps, is in a state of reäction from
the excitements of the day. You are in-
disposed to thought of any kind. You have
no eagerness of search after God; it is not
the struggling cry of your heart, Oh that
I knew where I might find Him!' From
sheer reluctance to endure the labor of
thinking, you neglect preparatory medita-
tion. You read the Scriptures indolently;
you do not expect, or seek for a spur to
your own conceptions, in the words of in-
spired thinkers. Your indolent mind in-
fects the body with its infirmity; you
instinctively choose that posture in your
devotions, which is most tempting to physi-
cal repose.
Imagine that, in the act of prayer, your
mind dreams its way through a dialect of
dead words; it floats on the current of a
stereotyped phraseology, which once leaped
82
THE STILL HOUR.
with life from the lips of holy men who or-
iginated it; but some of which, your mem-
ory obliges you to confess, never had any
vitality in your own thoughts. It was
never original with you; you have never
worked it out in your own experience;
you have never lived it; it has never
forced itself into expression, as the fruit
of self-knowledge or of self-conflict.
Or, imagine that you invariably, or even
habitually, pray inaudibly, because the lux-
uriousness of silent thought is more facile
to an indolent spirit, than the labor of ex-
pressing thought with the living voice.
You cannot often say, with David, “I cried
unto the Lord with my voice; with my
voice unto the Lord did I make my suppli-
cation. You do not pause, and struggle
with yourself, and gird up your loins like
a man, and ejaculate a cry for Divine aid,
in the mastery of thoughts which wander
like the fool's eyes. And you close your
A SECRET FAULT.
83
prayer, with a formula which touches the
very soul of faith, and hope, and love, and
all that is grand and mysterious and eter-
nal in redemption, — a formula hallowed
by centuries of prayer; yet, in uttering it,
when you say: "For Christ's sake, Amen,'
your mind is not conscious of a single defi-
nite, affecting thought, of either the history
or the meaning of that language.
Imagine this as a scene of real life in
the closet. Is this a caricature of some
possible modes of secret devotion ? And
if it is not, is it marvellous that such devo-
tion should be afflicted, with a vant of en-
joyment of the Divine presence ? Should
I accept this of your hand ? saith the Lord.'
The truth is, that an indulgence of slug-
gishness of mind is sometimes the secret
sin of good men. It is the iniquity which
they regard in their hearts, and because of
which God will not hear them. Mental
ease is a refined and seductive idol, which
84
THE STILL HOUR.
often beguiles men who have too much
Christian principle, or too much delicacy
of nature, or too much prudence of self-
control, or it may be too much pride of
character, to fall into a physical vice.
When good men are ensnared in this
sleek idolatry, before the decline of old
age, or the infirmities of disease render
rest a necessity, God often breaks in upon
it with the blows of His hard hand. He
fights against it with battles of shaking’;
and in part with the design of recalling
His mistaken friends, into closer com-
munion with Himself. He thwarts their
plans of life. He sends troubles to-plague
them. He knocks out from under them,
the props of their comfort. He does this, in
part, for the sake of startling their torpid
minds, and thus reaching their stagnant
hearts, by giving them something to think
of; which they feel they must make the sub-
ject of living, agonizing prayer.
U
THE STILL HOUR.
85
Oh! God's thoughts are not as our
thoughts. Dear as our happiness is to
Him, there is another thing within us,
which is more precious in His sight. It
is of far less consequence, in any Divine
estimate of things, how much a man suf-
fers, than -- what the man is.
COULD YE NOT WATCH WITH ME ONE HOUR ?
MATT, 26 : 40.
We are often in a religious hurry in our
devotions. How much time do we spend
in them daily? Can it not be easily reck-
oned in minutes ?
Probably, many of us would be discom-
posed by an arithmetical estimate of our
communion with God. It might reveal to
us the secret of much of our apathy in
prayer, because it might disclose how little
we desire to be alone with God. We might
learn from such a computation, that Augus-
tine's idea of prayer, as the measure of
love,' is not very flattering to us. We do
not grudge time given to a privilege which
we love.
3
HASTE IN PRAYER.
87
Why should we expect to enjoy a duty
which we have no time to enjoy? Do we
enjoy anything which we do in a hurry?
Enjoyment presupposes something of men-
tal leisure. How often do we say of a
pleasure, “I wanted more time to enjoy it
to my heart's content.' But of all employ-
ments, none can be more dependent on
time for it, than stated prayer.
Fugitive acts of devotion, to be of high
value, must be sustained by other ap-
proaches to God, deliberate, premeditated,
regular, which shall be to those acts like
the abutments of a suspension-bridge to the
arch that spans the stream. It will never
do, to be in desperate haste in laying such
foundations. This thoughtful duty, this
spiritual privilege, this foretaste of incor-
poreal life, this communion with an unseen
Friend, - can you expect to enjoy it as
you would a repartee or a dance ?
In the royal gallery at Dresden, may be
88
THE STILL HOUR.
often seen a group of connoisseurs, who
sit for hours before a single painting.
They walk around those lialls and corri-
dors, whose walls are so eloquent with the
pause again before that one masterpiece.
They go away, and return the next day,
and again the first and the last object which
charms their eye, is that canvas on which
Genius has pictured more of beauty than on
any other in the world. Weeks are spent
every year, in the study of that one work of
Raphael. Lovers of Art cannot enjoy it to
the full, till they have made it their own, by
prolonged communion with its matchless
forms. Says one of its admirers : 'I could
spend an hour every day, for years, upon
that assemblage of human, and angelic, and
divine ideals, and on the last day of the last
year discover some new beauty, and a new
joy.'
I have seen men standing in the street,
PRAYER A COMMUNION.
89
before an engraving of that gem of the
Dresden Gallery, a longer time than a good
man will sometimes devote to his evening
prayer. Yet, what thoughts, what ideals
of grace, can Genius express in a painting,
demanding time for their appreciation and
enjoyment, like those great thoughts of God,
of Heaven, of Eternity, which the soul needs
to conceive vividly, in order to know the
blessedness of prayer? What conceptions
can Art imagine of the Divine Child,'
which can equal in spirituality, the thoughts
which one needs to entertain of Christ, in
the prayer of faith'? We cannot hope,
commonly, to spring into possession of such
thoughts, in the twinkling of an eye.
Prayer, as we have observed, is an act of
friendship also. It is intercourse ; an act
of trust, of hope, of love, all prompting to
interchange between the soul and an Infi-
nite, Spiritual, Invisible Friend. We all
need prayer, if for no other purpose, for
C01
90
THE STILL HOUR.
this which we so aptly call communion with
God.
Robert Burns lamented that he could not
(pour out his inmost soul without reserve
to any human being, without danger of one
day repenting lis confidence.' He com-
menced a journal of his own mental history,
as a substitute,' he said, 'for a confidential
friend.' He would have something which
he could record himself in,' without peril
of having liis confidence betrayed. We all
need prayer, as a means of such intercourse
with a Friend who will be true to us.
Zinzendorf, when a boy, used to write
little notes to the Saviour, and throw them
out of the window, hoping that He would
find them. Later in life, so strong was his
faith in the friendship of Christ, and in his
own need of that friendship as a daily sol-
ace, that once, when travelling, he sent
back his companion, that he might converse
STUDIOUS PRAYER.
91
LIL
more freely with the Lord,' with whom he
spoke audibly.
So do we all need friendly converse with
Him whom our souls love. He alone is a
thousand companions; he alone is a world
of friends. That man never knew what it
was to be familiar with God, who complains
of the want of friends while God is with
him.'
But who can originate sucli conceptions
of God, as are necessary to the enjoyment
of His friendship in prayer, without time for
thought, for self-collection, for concentra-
tion of soul ? Momentary devotion, if genu-
ine, must presuppose the habit of studious
prayer.
We have portraits of deceased friends,
before which we love to sit by the hour,
striving to recall the living features which
are so feebly portrayed there, and to resus-
citate the history of expression on those
countenances in life, which no Art could fix
S
1
92
THE STILL HOUR.
on canvas, and to which our own memory
is becoming treacherous. Have we never
struggled with the twilight, to make those
loved but flitting expressions live again?
Yet, have we any more vivid or indelible
conceptions of God, whom no man hath
seen at any time'? How can we expect to
enjoy a sense of the friendship of a present
Saviour, if we never linger in the twilight,
to freshen and intensify our thoughts of
Him? Does He never speak to us that
plaintive reproof, “Could ye not watch with
me one hour?'
A very busy Christian says, “This is a
cloisteral piety which demands much time
for secret prayer.' No, not that. But, on
the other hand, it is not a piety which, in its
recoil from the monastery, is heedless of the
look of business in devotion, which is ex-
pressed by the words, 'Enter into thy closet
and shut thy door;' and of the scriptural
stress upon perseverance in prayer; and of
CONTINUANCE IN PRAYER.
93
the inspired idea of fasting and prayer; and
of the historic argument from the example
of eminent saints, both of Biblical, and of
later times.
Wlio ever knew an eminently holy man,
who did not spend much of his time in
prayer ? Did ever a man exhibit much of
the spirit of prayer, who did not devote
much time to his closet ? Whitefield says,
· Whole days and weeks have I spent pros-
trate on the ground, in silent or vocal
prayer.' 'Fall upon your knees, and grow
there,' is the language of another, who knew
that whereof he affirmed. These, in spirit,
are but specimens of a feature in the expe-
rience of eminent piety, which is absolutely
uniform.
It has been said, that no great work in
literature or in science was ever wrought
by a man who did not love solitude. We
may lay it down as an elemental principle
of religion, that no large growth in holiness
94
THE STILL HOUR.
11
was ever gained, by one who did not take
time to be often, and long, alone with God.
This kind goeth not out but by prayer and
fasting. No otherwise can the great cen-
tral idea of God enter into a man's life, and
dwell there supreme.
Holiness,' says Dr. Cudworth, “is some-
thing of God, wherever it is. It is an efflux
from Him, and lives in Him; as the sun-
beams, although they gild this lower world,
and spread their golden wings over us, yet
they are not so much here where they sline,
as in the sun from whence they flow. Such
a possession of the idea of God, we never
gain but from still hours. For such holy
joy in God, we must have much of the
spirit of Him who rose up a great while
before day, and departed into a solitary
place and prayed, and who continued all
night in prayer; "the morning star finding
Him where the evening star had left Him.'
XI.
A DEVOUT MAN, ONE THAT PRAYED ALWAYS.
ACTS 10 : 2.
We miss very much devotional joy, by
the neglect of fragmentary prayer. In the
intervals which separate periodical seasons
of devotion, we need a habit of offering up
brief ejaculatory expressions of devout feel-
ing. The morning and the erening sacrifice
depend very much upon these interspersed
offerings, as these in return are dependent
on those. Communion with God in both, is
assisted by linking the set times' together
by a chain of leavenward thoughts and
aspirations, in the breaks which occur in
our labors and amusements. Sunrise and
sunset may attract our attention more
96
THE STILL HOUR.
O
strongly than the succession of golden
rays between them, but who can say that
they are more cheering? It is not often
that a day, wholly clouded lies between two
clear twilights.
Prayer, as we have seen, is, in the high-
est conception of it, a state rather than an
act. A full fruition of its benefits depends
on a continuity of its influences. Reduce
it to two isolated experiments daily, and
separate these by long blank hours in which
the soul has no glimpse of God for its re-
freshment, and how can prayer be other
than a toil, and often a drudgery?
We come to the eventide with the im-
pression of the morning watch all obliter-
ated ; probably with a conscience burdened
by accumulations of sin upon an ungov-
erned spirit through the day. We feel that
we must take a new start every time we
seek God's presence. Our sense of spirit-
ual progress is lost. Sinning and repenting
FRAGMENTARY PRAYER.
97
is all our life ; we do not have holy force
enough to get beyond repentance in our
devotion. Our prayers, instead of being,
as they should be, advancing steps, are like
the steps of a tread-mill. Humane law has
abandoned this, even as a punishment for
felons; why should one whom Christ has
made free inflict it upon himself ?
We need, then, something that shall make
our prayerful hours support each other —
the morning tributary to the evening, and
the evening to the morning. Nothing else
can do this so naturally as the habit of ejac-
ulatory prayer. The spirit of prayer may
a lifetime. So, one may live in a state of
prayer, ' a devout man that prays always.'
Not only does this habit of fragmentary
prayer contribute to a lofty, devotional spirit,
but such a spirit demands it for its own
indulgence.
It is characteristic of minds which are as-
98
THE STILL HOUR.
I
piring in their piety, and which have begun
to reap the reward of arduous devotional
culture, to be habitually conversant with
God. Such minds are constantly looking
up. In the very midst of earthly toils, they
seize moments of relief, to spring up to the
eminences of meditation, where they love to
dwell. In the discharge of duties most un-
friendly to holy joy, they are apt to expe-
rience a buoyancy of impulse towards a
heavenly plane of thought, which it may
even require a power of self-denial to keep
down.
Critics have observed, that in the apos-
tolic epistles, doxologies are sometimes em-
bedded in passages of remonstrance and of
warning. It should seem, that the apostolic
mind came down unwillingly, or from a
sense of duty only, to deal with the sins and
weaknesses of earth ; and was on the watch
for chances to rise, like a bird let loose,
PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER.
99
though but for a moment, into the upper
air.
Such is the nature of holiness. Being
from God, it is ever seeking to revert to its
source. The heavier the pressure of a mun-
dane life upon it, the stronger is the force
of its compressed aspirations. Such pres-
sure is like that of the atmosphere on
water, which seeks, through crevices in its
enclosure, the level of its fountain. A spirit
like this, I repeat, will demand the habit of
fragmentary prayer for its own holy indul-
gence; and will demand it with an impor-
tunity proportioned to tlie superincumbent
weight of earthly cares.
The providence of God, also, contem-
plates these impulses as a counterpart to
certain of its own procedures.
Under the laws of Providence, life is a pro-
bation; probation is a succession of tempta-
tions; temptations are emergencies; and
for emergencies we need the preparation
Y
CU
100
THE STILL HOUR.
and the safeguard of prayer. We have du-
ties which are perilous. We meet surprises
of evil. We struggle with a wily adversary.
We feel perplexities of conscience, in which
holy decision depends on the mind we bring
to them. We encounter disappointments
which throw us back from our hopes rudely.
We have difficult labors, in which we some-
times come to a “dead-lock;' we do not know
wliat to do. We have an unknown experi-
ence opening upon us every hour. We are
like travellers in a fog, who cannot see an
arm’s-length before them. Providence is
thus continually calling for the aids of
prayer; and in a soul which is keen in its
vigilance, prayer will be continually respon-
sive to providences, often anticipative of
them.
The methods of the Holy Spirit also, pre-
suppose the value of these fragmentary de-
votions. God often secretly inclines a Chris-
tian's heart to engage in them.
SECRET PROMPTINGS.
101
Are there not, in the lives of us all, mo-
ments when, without the formality of retire-
ment to the closet, we feel disposed to pray ?
We are conscious of special attraction to-
wards God. Perhaps with no obvious rea-
son for 'looking up' now rather than an
hour ago; we do look up. “We feel just like
praying. It is as if we heard heavenly
voices saying, ' Come up hither.'
There is often a beautiful alliance be-
tween Providence and Grace, in these expe-
riences. A Christian who will be studious
of his own history, will probably discover,
that often the occasions for such fragmentary
communings with God follow hard upon
these secret incitements to them. Emergen-
cies come soon for which they are needed.
The Holy Spirit has anticipated them, and
sought to forearm us. Providence and
Grace thus hover over us, not far asunder.
In this view, those Biblical exhortations
to prayer, which men have sometimes
102
THE STILL HOUR.
deemed extravagant, are transparently ra-
tional: Continue in prayer ;' Continue
instant in prayer;' 'Pray without ceasing;'
“Men ought always to pray;' Rejoice in
the Lord always !' Such exhortations con-
template a state, not insulated acts, of
prayer. They fit in well, to the system
of things in which we are living ; for, that
system seems, on all sides of it, to pre-
suppose just this continuity of unpremedi-
tated ejaculations, joining together our sta-
ted seasons of devotion.
No Christian, then, can afford to be fru-
gal of prayer, in the intervals of daily busi-
ness and amusement. Enjoyment of all
communion with God must be impaired, by
the loss of these little tributaries. A Chris-
tian's life, so conducted, must languish as a
tree does, whose fibrous roots are stripped
off, leaving only its truncal roots, possibly
only a tap-root, for its nourishment. That
Christian is hoping against impossibilities,
CONTENDING WITH GOD.
103
who thinks to enjoy a life of intercourse
with God, in any such way.
We are opposing God's method of work-
ing, if our life has a tendency to incapaci-
tate us for the enjoyment of prayer at all
times. If by needless excess of worldly
cares ; if by inordinate desires, which ren-
der it impossible for us to accomplish our
objects in life without such excess of care;
if by frivolous habits ; if by the reading of
infidel or effeminate literature; if by an
indolent life; if by any self-indulgence in
physical regimen — we render the habit of
fragmentary prayer impracticable or unnat-
ural to us, we are crossing the methods of
God's working. Something has gone wrong,
is going wrong, in the life of that Chris-
tian who finds himself thus estranged from
filial freedom with God.
Such a Christian must, sooner or later, be
brought back to Christ, and must begin life
anew. He will come back heavy laden and
104
THE STILL HOUR
in tears. No words express more becom-
ingly the wail of his spirit, whenever he
comes to his right mind, than the plaint of
Cowper -
Oh for a closer walk with God!'
In the vestibule of St. Peter's, at Rome, is
a doorway, which is walled up and marked
with a cross. It is opened but four times
in a century. On Christmas Eve, once in
twenty-five years, the Pope approaches it in
princely state, with the retinue of cardinals
in attendance, and begins the demolition of
the door, by striking it three times with
a silver hammer. When the passage is
opened, the multitude pass into the nave
of the cathedral, and up to the altar, by an
avenue which the majority of them never
entered thus before, and never will enter
thus again.
Imagine that the way to the Throne of
Grace were like the Porta Santa, inaccessi-
THE PORTA SANTA.
105
ble, save once in a quarter of a century,
on the twenty-fifth of December, and then
only with august solemnities, conducted by
great dignitaries in a holy city. Conceive
that it were now ten years since you, or I,
or any other sinner, had been permitted to
pray; and that fifteen long years must
drag themselves away, before we could ven-
ture again to approach God; and that, at
the most, we could not hope to pray more
than two or three times in a lifetime! With
what solicitude we should wait for the com-
ing of that Holy Day! We should lay our
plans of life, select our homes, build our
houses, choose our professions, form our
friendships, with reference to a pilgrimage
in that twenty-fifth year. We should reck-
on time by the openings of that Sacred Door,
as epochs. No other one thought would en-
gross so much of our lives, or kindle our
sensibilities so intensely, as the thought of
Prayer. It would be of more significance
1
10
106
THE STILL FOUR.
to us than the thought of Death is now.
It would multiply our trepidations at the
thought of dying. Fear would grow to
horror, at the idea of dying before that
year of Jubilee. No other question would
give us such tremors of anxiety as these
would excite: "How many years now to
the time of Prayer ? How many months ?
How many weeks? How many days?
Shall we live to see it? Who can tell ?'
Yet, on that great Day, amidst an in-
numerable throng, in a courtly presence,
within sight and hearing of stately rites,
what would prayer be worth to us? Who
would value it in the comparison with those
still moments, that --
I
—
'secret silence of the mind,'
.
in which we now can find God,' every day
and every where? That Day would be more
like the Day of Judgment to us, than like
the sweet minutes of converse with 'Our
ALWAYS WITH GOD.
107
Father,' which we may now have, every
hour. We should appreciate this privilege
of hourly prayer, if it were once taken from
‘Still with Thee, O my God,
I would desire to be;
By day, by night, at home, abroad,
I would be still with Thee !
With Thee amid the crowd
That throngs the busy mart –
To hear Thy voice, ʼmid clamor loud,
Speak softly to my heart!'
ΧΙΙ.
Rom. 8:26.
LANGUOR may be the penalty of egotism in
prayer. No other infirmity is so subtle, or
so corrosive to devotion, as that of an over-
weening consciousness of self. It is pos-
sible, that an intense self-conceit should
flaunt itself in the forms of devoutness.
To a right-minded man, some of the most
astonishing passages in the Bible, are the
mysterious declarations and hints of the
residence of the Holy Spirit in a human
soul. We must stand in awe, before any
just conception of the meaning of such
voices as these : "The Spirit of God dwell-
eth in you’; God dwelleth in us '; "Ye
INDWELLING OF GOD.:
109
are the temple of God'; “Your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost'; ‘Full of the
of God'; 'Praying in the Holy Ghost';
With all prayer in the Spirit'; "The
Spirit itself maketh intercession for us.'
But the mysteriousness of such language
should not surprise us. Its mystery is only
the measure of its depth. It is the reality
not fritter it away by shallow interpreta-
tions. While, on the one hand, we are
under no necessity of blinking the truth
of the intense activity of the soul in any
holy experience; on the other hand, we
must discern in such phraseology, the greater
intensity of the Holy Spirit's action in a
holy mind. The existence of the mind is
no more a reality, than this indwelling of
God.
What then is prayer, as seen in perspective
with this doctrine of the Spirit'? Is it
A
110
THE STILL HOUR.
merely the dialect of helplessness? Is it
only, as Paley defines it, the expression of
want? Is it nothing but the lament of
poverty, or the moan of suffering, or the
cry of fear? Is it simply the trust of weak-
ness in strength, the leaning of ignorance
upon wisdom, the dependence of guilt
upon mercy? It is all these, but more.
A holy prayer is the Spirit of God speaking
through the infirmities of a human soul ;
"God's breath in man, returning to his birth.'
V
We scarcely utter hyperbole in saying, that
prayer is the Divine Mind communing
with itself, through finite wants, through
the woes of helplessness, through the cling-
ing instincts of weakness. On this side of
the Judgment, no other conception of the
Presence of God is so profound, as that
which is realized in our souls every time
we offer a genuine prayer. God is then
not only with us, but within us.
TI
DISHONORING THE SPIRIT.
111
That was human nature in honest dismay
at its own guilt, in which the children of Is-
rael said to Moses, "Speak thou with us and
we will hear; let not God speak with us, lest
we die.' That was an adventurous trust
fulness, which could enable the Monk of
Mount St. Agnes to say of this language,
"I pray not in this manner; no, Lord, I
pray not so; but with Samuel I entreat,
“Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth.”
Do Thou, therefore, O Lord my God! speak
to my soul, lest I die.' But what is the
sacredness of God's speaking to us, in com-
parison with the more awful thought of His
speaking within us! Yet this is prayer.
Know ye not that ye are the Temple of
God?
. It is obvious, then, that the loss of much
joy in prayer may be attributed to some
form of dishonor done to the Holy Spirit,
11
CD
devotions.
The Spirit sternly refuses to
112
THE STILL HOUR.
G
I
become a participant in any act which dis-
parages Him, and exalts in the heart of tlie
worshipper the idea of Self. A profound
Christian truth may be clothed in the lan-
guage of a heathen proverb: "A Divine
Spirit is within us, who treats us as He is
treated by us.'
We may offer our supplications, with no
penetrating sense of the necessity of super-
natural aid. There may be no childlike
consciousness of infirmity which should
lead us to cry out for help. The inspired
words, often on our lips, may seldom come
from the depth of our hearts: "We know
not what we should pray for as we ought.'
We make prayer itself one of the standard
subjects of prayer; yet, on what theme do
our devotions more frequently degenerate
into routine than on this ? Have we a
sense of indigence when we ask for the
indwelling of God in our souls? Have we
such a sense of need of it, as we have of the
1
IRREVERENT PRAYER. :
113
me
need of air when we are gasping with faint-
ness? It is the law of Divine blessing, that
want comes before wealth, hunger before a
feast. We must experience the necessity, in
order to appreciate the reality.
Have we desires in prayer which we feel
unable to utter without the aid of God?
Dr. Payson said, that he pitied the Christian
who had no longings at the throne of Grace
which he could not clothe in language.
There may be a silent disavowal of our
need of the Holy Ghost, in the very act in
which we seek His energy. The lips may
honor Him, but the heart may say: 'What
have I to do with Thee ?'
We may dishonor the Holy Spirit by
irreverent speech in prayer. The Spirit
can indite no other than reverent words.
Where do we find, in the Scriptures, an
unliallowed familiarity of communion with
God ? Only at that gathering of the sons
of God, at which “Satan came also among
114
THE STILL HOUR.
9
them.' It required the effrontery of an evil
spirit, to talk to God as to an equal.
The consciousness of Divine friendship
in devotion, so far from being impaired, is
deepened by holy veneration. The purest
and most lasting human friendships are
permeated with an element of reverence;
much more this friendship of a man with
God. Moses, with whom God spoke · as a
man with his friend,' was the man who
said, “I exceedingly fear and quake.' Abra-
ham was called the 'friend of God ;' yet,
his favorite posture in prayer was prostra-
tion. He “fell on his face, and God talked
with him.' Angels, too, Teil their faces,
in any service which approximates to the
nature of prayer.
11
'Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground,
With solemn adoration, down tlicy cast
Their crowns inwore with amarant and gold,
Even He who could say to His Father, 'I
IMPATIENT PRAYER. :
115
know that Thou always hearest me,' we
are told, 'was heard in that lie feared.'
What, other than solemn mockery, can
that devotion be, which clothes itself in pert
speech? The heart which is moved in
healthy pulsations of sympathy with the
promptings of the Holy Ghost, indulges
in no such gasconade. It is not boisterous
and rude of tongue, lifting itself up to talk
saucily to God.'. It is emptied of self, be-
cause it is filled with the fulness of God.
Therefore it rejoices with joy unspeakable.
We may disparage the Holy Spirit by a
querulous devotion. Self-sufficiency is im-
patient when it is rebuffed ; scarcely less so
in intercourse with God, than in intercourse
with men. Complaint that prayer is not
answered immediately, or in the specific
thing we pray for, proves that the Spirit
has not helped our infirmities in that
prayer. We have not sought His aid, nor
desired it. He prompts only submissive
.
116
THE STILL HOUR.
petitions, patient desires, a willingness to
wait on God quietly, and self-forgetfully.
A Hottentot beats his idol when he fails
in his supplications. The people of Naples
are frenzied with rage, when the miracle
of the “Liquefaction' does not appear at
the festival of San Gennaro. How far is
that Christian elevated above these, in pos-
session of the 'fruits of the Spirit,' whose
heart mutters hard thoughts of God, at the
delay or the refusal of an answer to his
prayers ? Such devotion is intensely self-
ish, however it may be glossed by the re-
finements of devout speech.
We may be false to the moving of the
Holy Spirit, by a diseased inspection of our
own minds in the act of communion with
God. Self-examination is a suitable pre-
liminary, or after-thought, to prayer, but
is no part of it. Devotion is most thor-
oughly objective, in respect of the motives
which induce its presence. It is won into
EGOTISM IN PRAYER.
117
S
forced into being by internal commotions.
It is an outgoing, not a seething of sensi-
bility. The suppliant looks upward and
around beyond himself; and devout affec-
tion grows in intensity with the distance
which he penetrates, as the eye grows keen
with far seeing. The Spirit invites to no
other than such expansive devotion. We
are never more like Christ, than in prayers
of intercession. In the most lofty devotion
we become unconscious of self.
Joy too, has, from its very nature, the
same objective origin. It springs from
fountains out of ourselves. It comes to us;
we do not originate it, we do not gain it by
searching. We are never jubilant in think-
ing of our joy. Our happiness is an inci-
dent, of which, as an object of thought, we
are unconscious. Divine influence is ad-
justed to this law of our minds ; it seeks
118
THE STILL HOUR.
to bless us by leading us out of self into
great thoughts of God.
Hence, one of the most delusive methods
of crossing the will of the Holy Spirit, is
that habit of mental introversion in prayer,
which corresponds to morbid anatomy'
in medical science. The heart, instead of
flowing outward and upward at the bidding
of the Spirit, turns in upon itself, and
dissects its own emotions, and studies its
own symptoms of piety. Any kindlings of
joy in the soul are quenched, by being made
the subject of morbid analysis.
“There are anatomists of piety,' says
Isaac Taylor, “who destroy all the freshness
of faith, and hope, and charity, by immur-
ing themselves, night and day, in the in-
fected atmosphere of their own bosoms.'
Andrew Fuller has recorded of himself,
that he found no permanent relief from
melancholy, in his early religious life, till.
his heart outgrew the pettiness of his own
GENEROUS PRAYER.
119,
sorrows, through his zeal in the work of
Foreign Missions. We may often be sensi-
ble, that the teachings of the Spirit' in
our hearts are of just this character. They
prompt away from ourselves. “Look up,
look abroad,' is the interpretation of them.
• Come away from thyself; pray for some-
thing out of thine own soul ; be generous
in thine intercession; so shall thy peace bo
as a river.'
Have you never observed, how entirely
devoid is the Lord's Prayer of any material
which can tempt to this subtle self-inspec-
tion, in the act of devotion? It is full of
an outflowing of thought, and of emotion,
towards great objects of desire, great neces-
sities, and great perils. After this manner,
therefore, pray ye.'
XIII.
WE HAVE AN ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER.
CHRISTIANS sometimes offer heathen pray-
ers. The lifelessness of devotion may often
be attributable to the want of a cordial recog-
nition of Christ, as the medium of access to
the throne of Grace. Prayer, in the Divine
plan of things, has but one avenue. “No
man cometh unto the Father but by me.'
Whoever slights Christ in devotion, climb-
eth up some other way.' .
The central idea in the Christian theory
of prayer, is that of privilege gained by medi-
ation. The language of Christian faith is, 'I
am permitted to pray because of the merits
of another; I do not deserve to pray, I can-
U
TEACHINGS OF NATURE.
not claim to pray, I have no right to pray,
but by Christ's permission. The doctrine
of prayer, as a doctrine of Nature, is but
a fragmentary truth. In its fulness, it is
a Christian peculiarity. The fact of an
atonement is its foundation. The person
of a Redeemer is the nucleus of its history,
One of the grounds on which the neces-
sity of a Revelation rests, is that, by the
teachings of Nature, we have no clear right
to pray — no right which satisfies a guilty
conscience. Philosophy has often taught
men that prayer is impiety. To an awak-
ened conscience, Nature seems to shut man
in to the solitude of his own forebodings.
In its dim light, prayer and sacrifice grope
hand in hand, as the blind leading the blind.
The right of either to existence is only a
presumed right. Faith in the efficacy of
either staggers, whenever the soul is shaken
by remorse, or philosophy approaches the
Christian conception of sin.
122
THE STILL HOUR.
U
Not till Christ is revealed, does prayer
settle itself as an undoubted fact; and then
it is as a privilege only, and as a device
of mediatorial government. We may pray,
for Christ's sake. This is the Christian
theory of prayer, and this is the whole of it.
Now, it is not difficult to see that one
may pray, with no adequate appreciation of
this mediatorial element in the groundwork
of devotion. A man may habitually pray,
with no such cordiality of soul towards
Christ, as is becoming to a suppliant whose
only right of prayer is a right purchased by
atoning blood.
Is it unusual for a Christian mind to be
thus heedless of Christ in devotion ? Prac-
tical heresy of this kind may nestle side by
side with irreproachable orthodoxy. A
creed and a faith, even upon a truth so
vital, are, by no means, of necessity one.
The very soundness of the creed may
shelter the decay of the faith. We may
HEATHEN PRAYER.
123
profess and call ourselves Christians,' and
yet may every day approach God, as a con-
verted heathen would, who had never heard
of Christ. The general mercy of God may
be the foundation of all the hopefulness,
all the trust, all the ferror we really feel
in prayer, while not a thought occurs to
us of Christ as the ground of that mercy.
We may pray then, as, perhaps, Socrates
and Plato prayed.
We may rejoice to believe that even such
prayer would have power with God, from
one who should be ignorant of Redemption.
The northern Aurora lights up our midnight
skies with scintillations, emanating from
magnetic vortices, whose locality and causes
are otherwise unknown to us. So, we can
conceive of faith in mercy without a known
atonement, and in prayer without a revealed
Saviour, as looming up in radiant twilight,
and suffusing the heavens with beauty, to
the eye of a heathen seer, because of the
A
124
THE STILL HOUR.
secret history of such prayer, in its move-
ment among the mediatorial counsels of
God.
But what an Arctic temperature does such
prayer suggest to one who, in the full me-
ridian of time, can say, with Simeon: "Mine
eyes have seen Thy salvation?! Such devo-
tion could do no justice to Christian truth.
It could be no exponent of Christian privi-
lege. It is not Christian prayer.
In the experience of a Christian mind,
such prayer would involve a conceivable,
but an impossible distinction, which ex-
presses, perhaps, as nearly as language
can describe it, the error of him who
struggles with such an idea of devotion. It
is, that one may approach God rather as a
good man than as a redeemed sinner. This,
be it repeated, is an unreal distinction in
any religious life on this globe. Christian
faith recognizes no other objects of God's
mercy than redeemed sinners. No others
DISHONORING CHRIST.
125
1
Y
1
VI
1
are invited to hold communion with God.
The invitation is to the world, only be-
cause God so loved the world, that it is a
redeemed world. That Christian struggles
against impossibilities, who strives to realize
in his own experience, any other than the
joy of a redeemed sinner.
Yet the human heart is exceedingly tor-
tuous in its exercises on this theme. I re-
peat, that a neglect of Christ may lurk in
our habits of feeling, and may give charac-
ter to our devotions, when no heresy infects
the convictions of our intellect.
A distinguished divine, of the last gener-
ation, expressed his confidence in the faith
of a Christian brother, whose soundness as
a theologian had been questioned ; and he
gave as his reason, that he had heard that
brother pray, and that he prayed as if Christ,
as an atoning Sariour, were a reality to
him, and that such a man could not be
essentially heterodox. The principle was
II
126
THE STILL HOUR.
trutlıful; but the converse of it is not so.
The experience of prayer may be founded
on no more than Socrates believed, and yet
the creed of the intellect may be that of the
Epistle to the Romans.
We do not need to be taught for the
enlightenment of our understanding, - but
do we not need that that Spirit which shall
not speak of Himself, but shall take of the
things of Christ and show them unto us,
should teach our hearts ? — that the most
profound joy in communion with God, must
centre in an experience of the reality of
an atoning blood. In this one thought, it
must culminate and rest. :
A divided leart, on this subject, cannot
know the fulness of the liberty of prayer.
A heart which is confused in its religious
life, by a compromise of this truth, cannot.
Christ, as the Atoning One, must be a
reality to the soul, or prayer cannot rise to
its full growth, as an experience of blessed-
THE MISSION OF SORROW.
127
ness in the friendship of God. For such
blessedness, we need much of that sense of
the reality of Christ, which one of the early
preachers of New England is said to have
had upon his death-bed, when, after giving
his last messages to his earthly friends, he
turned and said: 'Where, now, is Jesus of
Nazareth, my most intimate, most faithful
friend ?'
May we not often solve, with this princi-
ple, the mystery of God's disciplinary pror-
idence? “Many are the afflictions of the
righteous;' and wherefore,' writes one,
but to necessitate the use of prayer as a
real and efficient means of obtaining assist-
ance in distress?' 'Lord, in trouble have
they visited Thee,' says another; they
poured out a prayer when Thy chastening
was upon them.' Often, to deepen our
knowledge of Christ in prayer, is the mission
of the angel of sorrow.
The truth is, that we never feel Christ to
128
TIE STILL HOUR.
be a reality, until we feel Him to be a ne-
cessity. Therefore, God makes us feel that
necessity. He tries us here, and He tries
us there. He chastises on this side, and He
chastises on that side. He probes us by the
disclosure of one sin, and another, and
a third, which have lain rankling in our
deceived hearts. He removes, one after
another, the objects in which we have been
seeking the repose of idolatrous affection.
He afflicts us in ways which we have not
anticipated. He sends upon us the chas-
tisements which He knows we shall feel
most sensitively. He pursues us when we
would fain flee from His hand; and, if need
be, He shakes to pieces the whole framework
of our plans of life, by which we have been
struggling to build together the service of
God and the service of Self; till, at last,
He makes us feel that Christ is all that is
left to us.
When we discover that, and go to Christ,
1
CHRIST A REALITY.
129
U
conscious of our beggary in respect of every-
thing else, — wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked, — we go, not
expecting much, perhaps not asking much.
There may be hours of prostration when
we ask only for rest; we pray for the cessa-
tion of suffering; we seek repose from
conflict with ourselves, and with God's
providence. But God gives us more. He
is more generous than we have dared to be-
lieve. He gives us joy; He gives us liberty ;
He gives us victory; He gives us a sense of
self-conquest, and of union with Himself in
an eternal friendship. On the basis of that
single experience of Christ as a reality, be-
cause a necessity, there rises an experience
of blessedness in communion with God,
which prayer expresses like a Revelation.
Such devotion is a jubilant Psalm.
XIV.
DRAW NIGH TO GOD, AND HE WILL DRAW NIGI TO YOU.
JJIES 4:8.
God only knows what are the prevailing
habits of Christians of our own day, respect-
ing the duties of the closet. On no subject
is it more necessary to speak with reserve,
if we would speak justly, of the experience
of others. Each man knows his own, and
for the most part, only his own. That is
not likely to be a truthful or a candid
severity, which would bring sweeping accu-
sations against the fidelity of God's people
in their intercourse with Him. We should
believe no such charges. They are some-
times made in a spirit which invites one to
say to the censorious brother : " Take heed
to thyself; Satan hath desired to have thee.'
MODERN PRAYERFULNESS.
131
It cannot reasonably be doubted, that
multitudes of Christ's followers are strug-
gling daily to get nearer to God. Perhaps,
of all the recent treasures of hymnology,
no other lines have thrilled so many Chris-
tian hearts, or called forth so deep a throb
of sympathy as the following, from one of
our living poets, viz. :
1
Nearer, my God, to Thee, -
Nearer to Thee;
Ev’n though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still, all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, –
Nearer to Thee!'
S
None are more sensible of their failures
in prayer, than those Christians to whom
these words have become a song of the
heart, more precious than rubies. Yet such
Christians are more successful than they
seem to themselves.
It cannot be proved that the Modern
Church -- taking into account its numbers,
132
THE STILL HOUR.
the variety of rank, of nation, of tempera-
ment, and of opinion which it embraces,
the breadth of its Christian character, and
the energy of its benevolent activities -- is
inferior, in respect of the spirit of prayer, in
its most scriptural and healthy forms, to the
Church of any other, even of apostolic,
times. It is often affirmed, to the discredit
of the modern developments of piety; but,
I repeat, it cannot be proved, nor, in view
of the aggressive revival of religion which
seems to be sweeping over Protestant
Christendom, is it probably true. It is
not the law of Divine Influence, to bestow
such measure of power, when and where the
spirit of prayer is dying out. The law of
procedure, in reference to such grand strides
of progress, is rather: "For all this, will I
be inquired of by the house of Israel.' The
language of fidelity, then, should not be
mistaken for the language of suspicion and
of croaking
MODERN ACTIVITY.
· 133
LO
Yet, this doubtless is true, of the tenden-
cies of our modern Christian life — that
they embody certain centrifugal forces, as
related to a life of solitude and stilluess.
Modern piety goes outward, in duties and
activities, extrinsic to a secret life with
God. It does this by an iuborn instinct,
which perhaps was never more vigorous in
its operation than now. This is no evil.
It is a growth, rather, upon the usage of
other ages. It is an advance, certainly,
upon the piety of the cloister and the cowl.
It is a progress of religious life, too, beyond
that of the early denominational contentions
of Protestantism. Those contentions may
have been a necessary preliminary to it, but
it is an advance upon the spirit and the
aims of them. It is a salutary growth.
But, like every large, rapid growth, it
involves a peril peculiar to itself — a peril
which we cannot avoid, but which, by wise
forethought, we may encounter with safe
134
THE STILL HOUR.
courage. That very obvious peril is, that
the vitality of holiness may be exhausted
by inward decay, through the want of an
increase of its devotional spirit, proportioned
to the expansion of its active forces. Indi-
vidual experience may become shallow, for
the want of meditative habits, and much
communion with God.
Should this be the catastrophe of the
tendencies working in modern Christian
life, centuries of conflict and corruption
must follow, by a law fixed like gravitation.
Our religious organizations must begin soon
to settle, like a building whose frame is
rot.' Activity can never sustain itself.
Withdraw the vital force which animates
and propels it, and it falls like a dead arm.
We cannot, then, too keenly feel, each one
for himself, that a still and secret life with
God must energize all holy duty, as vigor
THOLUCK.
135
in every fibre of the body must come from
the strong, calm, faithful beat of the heart.
To one who is conscious of defect in his
own piety, respecting the friendship of the
soul with God, there will be great apt-
ness and beauty in the appeal of a foreign
preacher: "Why fleest thou from solitude ?
Why dost thou shun the lonely hour ?
Why passeth thy life away, like the feast
of the drunkard ? Why is it, that to many
of you there cometh not, through the whole
course of the week, a single hour for self-
meditation? You go through life like
11
Iul
and never with yourselves. * * * You
have torn down the cloister, but why have
you not erected it within your own hearts ?
Lo, my brother, if thou wouldst seek out
the still hour, only a single one every day,
and if thou wouldst meditate on the love
which called thee into being, which hath
overshadowed thee all the days of thy life
136
THE STILL HOUR.
with blessing, or else by mournful experi-
ences hath admonished and corrected thee;
this would be to draw near to thy God.
Thus wouldst thou take Him by the hand.
But whenever, in ceaseless dissipation of
heart, thou goest astray, the sea of the
Divine blessing shall surround thee on all
sides, and yet thy soul shall be'athirst.
Wilt thou draw near to God ? * * * Then
seek the STILL HOUR.'
THE END.

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الاضمامه
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ممممممممممممممممممممممسهمدمننمنتن
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|
ة
.
أماه
i
.
وه .
. .
.
.
.
وزر;
همسایه
*
*
*
..
.
مم و
يوما عانتها
له
برلمان
,
وو
.مد