The cultivation of the gift of prayer dare not, any more than the gift of meditative contemplation, be left to accident, to become a mere affair of moods (of inclination or disinclination); for in that case prayer would far too often be omitted. It must become a problem to every Christian to educate himself for prayer, by subjecting prayer to a rule, a discipline. In the life of a Christian there must be an order of prayer, appointed times of prayer; and it is a natural requirement that no day pass over without morning and evening sacrifice.
1. What is your time each day for prayer? When do you begin and how long do you continue? The answer in the majority of cases is that there is no fixed time. You have a fixed time for your meals, a fixed time for your business, a fixed time for your games, but for prayer you have no fixed time. You regard prayer as a thing of mood and to be practised only when you feel in the mood for it. So be it. Then the question is, how often does “the mood” incline you to pray? How often has “the mood” impelled you to spend a whole night in prayer? How often has it impelled you to spend even ten minutes in prayer? Can you mention five occasions during the year? Can you mention even one? It must be seen that the “mood” theory of prayer removes prayer clean out of the category of the serious business of life. We should never tolerate in ourselves or in others the transaction of business by mood. But prayer, the greatest business of life, we make contingent on a mood which, in turn, may be contingent upon wounded pride or corroding jealousy or over-indulgence at the table! Furthermore, it must be clear that such a view removes prayer clean outside the most definite teaching of Christ on the subject. The teaching that “men ought always to pray and not to lose heart” is a teaching which directly contradicts the “mood”-view of prayer. Violentiam fac tibi ipsi. In this matter the words of Thomas a Kempis have the ring of the Master. He would have us do violence to ourselves and declare war upon all our prayerless moods.
Remember that in the Levitical Law there is a frequent commemoration and charge given of the two daily sacrifices, the one to be offered up in the morning and the other in the evening. These offerings by incense our holy, harmless, and undefiled High Priest hath taken away, and instead of them every devout Christian is at the appointed times to offer up a spiritual sacrifice, namely, that of prayer: for “God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth”. At these prescribed times, if thou wilt have thy prayers to ascend up before God, thou must withdraw from all outward occupations, to prepare for the inward and Divine. [Note: Henry Vaughan.]
2. The saints of old observed regular times for prayer. One Psalmist mentions “seven times a day” (Psa_119:164), and on this the Mediaeval Church based the seven canonical hours of prayer. The word “seven” here, as in many other places, is probably a round number, not to be taken with literal exactness and simply meaning “several”. More precise, probably, is the utterance of another psalm (Psa_55:18): “At morning, and evening, and at noontide,” which reminds us of Daniel’s custom of praying “three times a day” (Dan_4:10). Whatever the number may be, the point to be insisted on is that every one should have his definite and regular times for prayer, and, if possible, let nothing trespass upon them.
According to the tradition of Islam, the institution of prayer five times a day was introduced by the great prophets, and these devotional periods are therefore dedicated to them. The Christian may perhaps be led to ask whether such frequent occasions for daily worship may not lead at last to pure formality, and a fettering rather than a freeing of the spirit; but there can be no question either as to the reverence of the worshipper or the intense earnestness of the Mu’azzin’s cry: “Come, come! for prayer is better than sleep!” Five times comes the call, which no follower of Muhammad can ever resist. They are as follows: (a) At daybreak, when, being cast out of Paradise and falling to the earth, Adam prayed. Finding himself enveloped in darkness, he could not but thank God for the first grey streaks of dawn when they appeared upon the horizon. (b) At midday, when Noah prayed, having got safely with his family into the ark. At midday also Abraham was thrown by Nimrod into the fiery oven, when by prayer the furnace was changed into a garden of roses. (c) In the afternoon Moses gave thanks to God when he had safely crossed the Red Sea with the Israelites. (d) In the evening the Lord Jesus prayed upon the cross and committed His Spirit to God. (e) At night all the other prophets prayed—Joseph in the pit; Jonah in the whale; Sachariah as he was being torn to pieces; Shoeb, Moses’ father-in-law; Hud the wind-maker; the Seven Sleepers, etc.; last of all Muhammad, when in a vision he saw his people in hell, and made intercession for them. [Note: H. Baynes, in The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, Jan. 1904, p. 109.]
This call to prayer, sung in a sort of florid chant, rings out above every mosque in Islam. In Turkey the flag often floats over the minaret during the function. The crier, or Mu’azzin, is often chosen for the strength and sweetness of his voice. In a closely built city like Sidon it is inspiring to listen from the house top to this human carillon, borne through the sunset glow from minaret to minaret, with many a variety of key and cadence. The singer first faces the south, turning to the other points of the compass as the chant proceeds. In the minarets of the large mosques the singers may be two or more, chanting now alternately, now in unison. “God is great!” they call four times, and then repeat the phrases: “I testify that there is no God but God I testify that Muhammad is the prophet of God! Come to prayer! Come to salvation! God is great. . . . Mercy and peace be unto thee, O prophet of God!” In some lands after the first or morning call the words are added: “Prayer is better than sleep!” [Note: F. J. Bliss, The Religions of Modern Syria and Palestine, 200.]
3. To hurry over this duty would be to rob ourselves of the benefits which proceed from it. We know, of course, that prayer cannot be measured by divisions of time. But the advantages to be derived from secret prayer are not to be obtained unless we enter on it with deliberation. We must “shut the door,” enclosing and securing a sufficient portion of time for the fitting discharge of the engagement before us. Prayer has the power of sanctifying life because it brings God into life. Twice in the day it has been for ages the habit of the race to use this talisman, once for the sanctification of the day, once for the sanctification of the night. The morning prayer chimes in with the joy of the creation, with the quick world as it awakes and sings.
Dr. Maclaren, that prince of expositors, realized the necessity of the shut door. Every morning from nine till ten he had a quiet hour with God. In the solitude of silence, his Bible on his knees, he claimed the Divine gift of power. Dr. Alexander Whyte has also emphasized this great truth; he, on the other hand, finds the last hours of night most blessed to his soul. He says, “For myself, I always feel that Divine things thrive best with me, aye, and all things else, when I let nothing invade me and my Bible between ten and eleven at night. And you also are, as a rule, free from all your day’s work, and from all your entertainments, and from all your visitors by that hour. And it is about that hour that your Bible always says to you—unless you have completely silenced its voice by your long neglect of it ‘What!’ it says to you, ‘can you not watch with me one hour?’ For it knows, and He who puts it into your hand knows, that that hour, so spent, would be the best hour for you of all your twenty-four.” [Note: T. W. Riddle, The Pathway of Victory, 119]
(1) In the morning.—Inthe morning we should look forward to the duties of the day, anticipating those situations in which temptation may lurk, and preparing ourselves to embrace such opportunities of usefulness as may be presented to us. The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.
But it is sad to think how often we make the urgency of business, or our own weariness of body and mind, an excuse for curtailing within the narrowest space, or neglecting altogether, our morning intercourse with God. We can even persuade ourselves that to keep sacred a special time for private devotion savours of formalism, and thus we neglect a plain duty on the plea of avoiding a dangerous Pharisaism: or we tell ourselves that it is better to leave our praying till we have a more pressing sense of need. Sometimes we may let an inconvenient situation for prayer, the want of a place secret enough and far enough removed from disturbance, excuse us from it. Sometimes social or family prayer is thought to absolve us from the duty of private prayer. Sometimes it is postponed from the want of what we call a right spiritual tone, discomposure of mind through a world of cares preventing us from getting the stillness of soul required for communion with God. Sometimes, too, we are hindered from it by the sense of recent sin, the guilt of which, lying on our conscience, whispers to us that the prayer of such a heart as ours would be only a mockery of God.
The great obstacle, however, is the tendency to look upon prayer more as a cold duty than as a blessed privilege and joy, a direct and simple-hearted talk with a loving Father in heaven, able to help and waiting to help whenever a cry for help reaches His listening ear. If we only realized more fully the heart of our Father, to unburden our own heart to Him would be our greatest joy. As our love to Him grows, our love of prayer will grow, in ever-new delightfulness, along with it. As we continue musing the fire will burn, till we would not miss that fellowship for all the world.
If there is any time in the twenty-four hours when men and women should pray, it is before the wheels of the activities of the day have begun to revolve. The King who tells us, “I prevented the dawning of the morning and cried,” had realized this. It was with the words of the Hundred and Twenty-seventh Psalm, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it,” ringing in his ears that Benjamin Franklin, speaking before the Convention assembled to frame a Constitution for the United States of America, pleaded thus for the offering of daily prayers in the House of Representatives:—
“I have lived for eighty-one years, and the longer I live the more convincing proof I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.” [Note: E. J. Brailsford, Thoughts at Sunrise, 97.]
I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or meet others early, it is eleven or twelve o’clock before I begin secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: “Early will I seek thee”; “Thou shalt early hear my voice”. Family prayer loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed, the lamp not trimmed. Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out of tune. I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see His face first, to get my soul near Him before it is near another. [Note: B. M. McCheyne.]
St For the first sight of Mont Blanc there must always be a notch in the traveller’s staff, and the vision must always remain. I reached the Chamounix Valley in the dusk of the evening, when the presence of the surrounding hills could be only felt and not seen. The stars were not shining, and no peaks were visible, and even the lowermost slopes of the monarch of all the mountains were hidden from view. The night wore away. Sleep in such company was almost an impertinence. What else could one do but look out of the window from time to time and watch for the morning? At last, on the snow-covered head of Mont Blanc, which touched the far-away heaven, there rested the rosy glow of the dawn. The impression of that moment can never be effaced. It has often helped a blind and halting faith. How near to us is the sublime presence of God, although we see Him not! [Note: E. J. Brailsford, Thoughts at Sunrise, 13.]
Dr. Kidd’s grandson, Mr. Henry Oswald, afterwards one of the magistrates of Aberdeen, who, when a boy, was for some time resident in the minister’s house, has left amongst his papers a most vivid account of the impression made upon his mind by Dr. Kidd’s heroic devotion to duty in the early morn: “In the darkness of a cold winter morning I have once and again heard him rising while the rest of the household was hushed in slumber. I listened while he patiently lit his fire, not with the ready help of lucifer matches, but with flint and steel eliciting a spark (how little we moderns prize our luxuries!); then he began to breathe out his soul in the most earnest tones at the throne of grace; the utterances of his devout heart were not audible to me, who was in an adjoining room, but, youngster as I was, I felt awed as I heard the sound of prayer that often became wrestling, and I knew that the man I revered was doing business with God.” [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 128.]
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like; our bodies but forerun
The spirit’s duty. True hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flow’rs do to the sun;
Give Him thy first thoughts then; so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in Him sleep.
Walk with thy fellow-creatures: note the hush
And whispers amongst them. There’s not a spring
Or leaf but hath his morning-hymn. Each bush
And oak doth know I AM. Canst thou not sing?
O leave thy cares and follies! go this way;
And thou art sure to prosper all the day. [Note: Henry Vaughan.]
(2) In the evening.—Whatshall be our attitude when the day is far spent and the time for rest draws near? Shall we allow the gracious Companion who has travelled part of our way with us to leave us? It would be wiser to pray “Abide with us,” and to enter the inner chamber of communion with Him before the curtains of night are quite drawn.
The disciples returned at evening and made a report to Christ of their work. Thus I tell Him of my life during the day, my dealings with persons who have come into it, and whatever has been attempted—in short, the whole day’s work; its efforts, failures, mistakes, sins, and joy. That is my evening prayer. [Note: Jesus and I are Friends: Life of the Rev. J. B. Miller, 223.]
Very earnestly would I advise the dedication to Secret Prayer of a strictly regular time; a punctual beginning, and, especially in the morning, a measured and liberal allotment. If I plead less earnestly for a large allowance of time at night, I do it with hesitation and reserve, and only because a conscientious Christian, who is doing the will of God through the day, is likely to be physically tired at night in a way in which he will not be, certainly in his youth, in the morning. [Note: H. C. G. Moule.]
Who goes to bed and doth not pray,
Maketh two nights of every day. [Note: George Herbert.]
(3) Midday.—Then, in the mid-time of the day, if one is able to create amid the whirl of traffic a silent space, how blessedly that leisure may be employed in contemplating ,the Divine Being and in pouring out one’s heart before Him! The tangled skeins are unravelled then, heat and fret are taken out of the heart, the perplexed path is made plain, burdens and anxieties are rolled on Christ, rough ways become smooth and crooked places are made plain. In the mid-hour of the day God spreads a table before us, in the presence of our enemies.
Daniel could not be content with private devotions in the morning and in the evening. He kneeled in his chamber three times a day, having his windows open toward Jerusalem. This devotion was private. The windows were not open toward Babylon that he might be seen of men to pray, but toward Jerusalem where his God dwelt. Are our windows open sufficiently often if we open them only for a few minutes in the morning and in the evening? From rising till retiring is rather a long spell without an open window. Foul air accumulates, and much fresh breeze from the heights of Zion is excluded, unless there is an opportunity for airing the soul’s habitation between these times. If we leave the windows that look toward Jerusalem closed for so many hours, our spirit will become drowsy and even unhealthy. It is good to have a third hour in each day when the door may be closed, and the window may be opened, and the soul may be refreshed by a vision of God.
And here I was counselled to set up one other sail, for before I prayed but twice a day, I here resolved to set some time apart at midday for this effort, and, obeying this, I found the effects to be wonderful. [Note: Memoirs of the Rev. James Fraser, 208.]
At noon as he lay in the sultriness under his broad leafy limes,
Far sweeter than murmuring waters came the toll of the Angelus chimes;
Pious and tranquil he rose, and uncovered his reverend head,
And thrice was the Ave Maria and thrice was the Angelus said.
Sweet custom the South still retaineth, to turn for a moment away
From the pleasures and pains of existence, from the trouble and turmoil of day,
From the tumult within and without, to the peace that abideth on high,
When the deep solemn sound from the belfry comes down like a voice from the sky.
(4) At night.—The Psalms contain many references to prayer and meditation during the “night watches”. David, like Jacob, realized that God “visited” him “in the night”. Mr. Strachey, writing to Lady Louis, says: “You once expressed a wish to be sure that Maurice had as much personal religion as knowledge of spiritual truth. I think you have since learnt enough to satisfy you on this point; but you will be interested in hearing that Miss B., speaking of him, said, ‘He is a man of much prayer; his sisters told me that when he was with them they frequently found that he had not been in bed all night, having spent the whole night in prayer’.” [Note: The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 205.]
I am not surprised at David’s praying to God in the night watches; in his rising from his bed and ascending to the roof of his house, and when the “mighty heart” of the city “was lying still,” and “the mountains which surrounded Jerusalem” were sleeping in the calm brilliancy of an Eastern night, that he should gaze with rapture on the sky, and pour forth such a beautiful psalm of praise as “When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers”.
The night is more suited to prayer than the day. I never awake in the middle of the night without feeling induced to commune with God. One feels brought more into contact with Him. The whole world around us, we think, is asleep. God the Shepherd of Israel slumbers not, nor sleeps. He is awake, and so are we I We feel, in the solemn and silent night, as if alone with God. And then there is everything in the circumstances around you to lead you to pray. The past is often vividly recalled. The voices of the dead are heard, and their forms crowd around you. No sleep can bind them. The night seems the time in which they should hold spiritual commune with man. The future too throws its dark shadow over you—the night of the grave, the certain death-bed, the night in which no man can work. And then everything makes such an impression on the mind at night, when the brain is nervous and susceptible; the low sough of the wind among the trees, the roaring, or eerie whish of some neighbouring stream, the bark or low howl of a dog, the general impressive silence, all tend to sober, to solemnize the mind, and to force it from the world and its vanities, which then seem asleep, to God, who alone can uphold and defend. [Note: Memoir of Norman Macleod, 1: 151.]
