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Austin Phelps was a congregational minister, a professor of sacred rhetoric and homiletics, and later a president of Andover Theological Seminary. He wrote several books which were widely read, but none as much as "The Still Hour. It is perfect alike for the new believer and the aged saint who has walked with Christ for decades. In The Still Hour, Austin Phelps wrote, '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 was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Sep 30, Shannon rated it it was amazing Shelves: I looked this book up after reading a short excerpt of it in another book.
It was well worth finding. Austin Phelps begins with a concise survey of great Christians' prayer lives. That first chapter quickly leads one to recognize something important: The author then goes on to diagnose numerous problems Christians face in prayer and explains how to address them. One thing I loved about this book was the emphasis on love and delight.
Many I looked this book up after reading a short excerpt of it in another book. Many of the modern books I've read on prayer emphasize duty. And while Austin Phelps did not deny it, he also didn't focus on it. Delight and privilege are the ground of his call to join the ranks of praying Christians. Jul 15, Reid rated it liked it Shelves: Some good ideas about prayer in this book, a little sluggish to get through, primarily from the 19th century language. Dense for a little book with lots of truth to chew on.
Addresses the epidemic of ignorance and apathy Christians have toward praying and revives the practice with gospel-centred truths. Natasha rated it really liked it Aug 12, Daniel Corey rated it it was amazing Apr 25, Not the most enticing of covers in the Banner of Truth edition of Nor does the title of the book really seem all that suitable for something that is about prayer-life generally. The title gives the impression that it could be a selection of devotional thoughts for the daily 'quiet time', rather than a discussion of the difficulties we have when trying to pray.
It's a short little book, quick to read, though sometimes the sentences are constructed a little awkwardly which slows things dow Not the most enticing of covers in the Banner of Truth edition of 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? 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. 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 coexistent, 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. Heathen prayer, whatever else it is or is not, is a reality in the heathen idea. A pagan suppliant has faith 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 expeets to accomplish something by praying. 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. Right in the heart of God s plan of government it is lodged as a power. Amidst the conflicts which are going 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.
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. 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 gaming 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.
Our conviction on this point must he as definite and as fixed as our trust in the evidence of our senses. It must hecome as natural to us to ohey 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, hy 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 ohcy such faith in prayer, with any more heart than a man who is afflicted witli double vision can feel in obeying the evi dence of his eyes. They become circuitous, timid, heartless. They may so degenerate as to be offensive, like the reekings of the Dead Sea.
Ax 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: This is no romance and no farce. 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 hoard in heaven, and it is to put forth a power there, the results of which only God can know, and only eternity can develop. 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. Chalmers observed as being the characteristic of the prayers of Dbddridge, - 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.
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 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.
God, thy words were heard ; and I am come because of thy words. Again I say, man greatly beloved! 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 MYSTERY OF PRAYER.
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, 4 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. 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. Ycrily 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?
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 coexistence of these qualities. In the diary of Dr. Chalmers, we find recorded this petition: 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. 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: 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: 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 Uindty 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 specincness 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.
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. 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. The scriptural examples of prayer have, most of them, an unutterable intensity.
Recall the wrest ling of Jacob, i 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 possible if it be possible!
There is no easiness of desire here. The scriptural examples of prayer, also, are clear as light in their objects of thought. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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: To enjoy prayer, we must be used to it.
Therefore, we must be used to the sensibility of which it is the expression. The necessity of this is often overlooked by Christians, whose lives, in other respects, are not visibly 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.
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, whoso touch was always clammy, and whose breath was always like an east wind. Such a religious temperament as this, will never do fur 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 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. 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- possession, but fluent and self-forgetful in its earnestness, so that it shall have more of the grace of a child in its outgoings. It could find no other so fit. Joy in that intercourse would be like the swellings of Jordan. 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. 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 Heave.
Full text of "The still hour, or, Communion with God"
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 suggest its purely mental character. They involve, also, the need of mental exertion.
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 speaketh out of the abun dance of the heart.
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 lift mon 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, 68 THE STILL HOUR. He whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, 4 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 l 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, what is the phraseology in which it has spoken to our hearts most convincingly? Is it that of magnificent and transcendental speech? But we degrade the dignity of God s condescension, if we abuse His indulgence of our weakness to an encouragement of our indolence. Must we not wince under the rebuke of the preacher at Golden Grove: We should not dare to throw away our prayers so, like fools? 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 in -. Tho prayer of a righteous man, th. 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. It was a lament of the prophet over the degeneracy of God s people: 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? 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 vivid thought before we can have profound feeling.
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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? 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. 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.
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.
A plain man once said: Does it cost us no effort to feel, in the silence and solitude of the closet, the truth fulness of language like this? 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: 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.
The still hour; or, Communion with God.
The veil of sense hangs dark between Thy blessed face and mine! 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 heing, 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.
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 have 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.
The Still Hour or Communion With God
Your mind, perhaps, is in a state of reaction 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, i Oh that I knew where I might find Him! From sheer reluctance to endure Ihc 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. 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- uriousncss 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.
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 want of en joyment of the Divine presence? 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. 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.
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. WE arc 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. Do we enjoy anything which we do in a hurry? Enjoyment presupposes something of men tal leisure. But of all employ ments, none can be more dependent on i 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? They walk around those halls and corri dors, whose walls are so eloquent with the triumphs of Art, and they come back and 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.
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. Robert Burns lamented that he could not i pour out his inmost soul without reserve to any human being, without danger of one day repenting his confidence. He would have something which he could record himself in, without peril of having his 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.
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 he familiar with God, who complains of the want of friends while God is with him. But who can originate such 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 92 THE STILL HOUR. 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. Who 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.
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. This kind gocth 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. 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 shine, 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. 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 evening sacrifice depend very much upon these interspersed offerings, as these in return are dependent on those. 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 un gov 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. 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 run along the line of such a habit through 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. 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. 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 the superincumbent weight of earthly cares. The providence of God, also, contem plates these impulses as a counterpart to certain of its own procedures. 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 l dead-lock ; we do not know what 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-lcngth 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.
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. Wo feel just like praying. It is as if we heard heavenly voices saying, i 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.