Prayer-Meetings

He prayer-meeting may fairly claim to be regarded as second only to the pulpit in the spiritual life of a Christian church. Some would give it the first place; for while many churches have managed to keep alive without a pastor, none are likely to preserve their vitality and vigor without a regular gathering of the flock for public devotion. Certainly the prayer-meeting is a very fair thermometer; a cold prayer-meeting marks a cold church. It is at once the cause, and the effect of spiritual declension. On the other hand, a well attended, well conducted prayer-meeting is both a joy to the pastor, and a well-spring of blessings to the people. It is pre-eminently th& people s service; and during nearly the whole of my ministry it has been my custom to entrust the charge of the service to the elders, who are the representatives of the congregation. Each elder takes the leadership of the weekly meeting, in alphabetical order. He selects the topic to be discussed and must see to it that the topic is duly announced from the pulpit on the previous Sabbath. For the right management of the meeting he is responsible; and he should make thorough preparation for the solemn charge committed to him.

If there be any religious service that ought to be delivered from frigid formality it is the family-gathering of Christ’s disciples at the mercy seat. “Cut and dried” addresses are out of place. Long stereotyped petitions are a weariness to the flesh. A good rule for the pulpit, and an equally good one for the weekly devotional service is — have something to say, and then say it! Those who come to the service filled with the Spirit, are likely to overflow

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in pithy, inspiring exhortations, or in fervent, well-ordered petitions.

It commonly requires the presence of several sensible people to make a good prayer-meeting; but it is in the power of one or two weak-headed and troublesome people to mar it most wretchedly. Certain persons of this sort will come into a meeting as moths fly into a candle. They stick there like the moths; but, instead of being scorched to death, they nearly extinguish the meeting. Now, it is the imperative duty of the pastor or of the conductor of the service to deal with such brethren most frankly.. If self-conceit makes the brother so troublesome, then that self-conceit should be kindly rebuked. If he offend ignorantly, then his ignorance should be kindly corrected. The man who has not enough sense or conscience to take a wise hint gratefully will never be of any value to a devotional meeting. Some good people mar a meeting without intending it. For example, one fluent brother gets to monopolizing the time by the inordinate frequency or the inordinate length of his utterances. I once had an excellent church-member who spoke regularly at every prayer service (and it requires a very full man to do that profitably). I frankly told him that he was crowding others out of their rights; and also suggested that he might better address the Almighty in petition sometimes, instead of always addressing his neighbors in exhortation. He accepted the hint kindly and reformed. Some good speakers would be listened to more eagerly if they relieved their talks with more frequent “flashes of silence.”

A prayer-meeting is sometimes marred by aimlessness, both in the addresses to the

Lord and to each other. Brother A

talks about faith, and Brother B about

the pestilence at Memphis, and Brother

C about — no one can exactly tell what;

and the prayers go off about as fairly at random as the squibs which boys fire on the Fourth of July. One method of correcting this aimless diffuseness, and of compacting the service, is to select and announce beforehand some profitable topic for discussion. This may be even selected by the leader and announced on the previous Sabbath. Then everybody has some definite object to aim at in his remarks. Then the whole service hangs together like a fleece of wool, and there is spiritual instruction afforded, as well as a kindling of devotional feeling by a study of God’s truth. If a company of Christians will carefully discuss such a practical topic as “Obeying Conscience,” or such a passage as the twenty-third psalm, or the parable of. the wheat and the tares, they cannot but be instructed and strengthened. Food for devotion will be furnished and both the praying and the speaking will be directed “at a mark.” Of course, this arrangement need not hoop a meeting as with iron, or forbid any one from presenting some especial request or some matter of immediate interest that lies near his heart. The moment that any system of management kills the freedom of the family gathering at the mercy-seat, then the system should be abated. A cast-iron rigidity may be as fatal to the meeting as aimless verbiage. If the Spirit of God is present with great power, there is no danger from either quarter. Wherefore the most effectual cure for an invalid prayer-meeting is to open the lips and the hearts in fervent supplication for the incoming of the Holy Spirit. There may be cases in which a meeting is seriously disturbed by the unwelcome utterances of persons whose character is more than doubtful, and who desire to gain a cheap reputation for piety by taking part in prayer or exhortations. Such transgressors should be frankly informed that they had better remain silent until they are ready to open their lips in honest confession. Mr, Moody pithily says that” a man who pays fifty cents on the dollar when he could pay one hundred cents on the dollar had better keep still.*’ To confess flagrant wrong-doing in a social meeting is no easy

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thing; but I once heard a man do it in a way that not only thrilled the assembly, but brought a rich blessing on his own soul and reinstated him in the position which he had lost. Sincere confession to God or to our fellow-men fills a prayer-room with an odor as sweet as that of the broken alabaster-box in the house of Simon the leper. But there is a species of wordy and windy parading of one’s own “awful guiltiness,” which only nauseates the auditors and cannot impose upon God. It is a terrible thing to tell lies in the name of the Lord. Whatever else be the faults of our prayer services, let them be delivered from pious fraud and solemn falsehood.

Brevity should be rigorously enforced in the prayer-meeting, except in those rare cases where an individual is speaking so evidently under the inspiration of the Divine Wisdom that it would be a sin to apply the gag-law. Five minutes is commonly long enough for an address and three minutes for a prayer. The model for our petitions yS HOW TO BE A PASTOR.

which our Lord has taught us, does not consume half a minute; and even that wonderful intercessory prayer which he offered for his followers on the night of his betrayal, occupied just twenty-six sentences. We ministers too often transgress in monopolizing time at our people’s devotional meetings. In is their meeting. We have ample opportunity for Bible exposition on the Sabbath. If the social meeting has broken down under the weight of long, heavy preachments, it is time it were mended. An energetic leader can do this by a prompt tap of a bell or a kind word of monition, or by calling on some “full” brother to offer a word of prayer. Without dwelling further upon the things which mar the seasons of devotion, I will present briefly in the next chapter, an account of a service which fairly realized my ideal of a prayer-meeting.