Closet Communion with God
We are now prepared to study these lessons on prayer, in their order, and we must begin at the beginning; for in the school of Christ no second lesson is ever learned until the first has been. We ascend, as on the rungs of a ladder, one by one: to neglect or pass over one step forfeits progress.
“But thou,
When thou prayest,
Enter into thy closet.”
This lesson of closet communion is the first taught, because in the order of time, of experience, of importance, it belongs first. Until this is thoroughly learned no other can be; and, in proportion as this is mastered, every subsequent teaching can and will be apprehended and appreciated. If therefore a disproportionate space seems to be assigned to this primary lesson, in our studies, it is because we find here the very foundation for all that follows.
Three things stand out prominently in this brief injunction. Enter into thy closet: first, the individual approach to God; second, the secret place of comfnunion; third, the specific object, prayer.
The word, ‘closet,’ is unusual. The original Greek word, ra/xsiov, is found but four times in the New Testament, in one place being rendered, * secret chambers,’ * and in another, * storehouse.’ f The words here used seem undoubtedly adapted from the Septuagint version of Isaiah xxvi. 20: “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee.”
There is also a marked emphasis on the singular number of the second personal pronoun. In the quotation from Isaiah, the opening call is plural, or collective, “Come, my people,” but it immediately changes to the singular, “Enter * Matt. xxiv. 26. t Luke xii. 24. thou into thy chambers”; and so, in our Lord’s adaptation of these words, conspicuous stress is laid on the singular, “thou.” Presently he adds a caution, perhaps as to prayers in which others publicly join, and says, “Whenjv pray”; but here how intensely individual: “But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father shall reward thee openly.” Eight times, in these few words, is the singular pronoun used, and surely for some purpose.
How important, first of all, that we enter into the secret chambers of the divine meaning. What do these four words suggest: “Enter into thy closet”? The closet is simply a close, a closed place, shut in for privacy, shut out from intrusion and interruption. Christ was speaking to a Jewish audience, and what would such language naturally suggest to such hearers? To the Hebrew mind there was one place that was pre-eminently a secret chamber: it was that inmost court of the Tabernacle and Temple, where God specially dwelt, and which was known as the Holy of Holies.
That was pre-eminently a secret chamber, a closed place. It had neither door nor window; unlike many an Oriental court which is open to the sky, it was roofed in and without skylight. It was never open: a door which we open, as we enter a room, we must close behind us; but, when the holiest of all was entered, the veil, raised as the High Priest went in, automatically fell back to its place as soon as it was released, and so kept the secrecies of God’s chamber from mortal eyes.
Here then was one place, peculiarly marked by silence, secrecy, solitude and separation. Only one person ever entered here, at a time: “the High Priest, once every year, alone.” Two persons were never known to meet there save himself and God. It was, in a unique sense, the place of which God could say, “Thou and I.” It was the one great closet, shut-in place, secret chamber — the meeting place of one man and his Maker.
And, moreover, the one conspicuous, solitary article of furniture, there found, was the Mercy-Seat, the appointed meeting place, the basis of communion between the suppliant sinner and the merciful Hearer of Prayer. And thus the three conditions, suggested by the injunction, * Enter in thy closet,’ met here as nowhere else: there was the secret chamber, the individual approach, and the mercy-seat for prayerful communion.
If we mistake not, we have now the key to this first lesson of our Lord on Prayer. The closet is the Holy of Holies where the suppliant soul meets God alone and communes with Him at the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat.
The highest act of prayer is impossible, unless and until the human suppliant deliberately seeks to meet God absolutely alone. To secure such aloneness with God we are bidden to ‘enter into the closet,’ to find some place and time where we may shut ourselves in with Him. This is so important that it is made emphatic by repeating the thought in another form: as though the word, closet, were not enough, Christ adds,” And when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is i?i secret’ upwrrcf) — a second word, meaning essentially the same as closet — a secret place.
Every praying soul needs some place and time for prayer, free from needless interruption and intrusion. The eye is mercifully furnished with an eyelid which instantly drops over the organ of vision, shutting out all external objects; and, if the ear were similarly supplied with an earlid, which could be used to shut out all sounds, as the eyelid does all sights, a closet could be instantly found and entered even in the midst of a throng, and the spirit might secretly commune with God, in the crowded streets or assemblies.
But, in the absence of any such natural provision for such complete seclusion and exclusion, our Lord counsels us, when we pray, to get somehow, somewhere, a silent, secret communing place with God, as the very basis of prayer, not only, but of all the holy living which is built upon prayer. The more completely we can separate ourselves from all other persons, all worldly pursuits and pleasures, all distracting cares or diverting thoughts, shutting out all else but God, the more perfect is the fitness of the hour and place to their purpose. And those who know how needful and helpful such secret times and places for prayer are, will secure, at any cost, the silent season even though, like the psalmist, it be found necessary to rise before others wake, and “prevent the dawning of the morning.”*
Yes, every praying soul needs to meet God absolutely alone. There are secrets of soul and spirit which no other human being however intimate ought to know, or indeed can know.
“The heart knoweth his own bitterness; And a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.”f
* Psalm cxix. 147. f Proverbs xiv. 10.
We turn ourselves inside out to no other person, though it be a bosom friend: we would not if we could, we could not if we would. To the inmost secret chambers there is no open door; they are locked and sealed; words supply no key to them, and the seal of silence and secrecy is inviolable. But “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do”; and therefore the closet, where we meet God alone and God only, is the one place for all such secrets. Nothing else will supply its place. The public service of worship, the more secluded
* family altar,’ or the yet more private prayer in which only the husband and wife bow before God, — none of these can take the place of the solitary closet. There is at least one respect in which they who are as * one flesh,’ are still
* twain’; for neither can ever fully know the other. But while, to our dearest and most intimate friend, we cannot reveal everything, from God we can conceal nothing. His omniscient eye pierces to the secret chambers, despite the lock which no man can pick, the seal which no man dares break. God reads the thoughts which are yet “afar off,” like forms faintly seen in the dim distance, and hears the word yet unspoken “in the tongue.” And it is about these secret things which must be brought to the light in His presence, exposed, confessed, renounced, corrected before Him, that the closet is meant to give facility and freedom for converse with God. Hence this initial command to cultivate habitual aloneness with God. Like Jacob at Peniel, each suppliant must be “left alone” at times: the “thou” must be absolute and not the “ye,” when the closet is entered.
Why now is such heavy stress laid, in our Lord’s primary lesson on prayer, upon this shutting out of all else, and closing in of the suppliant with God?
Is it not, first of all, in order to what, as his “third instrument of Holy Living,” Jeremy Taylor calls. The Practice OF THE Presence of God?
Nothing else has so marvelous an effect upon character and conduct, as this sense of God’s Presence; and nothing is so difficult, nay impossible of attainment, so long as we neglect God’s appointed means.
God is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in the spirit. Invisible to the eye, inaudible to the ear, intangible to the touch, He cannot be tested by the senses. They utterly fail us as channels of impression or communication. His subtle essence evades all carnal approach or analysis. He must be otherwise known, if at all: the spirit alone has the higher senses which, being exercised to discern good and evil, can enable us to perceive God and hold communication with Him. Hence, to those who live a sinful or even a worldly life, and are carnally minded, even the reality and verity of His existence become matters of practical, if not theoretical, doubt. There is a great deal of virtual atheism in mere unbelief. It is possible to recite the creed, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” and yet never have had for one moment a real, true sense of the presence of God. Many may not deny that God is, but do they know that He is?
Such sense of the Divine Existence, such realization of the Divine Presence may be cultivated. God has appointed two means, and when used jointly they never fail: first a meditative reading of Holy Scripture and secondly a habitual communion with Him in the closet. These two are in fact so closely related, that they are not only mutually helpful, but they operate upon us in ways almost precisely alike. Both introduce us into God’s secret chambers.
When a devout disciple takes God’s Word in his hands, for studious and thoughtful meditation, he naturally lifts his heart to Him who alone can unveil the eyes of his understanding to behold wondrous things out of His law.* As he reads and searches, meditating therein, the same Spirit who first inspired the * Psalm cxix. 18.
Word, illumines his mind. New light is thrown upon the sacred page, so that what was obscure or hidden, becomes visible and legible; and new clearness of sight and insight is given to the spiritual organ of vision, so that it becomes ipaore capable of seeing, more keen-sighted and far-sighted.
Let those who have felt this double effect of the Spirit’s teaching bear witness to the marvelous result. The Bible becomes a transformed book. It was before the best of all books, but it is now the Book of God — a chamber of disclosed mysteries — a house of manymansions, in which new doors constantly open into new apartments, massive and magnificent, God’s art galleries, museums of curious things, treasuries of celestial gems. The devout student is filled with wonder, transported with delight. Words open with new meanings until we look through them into depths and heights, breadths and lengths, that are infinite. We are looking at a firmament which was before clouded — but the clouds are parting and heavenly constellations are visible. Meanwhile the eye has become telescopic, and where before we saw a few scattered stars, and an indistinct nebulous cloud, everything is ablaze with the glories of countless, and many colored lights. When the Author of the Word becomes Instructor and Interpreter of His own text-book, we read Heaven’s great Classic with the notes and comments of the divine Author himself. And so he who devoutly searches the Scriptures, finds in them both eternal life and the testimony of Jesus; the reverent, searching, prayerful study of the Word of God is the cure of all honest doubt as to its divine origin, and the all-convincing proof of its plenary inspiration. But, as the first Psalm teaches, he who would find such delight in the Law of the Lord, must meditate therein day and night. He must be a sort of sacramental tree of life, planted by the rivers of water. Mark the instructive, emphatic metaphor. The tree is permanently planted in the soil. Its roots are fixed organs of nutrition, constantly subordinate to the double purpose of growth and fruitfulness. Through the spongelets at their extremities, the tree takes up the moisture of the river into itself, transmuting the water into sap, which deposits woodyfiber in the branches and becomes juice in the fruit. The disciple is planted by the River of God, — the Word which goeth forth out of His mouth; he takes up into himself the very water of life, transmuting truth into character, and precepts and promises into practice. And so he who reads God’s Word and, like the cattle that chew the cud, ruminates upon it, comes to know God through His Word, as we come to know men through their candid and self-revealing utterances. To meditate on God’s words introduces us to the secret chambers of God’s thoughts, and imparts insight into God’s character. He becomes sure there is a God, who sees Him unveiled in the Scriptures, hears His still small voice in their audience chambers, traces His glorious footprints on their golden pavements; and, in times of temptation, trial, sorrow, doubt or any other need, God’s words are so brought to his remembrance, and applied by the Spirit to his needs, that they become to such a reader, individually, God’s words to hiffi. He consults Holy Scripture as the oracles of God, and the oracles give answer. This is one of the closed mysteries, a stumbling-block of mysticism, or the foolishness of fanaticism, to the unbelieving; but, to him whose experience has been enriched by it, an open mystery, a fact as indisputable as anything in the realm of matter.
The other method of the practice of the Presence of God is communion with Him in the closet. And how like to the other is the process whereby prayer introduces us to His Fellowship! It implies meditation; it opens the secret chambers and reveals God; it discloses marvels and unlocks mysteries; it makes one sure that God “is and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,” * which * Hebrews xi. 6. is the divinely declared condition of all acceptable, prevailing approach!
Upon this method of cultivating acquaintance with God, the great Teacher just now would fix our attention, as His primary lesson on Prayer. Let us seek to enter into the secret philosophy of this injunction: “Enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret.”
All other presence hinders the practice of the Presence of God. All thought of human auditors or observers is a hindrance to the closest approach and to the highest power in prayer. At the very mom.ent when the supreme need is that all the faculties and activities of the being shall be gathered up, converged and concentrated, centralized and focalized as are scattered rays of light by a concave speculum or a convex lens, the mind is diverted and distracted, and the attention divided, by the thought that another human being hears or sees me. Any such divided attention must hinder the realization of the presence of the unseen God. Let us ask the reason why.
That profound lesson, taught to the Samaritan woman on the general subject of worship, includes prayer as one of the highest forms or acts of worship. God being a Spirit must be worshipped as such, and can be approached only by what is spiritual in man. There is such a thing among men as bodily contact and communion, as when hand joins hand, eye looks into eye, or words spoken by one’s mouth reach another’s ear. But, as God can neither be seen, heard nor touched, there can be no such contact between man and God. Being a Spirit, He can be approached only spiritually, that is by contact between our spirits and His.
In order to such contact, and in order that it may be real, recognized and conscious, all our spiritual faculties need to be active, on the alert; and all diversions or distractions of mind must be avoided which make impossible exclusive attention to the divine object of thought. But we are so constituted as to be unable to really fix attention on more than one thing at a time. Hence, in God’s economy of Nature, many necessary acts are so provided for as to be half automatic, like the act of walking, and so only half conscious and semi-voluntary; for, were it necessary to concentrate all attention upon every step we take, we could, while walking, give heed to nothing else.
Moreover we find that we cannot fully exercise any one sense while the rest, or any one of them, is fully exercised and occupied: there is room for but one thorough sense-impression at a time. We cannot at the same moment fix our eyes upon a picture so as to study its effects in drawing and coloring, and yet give our ears to the hearing of a masterpiece of music, so as to observe critically its melody and harmony. Especially do we find that, to occupy the physical senses is so far to divert the mind from purely intellectual processes however simple.
For instance, in the late Harvard experiments in Psychology, where the test was made, how far an observer, watching rapid changes of color, could detect the delicate transitions from one shade to another, it was found that if, while so engaged, the simplest exercise in mental arithmetic were attempted, though it were only the addition or multiplication table, the power to discern these gradual changes of color was arrested. Man is so constituted that he can properly and thoroughly do but one thing at once.
Acquaintance with the unseen God is the first of all acquisitions. To attain the closest approach to Him, to get the most vivid sense of His presence, and so, the greatest power and blessing at the mercy-seat, all thought of men and of this world must be shut out, and all interruptions avoided that come through the senses or the imagination. So far only as we learn the art of thinking only of God, will this great lesson of closet prayer be learned, for, on the measure of our realization of the unseen Presence, all else must depend.
Our Lord’s first lesson on prayer gives another hint of great value, though it is rather implied than openly expressed, for the more this injunction is studied the more it reveals of hidden meaning, itself a secret chamber whose mysteries are unveiled only to devout and persistent meditation.
He tells us that the Father who is in secret, or in the secret place, and who sees in the darkness of the soul’s Holy of Holies, rewards the suppliant openly — in the open.’ Here again we are reminded of the High Priest’s approach to the mercy-seat. When he went into the holiest of all, with blood of atonement, it is neither recorded nor intimated that he was there wont to offer up supplication; certainly the element of petition is nowhere prominent. He seems to have gone in thither, rather to ‘appear before God’ — simply to present himself, with the blood, before the mercy-seat, — his presence constituting his plea; and the blood of atonement, both the sign of his obedience and the pledge of his acceptance. There he seems to have waited before God, not so much to offer up prayers and supplications, as to receive from God impressions and revelations.
The yet unexplained mystery of the Urim and Thummim may have some connection with this revealing of God’s mind and will. The most plausible interpretation of this mystery is perhaps that which suggests that the Light of the Shekinah fire, shining on the breast-plate of the High Priest, made successive letters, of the names with which its stones were graven, to stand out conspicuous, so that he could in characters of light spell out the divine message. And it is a curious fact that the twelve names with which the sacred stones were marked, taken together, contain almost every letter of the Hebrew Alphabet!
However this be, the Mercy-Seat was to the High Priest mainly a place, not of petition but of communication, of impartation from God, of divine revelation. He waited there, for a message which he bore back to the people in benediction.
Certain it is that the closet is not an oratory — a place for prayer in the narrow sense of mere request — so much as an observatory, from which to get new views of God, and new revelations of Him. There is a quest higher than mere request — a search after knowledge of God and communication from Him. In this secret place, devout souls learn what is meant by covununion — and communion is mutual. There is not only prayer offered, but blessing received. The praying soul speaks to God, and hears God speak. He who enters the closet gets as well as giveSj and finds the most precious part of this communion, not in any requests imparted Godward, but in returns imparted manward, the reception from God of divine impressions and communications. The reward, promised, comes while yet he speaks and waits before the Lord: believing he receives, and receiving enjoys. Such reward cannot be kept secret. It makes the heart to overflow and even the face to shine.
True prayer, in its highest form and reach, is not only impartive but receptive: the whole nature going out to God in adoration, thanksgiving, confession, supplication, intercession; but also opening all its channels for the incoming of blessing. Communion becomes intercommunication — Jacob’s Ladder rests in the closet and reaches to the Throne — and angels descend to bring blessing, as well as ascend to bear petition; or, as a simple Japanese convert put it, prayer is like the well where one bucket comes down while the other goes up, only that in this case it is always the empty bucket that goes up and the full one that comes back. Of this aspect of prayer, as a revelation of God to the suppliant, the current definitions of prayer seem to take little if any notice. For example the Westminster standards define prayer as “the offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of His Spirit, with confession of our sins and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies.”* Full as is this definition, it has * Larger Catechism, Q. 178. no recognition of that element in prayer which involves meditative communion with the Divine Presence for the sake of a present communication from God to the soul.
With most praying people, the fundamental if not the exhaustive conception of prayer is asking somewhat of God. This is indeed a part, but surely it is not the whole, of prayer; and it may be doubtful whether more than a beginning is made unless and until there be a disclosure of God to the soul. We read of our blessed Lord himself that at times he withdrew from all human companionships, for the purpose of secret communion with the Father; as when he went out “into a mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God.” These midnight, all-night interviews, mark the great crises of his life on earth; and it cannot be supposed that he spent all these hours in continuous supplication. Was it not rather like Gideon, on the plains of Jezreel, to spread out his whole being like fleece, to drink in the heavenly dew in the Father’s Presence and in the strength of this celestial nectar confront new trials and temptations?
Thus meditative prayer, like reflective reading of the Word of God, becomes a perpetual means and medium of communion with God, and so, also, of Revelation of God, for communion not only leads to, but itself becomes and is, revelation. He who converses with a friend, habitually, has no room for doubt as to that friend’s existence and presence; and God meant that this simple method of converse with Himself should be a demonstration that He is, and is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him — a demonstration so convincing as to dispel all doubts, being itself the sufficient proof of His reality and verity as the ever present, living, helping God.
The humblest believer, however unlettered or unlearned, may attain in this school of prayer to practical certainty in divine things; he needs not to read volumes of Apologetics, or Evidences of Christianity: le>- him but cultivate the sense of the Presence of God, and the proofs, though he cannot always formulate them for others, become convincing and overwhelming to himself. Indeed we oftenest find such assurance of faith in the humbler, simpler sort of disciples; and, because it is found in the ignorant and unlearned rather than the princes of this world, or the great scholars of the church, there is a proneness to associate such faith with credulity and even with superstition, as in that abominable lying maxim, “Ignorance is the mother of devotion.” But wrongly; for while the more intelligent and intellectual too often lean to their own understanding, and turn to human logic and philosophy for confirmation of their faith, he who, being untaught of men and having little access to books, has no other means of strengthening his assurance save converse with God, is compelled to learn in God’s school, where logic and philosophy are never perverted to the purposes of fallacy and sophistry. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, abides under the shadow of the Almighty “; and the darts of satanic doubt can pierce him, only as they first pass through the divine “Wings” which are his covering and shelter.
Here, then, is the initial lesson of our Lord upon Prayer. And, as in any other first lesson, a master teacher naturally lays down fundamental laws or first principles, we find here laid the cornerstone of all true prayer. This primary lesson is so easy to see that it is hard to mistake, namely: Piay;erisat bottom the meeting of ajiu7nan suppliant alone with God, for supplication and communion at the mercy-seat and revelation of the Existence, Presence and character of God.
It is plain why the preliminary caution of the Great Teacher is directed against hypocritical ostentation. “When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” In praying, as in almsgiving and fsiSting, /lypocnsy courts publicity. Through all this warning about ’ doing righteousness,’* the one emphatic phrase is — “to be seen of men.” The hypocrite’s prayer is addressed to a human audience rather than offered to the divine ear. It has reference mainly to outward appearance and transient impression. Hence publicity is an object; and in the synagogues where the crowds throng, at the street corners or crossways where all points of the compass are commanded at once, the hypocrites took their stand that they might be seen of men. The formalist may not be a hypocrite, but his mind is taken up with the externals, and here again “the letter killeth,” and only “the spirit giveth life.”
Christ would teach praying souls, and have them learn first of all, that this being seen of men is to be avoided rather than courted and sought. To concentrate all thought and desire upon God, to forget all else in order not to forget Him, and so to be lost in the absorbing sense of His *See Matt. vi. i., R. V. presence — this is the first secret of power in grayer, and in fact the secret also of all power in holy living and serving.
This first lesson is also the last, for there is no higher, nobler fruit of habitual closet communion with God than this new sense of divine realities. Paul gently rebukes the Hebrew Christians because they have not, by reason of use, exercised their senses, trained them to keenness, to discern good and evil.* Of course he does not refer to physical senses, whose office is not the discerning of moral qualities. The spirit has its senses, as well as the body, and they are trained to acuteness and exactness by holy exercise. Imagination is the sense of the unseen; Reason, the sense of truth and falsehood; Conscience, the sense of right and wrong; Sensibility, the sense of the attractive and repulsive; Memory, the sense of the past. The understanding and heart have eyes with which to see God’s beck and glance, ears with which to hear His still small * Hebrews v. 12. voice, organs of touch wherewith to “Handle” Him and see that is He Himself. The closet is the grand school for the education of these senses. There we go to get enrapturing visions, looking at things unseen, eternal; to listen intently and hear the divine whisper; to catch the scent of heavenly gardens; to taste and see that the Lord is good. And it is to reach such results, that we need aloneness with God, that He may hold our senses fixed upon Himself.
These words of our Lord, ‘Enter into thy closet,’ supply a key to many mysteries of Scripture biography. We unlock Jacob’s experience at Bethel — ‘’Surely God was in this place and I knew it not; this” — a desert place with a stone pillow — “is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven “: and particularly, at Peniel, later on, when he saw ’ the face of God ’ and got a lifelong blessing, and the supplanter of men became the prince of God. Yes, it is when we are “left alone” that great revelations come. Elijah was bidden to ‘Hide ’ himself, and then ‘Shew* himself unto Ahab: it was the hiding that made the shewing such a power in Israel. When Elisha ’ went in and shut the door upon them twain and prayed unto the Lord,” * there came out from that secret chamber the child of the Shunammite brought back to life. Nathanael under the fig-tree was without doubt holding secret converse with God; and, when Christ said to him, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree / saw thee,’’ the guileless Israelite of Cana recognized in the Christ before him one whom he had met in the secret place, and who now as then read his thoughts.
To get such exalted impressions of God, in closet communion, there is needful the Time-element. A rapid glance leaves a comparatively transient impression; but a gaze, which takes time to fix itself on an object, so takes in its whole impress as to leave its image permanently in the mind.
It is true, as our Lord warns us, that we *2 Kings iv. 33. are not heard for our much speaking: it is not many words or long prayers that prevail. But it is nevertheless also true that haste or hurry in prayer defeats the main end in view, preventing that calmness, concentration, peace and rest — that quiet of soul which helps to the divine revelation. There is an ethical suggestion in that word reflective so often applied to a temperament or spiritual mood, and so inseparable from true devotion: it suggests a power to reflect as in a mirror, divine verities and realities. To all such reflection hurry and worry are fatal. He who rushes into the Presence of God, to hasten through a few formal petitions, and then hasten back to outside cares and pursuits, does not tarry long enough to lose the impression of what is without, and get the impress of what is within, the secret chamber. He does not take time to fix his mind’s gaze on the unseen and eternal. Many a so-called ’ praying man * has never once really met and seen God in the closet. The soul, disturbed and perturbed, tossed up and down and driven to and fro by worldly thoughts and cares, can no more become a mirror to reflect God, than a ruffled lake can become the mirror of the starry heights that arch above it. He who would look downward into his own heart-depths, and see God reflected there, must stay long enough for the stormy soul to get becalmed. Only when He first gives peace is the nature placid enough to become the mirror of heavenly things.
But when such communion becomes real, prayer ceases to be mere duty and becomes delight. All sense of obligation is lost in privilege. Love seeks the company of its object, simply for the sake of being in the presence of the beloved one; as one little fellow explained his quietly coming into his father’s study by the hunger for his presence — “just to be with you papa.” Have any of us not known what it is to cultivate companionship for its own sake, mutely sitting in the presence of another whom we devotedly love? And do we not love God enough to make it an object to shut ourselves in with Him at times just to enjoy Him? Is there no taint of selfishness in the prayer which knows no other, not to say higher, motive than to ask for some favor “^ Jude counsels us to ‘pray in the Holy Ghost’ as a means whereby we keep ourselves in the love of God, as Archbishop Usher, in his last days, when animal heat failed him, kept himself in the warm sunshine. He who knows the very ecstasies of the secret chamber, there learns to keep himself in the love of God, finding therein the Sunbeam whose light illumines, whose love warms, whose life quickens. God’s Presence becomes the atmosphere he breathes and without which his spiritual life cannot survive. Such a habit of abiding in the Presence of God, and dwelling upon His glorious perfections develops a holy and enamoring love, which can only say with Zinzendorf and Tholuck, “I have but one passion: and it is He and He alone!”
It has been already hinted, in passing, that such God-revealing habits of prayer lay the very cor?ter-stone of all holy living.
There is nothing vital to godliness that is not nourished on closet air. Prayer is spiritual respiration and the secret place furnishes its oxygen and ozone.
For example, what a power both to reveal and to prevejit Sin is this Sense of the Presence of God which is trained in secret prayer.
We must not be surprised if the communion with God that reveals Him unveils ourselves. ‘Whatsoever doth make manifest is light.’ And if we linger long before that Shekinah fire, which makes the golden wings and faces of the cherubims shine, it will pierce through every disguise and show us the very thoughts and intents of the heart. The sword of flame will pierce to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. Secret prayer is always a revelation of self as well as of God. We must be content to endure its searching ray, and even to invoke it.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my thoughts; And see if there be in me any wicked way, And lead me in the everlasting way.”* * Psalm cxxxix. 24.
Daniel was so faultless that even enemies could find nothing in him to accuse save his faith in God and his unceasing prayer; yet, in the presence of the searchlight of that Glory, he beheld even his “comeliness turned into corruption.” Isaiah in that Presence, cried, “Woe is me; for I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.* Peter, under such self-exposure, fell down at Jesus* knees, saying,” Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord! “f But all such self-revelation and self-condemnation only brings blessing, for it is the result of a divine vision! The divine answer to such human self-abasement is a new communication and exaltation, Daniel abhors himself, but hears a voice saying,” O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, fear not; for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were
* Isaiah vi. 5. f Luke v. 8.
SCHOOL OF PRAYER. $y
heard and I am come for thy words.” * Isaiah bewailed his unclean lips, but the seraph touched those same lips with a live coal from off God’s altar, and said, “Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin is purged,“t Even Peter, who felt so unfit for the companionship of the Lord that he involuntarily besought Christ to depart from him, heard only the assuring answer,” Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt capture men alive,“J (iarj ^wypayv) The sense of the Divine Presence, which reveals sin, also prevents it. When Joseph was in the crisis of awful temptation his answer to the syren voice of the tempter was an obvious sign of his habit of thinking of God. He had evidently learned that great truth, ‘* Thou, God, seest me!” He practiced the Presence of God, and it was natural to say with himself, “How can I do this great thing and sin against God?” And, when Paul rises to the
* Daniel x. 8-12. f Isaiah vi. 7.
X Luke V. 10. height of his grand argument on personal holiness, he reminds Corinthian Christians that they are the very temple (yao?) — the Holy of Holies, of God; and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in them. And, on the basis of this awful fact, he builds that exhortation, “Having therefore these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.“* What a security in the hour of temptation, however sudden, overwhelming, and otherwise irresistible, is the thought, the conviction, the consciousness, ^’ Thou, God, seest me. I can go nowhere without Thy Presence. The wings of the morning are not swift enough, nor the uttermost parts of the earth far enough, to remove me from Thine E)^e and Thine Hand.” Such are the profound, devout meditations of that Psalm of the Presence of Godf which cannot be surpassed for poetry or piety. How natural and easy, when one feels God near, search-
*2 Cor. vi. 16-vii. i. f Psalm cxxxix. ingthe inmost depths of being with omniscient glance; so near that He can never be afar off, but by omnipresent companionship is with us because in us, everywhere; and with omnipotent energy creating, upholding, strengthening — how easy and natural to do what pleases God, and say to seductive allurements of evil, “My heart is fixed.” It is only when a saint loses the sense of God’s Presence that voluntary sin can be possible.
Again, what intrepid courage in witnessing for God, and following the path of heroic duty this sense of the Presence of God imparts.
Elijah, the stern reformer of abuses, the great rebuker of idolatry among the people and of iniquity in high places, cultivated this consciousness of God. His habitual and characteristic phrase was, “Jehovah, God of Israel, before whom I stand’’’ — as though he felt himself to be constantly standing in the presence of his Divine Master — a servant whose eyes were to the eye and hand of that Master, watching and waiting to be guided by a beck or even a glance. It was because he stood before God, as one who awaits orders and receives from His very mouth his messages, that he could stand unabashed before Ahab and Jezebel.
In the old days of the Commonwealth it was customary to open the Connecticut Legislature with what was known as an ‘election sermon.’ On one occasion the chosen preacher was one of the fam. ous brothers Strong, a man whose modesty was equal to his merit, and who shrank from the grave responsibility. On the way to the place of assembly, as he walked beside his brother, who was also a minister of the gospel, this retiring man disclosed his oppressive burden of reluctance to face such a body of distinguished men, among whom would be found lawyers and barristers and judges, generals and statesmen, doctors of divinity and doctors of law, governors and exgovernors, the very flower of the Commonwealth. “How can I venture before such an audience?” said he to his brother. “You have only to remember,” answered he, “that in that hall of assembly is Another Presence, so supremely august, that in comparison all other presence becomes utterly insignificant and contemptible, and preach as in that Presence alone.” Keeping before him this thought, he went fearlessly to the discharge of his solemn duty, and all unwholesome restraint was gone. Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox recalled this incident when called to the momentous crisis of his life, addressing the Evangelical Alliance with its representatives of all nations, and the thought of that same Presence nerved his fainting spirit.
So went John Baptist before Herod, Paul before Agrippa, Felix, Nero; Luther before the Diet of Worms, Knox before Queen Mary. And was it not this same sense of the Father’s Presence, who never left him alone, which made Him whom the prophet called * The Servant of Jehovah,’ to go with such infinite calmness before Herod and Caiaphas and Pilate? Who was ever so utterly careless of human opinion, indifferent alike to censure or applause, because he could say, ‘I do always those things which please Him! ‘When his disciples, after one of his severe rebukes of the Pharisees for making void the commandments of God through their tradition, said, “Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended after they heard this saying,” He calmly answered, “Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.”* He could not accommodate his message to the hearer, but the hearer must accommodate himself to the message. And so will every true messenger of God answer human opposers, if he is wont to cultivate and cherish the sense of the Presence of God.
This practice of the Presence of God is the secret of both fidelity and cheerfulness in the discharge of conunon duty.
Whatever is a help to holy living must be found in those secret chambers to which devout study of the Word and habitual communion with a prayer-hearing God
*Matt. XV. 12, 13. open the doors. Any burden can be borne, any trial endured, any responsibility assumed, when this sense of God is active and constant. To be about his “Father’s business” was the secret of our Lord’s untiring service and unalloyed satisfaction; and with what patient hope do we work out the mission of a complete life, while we feel that God works in, to will and to do!
That is a deep law of life which Paul puts in those few words in his first letter to Corinth:* “Let every man, in that calling wherein he is found, therein abide WITH God.” When the renewing grace of God finds a man engaged in an honest calling however humble, he has no need to change his vocation, but only to take a new, and divine Partner and henceforth abide with God in his daily sphere of work. How simple, how sublime! Christ wrought at the bench of the carpenter of Nazareth until at thirty years of age he entered on his public ministry, as though
* I Cor. vii. 20-24. to teach us that no workman need be ashamed of his craft when he follows it as God’s servant; and that, whether it be the bench of the carpenter or the shoemaker, or the bench of the judge; the loom of the weaver, the wheel of the potter, or the desk of the author, the studio of the artist, the throne of the emperor — any place where service is rendered to God becomes a pulpit of witness, a shrine of God.
A humble monk known as Brother Lawrence has left behind a few simple letters that have awakened profound interest.*
From these letters it appears that, being called to the menial office of a cook in a convent, he was led, by this suggestion of Jeremy Taylor’s, to cultivate the habit of thinking of God as ever with him, and as a partner in his lowly calling, until it became easier to think of Him as present than as absent; and until that convent kitchen became as another
* “The Practice of the Presence of God.” garden of Eden, and every day as one of the days of Heaven upon earth.
We are now prepared to understand why and how this sense of the Divine Presence is especially and in every way so helpful to prayer that in exact proportion to its vividness and constancy is prayer effective and powerful.
Every element and exercise of prayer is dependent upon it. It prompts the highest outburst of thanksgiving, for it reveals the fact that God is and reveals Him as He is: we get in the secret place glimpses of the character and glory of God which are the very inspiration of gratitude. To know what God is, is of far more consequence than to know what He does. God is Love, and therefore all His outgoings are lovely and loving: the stream is as the spring.
We have seen that to realize the Divine Presence leads to most heart-searching contrition and confession, because in the light of His purity and holiness sin’s enormity and deformity are most clearly seen; and in the contrast of the glory of His goodness our unworthiness and ungratefulness become awfully apparent. And, in like manner, when the mind is filled with new views of God, His truth and grace, the reality and verity of His promise, our supplications and intercessions become the confident appeals of suppliants who “have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.”*
There is thus no side or aspect of true prayer which this vision of God in the closet does not touch. Contemplation of God compels contemplation of self; a new sense of destitution, degradation, depravity; a deeper contrition, a sincerer confession; a more importunate entreaty — a new repentance toward God, a new faith in God, a new separation unto God, a new power with God.
The loftiest conception of Prayer is that which finds expression in what is called worship — worth-ship — the ascribing of worth to God, describing His
* Eph. iii. 12; compare Hebrews iv. 16. worth in the highest expressions of praise, inscribing His worth on the forefront of the mitre, the palms of the hands, the door-posts of the house, and the gates whereby we go out and in — keeping before us and others the infinite excellence of God. Worship is more than thanksgiving and praise, for it includes both; and it rises above both in adoration, the whole soul and spirit going out to Him in devout words, or more likely in groanings and raptures which cannot be uttered, the mute language of emotions and affections which have no adequate articulate, human dialect.
Worship is the form of Prayer which fills Heaven, and echoes in the Apocalypse when the door is opened into Heaven: “Thou art worthy, O Lord!” Redeemed throngs and even angelic hosts, lost in the vision of infinite excellence and worthiness, rest not day or night from such adoration. Surely to get a new apprehension and appreciation of these adorable perfections is the ideal of Prayerful Communion.
In the Psalm of Nature,* all creation is seen to be God’s Temple. Nature is the vast cathedral where He is throned, and all the forces of the material universe are vocal with His praise. The boom of the great waters sounds the deep diapason, the gentle breezes breathe melodies, and the peal of the thunders rolls its pedal bass, while cyclones and whirlwinds add majesty to the chorus. Lightnings flash like electric lamps, and giant oaks and immortal cedars bow like worshippers. In this Psalm of Nature it is declared that “In His Temple, everything doth shout Glory!” f
To those devout souls that abide in the secret chambers with God, the closet itself expands into a grand cathedral. Every power and faculty of body, mind, soul and spirit shout ‘Glory! ‘Memory brings her grateful stores to lay them at God’s feet; Imagination, the poet and painter, weaves choicest tributes and paints glorious pictures, as aids to Faith;
* Psalm xxix. f Verse 9 (Hebrew).
Reason, the logician, constructs its most eloquent arguments to set forth God’s claim on universal homage and love; Understanding, overawed before the Infinite mind, can only mutely confess its own insignificance; Conscience, the Judge, pronounces Him perfect in all moral beauty; the Will, the Sovereign of man, lays down its imperial sceptre at His feet who is alone worthy to rule; and Affection, despairing of ever responding fully to such perfect love, breaks her alabaster flask and fills the whole house with the odor of her anointing. The soul that knows the closet’s revealings can only say, “Who is like, O Lord, unto Thee!”
It is because our Lord would teach us how to reach these lofty heights of heavenly experience that he makes his first lesson on Prayer, Enter into thy closet. The first rung in the ladder of ascent is faith in the actuality, reality, verity of the divine existence. And hence, as the primary condition of prayer, we are told, “he that cometh to God must believe that He is (that He exists), and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Of what use indeed to pray — nay, what but an affront, rather than an approach, to God — if we do not believe that He exists; and what is the closet for, if not to cultivate those spiritual senses which alone can perceive Him and receive Him?
We dared not leave this first lesson until we had taken time thoroughly to master it, that we might so understand those which follow. These may therefore be treated more briefly, as the first throws light over all the remaining path to be trodden. But let us not dismiss this primary lesson without once more recalling and impressing its commanding truth, that communion with God is the essential secret of all holiness of character, conduct and service; and that meditation on the divine character and perfections prepares us not only for prevailing supplication but for reception of divine blessing. Let us think of the secret chamber as a place of vision — of contemplation of God, which makes possible new impressions, new discoveries into His nature, new revelations of His goodness, new impartations of His power. Thus it comes to pass that before we call He answers, and while we are yet speaking He hears.* Communion proves mutual — an outgo, and an income, a Voice that answers as well as a voice that cries.
What a new factor in our spiritual life would such Prayer prove!
The most devout souls have found it not only profitable but natural to make the first exercise in closet devotion mute meditation. In the Prayer of Habakkuk we have a hint that this is becoming to all true worship:
•’ The Lord is in His Holy Temple! Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” f
And when, in the Apocalypse, that most wonderful vision of the prayers of saints
* Isaiah lxv. 24. f Habakkuk ii. 20. is about to be disclosed — the mysterious announcement which precedes it is:
‘* There was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour,” *
as though such silence were the only fit prelude and preparation for a revelation of such magnificence and significance.
God is here; but what if I know it not? Let me tarry till I do know it. Then how much added power will come into my communing, and with what new anointing shall I go forth to life’s work, and witness and warfare!
* Rev. viii. i.