Leading Others in Prayer

It is one thing to be in the spirit of personal prayer at all times; it is quite another thing to be ready to lead others in prayer at one time in particular. Yet these two things are often confounded; and the mistake is made of supposing that the possession of a spirit of prayer gives a fitness for leading others in prayer on every occasion. This mistake it is which makes public prayer so much less the impressive and inspiring service that it ought to be.

Being alike ready at all times for any service whatsoever, is being poorly fitted for such service at any time whatsoever. He who never falls below a common average, never rises above it. A dead level is always a dead level; there is no life in it. The most tiresome scenery in the world is a boundless plain.

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Water will stagnate and corrupt, if it has neither fall nor tides, neither ripple nor waves. He who is just as ready at one time as another to sleep or to eat, to laugh or to cry, to ride or to walk, to sing or to pray, to sit at home or to go out and see his neighbors, can never do any one of these things with a real relish, or to the satisfaction of those who are with him. He who is never excited, never. off his center, never enthusiastic and never depressed, might have got along with the Laodiceans, who were never cold, nor ever hot, but always nauseatingly lukewarm; but he is the last man in the world to make friends or to win admiration in the communities which are in the van of social progress nowadays.

Peculiarly is it true in the field of mental activity that no general acquisition obviates the necessity of special preparation. If you hear a man make a good off-hand speech, you may be sure that that speech was not made off-hand. It was prepared — Leading Otbers in Prayer

for, in some way. If you find that a man

seems always ready with his voice or his pen, you may set it down as certain that he makes himself specially ready for each call on his voice or pen. There are no exceptions to this truth.

On one occasion, when Daniel Webster was urged to make an address, he pleaded lack of time for fitting preparation. “O Mr. Webster!” was the response, “any- — thing you say, even without preparation, will have weight with an audience. You need not prepare for it.” “If my words. have weight with others,” said Mr. Webster, “it is because I never speak without preparation.” And that is the thought of every wise leader of his fellows.

When some one complimented M. Thiers on his effective impromptu speeches in the French Assembly, M. Thiers replied, that he never insulted the Assembly with impromptu speeches, but he rose at five o’clock every morning to prepare his “impromptus” for the day.

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Dr. Thomas Arnold declared that he never taught a lesson — even in the line of studies that he had a lifetime of general preparation in — without, specially preparing himself for that one class recitation. And that it was that kept Thomas Arnold the good teacher to the last. So it is all the way up and down the scale. He who shows any special fitness for any special work has made special preparation for that special work. General fitness is not a safe reliance for anything in particular.

Public prayer is a very different matter from private prayer. Private prayer is the emptying of one’s soul unreservedly to God; there need be no constraint in it whatsoever. Public prayer ought to have no such emptying of the leader’s personal soul to God, in the presence of others; constraint so far is a duty, from the beginning to the end of such prayer.

If one is in the constant habit of personal prayer, accustomed to keep himself always open before God in confession and Leading Otbers in Prayer

supplication, he is in all the greater danger of failing to lead others fittingly in public prayer; and there is all the more need of his making himself ready, by deliberate plan and purpose, to keep himself within the bounds of proper public prayer while leading the worship of others, as distinct from that unrestrained freedom of personal prayer which is as natural to him in his daily life as his instinctive breathing.

A member of the congregation of a prominent church went to his pastor at one time with a word of warning about his pulpit prayers. “You do altogether too much of private confession of your sins in public,” he said. “You let yourself out there in entire freeness to God, forgetful of the fact that your people are hearing you. Some of your confessions they could join in; but others they know nothing about. You give yourself away as a pastor, by telling aloud your weaknesses, your temptations, and your special sins. It is all right to tell God of those things in your Prayer

closet, but don’t say anything about them in the pulpit.” There was a wise caution for other pastors in that counsel from an observant hearer.

Praying is not the same thing everywhere. It is one thing in the closet, another thing in the family, another thing in the Sunday-school, another thing in the social prayer-meeting, and yet another thing in the sanctuary, with the general congregation of worshipers. He who does not consider these differences, and make himself ready accordingly for the special service to which he is ‘summoned, neither knows his duty nor does it, in the line of prayer.

As a practical matter, the clergyman who has power in public prayer is sure to be found a clergyman who makes special preparation beforehand for his public prayers. It is a shame for any clergyman to go into his pulpit without specific preparation for every portion of the service he is to lead, — for his Bible-reading, his hymn- reading, Leading Otbers in Prayer

his preaching, and his praying. It is not enough for him to be in the general spirit of Bible-reading, and hymn-reading, and preaching, and praying. He has a particular duty for that day, before that congregation, in view of the peculiar needs of those who are there before him, and the peculiar circumstances of that hour — as apart from every other hour of their lives and of his life.

Unless he makes ready for that particular duty he is unready for it; and his hearers are aware of that fact before the service is half over with, whether he knows it or not. Special preparation for the public prayers of the day is made by the best clergymen generally. Those who fail to make such preparation show it in their failure to have the results of that preparation. And that such failures in pulpit services are pitiably common cannot be denied.

Our Lord told his disciples that there were times when they need take no

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thought in advance how or what they should speak before others, for it should be given them in that hour what they were to say; but when they asked him how they should gray, he did not tell them to rely wholly on the inspiration of the hour, but he gave for their guidance a pattern of prayer, the structure and methods of which he seemed to think were worthy of their study. There are, however, ten leaders in social or public worship who take pains to make ready for a sermon or an address, where there is one who prepares himself for a public prayer. Why does any man slight the latter service in comparison with the former? Is it because he deems it of less importance? Or is it because he thinks he has so much more skill and power in leading others in an address to God, than in making a direct address to his fellows?

A prominent clergyman, in addressing the students of a divinity school, urged the importance of careful preparation for all Long Library emma BE Gib

Leading Otbers in Prayer

pulpit exercises. Referring to the common idea that God would inspire the unprepared clergyman to pray effectively in’

public, he said, “Remember, young men, that God does not inspire vacuity.” Another clergyman, when asked if a man could be as earnest and sincere when he had prepared himself carefully for such a service, as he could be if he trusted to the inspiration of the moment, replied: “God puts no premium on slovenliness. You need God’s help if you have done your best to make yourself ready for his service. You have no right to ask his help, if you have neglected preparatory thought and prayer.”

If a clergyman needs special preparation for leading in public prayer, much more so a layman. And the best laymen recognize this fact. Professor John S. Hart, the first Editor of The Sunday School Times, was quite a model superintendent in his day. He was a man of disciplined mind, of ripe culture, and of rare devoutness. He had LIBRARY

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much experience, and much impressiveness and unction, in public prayer.

If any superintendent would be justified in feeling that it was unnecessary for him to make special preparation for an opening prayer in his Sunday-school, it would seem to be such a man as Professor Hart. But, on the contrary, ke always prepared himself with much pains for this service. He told the writer, on one occasion, that during all the time he was in charge of the State Normal School of New Jersey he made particular preparation for each day’s morning prayer at the opening of school, and that he still preserved the outline plans of all those prayers.

Writing on this theme in counsel to superintendents, not long before his decease, Professor Hart said of the methods of study for a prayer, and of the value of such study: “Each week some new want will arise. Some scholar or teacher will be sick. Some family connected with the school will be in trouble. Some inquiring Leading Others in Prayer

soul will be craving for an expression of sympathy. Be it your care to study how these various wants may find expression in your opening prayer, without improper. and offensive personalities.

“Besides these wants, each week’s lesson, you will find, has certain leading thoughts. It has been selected with the express design of teaching certain religious truths, and these truths have a direct bearing upon the daily life of every member of your school, both scholars and teachers. Having yourself studied the lesson and filled your mind to saturation with the truths which it contains, you will find how much you need divine help to bring those truths home to your heart and conscience, so that you may carry them into practical life. This, your want, is the want of every teacher and scholar. See how you can in your prayer, without offense, give utterance to this want. Try, in short, to turn the lesson into a prayer, without turning it into

a harangue. Let it be a real prayer, ad-IoI

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dressed to God, not an exposition addressed to the school.”

In testimony, out of his experience and observation, Professor Hart added: “As you grow older in the service, you may learn that those superintendents who have been longest in the harness, and are most familiar with the work, are often the very ones who habitually make the most painstaking preparation for each specific occasion. I could tell you of veteran superintendents who habitually spend from one to two hours of each Sabbath evening in preparing for the opening service of the next Sabbath.”

It may seem to some that it would be easier for such a man as Professor Hart, with his habits of study, to prepare himself for an appropriate prayer, than for one unaccustomed to systematic and persistent study to do a thing of this sort. “I could never study for a prayer,” says one superintendent or another. “I shouldn’t know

how to set about it. If I pray at all, I 102

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must ask the Lord to guide and help me, and then go right at it, forgetting all about theories and plans.”

But many a man who has at first said this same thing about the study of a lesson, has afterwards learned how to fit himself by lesson study for lesson teaching. He, then, who never has studied for a prayer, ought not to feel that he never can do it. When he realizes the importance of thorough preparation, he can set himself to learn its methods. Now for an illustration in this line.

Some years ago the writer was at a Sunday-school in a town in Michigan. The lesson for that day was “The Smitten Rock,” the narrative of the rock smitten by Moses in the wilderness. As the superintendent went on with his opening prayer, the writer was impressed with both its spirit and substance. It was strikingly appropriate to the day’s lesson. It was delightfully reverent, inspiring, and impressive. It seemed to bring together and to Prayer

uplift the entire school in devout and loving communion with God, over the theme of the hour’s study, and to express the love and the longing of every grateful and needy heart in the assembly.

The writer felt that he had rarely listened to such a Sunday-school prayer, had rarely been so helpfully led in prayer; and at the close of the school, in conversation with the superintendent’s wife, he expressed his interest in that portion of the service. “Iam glad you feel so,” was the answer; “for my husband gives a great deal of study to his Sunday-school prayers.” Ah! that was it. It was the same there as elsewhere. Faithful and faith-filled work was not without its effect and its reward, And at once the writer applied to that superintendent to learn his method of preparing to pray, nor did he seek information in vain.

That superintendent was a railroad conductor, having little time — only odd moments at the best — for preliminary study Leading Otbers in Prayer

of any sort. Early in his Sunday-school work he had felt the importance of preparation for his opening prayer in the school; but for a time he had hesitated to give study to this exercise, lest he should deprive it of some of its vitality and fervor. Even when he was convinced that it would be quite right and safe for him to take with him thoughts and words, as well as feeling, when he turned to the Lord as the leader of a praying Sunday-school, he was yet unfamiliar with wise methods of study; but he finally worked out and adopted a satisfactory plan.

From the beginning of each week he would have his next Sunday’s prayer in ‘mind, as he studied his next Sunday’s lesson. Filling himself with the lesson, becoming imbued with its spirit and impressed by its teachings, through prayerful study, he would proceed to make an outline of its main features to guide him in the plan of a prayer.

First he would consider in what char- ‘Prayer

acter God is presented in the lesson, that he might be addressed in that character, — as Father, as King, as Guide, as Rock, as Tower, as Captain of Salvation.. Then he would note the figures or comparisons in the lesson by which God’s dealings with his people are shown, that they might be employed in the petitions or thanksgivings of the prayer. The teachings of the lesson would be next observed, that supplications for their practical benefits might be offered up for all. In closing, there would be an ascription of praise to God, in the line of the opening recognition of his distinctive character as shown in that lesson..

The prayer would be brief, not above three to four minutes at the outside; but it would have just as much more in it than an ordinary prayer of two or three times its length as was secured to it by the added study which it represented.

In the case of the prayer which the writer heard, the schedule of preparation Leading Otbers in Prayer

had been preserved by the superintendent, and it was shown in illustration of the method asked for. In that lesson God appeared as the merciful and compassionate God, and Christ was pictured as the spiritual Rock. The opening call of the prayer was, “Most merciful God, our kind heavenly Father, help ws to drink from that spiritual Rock — the Rock Christ Jesus.”

Among the symbols and likenesses of the lesson were the flinty rock, the potent rod, the gushing waters. Among the petitions of the prayer were these: “And as at the touch of the rod in Moses’ hand the refreshing waters came forth from the rock in plentiful abundance for the thirsty children of Israel to drink, so to-day, blessed Saviour, let the touch of our prayers of faith bring forth the richest joys of heavenly refreshing from thee — thou fount and source of every blessing. And likewise may our hearts, touched with the finger of thy love, burst forth in joyful, Prayer

in triumphant, and in everlasting, praises of our Redeemer and our Lord.”

The lesson teachings noted were, that all good comes from God; that we are in daily dependence upon him; that we need his sustaining presence, and that we should obey all his commandments. The petitions based on these teachings were: “Assist us, we pray thee, to fully comprehend the truths taught in our lesson to-day: that all good cometh by thee; that daily and hourly we are in need of thy sustaining presence to carry us through the sore perplexities and trials of this life; and that in all things we should observe perfect obedience to thy commandments and requirements — perfect submission to thy holy will.”

The closing ascription was, “And unto him who leadeth us in green pastures and beside the still waters, and who will at last, if we are faithful unto the end, lead us to living fountains of heavenly waters which forever flow from out the great white Leading Otbers in Prayer

throne of God and of the Lamb — unto him be honor and glory and dominion, forever and ever. Amen.”

The fervor and spirit of this prayer are of course in a measure lost by a formal quotation of its language; but they were certainly none the less real and impressive because of that superintendent’s intelligent interest in the theme of his prayer, and of his previous understanding of what he was to ask for.

He was not in the habit of writing out his phrases of prayer in full, but of noting under the several heads what he purposed to pray for. Hence he could say, in speaking of the results to himself of his preparations, “When I stand up for prayer, I have not to grope blindly about for this or that and the other thing to say. I have’ my prayer-heads mentally before me, and I pass from one to the other, and when done I have drawn the prayer right out of the lesson as water from a well, and tried, at least, to make it one which Prayer

can lift the school with me to Jehovah’s throne.”

This illustration discloses one plan of preliminary study for the opening prayer in Sunday-school. It may be suited to many persons; to others it may not be. As the superintendent said of it, “It is a plan which all would find easy after a little time. At first, and especially if their memory was poor, it would be hard; but study will do much, and asking Jesus’ help will do the rest.” Yet no one plan is best for all superintendents. The chief thing emphasized by such an example is the truth that preparation for public prayer is wise and practicable, and that it in no degree diminishes the spiritual fervor of the prayer.

And the superintendent who prepares himself for leading his school in prayer will not expect his teachers to be ready for a similar service without similar preparation. Henry P. Haven — * model superintendent” as he has been called — was in the habit of notifying his teachers, at the opening of Leading Others in Prayer

the month, of the time when they would be called on, during that month, to lead the school in prayer. Then they had no excuse for being unprepared to lead in prayer when the time came. Similarly, there are thoughtful superintendents who quietly notify in advance the teacher whom they are to ask to close the ordinary weekly teachers’-meeting with prayer.

The superintendent who would call on a teacher to lead in the opening prayer of the Sunday-school without a word of previous notice evidently lacks an appreciation of the privilege and duty of preparation for public prayer. Mr. C. B. Stout, of New Jersey, gave this illustration of the difficulties in such a case: “Farmer Johnson comes to Sunday-school very much troubled over a sick cow. As he is thinking of her, he is suddenly called on to lead in prayer. If he prays out freely, he’ll find it hard not to pray for that cow. It isn’t fair to put Farmer Johnson to such a test.”

We are not to attempt, nor are we to III

: on for such prayer. for others the injunction: ise Wher i u. goest to the house of God,” and art called SB ay EO lead in prayer, “be not rash with thy pee mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to s ws

utter anything before God: for God is in

heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let: thy words be few” — and well considered.