Morning Hours
A MAN of average duration of life (thirty years) sees about ten thousand mornings in the course of his existence. He begins ten thousand days; and as the after-issues and conduct of the day depend so much upon the beginnings, we wish to say a few practical words on beginning every day with God. Morning piety has much to do with household piety and with the whole current of one’s e very-day religion.
Every morning gives us (in a limited sense, of course) a new birth and commencement of life afresh. Sleep is the twin-sister of death, We lie for hours mute, motionless, and irresponsible. The outward world is a blank; the mind is virtually a silent chamber, through which incoherent dreams sometimes flit to and fro; life is suspended as to thought, action, and moral agency.
After a few hours of deep slumber — practically as devoid of activity as a sleep in the grave would be — the rosy finger of the morning touches us, as the Divine Restorer touched the motionless form of the dead maiden in Jairus’s house, and says, Arise! In an instant life sets its wheels again in motion. “We leap up from that temporary tomb, our bed. We awake refreshed, restored, made anew for a fresh start on the life-journey. Was yesterday a sick day? Sleep, like a good doctor, has made us well. We left our aches and pains in the vale of dreams. Was yesterday a sad day? Sleep has blunted the edge of our grief and soothed the agitated nerves. Was it (like too many of its predecessors) a lost day? Then our Merciful Father puts us on a new probation, and gives us a chance to save this new-born day for Him and for the holy purposes of our existence.
Do we lose the morning ‘, either by long sleep, indolence, or aimlessness? Then we commonly lose the day. One hour of the morning is worth two at the sun- setting. The best hours for study, for invention, for plans, and for labor are the first hours which the mind and the body have after their resurrection from the couch of slumber. Napoleon — who, above all generals, knew the value of time — seized the early dawn. Walter Scott wrote nearly all his Waverley romances before breakfast, and achieved a literary immortality while his guests were sleeping. The numerous and erudite commentaries of Albert Barnes are monuments to early rising; they will ever attest ho w. much a man can accomplish who gets at his work by “four o’clock in the morning.” To the student, to the artist, to the merchant, to the day -laborer, the mest useful hours are reached before the sun climbs to the meridian. I am well aware that a vast deal of traditional stuff has come down to us about the “midnight lamp.” But I have generally found that those wTho use most the “midnight lamp,” either for study or dissipation, burn their own lamp of life out the soonest. While good men are most active in the morning, the ‘“children of darkness,” knaves, roues, and debauchees are most busy at the midnight Make it a rule, then, that he who would begin the day aright must seize and save its earliest hours. How often do we see some poor, careless, dilatory fellow rushing in blundering haste through the whole day in a vain chase after the hour he lost in the morning!
II. Every day should be commenced with God and upon the knees. “In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up,” said that man who was “after God’s own heart.” He begins the day unwisely who leaves his chamber without a secret conference with Christ, his best friend. The true Christian goes into his closet for his armor; before night he will need the whole panoply. He goes to his closet for his spiritual “rations” for the day’s march. As the Eastern traveller sets out for the sultry journey over torrid sands by loading up his camel under the palm-tree’s shade, and by filling his waterflasks from the cool fountain that sparkles at its roots, so doth God’s wayfarer draw his morning supplies from the unexhausted spring. Morning is the golden hour for devotion. The mind is fresh. The mercies of the night provoke to thankfulness. The buoyant heart, that is in love with God, makes its earliest flight, like the lark, toward the gates of heaven. Gratitude, dependence, love, faith, all prompt to early interviews with Him who, never sleeping and never slumbering Himself, waits on His throne for our morning orisons. Yvre all remember Bunyan’s beautiful description of his Pilgrim who “awoke and sang” in the Chamber of Peace which, looked toward the sun-rising. If stony Egyptian Memnon made music when the first rays of the light kindled on his flinty brow, a living Christian heart should not be mute when God causes the outgoings of his mornings to rejoice.
III. Closet devotions are the precursor to family worship. Family religion underlies the commonwealth and the church of Christ. No Christian government — no healthy public conscience — no Bible-philanthropies — no godly church-life, can exist without their roots beneath Christian hearth-stones and family altars. The” tutamen et decus’’ of dear old Scotland is found in those scenes of fireside worship which Burns has so sweetly pictured:
“From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad.”
No prelude to the day is so fitting, so impressive, so powerful in its sacred influence as the union of household hearts around the throne of grace. When a cheerful morning-hymn is sung, even the “wee bairnies” can join their carol; and what might be tortured into a penance is transformed into a delight. Morning worship at the family altar is a “strong seam” well stitched on the border of the day, to keep it from ravelling out into irreligion, indolence, contention, and sin. Wise is that Christian parent who hems every morning with the Word of God and fervent prayer!
IV. When the early devotions of the day are over, and a distinct plan of useful labor laid out, then let us shoulder up the day’s load cheerfully. God will make the load light if we ask Him. And the happiness and serenity of the whole day depend much upon a cheerful start. The man who leaves his home with a scowl on his brow, with a snap at his children, and a tart speech to his wife, is not likely to be a very pleasant companion for any one through the day, or to return home at night less acid than a vinegar-cruet. But more than cheerfulness is needed for some days, whose advancing hours come loaded with unexpected sorrows. For such days let us make ready every morning by putting ourselves under the wing of a Saviour’s loving care. We know not how soon the last sunrise may light us on our way, nor how soon we shall hear on earth the last “good morning.”
“We have just returned from the funeral of the heroic veteran, Lyman Beecher, and as we gazed on his sleeping clay, we could not but think, “Oh, sainted patriarch! how many must be thy glorified spiritual children on the ’ sea of glass,’ who have already greeted thee with heaven’s glad good morning /”
All that we have sought to say is finely condensed by Bonar into these lines:
“Begin thy day with God;
He is thy sun and day;
His is the radiance of thy dawn;
To Him address thy lay.
“Take thy first meal with God;
He is thy heavenly food;
Feed with and on Him; He with thee
“Will feast in brotherhood.
“Take thy first walk with God;
Let Him go forth with thee;
By stream, or sea, or mountain-path,
Seek still His company.
“Thy first transactions be
With God himself above;
So shall thy business prosper well,
And all the day be love.”