Ministers Must Be Men of Prayer

An occasional remark has been thrown out in the preceding joages, intimating the importance of prayer in the ministers of the Gospel. The thought is one which may not he passed over thus lightly.

The appropriate vocation of a minister of the Gospel is one which has much to do with God; it is a spiritual, and not a secular vocation. His own soul may indeed be greatly ensnared by this very circumstance; he must be familiar with spiritual things; this is his business, and he matj be familiar with them as a matter of busitiess only. If it be so with any of us, we are of all men most to be commiserated; because, “after having preached to others, we ourselves shall be cast away.” If it may be said of any man in the world, that he lives very near to heaven, or very near to hell, it may be said of a minister of Jesus Christ. If he is not a pious man, he is among the most obdurate of the wicked; and though his feet may stand on the highest mountains of Zion, he stands on slippery places, and shall slide in due time. If he is not a man of prayer, he is not a man of God; and had better be anywhere else, than in the pulpit.

Yet is the thought a pleasant one to the mind of a good man, that he is occupied in a religious, and not a worldly vocation; and that the privileges, as well as the obligations of the sacred ministry, have this great peculiarity. “We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word.” This is the law of the pulpit. Ministers are “laborers together with God;” and their intercourse with him ought to be unembarrassed and intimate. Their life is one of continual, and in some respects, peculiar dependence on him; and on him their eye ought to be steadily fixed. This is their great support and comfort. Their personal trials are sufficiently numerous; and if they have not a refuge in God, and hide not beneath the shadow of his wrings, the Comforter is far, — far away. To no class of men is the thought more welcome and precious, that God is their friend, than to the trembling heart and jaded mind of his ministers. “More is he that is for us, than they that are against us!” Who better than they, know how to appreciate the inviting summons, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee; hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.” Who more than they, have need to appropriate the promise, “For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion; in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock.”

But these are not the precise thoughts which we desire here to enforce. We speak rather of that intercourse which ministers have with God, as his commissioned servants, sent by him to perform a great work, and one in which they constantly need his assistance and direction. We would fain urge upon ourselves and our fellow-laborers, that delightful habit of prayer, in the cultivation of which the commissioned servants of God go to him under every exigency, and in which there is such an exceeding great reward.

There are ministers who are by no means slothful, and who possess a deep interest in their work, who yet labor to very little purpose, because their time is not jyi’ofitablij employed. Their course of reading and study is not so useful to them, as preachers, as it might be; and their out-door labor is not always so arranged as to subserve the pulpit. In this matter they need to be directed by wisdom that is from above, and should seek that direction as constantly as they ask for their daily bread. Youdifiil ministers especially, are not always sensible of the importance of so employing their time, and arranging their labor as to accomplish the most for the cause of God and the souls of men. Yet this is their great object; and in the prosecution of it, they must just submit themselves to a heavenly guidance. In their selection of subjects also for the instruction of their people, ministers are often most uriwise, and expend no small amount of strength to very little effect. I have heard many a discourse which produced the impression on my own mind, that if the same amount of thought and labor had been bestowed on a more useful topic, the preacher uould have better answ ered the expectation of his hearers, and the great object of preaching the Gospel. There is not a little preaching, which, from this cause alone, profits no one; it is not to edification. While listening to it, an intelligent and devout hearer can scarcely help saying within himself, What then? — w hat if it is all as you say? — what good comes of all this? Do we say more than we are warranted in saying, when we express the fear that too many preachers select their subjects “without asking counsel of God?” It is no small relief, in prosecuting his studies for the week, for a minister to have the consciousness that his Divine Master approves his w ork, and that the discourse lie is preparing is upon a topic which has been assigned him, and given him in answer to prayer. Nay, there is confidence; there is courage and hope; there is joy; his own mind is stimulated by the thought, nor does the sacred excitement pass away until he has delivered himself of the burden, and his appointed message is made known.

More than this. It is no uncommon thing for the preacher to be greatly embarrassed in the choice of his subject; the embarrassment is not unfrequently a serious one, and occasions loss of time and effort. Sometimes it arises from the poverty of his own resources; sometimes from the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting claims of more subjects than one; and sometimes from the sluggish operations of his own mind. It is often a profitable embarrassment to the preacher, and constitutes a part of that intellectual and spiritual discipline, by which he is made a better man and a better minister. By it he is taught to think, and feel, and pray, and is brought to a deeper sense of his own littleness. He learns to have recourse to the Master who sent him; and he finds it available. The promise is good, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally and without upbraiding.” The writer has now in his thoughts a youthful minister

of Christ, who had occupied almost an entire

2GG THE POWER OF THE PULPIT.

day in scarcliiiii for a subject for the following’ Sabbath, lie had sought direction apparently in vain; he had turned over page after page in the Bible; he had inspected his commonplace-book; and could find no subject in which he felt sufficient interest to induce him to select it as the topic of his forthcoming discourse. His mind was depressed; he felt as though he could never write another sermon, and doubted his fitness for the ministry. Toward the close of the day, he fell again on his knees, and the first sentence he uttered was, “O Lord, I am as a beast before thee!” The thought he had uttered made a deep impression on his mind, and at the close of his prayer, he turned to his folded manuscript, and began a discourse from that passage in the seventy-third Psalm: “So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a beast before thee!” God had heard the voice of supplication. We have no doubt that this is substantially the history of thousands and thousands of some of the most profitable discourses that are ever preached. We who ought to know so much of God know very little of his bounty; very little of his faithfulness and condescension as a prayer-hearing God. We too often pray as though we thought him unwilling to give. What amazing words are those, —” O

THOU THAT HEAREST PRAYER!” SubjCCts that

are thus given in answer to prayer, ought always to be accepted, be the subsequent labor they cost what it may. God is pleased that we should ask, and pleased when we accept and employ his gifts. He will continue to give, if we furnish this proof of our honesty in asking. Still further. The same spirit of prayer should attend us in the preparation of our discourses, as in selecting the subjects of them. If we are not satisfied with the method and arrangement of our thoughts, or if we are not satisfied with a page we have written; let us betake ourselves to our knees till we are satisfied. Let us not only think out our subject, but pray it out. Those views of divine truth which are enjoyed under the influence of prayer are very different from those in which prayer has no part. Without prayer, even the more spiritual truths will be very apt to be studied as a science merely, and our increasing acquaintance with them will not minister to our spirituality; with it, we shall acquaint ourselves more with the adorable and ever-blessed God, and with every view of him shall sink in the dust before him, and make his service our joy. It is not the view of the naked eye that discovers God’s truth in its beauty; it is the view taken through the telescope of prayer, in which distant objects are brought near and magnified.” Things unseen elsewhere are seen at the mercy-seat, and in new aspects, and new beauty and loveliness.

They stand out in their celestial brightness; they cluster like the stars in the milky-way; the deliiihted eye dwells upon them, the swelling bosom feels them, and when we speak of them it is with glowing lips. We have often read of those who studied the Bible upon their knees. Would not our sermons be more appropriate and effective, if more elaborate with prayer? W ould not the weak parts of them be stronger, the barren more rich, the cold more ardent, the objurgatory more persuasive, and the whole more pungent and faithful, were it more imbued with the spirit of prayer?

Nor is this all. If from the toil of the study we advert to the devotio?ial services of the sanctuary, what minister will venture upon them without prayer? For every part of this public service, the spirit produced at the mercy-seat is a qualification that is absolutely indispensable; but in no one thing are ministers more deficient than in the devoiioiial exercises of God’s house. We sometimes listen to prayers from the pulpit which are absolutely chilling: they have no connection of thought, and no spirituality of feeling. While listening to them, they seem to us to partake very little of the character of religious worship: were there no relief from such prayers, wgp’ would gladly take refuge in the formularies of an established liturgy.

We are no advocates for forms of prayer in the pulpit: the Scriptures set us a different example. The nature of the service itself requires a more spontaneous and free, and full, and varied expression of Christian feeling than any forms can furnish. Piety itself very often requires the free and spontaneous expression of a full and gushing heart. Those who are, on principle, most attached to forms, are not unfrequently constrained to lay them aside. Archbishop Seeker, when laid on his couch with a broken thigh, was visited at Lambeth, by Mr. Talbot, the vicar of St. Giles, in Reading, who had lived in great intimacy with him, and received his preferment from him. “You will pray for me, Talbot,” says the Archbishop, during the interview. Mr. Tabot rose and went to look for a prayer-book. “That is not tvhat I want now,” said the dying prelate;” kneel down by me, and 2^^’ay for me in the way I know you are used to do;’’ with which command this zealous man of God complied, and prayed earnestly from his heart for his dying friend, whom he saw no more. An instance of Episcopal candor like this is well worth recording. Grace is stronger than forms, and in the time of need must have utterance in its own way. A most beautiful sight is this, — a devout clergyman of the Church of England kneeling at the bedside of the dying Primate, and at his request offering an extemporaneous prayer in the Archbishop’s palace at Lambeth! There is no need of argument in favor of sy)()ntaneous prayer, after this. A rich and spiritual prayer, coming’ from the well-furnished mind and glowing heart of the preacher, forms one of the great excellencies of our own directory for religious worship. We have on one occasion, and in accommodation to the usage of the place, publicly made use of the forms of prayer of our Episcopal brethren: but it was new wine, — the old is better. We greatly prefer our own usages. These spontaneous devotional exercises with us decide the character of the whole service. We know how a minister will preach, after we have heard him pray. Never shall I forget some prayers I have listened to during seasons when God was pouring out his spirit upon the church of which I was a member before I became a minister of the Gospel. Often have I felt since, that these services are the most responsible and most dilficult part of a minister’s duty. Oh, the trembling of heart which sometimes comes upon us when we stand up to address the Infinite God! Our hearers, for the most part, tliiidv little of this part of our public duty; but once let the most devout and most intelligent of them ascend the sacred desk, and spread forth his hands to pray, and he wall at least have some sympathy with those on whom this solemn responsibility is devolved.

And where do they learn to pray, but in habitual and intimate fellowship ^vitli C4od, in the secret of his presence? It is by praying, that we learn to pray. No matter how much we have otherwise learned; if we have not sweet and happy intercourse with God in our closets, the lesson is forgotten. But there is a halo of glory around the mercy-seat, in the midst of which it is impossible long to remain in secret, without reflecting its radiance when we stand in the presence of the “great congregation.”

If from the devotional part of the service, we turn to what is more properly its instructions, there is not a devout minister in the world but would bear testimony, that there is no preparative for preaching like that which is made in his closet. Nowhere else will his mind become so imbued with the spirit of his errand; or so deeply impressed with a sense of the Divine presence; or so touched with love to Jesus Christ and the souls of men. Whence too, comes that power of the Holy Ghost, which renders the truth powerful, but from the same exhaustless source? No minister has done his utmost to give power to the pulpit, who has not tried the power of prayer. Shame on us that our preaching is so powerless, when God has said, “Ask, and ye shall receive!” Is it so, that we may always go into the pulpit fully furnished for our work, and have the

Spirit of our Master with us, simply for the asking, and shall we ever go alone?

It was a terrible reproof to men of other times, “There is none that ealleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.” It is indeed a wondrous thought, that worms of the dust may thus have free access to God, and are actually rebuked for not “stirring up themselves” to take hold on him. There are no discouragements in our work when we can go to God’s throne. We need be careful for nothing, if “with a true heart and full assurance of faith,” we can come near even to his seat and fill our matuth with arguments. We may, indeed, often go with heaviness, but we shall often come away with tranquillity and joy. We may go as slaves, but we shall find our chains knocked off there, and have the liberty of children. We may fear and tremble; we may agonize; but we shall prevail. Jacob, as a prince, wrestled with the Angel of the Covenant, and had power with God. O what an illustration of the power of yrayer was that! Let me go f let me go! No, no, 7 will not let thee go; I will not let thee go unless thou bless me! How little do we know of the power of prayer! a power to which even the power of God condescends to be subjected, and which divides with him the government of the world! Others may think as they will; but for ourselves, we cannot reconcile the form of prayer, with the power of prayer. Just think of Jacob readingfrom a prayer-book, when he wrestled with the xlngel of the Covenant; or Elijah when he bowed his knees on the mount! It lessens its power just in the measure in which it depends on form. The atmosphere of prayer is not that factitious atmosphere which is evolved by the screws of a printing press. Where the heart feels deeply, and prays eifectively, it throws away its forms; it has desires of its own and must express them.

We scarcely know” what different men, what different ministers, we should be, did we know more of the power of prayer. We should see in God’s light, labor in his strength, repose in his love, be filled from his fulness, reflect his glory, live in and for him. He who hears the young ravens when they cry, would not shut his ear against us when we go at his bidding and on his errand. When Moses complained that he was “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue,” his Maker replied to him, “Who made man’s mouth? Now therefore go; I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say!” We may be compassed about with infirmities; but “with the petition in one hand, and the promise in the other,” we may be “strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

It is narrated in the life of Andrew Fuller,

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that at a meeting of several very distinc:iiislied ministers at Northtinipton, the question was discussed very much at length, “To what causes, in ministers themselves, may much of their want of success be imputed?” The answer “turned chiefly upon their want of personal religion; particularly the neglect of close dealing with God in closet prayer T The probability is, that every collection of judicious and godly ministers would come to the same conclusion. The prophet seems to express the same thought when he says, “Their pastors have become brutish; they have not sought the Lord; therefore they shall not prosper, and their flocks shall be scattered.” The time was, when the pastors of the American churches valued the privilege of prayer. They were not only men of prayer, but they prayed often for and with one another; their reciprocal and fraternal visits were consecrated and sweetened by prayer; nor was it any unusual thing for them to employ days of fasting and prayer together for the effusions of God’s Spirit upon themselves and their churches. And they were days of power; days when God’s arm was made bare, and his right hand plucked out of his bosom. Nor was it difficult to see, then, wherein the great strength of the pulpit lies; “he that was feeble among them was as David, and the house of David was as God.”