XVII
REVERENCE IN PRAYER
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee or accept thy person? saith the Lord of Hosts."--Mal. i. 8.
IF we were summoned to dine, or to any other
audience, with our sovereign, with what fear and
trembling should we prepare ourselves for the
ordeal! Our fear at the prospect before us would
take away all our pride, and all our pleasure, in the
great honour that had come to us. And how careful
we should be to prepare ourselves, in every possible
way, for the great day! We should at once bethink
ourselves of those men of our acquaintance who had
been at court, and we should throw ourselves on
them to tell us everything. How to answer the
royal command: how to dress: how to drive up to
the gate: who would meet us: how they would
know us: all about the entrances, and the stairs,
and the rooms: all about Her Majesty herself and
the royal table. And then, when the day and the
hour came,--our first sight of the Queen1, and her
first sight of us! And then, our name announced,
till our heart beat as never before. And then,
our seat at the table: and what to say, and what not
to say. And, at the end of the day, our thankfulness
that we had been carried through the ordeal
so well, and without any dreadful mistake.
Now, all that is, as near as can be, the meaning
of Malachi in the text. The prophet is protesting
against the scandalous irreverence, and the open
profanity, of the people of Israel in their approaches
to Almighty God. "Offer it now to thy governor!"
he cries to them. "Will he be pleased with such
service at thy hands? Or will he accept thee?
A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master.
If then I be a father, where is Mine honour? And
if I be a master, where is My fear? saith the Lord
of Hosts. I have no pleasure in you, saith the
Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at
your hand."
1. Now, to begin with, let us take this pungent
passage, and apply it to our own public worship,
to the place where we are now assembled, and to
the service we are now engaged in. Compare the
stateliness, the orderliness, the rich beauty, the
impressive silence, the nobleness, the reverential
love of the Queen's palace: compare all that with
the squalor, the disorder, the absence of all beauty,
the rude noises, the universal irreverence, I will
not say of this church, but of so many churches up
and down the land. And if, in some outward
things, there has been some improvement for some
time past among us, how do we ourselves stand,
individually, for inward improvement, for our
personal demeanour of mind and heart in public
worship? A Court chaplain, who is at the same
time a minister of a congregation, says this to his
congregation, "When you are in an audience
with your sovereign, would you have your mind
taken up all the time with impertinent and utterly
trifling things? When you are standing, or kneeling,
in the royal presence, would you turn to see
who is conning in when the door opens? Would
you rise and look out to see who is passing the
window? Would yon stare round the room at the
servants, and at the furniture, while your sovereign
is speaking to you, and you to him?" And so on.
No. The thing is inconceivable. No sane man
could possibly do such a thing. There is a good
story told at the expense of a certain enterprising
and unceremonious English journalist, to the effect
that the Czar returned to his councillors, and said
that he had just passed through an experience
that was new to him,--he had been "dismissed"
by a newspaper man as soon as the interview was
over. Both Malachi, and the Court chaplain, and
the story about the dismissal of the Czar, have
lessons for us all about our behaviour in public
worship.
And, the worst of it is that all this irreverence,
disrespect for the House of God; and, indeed, downright
profanity, begins where it should be arrested
and denounced till it becomes impossible. For it
begins and is perpetuated, of all places, in the pulpit.
With how little reverence and godly fear do we
who are ministers enter the pulpit! With plenty
of fear, if not reverence, of man. Full of the fear
of man, lest we do not come up to-day to what our
irreverent people expect of us. How we study
and prepare to pray, and to preach, setting mortal
men like you before us! Were it not that He,
with Whom we have to do, is, far past all His
promises, "long-suffering and slow to wrath"
towards us ministers, an angry Voice would many
a Sabbath morning cut short our profane performances
with the sentence,--"O graceless
minister! Offer all that to thy governor!" And,
thus it comes about,--"Like priest, like people."
For who, here, of all this multitude of people with
psalm-books in their hands, really sang this morning's
psalm try God? To God? Who set everything
else aside at the church door, because he was
to have one more audience of the King, Eternal,
Immortal, Invisible? Who prayed to God, in the
opening or in the intercessory prayer, with an
arrested, entranced and enraptured heart? No:
not one. "Take it to your governor."
2. And, beginning with public worship, we take
all that profanity home with us to our family
worship. For one thing,--all our family worship
is made to give place, morning and night, to anything
and everything. There are so-called Christian
homes where the sons and the daughters and
the guests come down to family worship just as they
please and find it convenient. If they are down in
time for breakfast, good and well--the kitchen
arrangements must not be disturbed; but the
family prayers to God may be observed or not as
our young gentlemen please. And, as to evening
prayers,--this actually happened in one of our own
houses the other night. A new servant-man brought
in the books, and laid them on the table in the
crowded drawing-room, at the usual hour. I should
have said it was the night of a large and late dinner-party.
The poor innocent fellow narrowly escaped
being sent about his business as soon as the last
guest had left. "Do you not know, sir"--his
master set upon him--"that in good society there
is ever family prayers after a party like what we
have had to-night?" The stupid man had just
come from a devout old castle in the Highlands,
and did not know that family worship was a fast-dying-out
ceremony in the West End society he
had come to serve.
But even when family worship is never,--morning
nor night--pushed into a corner, it might almost
better be. The regulation chapter; the wooden
monotony; the mechanical round; the absence
of a thought, or an idea, or an emotion, or a feeling;
one pushing about a creaking chair when he is on
his knees: another yawning till the whole room
is ashamed of the indecency: another coughing
and sneezing without ceremony; and then,--before
Amen is well uttered,--all the room beginning to talk
at once: it had been so bottled up for the past
ten minutes. I only know one house, in all my
acquaintance, where ordinary decorum is taught
to the children and the guests in the matter of a
moment of reverential silence before the Babel
begins again after prayer to God. Now, would you
cough in the Queen's face? Would you yawn till
she heard you? Would you up, and begin to talk
to her servants before they are well off their knees?
"Take it now unto thy governor."
Very few men are such well-mannered gentlemen
at home as they are in company. No man dresses
for his wife and children, as all men so scrupulously
dress for court and ceremonial. But some select
men do. They have a queen every evening at
home, and young princes and princesses at table
with them. And they have their reward. And so
in the matter of family prayers. Few men, ministers
or others, prepare themselves for family prayers as
they do for State services, and ceremonial devotions.
But some men do: and they, too, have
their reward. Thomas Boston made it a rule to
prepare himself for family worship, as regularly,
and as honestly, as for the pulpit or the prayer-meeting.
And he had his remarkable rewards, as
you will see when you read his remarkable
Memoirs
of himself. An old college friend of mine keeps
me posted up with the work of grace that always
goes on in his congregation, and in his family.
And, not long ago, I had a letter from him telling
me that God had given him the soul of another of
his children: and the best of it was that it took
place at, and sprang out of, the family worship of
the manse. You and I would be taken aback if
any one--a child, a servant, a guest--said to us
that they had ever been any the better of any
family worship of ours. We do not expect it. We
do not prepare for it. We do not really wish it.
And we do not get it. And we never shall.
But it is perhaps at the breakfast and the dinner
table that our family mockery of God comes to its
most perfect performance. This is the way they
said grace about the year 1720 in England. "In
one house you may perhaps see the head of the
house just pulling off his hat: in another, half
getting up from his seat: another shall, it may be,
proceed as far as to make as if he said something,
but was ashamed of what he said," and so on. You will
see the miserable picture finished when you go
home today. And you will see the heartless
mockery to perfection the first public dinner you
are at. I suppose this is what Malachi meant
when he said, "Even the Lord's meat is to you contemptible."
3. And then, secret prayer, "closet" prayer, as
Christ calls it,--even where there is a certain
semblance of it,--take it to thy governor! For are
not these its characters and features, even where
it in some measure exists? Its chanciness, its
fitfulness, its occasionliness, its shortness, even
curtness, its hastiness to get it over, and to get
away from it, and from Him; and so on. "Be
not so hasty," says the prophet, "to get out of His
sight"; showing, you see, that in secret prayer
they had the very same impiety and profanity to
contend with that we have. And, again: "If the
spirit of thy ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy
place." No: leave not thy place, for His spirit
rises up against all haste to get rid of Him and all
dislike at His presence, and all distaste, and all
restraint of prayer. "Leave not thy place." The
whole world is in that word. Thy soul is in that
word. Thy salvation, and the salvation of others,
is in that word to thee, "Leave not thy place."
No! Leave not thy place. Keep firm on thy knees.
Go back a second and a third time. Even after
thou art out of thy door, if the Spirit moves thee:
and more, if He has forsaken thee and does not
move thee, go back: shut thy door upon thee
again: for thy Governor is there waiting for thee,
and nothing in thee pleases Him like secret prayer.
And, sometimes, speak out when you are alone with
Him. You will find it a great assistance to a
languid faith sometimes to speak out. Cry aloud
to Him sometimes. You will find a mighty alteration
in your heart as you continue, and continue, in
secret, and in intimate and in confiding prayer.
Say to yourself that the Governor of heaven and
earth is shut in with you, and you with Him; and
be not in such a hurry to "dismiss" Him.
Now, this Royal command has again gone forth
among us concerning next Lord's Day. "If the
Lord will, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper will
be dispensed here." "The Mighty God, even the
Lord, hath spoken. Out of Zion, the perfection
of beauty, God hath shined. Gather my saints
together unto Me; those that have made a
covenant with Me by sacrifice." And in obedience
to His command we shall all be gathering together
to the Lord's Table about this hour next Lord's
Day. Now, let us just do--all this week--as if
it were the week before we were to go to Windsor
or to Balmoral. Let us think all the week about
our King, and about His Table, and about how
we should prepare ourselves for His Table; and
how we should behave ourselves at it. Let us seek
out those royal favourites who are at home at the
Lord's Table, and go by their advice. There
are books, also, of court etiquette, that are simply
invaluable to intending communicants,--golden
books, in which the ways of heaven are set forth,
and illustrated, for the counsel and guidance of
new beginners. Read nothing else all the week.
Fill your mind with the ways and words and
manners of the Royal Table. And be ready, with
the right words to speak, when the King speaks
to you. And when He comes in to see the guests,
He will see you with your wedding garment on:
and He will look on you with His Royal countenance,
and will say to you, "Eat, O friends! drink, yea,
drink abundantly, O beloved." And you will call
the name of this place Peniel: for you will say,
"I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
