There are three sorts of prayer:--1. Public; 2. Domestic; 3. Solitary. Each
has its peculiar uses and character. I think the church ought to publish
and authorise a directory of forms for the latter two. Yet I fear the
execution would be inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional unction
in the numerous books of prayers put out now-a-days. I really think the
hawker was very happy, who blundered New Form of Prayer into New _former_
Prayers.[1]
I exceedingly regret that our church pays so little attention to the
subject of congregational singing. See how it is! In that particular part
of the public worship in which, more than in all the rest, the common
people might, and ought to, join,--which, by its association with music, is
meant to give a fitting vent and expression to the emotions,--in that part
we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a
Saviour. You know my veneration for the Book of Psalms, or most of it; but
with some half dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not adequate
vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy! Upon this deficiency in our
service, Wesley and Whitfield seized; and you know it is the hearty
congregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps the humbler
Methodists together. Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as
by his translation of the Bible. In Germany, the hymns are known by heart
by every peasant: they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in
the church praises God, like a Christian, with words which are natural and
yet sacred to his mind. No doubt this defect in our service proceeded from
the dread which the English Reformers had of being charged with introducing
any thing into the worship of God but the text of Scripture.
[Footnote 1:
"I will add, at the risk of appearing to dwell too long on religious
topics, that on this my first introduction to Coleridge he reverted with
strong compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days
upon prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said--
--'Of whose all-seeing eye
Aught to demand were impotence of mind.'
This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told
me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very
highest energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with
the total concentration of the faculties; and the great mass of worldly men
and of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer."--_Tait's
Magazine_, September, 1834, p. 515.
Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me
his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one
afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of
many passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others,
but complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his
most innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. "But I have no
difficulty," said he, "in forgiveness; indeed, I know not how to say with
sincerity the clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness _as we
forgive_. I feel nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or
reckon, the most solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act
of the reason and will. O no, my dear, it is _to pray, to pray_ as God
would have us; this is what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe
me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will,
to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and
verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon--this is the last, the greatest
achievement of the Christian's warfare upon earth. _Teach_ us to pray, O
Lord!" And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for
him. O what a sight was there!--ED.]
* * * * *
Hooker said,--That by looking for that in the Bible which it is impossible
that _any book_ can have, we lose the benefits which we might reap from its
being the best of all books.
* * * * *
You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is fancied without an
antecedent _quasi_ cause. It could not be otherwise.
_June_ 4. 1830.