IV

_Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America pouring out his

very soul before God for the perishing heathen without whose salvation

nothing could make him happy. Prayer—secret, fervent, believing

prayer—lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent

knowledge of the language where a missionary lives, a mild and winning

temper, a heart given up to God in closet religion—these, these are the

attainments which, more than all knowledge, or all other gifts, will

fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of human

redemption._—CAREY'S BROTHERHOOD, SERAMPORE.

There are two extreme tendencies in the ministry. The one is to shut

itself out from intercourse with the people. The monk, the hermit were

illustrations of this; they shut themselves out from men to be more with

God. They failed, of course. Our being with God is of use only as we

expend its priceless benefits on men. This age, neither with preacher

nor with people, is much intent on God. Our hankering is not that way.

We shut ourselves to our study, we become students, bookworms, Bible

worms, sermon makers, noted for literature, thought, and sermons; but

the people and God, where are they? Out of heart, out of mind. Preachers

who are great thinkers, great students must be the greatest of prayers,

or else they will be the greatest of backsliders, heartless professionals,

rationalistic, less than the least of preachers in God's estimate.

The other tendency is to thoroughly popularize the ministry. He is no

longer God's man, but a man of affairs, of the people. He prays not,

because his mission is to the people. If he can move the people, create

an interest, a sensation in favour of religion, an interest in Church

work—he is satisfied. His personal relation to God is no factor in his

work. Prayer has little or no place in his plans. The disaster and ruin

of such a ministry cannot be computed by earthly arithmetic. What the

preacher is in prayer to God, for himself, for his people, so is his

power for real good to men, so is his true fruitfulness, his true

fidelity to God, to man, for time and for eternity.

It is impossible for the preacher to keep his spirit in harmony with the

divine nature of his high calling without much prayer. That the preacher

by dint of duty and laborious fidelity to the work and routine of the

ministry can keep himself in trim and fitness is a serious mistake. Even

sermon-making, incessant and taxing as an art, as a duty, as a work, or

as a pleasure, will engross and harden, will estrange the heart, by

neglect of prayer, from God. The scientist loses God in nature. The

preacher may lose God in his sermon.

Prayer freshens the heart of the preacher, keeps it in tune with God and

in sympathy with the people, lifts his ministry out of the chilly air of

a profession, fructifies routine and moves every wheel with the facility

and power of a divine unction.

Mr. Spurgeon says: "Of course the preacher is above all others

distinguished as a man of prayer. He prays as an ordinary Christian,

else he were a hypocrite. He prays more than ordinary Christians, else

he were disqualified for the office he has undertaken. If you as

ministers are not very prayerful, you are to be pitied. If you become

lax in sacred devotion, not only will you need to be pitied but your

people also, and the day cometh in which you shall be ashamed and

confounded. All our libraries and studies are mere emptiness compared

with our closets. Our seasons of fasting and prayer at the Tabernacle

have been high days indeed; never has heaven's gate stood wider; never

have our hearts been nearer the central Glory."

The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put

in as we put flavour to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must

be in the body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty,

put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments of

time which have been snatched from business and other engagements of

life; but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and

strength must be given. It does not mean the closet absorbed in the

study or swallowed up in the activities of ministerial duties; but it

means the closet first, the study and activities second, both study and

activities freshened and made efficient by the closet. Prayer that

affects one's ministry must give tone to one's life. The praying which

gives colour and bent to character is no pleasant hurried pastime. It

must enter as strongly into the heart and life as Christ's "strong

crying and tears" did; must draw out the soul into an agony of desire as

Paul's did; must be an inwrought fire and force like the "effectual,

fervent prayer" of James; must be of that quality which when put into

the golden censer and incensed before God, works mighty spiritual throes

and revolutions.

Prayer is not a little habit pinned on to us while we were tied to our

mother's apron strings; neither is it a little decent quarter of a

minute's grace said over an hour's dinner, but it is a most serious work

of our most serious years. It engages more of time and appetite than our

longest dinings or richest feasts. The prayer that makes much of our

preaching must be made much of. The character of our praying will

determine the character of our preaching. Light praying will make light

preaching. Prayer makes preaching strong, gives it unction, and makes it

stick. In every ministry weighty for good, prayer has always been a

serious business.

The preacher must be pre-eminently a man of prayer. His heart must

graduate in the school of prayer. In the school of prayer only can the

heart learn to preach. No learning can make up for the failure to pray.

No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is

greater still. He will never talk well and with real success to men for

God who has not learned well how to talk to God for men. More than this,

prayerless words in the pulpit and out of it are deadening words.

V

_You know the value of prayer: it is precious beyond all price. Never,

never neglect it._—SIR THOMAS BUXTON.

_Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary

to a minister. Pray, then, my dear brother; pray, pray,

pray._—EDWARD PAYSON.

Prayer, in the preacher's life, in the preacher's study, in the

preacher's pulpit, must be a conspicuous and an all-impregnating force

and an all-colouring ingredient. It must play no secondary part, be no

mere coating. To him it is given to be with his Lord "all night in

prayer." The preacher, to train himself in self-denying prayer, is

charged to look to his Master, who, "rising up a great while before day,

went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." The

preacher's study ought to be a closet, a Bethel, an altar, a vision, and

a ladder, that every thought might ascend heavenward ere it went

manward; that every part of the sermon might be scented by the air of

heaven and made serious, because God was in the study.

As the engine never moves until the fire is kindled, so preaching, with

all its machinery, perfection, and polish, is at a dead standstill, as

far as spiritual results are concerned, till prayer has kindled and

created the steam. The texture, fineness, and strength of the sermon is

as so much rubbish unless the mighty impulse of prayer is in it, through

it, and behind it. The preacher must, by prayer, put God in the sermon.

The preacher must, by prayer, move God toward the people before he can

move the people to God by his words. The preacher must have had audience

and ready access to God before he can have access to the people. An open

way to God for the preacher is the surest pledge of an open way to the

people.

It is necessary to iterate and reiterate that prayer, as a mere habit,

as a performance gone through by routine or in a professional way, is a

dead and rotten thing. Such praying has no connection with the praying

for which we plead. We lay stress on true praying, which engages and

sets on fire every high element of the preacher's being—prayer which is

born of vital oneness with Christ and the fullness of the Holy Ghost,

which springs from the deep, overflowing fountains of tender compassion,

deathless solicitude for man's eternal good; a consuming zeal for the

glory of God; a thorough conviction of the preacher's difficult and

delicate work and of the imperative need of God's mightiest help.

Praying grounded on these solemn and profound convictions is the only

true praying. Preaching backed by such praying is the only preaching

which sows the seeds of eternal life in human hearts and builds men up

for heaven.

It is true that there may be popular preaching, pleasant preaching,

taking preaching, preaching of much intellectual, literary, and brainy

force, with its measure and form of good, with little or no praying; but

the preaching which secures God's end in preaching must be born of

prayer from text to exordium, delivered with the energy and spirit of

prayer, followed and made to germinate, and kept in vital force in the

hearts of the hearers by the preacher's prayers, long after the occasion

has passed.

We may excuse the spiritual poverty of our preaching in many ways, but

the true secret will be found in the lack of urgent prayer for God's

presence in the power of the Holy Spirit. There are preachers

innumerable who can deliver masterful sermons after their order; but the

effects are shortlived and do not enter as a factor at all into the

regions of the spirit where the fearful war between God and Satan,

heaven and hell, is being waged because they are not made powerfully

militant and spiritually victorious by prayer.

The preachers who gain mighty results for God are the men who have

prevailed in their pleadings with God ere venturing to plead with men.

The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the

mightiest in their pulpits with men.

Preachers are human folks, and are exposed to and often caught by the

strong driftings of human currents. Praying is spiritual work; and human

nature does not like taxing, spiritual work. Human nature wants to sail

to heaven under a favouring breeze, a full, smooth sea. Prayer is

humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory, and

signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and

blood to bear. It is easier not to pray than to bear them. So we come to

one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times—little or no

praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no

praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salve for the

conscience, a farce and a delusion.

The little estimate we put on prayer is evident from the little time we

give to it. The time given to prayer by the average preacher scarcely

counts in the sum of the daily aggregate. Not infrequently the

preacher's only praying is by his bedside in his nightdress, ready for

bed and soon in it, with, perchance, the addition of a few hasty

snatches of prayer ere he is dressed in the morning. How feeble, vain,

and little is such praying compared with the time and energy devoted to

praying by holy men in and out of the Bible! How poor and mean our

petty, childish praying is beside the habits of the true men of God in

all ages! To men who think praying their main business and devote time

to it according to this high estimate of its importance does God commit

the keys of His kingdom, and by them does He work His spiritual wonders

in this world. Great praying is the sign and seal of God's great leaders

and the earnest of the conquering forces with which God will crown their

labours.

The preacher is commissioned to pray as well as to preach. His mission

is incomplete if he does not do both well. The preacher may speak with

all the eloquence of men and of angels; but unless he can pray with a

faith which draws all heaven to his aid, his preaching will be "as

sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal" for permanent God-honouring,

soul-saving uses.