IX

_I ought to pray before seeing any one. Often when I sleep long, or

meet with others early, it is eleven or twelve o'clock before I begin

secret prayer. This is a wretched system. It is unscriptural. Christ

arose before day and went into a solitary place. David says: "Early

will I seek Thee;" "Thou shalt early hear my voice." Family prayer

loses much of its power and sweetness, and I can do no good to those

who come to seek from me. The conscience feels guilty, the soul unfed,

the lamp not trimmed. Then when in secret prayer the soul is often out

of tune. I feel it is far better to begin with God—to see His face

first, to get my soul near Him before it is near

another._—ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE.

The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on

their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and

freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway

seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and

efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of

the day.

Behind this early rising and early praying is the ardent desire which

presses us into this pursuit after God. Morning listlessness is the

index to a listless heart. The heart which is behindhand in seeking God

in the morning has lost its relish for God. David's heart was ardent

after God. He hungered and thirsted after God, and so he sought God

early, before daylight. The bed and sleep could not chain his soul in

its eagerness after God. Christ longed for communion with God; and so,

rising a great while before day, He would go out into the mountain to

pray. The disciples, when fully awake and ashamed of their indulgence,

would know where to find Him. We might go through the list of men who

have mightily impressed the world for God, and we would find them early

after God.

A desire for God which cannot break the chains of sleep is a weak thing

and will do but little good for God after it has indulged itself fully.

The desire for God that keeps so far behind the devil and the world at

the beginning of the day will never catch up.

It is not simply the getting up that puts men to the front and makes

them captain generals in God's hosts, but it is the ardent desire which

stirs and breaks all self-indulgent chains. But the getting up gives

vent, increase, and strength to the desire. If they had lain in bed and

indulged themselves, the desire would have been quenched. The desire

aroused them and put them on the stretch for God, and this heeding and

acting on the call gave their faith its grasp on God and gave to their

hearts the sweetest and fullest revelation of God, and this strength of

faith and fulness of revelation made them saints by eminence, and the

halo of their sainthood has come down to us, and we have entered on the

enjoyment of their conquests. But we take our fill in enjoyment, and not

in productions. We build their tombs and write their epitaphs, but are

careful not to follow their examples.

We need a generation of preachers who seek God and seek Him early, who

give the freshness and dew of effort to God, and secure in return the

freshness and fulness of His power that He may be as the dew to them,

full of gladness and strength, through all the heat and labour of the

day. Our laziness after God is our crying sin. The children of this

world are far wiser than we. They are at it early and late. We do not

seek God with ardour and diligence. No man gets God who does not follow

hard after Him, and no soul follows hard after God who is not after Him

in early morn.

X

_There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of the

present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of others. I

am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, manœuvering

temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out more than is

expedient to meet one man's taste and another man's prejudices. The

ministry is a grand and holy affair, and it should find in us a simple

habit of spirit and a holy but humble indifference to all consequences.

The leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a devotional

habit._—RICHARD CECIL.

Never was there greater need for saintly men and women; more imperative

still is the call for saintly, God-devoted preachers. The world moves

with gigantic strides. Satan has his hold and rule on the world, and

labours to make all its movements subserve his ends. Religion must do

its best work, present its most attractive and perfect models. By every

means, modern sainthood must be inspired by the loftiest ideals and by

the largest possibilities through the Spirit. Paul lived on his knees,

that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights, breadths, and depths

of an unmeasurable saintliness, and "be filled with all the fulness of

God." Epaphras laid himself out with the exhaustive toil and strenuous

conflict of fervent prayer that the Colossian Church might "stand

perfect and complete in all the will of God." Everywhere, everything in

apostolic times was on the stretch that the people of God might each and

"all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of

God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness

of Christ." No premium was given to dwarfs; no encouragement to an old

babyhood. The babies were to grow; the old, instead of feebleness and

infirmities, were to bear fruit in old age, and be fat and flourishing.

The divinest thing in religion is holy men and holy women.

No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness

energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for

more faith, more prayer, more zeal, more consecration—this is the secret

of power. These we need and must have, and men must be the incarnation

of this God-inflamed devotedness. God's advance has been stayed, His

cause crippled, His name dishonoured for their lack. Genius (though the

loftiest and most gifted), education (though the most learned and

refined), position, dignity, place, honoured names, high ecclesiastics

cannot move this chariot of our God. It is a fiery one, and fiery forces

only can move it. The genius of a Milton fails. The imperial strength of

a Leo fails. Brainerd's spirit can move it. Brainerd's spirit was on

fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing earthly, worldly, selfish came

in to abate in the least the intensity of this all-impelling and

all-consuming force and flame.

Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of

devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul

and body are united, as life and heart are united. There is no real

prayer without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The preacher must

be surrendered to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional

man, his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a

divine devotion. He is devoted to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition

are for God and to God, and to such prayer is as essential as food is to

life.

The preacher, above everything else, must be devoted to God. The

preacher's relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his

ministry. These must be clear, conclusive, unmistakable. No common,

surface type of piety must be his. If he does not excel in grace, he

does not excel at all. If he does not preach by life, character,

conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light, his preaching

may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo, yet its

weight will be a feather's weight, visionary, fleeting as the morning

cloud or the early dew. Devotion to God—there is no substitute for this

in the preacher's character and conduct. Devotion to a Church, to

opinions, to an organization, to orthodoxy—these are paltry, misleading,

and vain when they become the source of inspiration, the animus of a

call. God must be the mainspring of the preacher's effort, the fountain

and crown of all his toil. The name and honour of Jesus Christ, the

advance of His cause, must be all in all. The preacher must have no

inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition but to have Him

glorified, no toil but for Him. Then prayer will be a source of his

illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of his success.

The perpetual aim, the only ambition, the preacher can cherish is to

have God with him.

Never did the cause of God need perfect illustrations of the possibilities

of prayer more than in this age. No age, no person, will be ensamples of

the gospel power except the ages or persons of deep and earnest prayer.

A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. Prayerless

hearts will never rise to these Alpine heights. The age may be a better

age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the

betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its

betterment by the increase of holiness and Christ-likeness by the energy

of prayer. The Jews were much better when Christ came than in the ages

before. It was the golden age of their Pharisaic religion. Their golden

religious age crucified Christ. Never more praying, never less praying;

never more sacrifices, never less sacrifice; never less idolatry, never

more idolatry; never more of temple worship, never less of God worship;

never more of lip service, never less of heart service (God worshiped by

lips whose hearts and hands crucified God's Son!); never more of

church-goers, never less of saints.

It is a prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed by

the power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of praying;

the more of praying, the more of true saints.