p. 1 | STUDIOUS DEVOTION

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 21, 1860

STUDIOUS DEVOTION.

“Could ye not watch with me one hour?” Matt. xvi, 40.

We are often in a religious hurry in our devotions. How much time do we spend in them daily? Can it not be easily reckoned in minutes?

Probably many of us would be discomposed by an arithmetical estimate of our communion with God. It might reveal to us the secret of much of our apathy in prayer, because it might disclose how little we desire to be alone with God. We might learn from such a computation that Augustine’s idea of prayer, as “the measure of love,” is not very flattering to us. We do not grudge time given to a privilege which we love.

Why should we expect to enjoy a duty which we have no time to enjoy? Do we enjoy anything which we do in a hurry? Enjoyment presupposes something of mental leisure. How often do we say of a pleasure, “I wanted more time to enjoy it to my heart’s content?” But of all employments, none can be more dependent on “time for it,” than stated prayer.

In the royal gallery at Dresden may be often seen a group of connoisseurs, who sit for hours before a single painting. They walk around those halls and corridors, whose walls are so eloquent with the triumphs of art, and they come back and pause again before that one masterpiece. They go away and return the next day, and again the first and the last object which charms their eye is that canvas on which genius has pictured more of beauty than on any other in the world. Weeks are spent every year in the study of that one work of Raphael’s. Lovers of art cannot enjoy it to the full till they have made it their own by prolonged communion with its matchless forms. Says one of its admirers: “I could spend an hour every day, for years, upon that assemblage of human, and angelic, and divine ideals, and on the last day of the last year discover some new beauty and some new joy.”

I have seen men standing in the street before an engraving of that gem of the Dresden gallery, a longer time than a good man will sometimes devote to his evening prayer. Yet, what thoughts, what ideals of grace, can genius express in a painting, demanding time for their appreciation and enjoyment, like these great thoughts of God, of heaven, of eternity, which the soul needs to conceive vividly, in order to know the blessedness of prayer? What conceptions can art imagine of the “Divine Child,” which can equal in spirituality the thoughts which one needs to entertain of Christ in the “prayer of faith?” We cannot hope, commonly, to spring into possession of such thoughts in the twinkling of an eye.

Prayer, as we have observed, is an act of friendship, also. It is intercourse; an act of trust, of hope, of love, all prompting to interchange between the soul and an infinite, spiritual, invisible Friend. We all need prayer, if for no other purpose, for this which we so aptly call communion with God.

Zinzendorf, when a boy, used to write little notes to the Saviour, and throw them out of the window, hoping that he would find them. Later in life, so strong was his faith in the friendship of Christ, and his own need of that friendship as a daily solace, that once, when traveling, he sent back his companion that he might converse more freely with “the Lord,” with whom he spoke audibly.

So do we all need friendly converse with Him whom our soul loves. He alone is a thousand companions. He alone is a world of friends. That man never knew what it was to be familiar with God who complains of the want of friends while God is with him.

But who can originate such conceptions of God as are necessary to the enjoyment of his friendship in prayer without time for thought, for self-collection, for concentration of soul? Momentary devotion, if genuine, must presuppose the habit of studious prayer.

Whoever knew an eminently holy man who did not spend much of his time in prayer? Did ever a man exhibit much of the spirit of prayer who did not devote much time to his closet? Whitefield says, “Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground, in silent or vocal prayer.” “Fall upon your knees and grow there,” is the language of another, who knew that whereof he affirmed. These, in spirit, are but specimens of a feature in the experience of eminent piety, which is absolutely uniform.

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often and long alone with God. This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. No otherwise can the great central idea of God enter into man’s life, and there dwell supreme.