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The Morning Watch

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 21, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 63.

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The Morning Watch

By I. H. Evans

The readers of the Review and Herald are not strangers to the Morning Watch, and need but little argument to convince them of its vital worth.
In 1908 the officers of the Young People's Missionary Volunteer Department issued a neat booklet containing selections of Scripture to be memorized daily. This study of Scripture was planned to be accompanied by a season of meditation and prayer. The merits of this suggestive daily program were soon realized, and the practice of spending a few moments each day memorizing the verses and meditating on things of God soon spread beyond the young people. Preachers and laymen formed the Morning Watch habit, and were seen at camp meetings, institutes, and general meetings, studying the texts, and engaging in silent prayer.
The first year, the Department issued but six thousand of these Calendars. But the circulation has increased year by year, until now it is more than forty thousand. This means that over forty thousand Christians have formed the Morning Watch habit, with the attendant endeavor to memorize three hundred and sixty-five precious passages of Scripture during the year. But the growth of the circulation means more than that; it means forty thousand souls are crying to God daily for power, and for cleansing of their lives from sin. It means that forty thousand Seventh-day Adventists are engaged in daily secret prayer.
The selections of Scripture for the 1917 Morning Watch Calendar are confined to the Psalms. What book of all the Bible enters more heartily into man's daily experiences of joy and sorrow, of hope and fear, and of battles and victories, than those songs of David and other writers of psalms? In our experience sometimes we climb to Pisgah's summit, whence we may view the Beulah land beyond the turbulent Jordan, and breathe the atmosphere of the heavenly Canaan. At other times we seem to sound the depths of the valley of humiliation, and flounder in the slough of despond. But the psalms respond to all our experiences, and give comfort in the soul-struggles with the enemy through which we pass.
The Calendar contains a sunset table, and blanks for a daily record of missionary work done.
Soon the old year will be past. Its days have been freighted with unseemly sights, with convulsions of nature, and with perplexities innumerable both for nations and for individuals. Shall not the new year find the new Calendar in the hands of fifty thousand of our people, bringing the comforts and benefits of the Morning Watch habit? Parents should see that their children each have a Calendar, for it is difficult to make one suffice for all the members of the family.
It is desired that all our people who read the English language have their Calendars at the opening of the year, for great blessing will attend the study, meditation, and prayer suggested in them. The Morning Watch Calendar is also issued in several foreign languages.
The Morning Watch habit is a Christian habit that every believer should form at once, and follow during 1917.
I. H. EVANS.