Beecher on Prayer Meetings.
By Beecher
You know that prayer meetings are proverbially dry and stiff. Men test their consciences by their faithfulness in attending prayer meetings, and take great credit to themselves when they can say, I go to the prayer meeting every week—as much as to say, a man can do any thing on principle. And I sometimes think it is correct. Men go to prayer meeting often, in a room that is big enough to hold four times as many as come together, and each, one would suppose, suspecting others of some infectious disease, sits as far from them as he can; and they sing a hymn coldly; then they read a section of the Bible—if the word of God is the bread of life they take a very dry crust out of it—then they have a prayer, perfunctorily made; then there is another hymn; then there is another regulation prayer; and then the meeting is “thrown open.” For a while nobody speaks. Then somebody gets up and says the same thing he said two weeks ago—that they are all sinners, that they are all living below their light and privilege; and that they ought to feel roused up and quickened to a sense of their duty. He sits down and another man balances it on the other side. He is an elder, or a deacon, or some other regular speaker; and what he says is all good—they know it is, for they have heard it a thousand times. And when he sits down the hour has elapsed and everybody thanks God that it has. And the meeting is dismissed and they all go home. I really believe that the prayer meetings of churches are often the most waste periods of the whole week. And the most melancholy part of it is, that those men who are so unspeakably dry, have rich fountains of experience in them. They are really good men. The old elder who got up and repeated—for the five hundredth time perhaps—that ritualistic speech, or uttered that stereotyped prayer, is as sweet, and as gentle, and as simple as a child. He is a man of purity. I have seen one of those stiff meetings seized by an old sailor that had dropped in, who did not know what was “proper,” and who, when he had listened to those dry speeches till he could endure it no longer, got up and let himself out in true Methodist style. Tears ran down his cheeks, and his voice was lifted up and filled the whole room, and thrilled the hearts of all present. Although he used much bad grammar, there was a great deal of sense in what he said. And at such a time I have seen people cry, and little children wake up and look about and wonder what was happening. They had never heard of such a thing in a meeting before. And it was owing to nothing in the world but the fact that there was a man there with a fresh heart who was not ashamed to say just what he felt without thinking of grammar or propriety, or what special thing he should say, but relating his own experience and pouring out his little gospel in an earnest and simple manner. It was the best meeting the people had ever had, and they were delighted; and they got the man to come to the next meeting, and tried to get him to speak again as he did at the previous one; but they were disappointed. The moment you attempt to run two meetings in the same mould, the second will be a failure.