p. 19 | Long Prayers

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 15, 1875

Long Prayers.

Dr. Talmage has something to say on the question of praying:—

“We are confident that one reason for the long prayers with which we are sometimes afflicted in religious meetings is an incapacity to wind up. After the brother has been praying about long enough you see that he is trying to find “Amen.” He does not want to come too suddenly upon it, so he gradually makes that way; but he is like a Brooklyn ferry-boat aiming for the wharf when there is a good deal of ice in the river, and he backs in and out, in and out, at last reaching it with a blundering stroke. Many of the brethren in their prayers take one-third of the time to get started and another third to stop. Why not with your first sentence plunge into what you most want and stop when you get through without any circumgyrations? Men keep on after they ought to stop, because they do not know how to let down brakes. We have a recommendation to make. If any isolated “Amen” would sound abrupt at the time you want to close, do as the psalmist did when the prayers of David the son of Jesse were ended, exclaiming, “Amen and Amen!”