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DIED OF NEGLECT

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 7, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 7.

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DIED OF NEGLECT.

By S. S. Mooney

I once read a notice of the death of a prayer-meeting, in substance as follows:—
Died, in Laodicea, the prayer-meeting, aged one year. The health of this meeting was poor during most of the year, and its life was at times despaired of; but anxious friends kept it alive, and occasionally it would so revive as to give them hope of its recovery. Discouragement, however, at last prevailed, and the prayer-meeting is dead. It died from neglect. Not a Christian was present when it died. Over forty are living within a mile of it, and not one was there. Had two or three only been there, its life might have been saved; for where two or three are agreed as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done. Two-thirds of the forty might have been there, had they been so disposed; but they were not, and the prayer-meeting died.
It is to be feared that the health of many a prayer-meeting is injured from neglect on the part of those who should attend. Are we not apt to excuse ourselves from going to prayer-meeting, with the plea that we are too tired, or that the weather is stormy, or too hot or too cold; when if we could get a dollar by going the same distance, and remaining the same length of time, we would make quite an effort to go. We should remember the injunction of the apostle: “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”
But, says one, the prayer-meetings are so dull that I cannot become interested in them. Well, do we do anything to make them interesting? or do we sit indifferently while others carry the burden of the meeting? When Christians meet together in a social capacity, they should observe system and order in the exercises. When properly conducted, the prayer-meeting will surely prove a source of great blessing. There Christians should meet, not to criticise each other, to preach sermons, make cold, formal prayers, or deliver long, dry exhortations; but to seek God, to draw nearer the throne, where they can commune with him who is above the mercy-seat, to speak comforting words to each other, and to pray with and for one another. Thus may the prayer-meeting become one of the dearest places on earth.
S. S. MOONEY.