p. 95 | SELECTIONS by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 18, 1855

SELECTIONS.

By Editor

Do I go to Prayer-meeting?

CHRISTIAN reader, we address this inquiry to you, and it is one which relates to your present and eternal welfare, your spiritual growth and religious enjoyment. Do you believe it? Do you not know it? The experience of your own heart testifies to the truth of what we say, and your highest interest and dearest hopes demand an honest and faithful answer. In the prayer-meeting, you have the promise of Christ's presence, even though there should be but two or three there. Do you want a stronger inducement? Are you unwilling to turn aside from the world one hour during a whole week, to commune with that Saviour who has promised to meet and bless all who assemble in his name? Can you stem the tide of worldly influence which meets you at every step, without daily supplies of grace? Can you get along in your Christian life, growing in grace and in spiritual knowledge, without the influence of the weekly social prayer-meeting? No. You cannot be an active, vigorous, growing Christian while you deliberately and habitually neglect the house of prayer. Your thoughts, feelings and affections will become worldly, and they will control your life—destroying your Christian character and influence and real spiritual enjoyment. You cannot point to a single Christian in all your acquaintance, that neglects habitually the weekly prayer-meeting, who is spiritual in his thoughts, godly in his conversation, and devotional in his life, and whose influence and Christian enjoyment are what they should be. And what is the influence of such upon the church, upon the world, and upon their own families? We need not answer this question: for no one who is unwilling to meet with the people of God in prayer has any right to expect his blessing—that daily supply of grace which will enable him to overcome the depravity of his own heart and the influence of the world. His life may be moral, but it cannot be spiritual: for he neglects that which has been in every age the great means of spiritual growth, of religious enjoyment and Christian influence. Take from the Church the sacred and elevating influence of the weekly prayer-meeting, and you destroy her vitality, her heavenly mindedness, her aspirations for God; . . . and yet, are you not attempting to do this, so far as your influence will go, when you say, by your example, that you will not meet the people of God in the house of prayer? Yes, Christian friend, you are not only robbing your own soul of spiritual strength and comfort, but you are giving your influence to lower the standard of piety in the church, to increase the thoughtless indifference of the world, and you are placing before your own family an example which says to them that you find it a vain thing to wait on God. Can you thus live without becoming cold, formal and worldly—and yet you, and many who profess to be living for Christ, are compelled to admit that you are strangers in the house of prayer. And for this willful, deliberate, neglect of known duty you have not the semblance of an excuse. You stay away simply because you have no heart to go, and the longer you stay the less you will feel like going. Is it not so? Why, then, will you continue to live so reckless of duty—so dead to your highest interests? Is there no thought which can reach your heart—no obligation of duty to your own soul, to the church and world that can move you to a faithful discharge of duty? Look at the members of the church, with which you are connected—how cold, how lifeless, and how negligent of the prayer-meeting? Are you not among the number of those who stay away?—True Witness.