p. 127 | Short Prayers

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 19, 1865

Short Prayers.

Much is lost in prayer for want of brevity. If brevity is "the soul of wit," it is no less the life of prayer. Christians are not always heard for their much speaking, neither does the value or efficiency of a remark increase with the length thereof. Length should be secondary to depth. Let us pray for what we need, do our errands at the throne of grace with as much dispatch as is consistent with propriety, talk to the point, and stop when our duty is done. Volunteer service is sometimes not only ineffectual, but positively injurious. Much may be gained by due observance of the miller's creed: "Always shut the gate when the grist is out."