11. The Form of Prayer

The Form of Prayer

Many questions affecting the form of prayer receive a suggestive answer in the prayers of the Bible. In their noble combination of simplicity and solemnity they stand unsurpassed and almost unapproached. The language is so simple and unstudied that, but for the context, one could often suppose it was the petition of a man to his earthly friend. This at least can be said of the Old Testament prayers, and of the prayers of Jesus, though hardly of the prayers of Paul. It must not be forgotten, however, that no direct prayers of Paul have been preserved in their spoken form; they are woven into the course of his epistles, and are char­acterized by the same rapidity and disregard of the literary proprieties as characterize his writings gener­ally. But Biblical prayer, as a whole, is simple. “Heal me, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; for Thou art my praise” (Jeremiah 17:14). The vivid and passionate simplicity of such prayers could not be surpassed. They are the outcome of the Hebrew mind which saw clearly, and, whether in narrative or prayer, said what it had to say without circumlocution or affectation. Indeed, one test of a good prayer, from the literary point of view—if we may speak of such a thing—would be whether it easily lends itself to trans­lation into Hebrew; in other words, whether it has the directness and simplicity of the Old Testament or the Lord’s prayer. The Te Deum could stand this test. Assuredly the Lord looketh upon the heart more than upon the form of a prayer. Yet the form is not alto­gether unimportant, and least of all in public prayer, which, like every other part of public worship, ought to be inspired by a sense of “comeliness and order.” Nor is the form so very separable from the content after all. A clumsy, confused, or complicated prayer hardly tends to the edifying of the Church (1 Corinthians 14:12). Doubt­less God can take these weak things, and let His Spirit shine through them. The heavenly treasure may be enclosed in a very earthen vessel; but the vessel should be as worthy of the treasure as possible. The precious ointment deserves the alabaster box.

“The best prayers,” says Dr. John Hunter, “are those which express in the simplest language the sim­plest needs, trusts and fidelities of the Christian soul.” The language must be such that “the other is edi­fied” (1 Corinthians 14:17); and, considering the differences of age and of education in every Christian congregation, that means, in other words, that it must be simple and readily in­telligible. It hardly needs to be said that prayer must not be, as the Latin Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, in a foreign language; but there are other kinds of unintelligibility besides that of a foreign tongue. The use of soaring polysyllables, of exagger­ated expressions, of poetical quotations, of lengthy sentences, of complicated syntax, of antiquated forms of language or thought—all this goes to defeat the end for which prayer is offered. Instead of edifying, they mystify; and “how is he that fills the place of the unlearned to say the Amen to your thanksgiving, if he does not know what you are saying?” (1 Corinthians 14:16) How the heart warms to the simple words of the Bible!

Thy loving kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens:

Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies.

Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God:

Thy judgments are a great deep.

O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast.

How precious is Thy loving kindness, O God. And the children of men take refuge under the shadow of Thy wings.

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house, And Thou wilt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures. For with Thee is the fountain of life: In Thy light shall we see light (Psalms 36:5-9). The language is simple, but its power of suggestion is inexhaustible. “It is high as heaven; the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” True prayer must be simple, not only in the sense that it is plain and intelligible, but also in that it is free from exaggeration. The publican expresses his penitence in half a dozen words; he calls himself a sinner, but not a miserable sinner. It is the simplici­ties, alike in form and thought, that touch the heart.

Perhaps the exquisite simplicity of the Bible can never, on the same scale, be repeated; and yet the Christian era has also been blessed with prayers which express the needs of men with fidelity, simplicity and beauty. There is a certain noble austerity, as well as simple comprehensiveness, about the sixth century prayer:—

O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive our prayers; and grant that we may both per­ceive and know what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

More poetic and almost equally simple is the follow­ing prayer from the Mozarabic sacramentary:—

Grant us, O Lord, to pass this day in gladness and peace, without stumbling and without stain; that, reaching the eventide victorious over all temptation, we may praise Thee, the eternal God, who art blessed, and dost govern all things, world without end.

Perhaps the simplicity and beauty of the Bible have never been so completely and continuously sus­tained in subsequent prayer as in the Imitation of Christ. Take, for example, the following prayer, addressed to the “most merciful Jesus”:—

Grant to me Thy grace that it may be with me, and work with me, and continue with me even to the end. Grant that I may always desire and will that which is to Thee most acceptable and most dear. Let Thy will be mine and let my will ever follow Thine, and be in most excellent accord therewith. Let my will be all one with Thy will, and let me not be able to will or forego anything but what Thou wiliest or dost not will. Grant to me above all things the desire to rest in Thee and to quiet my heart in Thee. Thou art the true peace of the heart, Thou its only rest: out of Thee all things are full of trouble. In this peace, that is, in Thee, the one supreme eternal good, I will lay me down and rest.

Such prayers as these exercise an unconscious influence, apart from their content, by the singular beauty and musical cadence of the language. The ear is satisfied as well as the heart. And when, in addition to this, the thought is fresh and unhackneyed, the prayer is like a breath from the hills of God. Such a prayer, for example, is that of Robert Louis Steven­son:— The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day. Bring us to our resting beds, weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep. Or still more this:—

We are here upon this isle, a few handfuls of men, and how many myriads upon myriads of stalwart trees. Teach us the lesson of the trees. . . . Let us see ourselves for what we are, one out of the countless number of the clans of Thy handiwork. When we would despair, let us remember that these also please and serve Thee. No doubt original prayers of this kind may easily de­generate into the fantastic; but that tendency may be held in check by an acquaintance with the less daring language of the Bible and the more formal prayers of the Christian Church.

Prayer is the outpouring of the heart to God (Psalms 62:8; Lamentations 2:19), and, if the heart be that of a poet, the language, which normally tends to be severe and chaste, may well blossom forth into figure. Such figures are found in some of the most passionate prayers of the Bible. Compare, for example, the prayer in Isaiah 63:7 to Isaiah 64:12: “As the cattle that go down into the valley, the Spirit of Jehovah caused them to rest” (Isaiah 63:14). Almost more striking is the reference, a little later on, to the “fire that kindleth the brushwood and causeth the waters to boil” (Isaiah 64:2). So Jesus prayed that the cup might pass from Him. Metaphorical language is quite com­patible with the most intense sincerity: it is the natural expression of a poetical mind. But it does not follow that such language should be imitated. When a prosaic mind expresses itself thus, there is always the suspicion of artificiality; and better a thousand times that prayer be unadorned, even clumsy, than artificial. The garnishing of prayer with quotations from the poets and the hymn-writers is, as a rule, a breach of literary taste, as well as of religious propriety. It is certainly not incompatible with sin­cerity, but it lacks that simplicity which one has a right to expect in the speech of a child to his father. When ye pray, say Father. A child does not quote poetry when he talks confidentially to his father. On the other hand, where there is a real poetic gift, this may well come to light in the emotional speech of prayer; and this speech will be as natural to one soul as bolder and more prosaic speech to another. No one could fail to be moved by the following beautiful prayer of Christina Rossetti:—

O Lord, with whom is the fountain of life, give us all, we entreat Thee, grace and goodwill to follow the leadings of Thy Holy Spirit. Let the dew of Thy grace descend and abide upon us, refreshing that which droops, and reviving that which is ready to perish, until the day when all Thy faithful people shall drink of the river of Thy pleasures. The propriety of quoting Scripture extensively in prayer may also be doubted. Sometimes the quota­tions are ludicrously unnatural on western lips; as when in public prayer a preacher says, “Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not” (Isaiah 63:16); or when, on behalf of his people, he assures God that Assyria shall not save them, and they will not ride upon horses (Hosea 14:3). These touches are completely unnatural to any but members of the ancient people of Israel; and quotations of this kind will tend to disappear the more the historical relations of the Bible are understood. But there are countless passages in the Psalms and prophets, the gospels and the epistles, which lend themselves very readily to citation in prayer, and a question may be fairly raised as to the propriety of this practice. Unquestionably the temptation is very great. Assuming that the prayer is a real prayer, it is often those very words that have awakened in the mind of the speaker the thought he desires to express. He may find other words, but he is not likely to find better. The thing he would say is there to his hand; why should he not avail himself of it?

Obviously such a question cannot be fully settled by an appeal to the Bible itself, as, in the nature of the case, such citations could only appear in the later books. Time had to elapse and many circumstances had to conspire together before the earlier books could rise to the rank of “Scripture.” In the post-exilic literature such allusions begin to be found. Nehe­miah, for example, calls upon Jehovah to remember the word which He commanded His servant Moses saying, “If ye trespass, I will scatter you abroad among the peoples; but, if ye return unto me,” etc. (Nehemiah 1:8) This is not an exact quotation, but it is a close reminis­cence of Leviticus 26:33, Deuteronomy 30:2-3. In a prayer of Ezra (Ezra 9:11) there is a still more elaborate reminiscence of a law—“which Thou hast commanded by Thy servants the prophets”—against inter-mar­riage with the Canaanites, which recalls Deuteronomy 7:3. Similarly the confessional prayer of Daniel acknowledges that the disasters that have befallen the Jewish people are in accordance with that which is written in the law of Moses (Daniel 9:11; Daniel 9:13). By the time the New Testament was written, prac­tically the whole of the Old Testament was what we may call, for want of a better word, canonical; but, so far as this question is concerned, the early Christians were drawn in opposite directions. On the one hand, there was the exuberant sense of the possession of a new life, which, like all true life, had the desire and the power to create its own forms of expression. This is very conspicuous in the prayers of Paul, which do not reproduce even the prayers of Jesus, though there are naturally a few faint reminiscences (Cf. 1 Corinthians 10:13; 2 Thessalonians 3:3; Galatians 1:4). But, on the other hand, there was a very powerful Messianic influence at work in the early Church, impelling the Christians to “show by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ” (Acts 18:28). This would naturally affect the prayers, which would often take the form of thanksgiving that the Messiah had come, as had been predicted in ancient Hebrew Scripture. Therefore the tendency to spontaneous prayer would be balanced by a tendency to quote. An excellent illustration of this is furnished by the prayer offered by the friends of Peter and John after their acquittal: “O Lord, Thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is; who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David, Thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against His Anointed, etc.” (Acts 4:24-26 : the quotation is from Psalms 2:1-2.) Such a prayer does not make upon us one tithe of the impression made by the simple appeals of Jesus, nor would it be natural to us; but— unless we regard it, with some, simply as a later literary prayer—it is the spontaneous utterance of men filled with the idea that at last had come the Messiah “by prophet-bards foretold.”

Jesus does not refer to Scripture in this way (but cf. John 17:12, which probably comes in part from the author.), but He uses it in prayer. On the cross, He prays in the language of Psalms 22:1, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and in a sentence of Psalms 31. He commits His spirit into His Father’s hand. These quotations are not sufficient, however, to justify the extravagant use of Scripture which is frequently made in modern prayer. The situation must be borne in mind. Jesus was on the cross, in agony: at such a time, what was more natural than that the mind should fall back upon old familiar words? The creative impulse is not at its highest when the body is racked with pain. Then the apt words of others are doubly welcome, and they seem to be our own. But it has to be further noted that, in the case of the second prayer, Jesus gave the familiar words a touch distinctively His own by the addition of the word Father. In borrowing from the Psalmist, He did not so much adopt as adapt. There is a sovereign freedom even in His use of the quotation; for the Psalmist commits His spirit to Jehovah for life, while in His words Jesus commits His spirit to His Father in death. In Biblical prayer, reminiscences of Scripture are relatively frequent—consider, for example, the Mag­nificat—but direct quotations are few; and even these are always justified by special circumstances. Per­haps this principle might be applied with advantage to modern prayer. Where there is life, there should be liberty and power: we have perhaps not only the right, but the duty, to express our own thoughts in our own way. But as the Bible is at once the inspiration and the finest expression of those thoughts, its language cannot fail to be a constant stimulus, and it may even be directly appropriated; but, as we have said, if it be used at all, it should, as a rule, be adapted in the spirit of free and living men rather than indolently adopted.

Prayer is an address to God, not to man; therefore it must have a very different ring from the sermon, which is addressed to man, not to God. Yet this very obvious distinction is occasionally forgotten. Some prayers are so didactic and rhetorical that a somnolent person is inclined to suspect that he has slept through the prayer and into the sermon. That ought not to be; nor could it be, if the prayer were a prayer. Prayer is speech, but it ought not to be a speech. It is the speech of the heart to God, but it must not be a speech to men in the form of a prayer. This is one of the dangers of public prayer, where the presence of other men can hardly be altogether forgotten—an especial danger for one whose profession is preaching.

It is from the prayers that we pray when “the door is shut,” and especially in hours of trial, danger, or temptation, that we learn the real nature and meaning of prayer—such a prayer as was offered, for example, by President Harper, of Chicago, shortly before his death: “May there be for me a life beyond this life; and in that life may there be work to do, tasks to accomplish. . . . If in any way a soul has been injured or a friend hurt, may the harm be overcome, if it is possible.” That is how men pray, when they are face to face with death and reality; and that is the spirit also which should control public prayer. No rhetoric, pyrotechnics, or argument; but reverence, humility, awe, and filial confidence. A child does not preach to his father; no more should the preacher when he speaks to the Father in heaven. In some of the later prayers of the Old Testament there can be detected a slight tendency to preach. The reminiscence of Deuteronomy 7:3 in Ezra’s con­fession (Ezra 9:11-12), to which we have already alluded, gives a certain hortatory turn to the prayer: “Now, there­fore, give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their prosperity for ever; that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.” Of course this may be explained away on the ground that it is a quotation; but it shows how real and obvious the danger is. The same homiletic tendency comes out in another prayer of Ezra, which, though a real prayer, both in form and spirit, might yet also be not unfairly characterized as half-narrative, half-sermon. “They dealt proudly, and hearkened not unto Thy commandments, but sinned against Thine ordinances, which, if a man do, he shall live in them, and withdrew the shoulder, and hardened their neck, and would not hear” (Nehemiah 9:29).

It is obvious that this can only be a feature of long prayers: the danger becomes less as the prayer grows shorter, and therefore, for this reason among many others, short prayers are to be recommended. Biblical prayers are usually short—very much shorter than the average modern prayer. The very earnest prayer of Hezekiah (2 Kings 19:15-19) for deliverance from Sennacherib could easily be spoken in less than a minute and a half; and the beautiful thanksgiving of David in 1 Chronicles 29:10-19 in between three and four minutes. But most of the prayers are much shorter than this; and the teaching and practice of Jesus, as we have seen, go to confirm the impression that the ideal prayer is short. Many public prayers are undoubtedly much too long. The so-called “long prayer” in Scotland has little Biblical sanction. In essence the long prayer is a heathen prayer: your Father knoweth what things ye have need of. It is refreshing to turn from the elaborate prayers of Ezra to the simple ejaculations of Nehemiah. It is the difference between the practical man of affairs and the professional clergyman. Allow­ance of course must also be made for the difference in the situation. Nehemiah’s prayers are private, Ezra’s are public; and the unusual length of Ezra’s confession in Nehemiah 9—about nine minutes, and it appears to be unfinished—is explained by the exceptional gravity of the situation. All the long prayers of the Bible— and they are very few—are similarly connected with situations of critical importance. The prayer put into the lips of Solomon in 1 Kings 8 occupies about eight minutes, and that of Daniel in Daniel 9 about five; but the one is connected with the dedication of the temple, an event of epoch-making importance, and the other with its desolation (Daniel 9:17). But the ordinary Biblical prayer is short, often astonishingly short; and modern prayer, public and private alike, would do well to recover this essentially Biblical quality. A brief prayer will be more likely than a long one to concentrate itself upon the matter in hand. In the prayer of Hezekiah just alluded to, after a simple ascription of praise to Jehovah as the only God and the Creator, the king at once makes his request: “Hear the words of Sennacherib, wherewith he hath sent him to defy the living God . . . Now save us, I beseech Thee, out of his hand.” Besides securing concentration, brevity has the further advantage of keeping the speaker in mind of the elementary fact, which some speakers appear to forget, that prayer is an address to God. There are some who habitually speak of God in the third person. The motive might conceivably be one of reverence, though this was certainly not how

Jesus taught His disciples to pray. In other cases, the habit may be unconsciously produced by the influence of preaching, in which God is spoken of, not to. Prayer addressed to God in the third person is, in reality, devout meditation—an excellent thing in its way, and not far removed from prayer, but not to be confused with it. The long prayer of Ezra to which we have already referred, in spite of its narrative and homiletic drift, is a real prayer. Thou and Thee and Thine are every­where: we are never allowed to forget that we are in the presence of God. Occasionally, indeed, the third person appears in Hebrew prayer, but, except in the Psalms, it is seldom sustained for any length of time; its place is usually at once taken by a second person. Take the prayer of Jacob for example: “If God will be with me and keep me ... of all that Thou shalt give me, I will give the tenth unto Thee” (Genesis 28:20-22). Or of Solomon: “Will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee” (1 Kings 8:27). Or of Daniel: “Jehovah our God is righteous in all His works which He doeth, and we have not obeyed His voice. And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought Thy people out of the land of Egypt” (Daniel 9:14-15). Similarly, a man may refer to himself in the same sentence in the third person and in the first: “Thy servant doth know that I have sinned” (2 Samuel 19:20).

Especially interesting are the rapid transitions of the Psalms from the second person to the third and vice versa. (Cf. Psalms 23:3-4. So the third person in Isaiah 63:7-14 a glides into the second in Isaiah 63:14 b ff.) It is this that makes it so difficult to use the Psalms in their entirety as prayers; but it very powerfully suggests the reality and naturalness of the communion of these writers with God. God was the background of the Hebrew mind. He was never far from any one of them; and whether they speak to Him or of Him, they are with Him. He besets them behind and before, and in a real sense, all their religious speech is speech to Him. Meditation is on the borderland of prayer: Hebrew meditation has crossed the border.

Apart from the Psalms, allusions to God in the third person are rare in Hebrew prayer. As we have seen, they are usually displaced at once by the more direct address; and where the transitions are frequent, as in the Psalms, it is because the devout Hebrew had an unusually powerful consciousness of God. Nevertheless I am con­tinually with Thee. But in modern prayer, the use of the third person in addressing God is usually a sign of inattention. The suppliant is forgetting that he is appealing to God, as a man to his heavenly Friend.

God should therefore be directly, not allusively addressed: but how, and how often? When ye pray, say Father. That ought to settle the first question. This is not of course an absolute condemnation of all other names and epithets whatever. Jesus Him­self also said “My God,” and to Father He added “Lord of heaven and earth.” But it indicates the name by which He should be predominantly addressed, and any epithets which may be added should express His nature not only truly but simply. “O God, Light of the hearts that know Thee, and Life of the souls that love Thee, and Strength of the thoughts that seek Thee; from whom to turn away is to fall, to whom to turn is to rise, and in whom to abide is to stand fast for ever.” This introduction is very noble, but per­haps a little artificial; it is a literary prayer, and lacks the naive simplicity of the Bible. In the light of the teaching and practice of Jesus, and of the Bible generally, which never really overloads its titles, even when, as in the later prayers, it makes liberal use of them, it is interesting to find that Law sets a high devotional value on these epithets, and deliberately recommends their use. We may begin our prayers, he tells us, in words like these: “O Being of all beings, Fountain of all light and glory, gracious Father of men and Angels, whose universal Spirit is everywhere present, giving life, and light, and joy, to all Angels in Heaven, and all creatures upon earth,” etc. And again, when we direct petitions to our blessed Lord, let it be in some expression of this kind: “O Savior of the world, God of God, Light of Light: Thou art the brightness of Thy Father’s glory, and the express Image of His Person: Thou art the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End of all things; Thou that hast destroyed the power of the devil; that hast overcome death; Thou that hast entered into the Holy of Holies, that sittest at the right hand of the Father, that art high above all thrones and principalities, that makest intercession for all the world; Thou that art the Judge of the quick and the dead; Thou that wilt speedily come down in Thy Father’s glory, to reward all men according to their works: be Thou my Light and my Peace.”

Law justifies the use of epithets by insisting on their power to raise our hearts to lively acts of adoration. We are to begin by using such expressions as may make us most sensible of the greatness and power of the Divine Nature; and he observes rightly enough that, as words have a certain power of raising thoughts in the soul, so those words which speak of God in the highest manner are the most useful and edifying in our prayers. But there is something artificial, or at least unbiblical, about this attempt to create an atmosphere in which the nature of God can be more readily appre­hended. When a Hebrew sought to kindle in his audience a sense of the divine goodness, he pointed them to history (Hosea 11:1-4; Amos 2:9-10, etc.); or he revived his own wavering faith by meditating on the mysteries of the moral world, and on the ultimate destinies of the good and the bad (Psalms 73:16 ff.). The exercise prescribed by Law may have its uses, but it is not in the spirit of Biblical prayer. The men of the Bible did not have to whip themselves into a devout mood: they spoke to God as a man speaks to his father or his friend. Nor is it necessary to repeat the name of God often in prayer. A man does not name in every sentence the friend to whom he speaks. There is even a certain unreality about the too frequent use of the divine name in prayer; if the speaker really felt that God were as near him as the men about him, he would prob­ably not name Him so often. It is striking that, in some of the most passionate prayers of the Old Testa­ment, God is named very seldom, and even then very simply. There can, of course, be no law on such a point. Elijah, at a critical moment on Carmel, addresses Jehovah three times within two verses (1 Kings 18:36 ff.) But in the great prayers the direct addresses are few. For twenty-five verses in the prayer at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8:28-53), there is no direct address at all. In Ezra 9 the addresses are few, chiefly at the beginning and the end. When Jeremiah pleads in Jeremiah 12:1-3 with all the energy of perplexity and disappointment, he only says, “O Jehovah,” and that only twice. Simi­larly, this is the only address (Isaiah 63:16 f.; Isaiah 64:8) in the very powerful appeal of Isaiah 43:7 to Isaiah 64:12. Job, in Job 10:2-22, a prayer delivered at white heat, never mentions the name of God at all. This very curious circumstance, that the most passionate prayers have the very simplest addresses, and sometimes none at all, should perhaps be more generally borne in mind in modern prayer. The custom of multiplying epithets grew up very early in the Christian Church, and it has more or less influenced all subsequent prayer. On this, too, the word of Jesus has a bearing, that men will not be heard for their much speaking.

There is a certain solemn stateliness about Biblical prayer. The threefold invocation of Jacob: The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, The God who hath shepherded me all my life long unto this day, The Angel who hath redeemed me from all evil (Genesis 48:15-16; cf. Daniel 9:19). reminds one of the threefold priestly blessing:

Jehovah bless thee, and keep thee:

Jehovah make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

Jehovah lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

What is perhaps less often noticed is the orderliness of prayer in the Bible. In discussing tragedy, Aris­totle (Poetics, 7:3) defines a whole as that which has beginning, middle, and end. A good prayer, like a good poem, should be, in this sense, a whole; it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Its parts may not be strung together anyhow: it must move on from point to point, controlled by a sense of decency and order. It must not be obtrusively logical, for prayer is not argument; but it ought to have a natural conse­cution. Nothing could be more orderly, for example, than the Lord’s prayer. It is not a series of discon­nected petitions; it is the development of a single thought, presented, with an almost Greek regard for symmetry, from two complementary sides. The same sense of order characterizes all the longer prayers of the Old Testament. The prayer of Solomon, for example, begins with an ascription of praise. Its first real petition (1 Kings 8:31 f.) is for the visible establishment of the moral order; and then, with much variety, beneath which is a real unity, the prayer beseeches the mercy of God upon sinners who turn in penitence to Him. So the prayer in Isaiah 63:7 to Isaiah 64:12 begins by “making mention of the loving-kindnesses of Jehovah,” and then continues with entreaty and confession. In Nehemiah 1:5-11 an introduction emphasizing the might and the faithfulness of Jehovah is followed by an elaborate confession and a short petition. Similarly the prayer of Ezra in Nehemiah 9:6-37 begins with an ascription of praise to Jehovah for His might manifested in crea­tion and His love in history, and this is followed by confession and petition.

Generally speaking, the order of the longer prayers is: ascription of praise or thanksgiving, confession, petition. Especially secure is the place of praise or thanksgiving at the beginning of the prayer. Besides the cases mentioned, Hezekiah’s prayer for deliverance from Sennacherib so begins (2 Kings 19:15), David’s prayer of thanks for the free-will offering (1 Chronicles 29:11 ff.), Jehoshaphat’s prayer before the battle (2 Chronicles 20:6), and the probably post-exilic prayer in Jeremiah 32:17-23 (Cf. Jeremiah 10:6-7). One lesson to be learned from this is a lesson that the New Testament, as we have seen, teaches with exceptional power—that praise and thanksgiving are the first duty in prayer. But another is that prayer should be orderly. God is a God of order, not of confusion.

Again, prayer must be intelligent, as well as orderly: indeed it cannot be orderly without being intelligent. The speaker must know what he is praying for, and what he is thanking God for. For this cause, says Paul more than once: “for this cause I bow my knees unto the Father” (Ephesians 3:14), and “thank God without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). This is the attitude of the man who said, “I will pray with the spirit and with the understanding also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). But while intelligent, it will not be obtrusively theo­logical. Doubtless every thinking man will endeavor to concatenate his religious thought; and he will not be intellectually satisfied till he sees it in its relations. But prayer is not the place for theological opinion or doctrine, as such. “Though I walk through the valley of the deep shadow, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” How He will be with me I cannot tell, and on that I may speculate; but that He will be with me I know, and with these and similar words I may grate­fully approach Him in prayer. I have heard a man pray, “We thank Thee, O God, for the doctrine of the Trinity.” There is no Biblical warrant for a prayer like that. We thank God for facts, not for doctrines. Doctrines have their day and cease to be, but the facts abide for ever.

Occasionally, though seldom, in the longer prayers, simple statements occur, which, strictly speaking, do not belong to the essence of prayer, and which have perhaps a remotely theological flavor. For example: “Thou knowest the hearts of all the children of men” (1 Kings 8:39); “there is no man that sinneth not” (1 Kings 8:46) Here again we may say, “Your heavenly Father knows,” and such statements should not be frequent. But they are not in themselves objectionable; for they are statements, not of doctrine, but of fact. Every one who believes in God and who knows the human heart must admit their truth. Prayer gathers about the fundamental needs, confessions, and gratitudes, and expresses these in language that is simple and free from the technicalities of theology. We pray as children, not as scholars. When ye pray, say Father; and let the thought of this simple human relationship control all our speech to God. The religion of Jesus Christ is a religion of freedom; and the New Testament is true to itself in making no prescriptions as to the time and place of prayer. It does not even prescribe family worship any more than it enjoins the abolition of slavery. But it is supremely practical, just because it prescribes so little. It creates a spirit, and the spirit must express itself: how and when and where will depend upon circumstances. But where the circumstances are normal and regular, the expression is likely also to be regular. Regularity, however, so easily degenerates into routine that, by the very regularity, the real object of prayer may be defeated, and its seriousness forgotten. In every possible way, therefore, it is necessary for those who lead the devotions of others, whether in church or home, to preserve the vitality of prayer, without which it is of no more value than the sounding of brass or the tinkling of cymbals.

Every day we must allow ourselves to be impressed anew, and as if for the first time, by the wonder of God’s goodness, and by the mystery, the pathos and the frailty of our little lives. “Morning by morning He brings His justice to the light: He faileth not” (Zephaniah 3:5). That prayer will be hearty and spontaneous which rises from the lips of one who, with ever new delight and wonder, meets that goodness which un­failingly greets him in the morning, and unslumberingly watches over him in the night. Every day is a fresh reminder of the need of God—for bread to eat and for deliverance from evil. If He fails not, but comes to us more bright and sure than the shining of tomorrow’s sun, why should we fail? Why should we not gladly come with regular, fresh, unwearied gratitude to Him who renews His loving kindness in the morning, and His faithfulness every night?

Among these regular prayers may be included grace before meat. This is not prescribed any more than they are, though, as we have seen, it must have been practiced (Cf. Romans 14:6). A question might fairly be raised, how­ever, whether it is reasonable to connect so deliberately the taking of food with religion, while few would so readily think of formally beseeching the blessing of God upon a lecture or a concert they were about to attend. The nurture of the spirit should surely stand as high in the estimation of a Christian man as the sustenance of the body; and we should be at least as grateful for the one as the other. Give thanks, says Paul, always for all things (Ephesians 5:20); and in consistency it might be said that one was bound either to give thanks aloud for these things as well, or to allow his gratitude for food to remain unspoken, or to express itself prac­tically in a deeper sense of brotherly fellowship with his companions at table, who are all sons of a common Father.

Charles Lamb says, “I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner.” Though “theoreti­cally no enemy to graces, practically they seem to me to involve something awkward and unreasonable”— at any rate “at the heaped-up tables of the pampered and luxurious,” though he admits that they are proper enough at a poor man’s table or at the “simple and unprovocative repast of children.” There is a good deal of truth in this distinction; and many another besides Lamb has “felt in his mind the incompati­bility of the scene of the viands before him with the exercise of a calm and rational gratitude.” Such were certainly not the dinners contemplated by Jesus, when He encouraged His disciples to pray for their daily bread. But for the simple meal, a prayer which raises a natural act into a sacrament, though it cannot be said to be necessary, is peculiarly appropriate. There is no reason why we should not also express our gratitude to God for the anticipated blessings of music or litera­ture. Better level up than down. Better thank Him for all things at all times, than never formally thank Him at all. But grace before meat, as Law says, is a proof that religion is to be the rule and measure of all the actions of ordinary life. With regard to the length of such prayers, it is in­teresting to see how he characterizes the custom of his times. “To such a pass are we now come that, though the custom is yet preserved, yet we can hardly bear with him that seems to perform it with any degree of seriousness, and look upon it as a sign of a fanatical temper, if a man has not done, as soon as he begins.’’ Certainly, if prayer is to be offered at such times, it must be offered reverently; but even a very brief prayer may be reverent. The prayer Jesus offered, may have simply been, “Blessed be the Creator of the fruits of the earth”; but the effect was indescribable.