03.14. Where Shall We Find The Secret Place?

Where Shall We Find The Secret Place? My aim is not to instruct, but to suggest.

Manuals of devotion have usually been to me depressing rather than helpful. They are either too mechanical or too exacting. They discourage rather than inspire. I want to write quite frankly, and in the first person. All my life I have wanted to learn to pray. In my zeal I have experimented and explored in likely and unlikely ways and schools of prayer, and without pose or pride I want in meekness and humility to tell you what I have learned. I speak for myself. I judge no man’s method, criticize no man’s counsel, challenge no man’s experience. I speak with utmost simplicity, and you must judge what I say.

Let us begin with the difficulty of privacy.

There are tens of thousands of Christ’s disciples who have no room to which they can retire for private prayer. They live with other people, sleep with other people, work with other people. They cannot escape from people. Is not this a reason why the door of the house of God should never be closed?

One Monday morning a penitent sinner stopped me in the main street of the town where I had preached on the Sunday. There were three nonconformist churches near at hand, but they were locked and bolted, back and front, and we had to go to the parish church to find a place where there was privacy for prayer. The door of the church should always be open. Even that does not meet the need of the soul. The secret place of prayer should be part of the daily life, a part of the daily dwelling place.

Some place must be found that shall be a trysting place with God. A hungry heart will find a way. In the open air or in some secluded corner, some inner sanctuary will be found. If this advantage is impossible, the soul must make an open space into which it can withdraw, even in the presence of others, and be alone with God; but the "inner chamber" is an unspeakable boon. Happily, God wills that men should pray everywhere, but the place of His glory is in the solitudes, where He hides us in the cleft of the rock, and talks with man face to face as a man talketh with his friend.