Prayer and Practice

I need not prove to you that prayer, as a duty, is essential to Christian conduct; and, as a privilege, is equally indispensable to Christian enjoyment. All consistent professors of religion give themselves to this devout exercise. They pray in the closet, at the family altar, and in the house of God. Their petitions are copious, comprehensive, and seemingly earnest. What solemn professions they make to God! What ardent desires they express! What numerous blessings they seek! What strong resolutions they form! Judging of ourselves by the prayers we pour forth in secret, or of each other by the utterances we hear when we meet with one accord to make our common supplication known, we may very properly say, "What manner of people ought we to be?" If we so pray—how ought we to live? What kind of people must we be—to be up to the standard of our prayers? And ought we not, in some measure at least, to reach this standard? Should there not be a harmony, a consistency, a proportion—between our practice and our prayers?

There are many rules and standards of our conduct, or rather the one rule and standard is presented in various aspects in the Scriptures. The moral law, demanding perfect love to God and man; the moral character of God as revealed in his word; the example of our Lord Jesus Christ; the principles drawn from the Bible, and implied in our profession of religion, are all so many declarations of what we ought to be, and to do. Looking at these, how we are struck with our shortcomings, and with what deep humiliation ought we to confess and mourn them! But I now direct you to another rule and standard, and that is—your own prayers. Do you indeed ACT as you pray? Do you understand the import, and feel the obligation of your own petitions? Do you rise from your knees where you have asked and knocked, to seek? Do you really want, wish for, and endeavor to obtain an answer to your prayers? Does God see, and do men see, that you are really intent upon doing, and being—what you ask for in prayer?

I need scarcely inform you, that the designs and uses of prayer are many, besides being a means of obtaining necessary blessings. It is intended to do homage to God as the Fountain of being and bliss; to express our dependence upon him; to be a solace to our own minds, and also to be a means of personal improvement. Our prayers are to act upon ourselves; they have, or ought to have, great power in the formation of character and the regulation of conduct. This is too much forgotten. The moral influence and pious obligation of prayer are too much left out of sight. It is plain, therefore, that much of prayer is mere words—we either do notunderstand, or do not consider, or do not mean, what we say. This is a solemn consideration; for if it is true, we play the hypocrite before God, and insult him by the offerings of feigned lips. Can we endure the thought? It is time to consider such a subject—I mean the moral obligation of our own prayers—and to institute a comparison between them and our practice.

Let us review our prayers under two heads—

I. Prayers which relate to OURSELVES. I can only make a selection of subjects, but a few will be sufficient. How fervently we sometimes pray for the salvation of our souls, as our one great business in life, adding also an entreaty that we may ever consider it as such. Well, do we make it so? Do we go from praying to acting—and to live for salvation, for heaven, for eternity? How common is it for professors to pray for victory over the world by faith; to be delivered from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; to be enabled to set their affections on things above, and not on things of the earth; and to be dead to seen and temporal things, through the life that is hid with Christ in God—and yet all the while they are as obviously eager to amass wealth, to multiply the attractions of earth, and to enjoy as much luxurious gratifications as possible.

Nothing is more frequent than petitions to grow in grace—but where is the diligent use of the means of growth; where the habit of constant and lengthened retirement for prayer, meditation, self-examination, and reading the Scriptures? Is it not as though they expected the good seed of the kingdom to grow and thrive amidst thorns?

They pray for the mortification of their corruptions, and for their crucifixion with Christ; then of course they ought to have their eye fixed upon their heart, to watch against the least rising of sin; to repress the first movement, and crush a thought or feeling of iniquity. They ought to labor as they would do, to eradicate a vigorous and rapidly spreading weed in their garden; or to resist and heal a growing disease in their body. But do they? Is there all that effort after mortification—that weeping, wrestling, and ceaseless labor after the destruction of sin—which their prayers would lead us to expect?

They very frequently put up a prayer for consistency in their profession. This is a petition that is urged with all the appearance of sincerity and fervor, as if he who uttered it, and all who joined in it, were most anxious never to do the least thing, nor even to say a word, that would cause the enemies of religion to taunt professors with their inconsistency. And yet, perhaps, the very individual who had expressed, or the hearer who had joined in his earnest breathings after grace to be consistent, will, the next morning, by some dishonorable transaction in business, and, may be, in their dealings with some who were present the previous evening, do that which would disgrace a man of the world.

Spirituality of mind is the subject of innumerable prayers from some who never take a step to promote it—but, on the contrary, who are doing all they can to make them selves carnally minded! How many repeat that petition, "Lead us not into temptation," who, instead of most carefully keeping at the utmost possible distance from all inducements to sin, place themselves in the very way of it!

How often do they repeat that other petition in our Lord's prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us;" and yet how little do many feel disposed to pardon those who injure them, and how rarely do they from the heart forgive the trespasses of their neighbors! We should recollect that a person of a resentful and unforgiving temper shuts, by the use of such a prayer, the ear of God against his cry for mercy, and moves the arm of Omnipotence for his destruction! For if he ask to be forgiven, only 'as he himself forgives', and he, at the same time, revenges, instead of pardoning the offence—what is this but petitioning for vengeance, instead of clemency?

Professors ask to have the mind of Christ, and to imitate the example of their Lord. But where is the assiduous endeavor, the laboring effort, to copy this high model, in its self-denying condescension, its profound humility, its beautiful meekness, its indifference to worldly comforts, its forgiving mercy, its devotedness to God?

How often do we pray to be delivered from evil tempers and irascible feelings; and yet we indulge them on every slight provocation, and take no pains to subdue them! But it is unnecessary to multiply the illustrations of the inconsistency between our prayers and our practice, in reference to our own individual concerns as Christians. Alas! alas! who must not blush and be ashamed for his hypocrisy before God? Who must not smite upon his bosom, for this his iniquity, and say in deep humiliation and contrition, "God be merciful to me a sinner?"

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