Duty of Daily Sercret Prayer and Daily Study of Bible

THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET PRAYER AND DAILY STUDY OF THE BIBLE.
REV. J. M. MANNING.
BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES. 1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by NICHOLS AND NOTES, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SONS.
ALONE WITH GOD.
A TIME comes, in the experience of every true Christian, when the words, " enter into thy closet," are no more the stern command which they once were, but one of the sweetest of all Christ's invitations. The moments set apart for our secret devotions are “the children's hour ' in the Divine family. You know how it is wont to be in the household where love reigns. The child grows weary of playing, and steals away to the door of the room in which the father is. It finds that door ajar, and hears, from within, a voice of welcome. And so, entering in and having shut the door, it climbs upon the father's knees, is folded in his arms, and hangs about his neck, interchanging kisses of affection with him, and hearing tender replies to all its little story of wants and troubles, till its heart is made to overflow with comfort and gladness.
And is it at all otherwise, only unspeakably more blessed, with the soul which has learned to turn toward God, and say, “Abba, Father"? That new-born soul is forced to pass much of its time in a temporal world, where it finds many disturbances. It is driven hither and thither by unholy impulses. It is tossed up and down upon a sea of temptations. It is deceived, misled, betrayed, 'disappointed, until it cries out, as did the poor Prodigal, for its Father. And that Father, “Who seeth in secret," hears the cry of the distressed child. He is near it, in the calm and retired place, saying, " Enter in, thou bewildered and helpless one, and rest thee for an hour, communing with Me. Has the storm dealt hardly with thy little bark? Here, in ' thy closet,' is its haven of peaceful waters. Have the archers shot at thee, and art thou sorely wounded? Here, in ' thy closet,' is the balm of Gilead. Thy spirit hungers for food which the world cannot give: here it is, ' the bread of heaven,' of which if a man eat, he shall never hunger. Poor child of immortality, thou art thirsty; and here is the water of life,' which, if thou drink it, shall be in thee a well of water springing up into everlasting life. Come, thou weary child, born of Mine own Spirit, t and refresh thee in thy Father's love! ' Enter into thy closet,' and be alone with Me in that secret place, until thou shalt learn how much more ready than any earthly parent I am to give good gifts unto My children." Such, though alas! how unworthily spoken by my poor lips, is the mind of the Father towards us, when He bids us enter into our closet, and shut the door, and pray in secret to Him.
This meeting with the Father in secret, in order to fulfil its blessed purpose, must be distinguished by three things, the reading of the Scriptures, self-examination, prayer. These may be considered separately, though, in experience, each of them involves the other two. You cannot examine yourself in the light of God, without praying all the time, “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me." Together with your reading of the Scriptures goes forward that process of your own thoughts, " accusing, or else excusing, one another." And even while you pray, uttering the weakness and longings of which you are conscious, you find no words but those of the Spirit adequate to your groanings. As a vessel escapes from the tempest into its quiet harbor by means of three things, ballast to keep it low in the water, sails to catch the wind, and a helm to guide its course, so the Christian returns into his rest in the closet by means of self-examination, prayer, and reading of the Scriptures, all helping together. It is the Scriptures, read with a docile spirit, that hold him to his course; it -is beholding himself in the light of God that keeps him low in his own thoughts; it is crying, " Abba, Father," that bears him consciously on into his rest. Each of these exercises so involves the others, that, if you are diligent in either of them, you will be in all; and, if you neglect either one, you will become negligent of them all. As soon as you begin to examine yourself, you will look for the perfect standard with which to compare your life and character. As soon as you begin to know that standard, you will begin to cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner." If you tell me that you never pray, then I know that you are not a faithful student of the Bible and your own heart. If I could persuade you to attend to either of these duties as you should, I might feel sure that you would soon be attending to them all.
And what words of persuasion shall I speak? But hold a moment, fellow-disciple, and consider what I am proposing to do. Persuade you, who profess to be God's child, to have a time and place for meeting with that Father! Can it be that any such persuasion is needed? Oh, where is my charity! do I not, with cruel tongue, speak evil against you falsely, when I intimate that you have not daily communings with God, in your closet? Persuading you, at this late day, to do that in which the new life begins, and which is its light of life for evermore! The conversion of the apostle Paul was proved by his praying. The Lord said to His servant Ananias, " Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for, behold, he prayeth." Ananias need be afraid of him no longer. He had been born into God's family: God had begotten him, through the Spirit, to be a dear child; and the voice of that sonship in him was a prayer, feebly lisped in the dawn of the truth that God was his Father, and to be spoken more articulately, and with a richer fulness, as he grew toward the stature of a man in Christ Jesus. A prayerless Christian! that seems impossible. To be a Christian is to partake of the life of Christ. But the life of Christ was that of a Divine sonship in humanity. That sonship was a being in the Father as His dear child, knowing Him, and being known of Him, as in this tender fellowship, a fellowship which was expressed by the Son in prayer, and by the Father in hearing and answering that prayer. So, if you pray not, as Christ did, what can we say but that you have no part in, Him? Can you be God's child if you never call on Him as your Father? if, when you hear Him say, " Seek My face/' you answer not, "Lord, Thy face will I seek"? If you have been born of the free woman, how is it that you speak not the language of the free woman? Should not the children of Canaan use the speech of Canaan?
Let God decide the question. I see not how it can be, yet will assume as true what a Council of Pastors and Delegates, representing five thousand Church-members, has said of the prayerlessness of Christians. It may, in some mysterious manner, be true, that you are a child of God, though you have not the power to call Him Father. The Holy Spirit, let us assume, may have begotten you from the dead, and made you a partaker of Christ's life, though you are not conscious of such a life, " hid with Christ in God." Granting that this life of sonship is in you, though so stupefied by worldliness as to have no longing unto the Father, no filial impulse to go and meet that Father in the secrecy of the closet; how, then, shall you be persuaded to make that closet your daily resort, till the heart of the child in you shall find its voice in finding the heart of the Father?
First, think. upon the life of Christ, and how large a space in that life was filled by His secret communion with God. He prayed so much, and entered so fully into the mind of the Father, as to seem almost to carry His closet about with Him wherever He went. Appearing outwardly to men, in temporal form and vesture, He yet inhabited eternity, dwelt "in the bosom of the Father."
This spiritual indwelling was that which most filled His consciousness; so that, even in the midst of earthly disturbances, He could at any moment make Himself alone with God. We read of Him as absorbed in works of love; yet, even while performing those works, rejoicing in spirit, and saying, " I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth: ' ' saying these words in such a way as to indicate that nothing temporal, but only the eternal, was in His thoughts, no consciousness of any thing but a being in the Father, Who was also in Him. So at the grave of Lazarus, while touched with the sorrow of Mary and Martha, and while the company of Jews present were angrily watching Him, this whole scene being shut out from the sanctuary of His spirit, " He lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me; and I knew that Thou nearest Me always." This was to Him a praying in secret, and His prayer was answered openly in the coming forth of His friend from the grave. In like manner, when He prayed for His disciples at the Last Supper, all His words came out of eternity and the Father's bosom. Nothing earthly or temporal disturbs Him. He is conscious only of being in the high sphere and region of His own divinity, as a beloved Son communing with the infinite Father, praying in the secrecy of His spirit.
Yet even Christ, thus always in secret with the Father, had His hours for going away by Himself and praying. We read of Him in a certain place, that “He was alone praying." The whole tenor of His life, as sketched by Luke, was this: " In the day-time He was teaching in the temple; and at night He went out, and abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives." When He came to His disciples in the fourth watch of the night, walking to their drowning ship on the boiling waves, they knew that He came out of His place of prayer, where He had been “abiding under the shadow of the Almighty." "And it came to pass in those days," says one of the Evangelists, " that He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer." After His baptism, being consecrated to His redeeming work by the coming of the Spirit upon Him, He went away into the wilderness, and was there forty days and forty nights alone with the beasts of the earth. Oh, how those long hours of communion with God strengthened Him to vanquish the Tempter, to hold fast His faith that He was the Son of God; to undertake for lost men, who, as He foresaw, would lay on Him .the burden of their hatred and scorn, and nail Him in their wrath to the shameful cross! And when He saw that cross prepared, waiting that He might be lifted up upon it, He went over the brook into a place where was a garden; and there, curtained by the night and the shadows of the olive-trees, He girded himself for the sacrifice. "Being in an agony, He prayed." And then He came to His disciples, and found them sleeping; whereupon He went away again and prayed; and then again the third time, in the very same words; until at last He overcame His great sorrow, found Himself able to drink the cup which might not pass from Him, could respond perfectly to the judgment of the Father against sin, saying, " Thy will, not Mine, be done! "
Now, if the holy Son of God, who was without sin or sinful taint, and Who dwelt in the bosom of the Father, was wont thus to feed the sources of His spiritual life by setting apart hours for drawing near to God in prayer, how should we do, who are by nature strangers, the children of God only by a second birth, but feebly conscious as yet of the new life in us, and prone to evil? If He needed that strengthening which conies by abiding in the Father, then we should not dare trust ourselves a day, no, nor an hour, without it. He is not ashamed to call us brethren, though so little of His consciousness of sonship is in us. That consciousness was so vivid and constant in Him as to enable Him, amid scenes of the greatest confusion, to call God “Father." But we, even in the still hour of meditation, can hardly lisp the infant's cry, “Abba, Father." Oh, then, if we would meet the brotherliness which is in Christ, and, together with Him, would have our life hid in God, calling God "Father" with the full and articulate voice of our spirits, must we not again and again, and often and regularly, with the outgoings of the morning and evening, and " in season and out of season," enter into our closet, and shut the door, and pray to our Father who seeth in secret?
Turning now from Christ to those who have most nearly resembled Him in being the children of God, we shall find that in the closet was the hiding of their power. "Enoch walked with God." And this life of prayer, which he lived in a wicked age, gave him power to be translated, that he should not see death. Abraham had so much of this spirit, and communed with the Lord so often in secret places, that he was called “the friend of God." Jacob was named Israel, because he wrestled in prayer till he prevailed. When Moses came down out of the mount, his face shone so that the people were afraid to meet him; and that shining, so dreadful to consciences defiled by idolatry, was but the outward glow of a soul irradiated by the light of God, and filled and suffused with almighty power by being so long in the companionship of Jehovah. Such was the empowering of which Samuel, and Elijah, and Daniel, and Isaiah, and even Jeremiah, were conscious by entering into prayer before God. Herein was their inspiration; this the live coal, from off the altar, which touched their lips. Take out of the record of those holy men of old the accounts we have of their secret prayers and longings unto God, and the charm of that record, would be gone. The little remnant of outward fact would be dull and stale. You can no more think of those men without tracing all their wondrous words and works to the fountain of communion with God, than you can think of a river as possible without a source, or of the light of day as existing without a sun. Whom did God make ruler of His people, so that the kings of the earth feared him, and call “a man after His own heart," but David? David, full of evil impulses, yet who loved to " draw nigh to God; ' whose sweet Psalms, the joy of all burdened hearts, are but the voice of his own heart praying in secret; who called upon the Lord in the morning, at evening, and during the night-watches; who envied the bird that had her nest in the wall of the house of prayer; whose " heart panted after God," and " cried out for the living God;” “who was constantly exclaiming, " When shall I come, and appear before God?” How almost sadly we read, " The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended," feeling that then his life must have ended; or, if he lived after he had ceased to pray, that he must have been a weak and miserable old man, all the sweet freshness and strength of his early manhood having gone from him!
The words “human strength" seem at times to have no meaning. All our strength is weakness, and "power belongeth unto God;” and it is in His strength only that we feel ourselves to be really strong. And it is our prayer, the voice of the child in us longing unto its Father, that makes us conscious of receiving God's strength, even as the branch receives the life of the vine, by abiding in it. There is nothing men desire so much as the consciousness of power. This explains their indecent "haste to be rich," and scramblings for office or for the magic of a great name. But no such consciousness of power comes by these means, as comes to the Christian when he feels himself empowered from on high. This is the power of God in his soul, a spiritual might, by which he can do all things, subduing his own evil nature, " overcoming the world," "bearing all things, hoping all things, believing all things, enduring all things." "In us, that is, in our flesh, dwelleth no good thing; ' nor have we any power of ourselves, either to do or think any thing as we ought, save as God works in us, "both to will and to do of His good pleasure." And this inworking comes through prayer, being that " secret of the Lord” which is "with them that fear Him." And oh, what pleasure they have with whom this secret ever abides! I have no doubt that we here lay open the source of all that is greatest, purest, and best of man's doing. Out of this dwelling in God as a dear child, came the “Confessions” of Augustine, the sermons of Massillon, the “Thoughts” of Pascal, the conceptions of Michael Angelo, the sustained fervor of Whitfield. The singing men and singing women, whose hymns make melody in the Churches all round the world, have caught their inspiration in that secret fellowship of God into which prayer is the appointed way. We understand the patriotism of Washington, the missionary zeal of Brainerd, the courage of Luther, and the patience of the great company of saints " of whom the world was not worthy," by knowing that they went often, arid were always going, into see-ret places of prayer; where the spirit of the child in them uttered itself beseechingly, till they felt the life of the Father raising them up into " newness of life," and His Spirit witnessing with theirs that they were born of Him.
Let it be distinctly noticed that Christ, and those His brethren who have most largely shared in His experience of sonship, have never felt any embarrassment in coming before God to pray, as though their asking were a doubting of the Divine goodness, or a putting of their private wish in the way of changeless decrees. If God were a law of nature, or a fate, we might feel an impropriety in prayer. But He is our Father; and He is ready to do for us above all that we are able to ask, or even to think; and, when we are brought into perfect accord with Him in the way of childlike prayer, only then do we grasp the truth of this exceeding readiness to bless; and in this knowing of God as our un withholding Father is that " eternal life ' which is both the hearing and answering of prayer, and to which there need be added no other granting of our requests. " Do you pray as a child of God,, whose first and nearest relationship is to God, your Father; whose most deeply felt interests are bound up in that relation, in what lies within the circle of that relation contemplated in itself? Do you pray as one to whom the mind of God towards you and your own mind towards Him are the most important elements of existence, and whose other interests in existence are as outer circles around this central interest; so that you see yourself, and your family, and your friends, and your country, and your race, with the eyes, because with the heart, of one who ' loves the Lord his God with all his heart and mind and soul and strength '? Is this at least your ideal for yourself; what you are seeking to realize, to realize for its own sake, not for any consequences of it in time or eternity? for, whatever the blessed consequences of its realization will be, they shall be far, and for ever inferior and secondary to itself." *
But perhaps you plead that I have, in these remarks, transcended any thing you have ever experienced of the rewards of secret prayer. You have many times consecrated a closet, but have always forsaken it after a brief trial; for you found no upliftings of soul, no inspirations, no enlarging^ of your joy and strength, such as I have described. Let us see, then, if the causes of your discouragement cannot be laid open; and if you cannot be put in such a way of performing this duty as never again to neglect it, but, on the contrary, to esteem it the one pleasure of your
* John McLeod Campbell,
life, with which you shall allow no engagements or stress of worldly business to interfere.
Your closet is a dreary and barren place for just this: you do not, as God's child, so experience daily your own weakness as to feel driven to your Father for strength. And why is not this experience of weakness constantly yours? Because your new life is not a conflict with the powers of darkness, with which you are unable to cope, save in the strength of God. It is the consciousness that the battle is going against him, that causes the child of God to take refuge in his “Strong Tower." Oh blessed danger, that forces us to fly into our “Fortress," where we find the peace which passeth understanding! If you, compassed about with infirmities, are daily striving to live the life of the holy Son of God, then are you in a conflict which is continually forcing from you the prayer, “Father, save me from this hour." Are you not driven every day to the utterance of such “strong crying with tears "? Then you cannot be struggling to put down all your evil thoughts, to overcome the world, to convert sinners from the error of their ways, and to bear about the dying and the life of Christ daily in your mortal body. The sons of God do perpetually experience that they are utterly weak, powerless to be in perfect accord with the mind of the Father. Billows go over their head, and they are all the time ready to perish. Not allowing themselves to be drifted along in the currents of worldliness, but being in the way of their holy purpose to be conformed to God, they have such experience of weakness as to be ever crying, " Father, Abba Father, keep us through Thine own name, for we are Thy children; calm us, strengthen us, lead us, give us the victory over foes too mighty for our strength." And, finding that prayer answered, daily answered in their closet, where they pray to the Father in secret, answered with such consciousness of deliverance, and of incomings of peace, joy, and strength, the bitterest deprivation of their life would be not to be allowed to pray, while in praying they receive a thousand-fold for all their conflicts and troubles.
“Father, I'm now alone with Thee! Thy voice to hear, Thy face to see,
And feel Thy presence near;
It is not Fancy's lovely dream,
Though wondrous e'en to Faith it seem,
That Thou dost wait me here.
A moment from this outward life,
Its service, self-denial, strife,
I joyfully retreat;
My soul, through intercourse with Thee,
Strengthened, refreshed, and calmed shall be,
Its scenes again to meet.
How sweet, how solemn, thus to lie,
And feel Jehovah's searching eye
On me well pleased can rest!
Because with His beloved Son
The Father's grace has made me one,
I must be always blest.
The secret pangs I could not tell
To dearest friend, Thou knowest well;
They claim Thy gracious heart;
Thou dost remove with tender care,
Or sweetly give me strength to bear
The sanctifying smart.
Thy presence has a wondrous power!
The sharpest thorn becomes a flower,
And breathes a sweet perfume;
Whate'er looked dark and sad before
"With happy light shines silvered o'er;
There's no such thing as gloom! "

ADDRESSES TO CHURCH MEMBERS
BY THE
CONGREGATIONAL PASTORS OF BOSTON,
RECOMMENDED BY THE
Boston Congregational Council.
The following are now published, and ready for delivery: No. 1. THE RESULT OF COUNCIL. Complete.
No. 2. THE CHRISTIAN'S RECONSECRATION. By Rev. E. K. ALDEN, Pastor of Phillips Church.
No. 3. THE WORLDLINESS OF NOMINAL CHRISTIANS. By Rev. Dr. WEBB, Pastor of Shawmut Church.
No. 4. THE DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO UNITE WITH SOME CHURCH, AND THE DUTY OF CHURCH-MEMBERS TO UNITE WITH THE CHURCH WHERE THEY STATEDLY WORSHIP. By Rev. S. P. FAY, Pastor of Salem Church.
THE DUTY OF DAILY SECRET PRAYER and DAILY STUDY OF THE BIBLE. By Rev. J. M. MANNING.
The remaining Addresses will follow at intervals of about one
week; viz:
REVIVALS OF RELIGION. By Rev. J. E. TODD.
THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL IN THE CITY AMONG THE POOR, AND THOSE WHO HABITUALLY NEGLECT THE SERVICES OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr. DEXTER.
THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO WORK FOR THE SAVING OF SOULS. By Rev. Mr. BINGHAM.
THE DUTY OF A MORE STRICT OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. By Rev. Dr. BLAGDEN.
THE POWER AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. By Rev. Dr. ADAMS.
THE POWER OF PRAYER. By Rev. Dr. KIRK.
THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY IN ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SALVATION. By Rev. Mr. BAKER.