BY C. H. SPURGEON.
DO not let your prayer be long. I think it was John Macdonald who used to say, “If you are in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because other people will not be able to keep pace with you in such unusual spirituality; and if you are not in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because you will then be sure to weary the listeners.” Livingstone says of Robert Bruce, of Edinburgh, the famous co-temporary of Andrew Melville, “no man in his time spoke with such evidence and power of the Spirit. No man had so many seals of conversion; yea, many of his hearers thought no man, since the apostles, spoke with such power . . . He was very short in prayer when others were present, but every sentence was like a strong bolt shot up to heaven. I have heard him say that he wearied when others were long in prayer; but, being alone, he spent much time in wrestling and prayer.” A man may, on special occasions, if he be unusually moved and carried out of himself, pray for twenty minutes in the long morning prayer, but this should not often happen. My friend, Dr Charles Brown, of Edinburgh, lays it down, as a result of his deliberate judgment, that ten minutes is the limit to which public prayer should be prolonged. Our Puritanic forefathers used to pray for three-quarters of an hour, or more, but then you must recollect that they did not know that they would ever have the opportunity of praying again before an assembly, and therefore, took their fill of it; and besides, people were not inclined in those days to quarrel with the length of prayers or of sermons so much as they do nowadays. You cannot pray too long in private. We do not limit you to ten minutes there, or ten hours, or ten weeks if you like.
The more you are on your knees alone the better. We are now speaking of those public prayers which come before or after the sermon, and for these ten minutes is a better limit than fifteen. Only one in a thousand would complain of you for being too short, while scores will murmur at your being wearisome in length. “He prayed me into a good frame of mind,” George Whitefield once said of a certain preacher, “and if he had stopped there, it would have been very well; but he prayed me out of it by keeping on.” The abundant long-suffering of God has been exemplified in His sparing some preachers, who have been great sinners in this direction; they have done much injury to the piety of God’s people by their long-winded ovations, and yet God, in His mercy, has permitted them still to officiate in the sanctuary. Alas! for those who have to listen to pastors who pray in public for twenty-five minutes, and then ask God to forgive their “shortcomings!” Do not be too long for several reasons. First, because you weary yourselves and the people; and secondly, because being too long in prayer, put your people out of heart for hearing the sermon. All those dry, dull, prolix talkifications in prayer do but blunt the attention, blocking up ear-gate with mud or stones when he meant to storm the gate. No, let the portal be cleared that the battering-ram of the Gospel may tell upon it when the time comes to use it. Long prayers either consist of repetitions, or else of unnecessary explanations which God does not require; or else they degenerate into downright preachings, except that in one the minister has his eyes shut, and in the other he keeps them open. It is not necessary in prayer to rehearse the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism. It is not necessary in prayer to relate the experience of all the people who are present, or even your own.—”Lectures to my Students.”
Memoir of Rev. D. Macfarlane.
As intimated in our last issue the above is expected to be ready this month. Intending purchasers will confer a favour by using the order slips inserted in the April Magazine. The price is 3s 6d (post free 4s); orders to be sent to Rev. D. Beaton, Free Presbyterian Manse, Wick.