10 Prayer and Devotion United
There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry
of the present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of others. I
am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, maneuvering temper
of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out more than is expedient to meet
one man's taste and another man's prejudices. The ministry is a grand and holy
affair, and it should find in us a simple habit of spirit and a holy but
humble indifference to all consequences. The leading defect in Christian
ministers is want of a devotional habit. -- Richard Cecil
NEVER was there greater need for saintly men and women; more imperative still
is the call for saintly, God-devoted preachers. The world moves with gigantic
strides. Satan has his hold and rule on the world, and labors to make all its
movements subserve his ends. Religion must do its best work, present its most
attractive and perfect models. By every means, modern sainthood must be inspired
by the loftiest ideals and by the largest possibilities through the Spirit. Paul
lived on his knees, that the Ephesian Church might measure the heights,
breadths, and depths of an unmeasurable saintliness, and "be filled with all the
fullness of God." Epaphras laid himself out with the exhaustive toil and
strenuous conflict of fervent prayer, that the Colossian Church might "stand
perfect and complete in all the will of God." Everywhere, everything in
apostolic times was on the stretch that the people of God might each and "all
come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." No
premium was given to dwarfs; no encouragement to an old babyhood. The babies
were to grow; the old, instead of feebleness and infirmities, were to bear fruit
in old age, and be fat and flourishing. The divinest thing in religion is holy
men and holy women.
No amount of money, genius, or culture can move things for God. Holiness
energizing the soul, the whole man aflame with love, with desire for more faith,
more prayer, more zeal, more consecration -- this is the secret of power. These
we need and must have, and men must be the incarnation of this God-inflamed
devotedness. God's advance has been stayed, his cause crippled: his name
dishonored for their lack. Genius (though the loftiest and most gifted),
education (though the most learned and refined), position, dignity, place,
honored names, high ecclesiastics cannot move this chariot of our God. It is a
fiery one, and fiery forces only can move it. The genius of a Milton fails. The
imperial strength of a Leo fails. Brainerd's spirit can move it. Brainerd's
spirit was on fire for God, on fire for souls. Nothing earthly, worldly, selfish
came in to abate in the least the intensity of this all-impelling and
all-consuming force and flame.
Prayer is the creator as well as the channel of devotion. The spirit of
devotion is the spirit of prayer. Prayer and devotion are united as soul and
body are united, as life and the heart are united. There is no real prayer
without devotion, no devotion without prayer. The preacher must be surrendered
to God in the holiest devotion. He is not a professional man, his ministry is
not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. He is devoted
to God. His aim, aspirations, ambition are for God and to God, and to such
prayer is as essential as food is to life.
The preacher, above everything else, must be devoted to God. The preacher's
relations to God are the insignia and credentials of his ministry. These must be
clear, conclusive, unmistakable. No common, surface type of piety must be his.
If he does not excel in grace, he does not excel at all. If he does not preach
by life, character, conduct, he does not preach at all. If his piety be light,
his preaching may be as soft and as sweet as music, as gifted as Apollo, yet its
weight will be a feather's weight, visionary, fleeting as the morning cloud or
the early dew. Devotion to God -- there is no substitute for this in the
preacher's character and conduct. Devotion to a Church, to opinions, to an
organization, to orthodoxy -- these are paltry, misleading, and vain when they
become the source of inspiration, the animus of a call. God must be the
mainspring of the preacher's effort, the fountain and crown of all his toil. The
name and honor of Jesus Christ, the advance of his cause, must be all in all.
The preacher must have no inspiration but the name of Jesus Christ, no ambition
but to have him glorified, no toil but for him. Then prayer will be a source of
his illuminations, the means of perpetual advance, the gauge of his success. The
perpetual aim, the only ambition, the preacher can cherish is to have God with
him.
Never did the cause of God need perfect illustrations of the possibilities of
prayer more than in this age. No age, no person, will be ensamples of the gospel
power except the ages or persons of deep and earnest prayer. A prayerless age
will have but scant models of divine power. Prayerless hearts will never rise to
these Alpine heights. The age may be a better age than the past, but there is an
infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing
civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness
by the energy of prayer. The Jews were much better when Christ came than in the
ages before. It was the golden age of their Pharisaic religion. Their golden
religious age crucified Christ. Never more praying, never less praying; never
more sacrifices, never less sacrifice; never less idolatry, never more idolatry;
never more of temple worship, never less of God worship; never more of lip
service, never less of heart service (God worshiped by lips whose hearts and
hands crucified God's Son!); never more of churchgoers, never less of saints.
It is prayer-force which makes saints. Holy characters are formed by the
power of real praying. The more of true saints, the more of praying; the more of
praying, the more of true saints.
